The County School Inspectorate of Vaslui (Romania) organizes, in November 2018, more precisely on 16-11-2018, the first edition of the International Symposium of Didactic Archaeology, while marking a jubilee moment: the first half of century since the foundation of the School Inspectorates and Romanian Departments.
It is on this occasion that we wish to launch an innovative concept, but having deep roots in the tradition: the Didactic Archaeology, which we invented to answer an intense need of recovery of what we lost and reintroduce ideas, methods, processes and procedures, applications unfairly and too soon doomed to be forgotten, in the circuit of spiritual values with a didactic focus. In a hurry to rapidly and radically change anything, excellent textbooks but with too short a lifetime have disappeared, methods have been lost, the hard work of highly gifted national specialists has been replaced by imported products of a quality, more often than not, rather doubtful, and, in any case, unrepresentative for this spiritual space.
The didactic archaeology represents, consequently, a process of recovery and reintroduction in the circuit of the values either of the sequences, or educational and didactic works integrally. Like all scientific activity, didactic archeology requires sustained research work, its sites being, in general, libraries, special funds, museums housing treasures not only of precious metals, but also treasures of human thought.
Through didactic archeology, we propose to establish a permanent link between imaginative and abstract thought as well as between knowledge and action, through rediscovery. Admittedly, the participation of the taught in the process of knowledge and action is organized for its educational values; in exchange, the work of scientists who will put their stone on the sites of didactic archaeology will be noticed by general social values because, by rediscovering laws and their obligatory nature unknown or forgotten for a long time, they will enrich the human activity with new forms that can contribute to social progress.
Many elements of the treasure that didactic archeology proposes to bring back to the taste of the day, in the center of the attention, contain excellent methods to cultivate and finely endow the abilities for different specializations and that because, formerly, in general, school was much more connected to everyday life and much more aware of reality than “sed vitae discimus”.
Like skills, both types of knowledge are the result of learning and it is here that their relationship to the results of scientific research may be different. The first type refers to the knowledge that the learner receives in a “ready-made” form from his or her teacher, parents, colleagues, textbooks or even through the media and social networks whose role is growing competing with school and family. The didactic archaeology aims to refine this rugged terrain and highlight what is best, which has proven its effectiveness and efficiency.
It has come time to think about what traits should characterize the teacher and the researcher, what those traits would be, by advocating that contemporary learning should in some way resemble scientific research – the merit of didactic archaeology would be that of proposing a return to the sources, a diligent deepening, a precise documentation.
If we want learning to have a profound influence on the personality of pupils or students to develop and deepen their intellect and their capacity of knowledge, to emancipate their emotional life, if we want it to contribute to the development of will and action, then the teacher who organizes it must possess certain qualities and abilities. It is implied that a teacher who is only the intermediary between knowledge and learner, in the process of knowledge transfer and verification of the degree of their acquisition, will not reach such an influence. Much more effective, of course, could fulfill these functions the computer – used in the hypostasis of “machine to learn”, but it is reproached with this type of learning by the specialists – rightly – that it misses the direct contact between teacher and learner and, therefore, we can blame it for the lack of influence of the teacher on him.
The didactic archaeology aims to relearn teachers to reconsider their teaching, to enable them to be this inner eye open to the waking state by seeking in the forgotten wisdom of the predecessors that they will resurrect, the inspiration to build a better future.
The first edition of the International Symposium on Didactic Archaeology will take place in Vaslui on November 16, 2018. We are organizing this first edition on 5 major axes, corresponding to the main centers of interest in teaching, without eliminating the possibility of a desirable interdisciplinarity:
Axis 1: Pre-school education
Axis 2: Primary education
Axis 3: Secondary education
Axis 4: University education
Axis 5: Non-formal education.
As the first didactic archaeology project we wish to inaugurate, there will be no precise temporal benchmark or strict theme, but we would suggest to study, presentation and (re) bring to the attention of the world for example, early ABC-books, interwar and early post-World War II language teaching methods and manuals, science textbooks and teaching methods.
However, we announce our firm intention to gather the result of these efforts to recover this treasure of thought in the first issue of the Romanian Journal of Didactic Archaeology, an EBSCO indexed publication which anyone will have the possibility to study on its own website http://nelpae.ro/rrad . The Scientific Committee will rigorously analyze the works proposed for publication and will approve those who respond to this Call.
To register for the International Symposium on Didactic Archeology, please visit the Magazine’s website: http://nelpae.ro/rrad or, more directly, use the link of the enrolling form: https://goo.gl/forms/vcHI7rhFsNJp19qO2 . After the confirmation of the registration, you will be contacted for further details related to the course of the event and the publication of the first issue of the Romanian Journal of Didactic Archaeology.
Organizers:
Departmental School Inspectorate of Vaslui
General School Inspector,
Gabriela Plăcintă
School Inspector for Modern Languages
Spokesperson,
Alexandru Mîţă
