With Ricardo’s model, the kids actually choose and organise the visit of lots of different experts (with the help of their tutors). If it was a music related learning project, then getting a professional guitarist from a band would be great! But the key is, it’s the learners who are choosing who teaches them (and to some degree, what they are taught), not the ‘master’. This has some similarities to the apprenticeship model that you mention, but some major differences too, in that the kids are, at the same time, learning how to direct and manage their own learning.

Florian said:

When is the last time you heard of a teenager wanting to be like an important statesman, or a famous doctor, or a famous writer, or a chess player?

True too. Guess that’s why Mark Shuttleworth (man behind Ubuntu Linux) and others are running Hip2b2 (Hip to be Square) type projects – encouraging youth that learning is a cool thing! Great idea hey!

Funny that Aristotle apparently opened the Lyceum to compete with the existing Plato’s Academy which was teaching through lectures.

I guess the debate rages on to this day: is it a Lyceum or is it the Academy?

In time Lyceums became Colleges (still called lyceums in some countries’ educational systems) and Academies became Universities – go figure.

On the other hand in the quote above one cannot help but notice that “The masters are architects, astronomers, painters, musicians real experts chosen by the students themselves to come for weeks at a time. It sort of helps if they are not teachers. The thinking is that children want to learn and that ordinary schools stop them”.

Reminds one of current day “raw models” theory, the “masters” in the medieval “trade guilds” who came up with the apprenticeship model which is still with us and “mentoring” which is a learning model invented by the prelates. What do these have in common – the central figure who one can aspire to become one day.

When is the last time you heard of a teenager wanting to be like an important statesman, or a famous doctor, or a famous writer, or a chess player?

Don’t they all want to be like a famous chitar player in some band or a cartoon character or a punk rocker?

My point is: beyond the innate natural curiosity in each child, children want to learn so they can be like someone one day.

Could it be that Ricardo’s vision of Brazil’s education might just work because the experts it brings in the company of students are positive, inspiring raw models?

As they say – you are the company you keep…. (besides all that stuff you ate for dinner).