A Quiet Revolution: The Fontán System at Colegio Fontán, Medellin, Colombia
In my recent travels to Latin America, among the outstanding educational institutions I visited, offering world-class educational opportunities, I was introduced to a unique gem of a school, in the mountains above Medellín, Colombia. At Colegio Fontán, students are enabled to become independent learners in a way which is far removed from the platitudes of conventional schools. Systematic training in critical thinking and individual responsibility from a young age fosters an environment where students manage their own learning, design their own timetable and even plan their own term dates!
The System
Built upon the experimental Fontán system developed by Dr Ventura Fontán and Dr Emilia García in the latter part of last century, students at Colegio Fontán work closely with tutors to design their own programme of study, working through a carefully designed scheme of interactive reading, which builds active learning techniques. This ensures that the pace of learning is guided by the level of conceptual understanding of each individual student, not the external, time-pressured system of public examinations imposed upon the majority of learners across the world.
A unique learning environment
Visiting classrooms is like being in a university library, with students from an early age conducting their own research, working in collaborative groups and asking for advice and support from their tutors as and when they needed it. The overriding feeling is one of calm, mature study and of students having independent voices and opinions, which are taken seriously. A discussion with the MUN team shows just how developed these students are in their awareness and understanding.
By the time they reach university, Fontán students are incredibly well prepared, with fully-developed skills in research-based learning. EAFIT recently named 5 Fontán students in its list of the 10 top-performing students, and it's easy to see why.
The Principal, Adriana Fontán, is rightly fiercely proud of the the family legacy and the school's growing reputation, whilst recognising that the system is not for everyone.
Could the Sistema Fontán be applied more widely?
For sure, there is so much to learn from this unique approach, which radically shifts the position of learning from teacher to student. The challenge would be to scale this up on an institutional level. Allowing each individual to plan their own timetable and term dates sounds like a timetabling nightmare, and yet, if we really believe that the the student should be at the centre of the learning, it offers a model of perhaps how it should be done.