PREMISES
Living in this history time, we are in situation where the traditional education system has certain characteristics:
- Is sponsored by state
- Is institutionalized
- Is built on principles of industrial era
- Is intended to produce a specific type of human – the citizen of a modern nation who serves to the needs of the modern state
1) Sponsorship of the state
The current traditional education system is based, in most of the countries, on financial resources allocated by the State. Depending on the amount of wealth and the political line of the state leaders, the resources are more or less generous.
This means that there will be:
- A selection of domains that will receive training
- A choice of the methods for the instruction process.
The above items are optimized according to the financial constraints and state policy. As a result, there will be some domains of education which will not occur in the school curriculum or will be not such represented.
2) Institutionalization
The education is performed by state institutions, which have a tendency to become, across time, more complex structures and more conservative. This is an impediment for the entering into the curriculum of topics that are considered “new” or in conflict with the system in service.
3) The principles of industrial era
Mass education has appeared in the same time with industrial era. In this historical epoch the education system has remained unchanged, based on industrial principles such as:
- Mass production
- Standardization
- Uniformization
- Efficiency over quality
This manner of education assume the gathering of students on study years, in classes, being taught by one or more professors. The books are more or less standardized, with emphasis on memorization..
These principles are morally obsolete, especially nowadays when the information is available in different ways (multimedia) and channels (internet, television, satellites, etc). The availability of both forms wasn’t present when the current education system was built (the second half of the 19th century).
4) It is intended to produce a specific type of human
The current education system aims to produce a modern human being, a citizen who is part of the nation and who has certain characteristics:
- The compliance with social and state system
- The presence of a feeling of national loyalty
- Social integration
- Intellectual skills and professional training to make him a good employee
These values make a model person with uniform standardized personality and aspirations, away from natural tendency of human beings to pursue their callings and hobbies. This way, the modern human has major deficiencies in the following areas:
- Self-individualization, a distinct person from group and nation
- The growing of personal autonomy, despite the dependence of individuals, groups, social structures and services
- Finding the personal goal and purpose in life (the dream, life mission)
- The networking and the social and interpersonal communication
- The networking, the integration and the symbiosis with the natural environment
- A holistic view approach of life
These areas can be defined as belonging to the basic concerns of the personal development, and these elements are barely found in the current education system. That’s why the current society is perceived as functional as a system, but totally dysfunctional from any individual’s point of view.
If you’re looking at general level, the citizen is a uniform person, with standard aspirations, with a limited set of intellectual and emotional skills. This is the result of:
- The occasional family education and ephemeral interaction between parents and children
- An education system focused on quantity over quality
- A social pressure which flattens our trends to become distinct, independent, autonomous personalities
At some point, such a person comes to deal with a personal and social crisis, when they realize that their needs and aspirations can never be satisfied with the amount of knowledge, skills and routines that the educational system has provided them with. So, he is looking for new information which hadn’t been acquired before in school curriculum.
Unfortunately, this “awakening”, which we can call “zero point”, is happening quite late, usually after the third decade of life. This whole period of time, between graduation and zero point is lost.. This is an optimistic view actually, because there are people that, throughout their entire lives have no zero point moment.
The Head Start Project wants to produce the zero point as soon as possible, even during adolescence.
VALUES
The basic values of the project are:
- Love
- Freedom
- Independence
- Autonomy
- Evolution
Love
The main engine that drives the whole project is love for the human being, as a conscious and rational entity. From this love stems the desire to help people in personal development, which has the purpose to achieve the goal in life and with it, obtaining happiness.
Freedom
The expression of human personality – pursuing a personal dream or goal can’t be achieved without freedom.
Independence
A first step to personal evolution is the independence from people, groups, social and state structures.
Autonomy
The true independence is achieved only through autonomy, be it financial, social or otherwise.
Evolution
The pursuit of happiness is possible only through positive evolution and personal development in all areas in which the human being is expressed.
All the values which are defined above represent also steps in achieving our final goal: the happiness in the existence that we have in this reality.
PRINCIPLES
The main purpose of this project is to promote additional education among young people so that they start on the road to personal development.
This aim is accomplished through the following objectives of the project:
- To be a distribution channel for the content producers
- To facilitate free access of the general public to the content, especially adolescents and young people
- To become a transforming experience for those involved in the project as collaborators, helping them in their personal development
- To create, through all its work, people who started to think of their personal development, to become, in turn, mentors for those around them
- The creation of regional centers, where groups can form around mentors in order to initiate and lead an activity, similar to those around Head Start project, that have local and regional impact.
By definition, the content means all the materials that contribute to personal development, regardless of the topic and means of dissemination (written, spoken, audio-visual or other related forms).
PROJECT’S GUIDELINES
The function of the project is based on the following guidelines:
Content – production and dissemination
- the promotion of a content of excellent quality
- the promotion of a content with more attractive and exciting form, appealing to the younger generation
- the promotion of a content from a variety of personal development fields
- the delivery of content into several types of presentation (text, audio and video,etc.)
- the delivery of content through different channels (DVD, internet, webinars, seminars, meetings, conferences, TV, radio, etc.)
The impact of the project
- the national coverage, by penetration into all the schools in Romania and in as many institutions of higher education
- the expansion beyond the Romanian borders, to Romanian communities everywhere
The project image
- the transparency of project activities is provided by public statistics (number of people who have received the information, graphical presentations on maps of penetrating project, etc.)
- a permanent concern for the right and honest promotion of the project’s image
- a continuing challenge to disseminate information about the project and its activities, in newspapers and media (radio, TV)
The internal workings, organization and management
- The extensive use of information systems for project automation processes: data processing and the transmission of content (automated applications for collecting and processing databases, web-based automated systems for the dissemination of content through internet, etc) in all areas where such automation is possible.
- The implementation of interactive systems, web 2.0 at all levels which are suitable for this
- The full use of all methods of disseminating information about the project, through social media; looking for new and innovative methods so that the entire project become known to the whole population
- The use of modern marketing and promotion techniques, especially online (visual attractive design, split testing, the growth of the impact of web pages, auto responder for automated delivery of information, etc) and the content penetration to be as high as possible.
Collaborations and personnel involved in the project
- Collaboration with any structure that supports the project or who has similar goals to the project (NGO, structure or state organization – school inspector, the ministry of education – departments and other organization)
- A permanent search for new content producers
- A permanent search of collaborators in areas which are necessary for project
- A permanent collaboration, mutual information and mutual assistance for project team members
- The dissemination of experience gained by the project team, both within the team and general public to form an online knowledge base, such as wiki-how
- The different access of project team members to information structure (databases, hosting systems, sites) based on a layered system of passwords
- The different levels of access of project team members to information structure and decision processes that occur inside the project, based on personal skills in different areas, motivation, work strength, the workload performed and, very importantly, depending on the length of time he/she has participated in the project.
Public Relation
- A permanent preoccupation to receive feedback from the public about project activities for the content promoted, for the presentation modalities and for the presentation channels
- The implementation of an automated online system for gathering feedback, in various forms (comments areas, opinion polls, etc.)
- A full analysis of all received feedback, the selection of ideas and valuable feedback, followed by making changes in the project