NCCC holds forum with filmmakers

WINSTED — Northwestern Connecticut Community College (NCCC) screened the documentary “School’s Out: Lessons from a Forest Kindergarten” on Thursday, April 24, at Founders Hall Auditorium.Director Lisa Molomot and Producer Rona Richter were at the screening to present the documentary and take questions from the audience.The documentary chronicles a year in Switzerland’s Langnau am Albis, which is a suburb of Zurich.In Langnau am Albis, children 4 to 7 years old go to their kindergarten, which is located in a forest.The children do not have a formal classroom building and they go to kindergarten every day, no matter what the weather is.The documentary chronicles the children’s education and also offers interviews with parents and teachers at the kindergarten.Both Molomot and Richter met at the same kindergarten that their children attend in New Haven.Richter grew up in Switzerland and, while she did not attend the kindergarten as a child, grew up in a town near Langnau am Albis.“When we started to make the film we really didn’t even know what it was going to be about,” Molomot said. “I learned a lot because, since I’m an American, it is interesting to see how educators in a different country teach children. Both the parents and the teachers give children so much more freedom than the education we give American children. They let children think things out on their own and they let them become independent.”“In America there is too much emphasis on early academic learning,” Richter said. “Nowadays you have children sit down at a bench at the age of 5 learning about letters and you push them to learn about math. At that age, its debateable if its the right thing to do. They don’t get to establish a relationship with nature and their surroundings.”Molomot and Richter said they would like the audience of the documentary to think about giving children space and time in order to have the freedom to be children.“Something has shifted since I was a child in the 1970s where education has suddenly become so accelerated,” Molomot said. “What children are learning now in kindergarten are things we would have learned in the first grade in the 1970s. You have to ask yourself what is it that children are not getting if they are focuses in writing and math. There’s one scene in the film where we show a 4-year-old boy who walks home from the kindergarten by himself. He takes the elevator to his family’s apartment and lets himself in with his key. We don’t usually allow children to do these things in America.” “In the forest kindergarten at Langnau am Albis they give children a lot more slack than we do in America,” Richter said. “If possible, we should allow children the freedom to make mistakes and not being supervised as much.”