The Future of Education

“Ludvik is a five and a half year old boy, and I was visiting his kindergarten. As I was writing in my journal, he came over to me, bringing with him pencils and a sheet of paper, and sat down next to me. He wrote some random letters on his paper, asking me to read for him what he wrote. He found it hilarious when I read the strange words. He folds the paper in two, writes some numbers and a sign in the front and tells me: ‘This is a book. This is the price tag’. He then writes his name. I ask if he can read the letters to me. He knows all the letters, and reads them out aloud to me. ‘L, U, D, volcano, I, K’.” This case is taken from my journal of February, 7^th 2023. «The term ‘invented spelling’ is an attempt to avoid labellings as ‘mistake’. ‘error’; but it itself obscures the processes that children engage in in making their sense of this bit of semiotic world” [1]. This was not invented spelling - the boy invented the name for a letter. Ludvik has a curiosity for letters, and has his own ideas around them. This paper presented is a case study, were one sees the child as an individual, instead of as a part of a larger group [2]. An aim of the paper is to show the relevance of the sociocultural learning theory [3] for the university professor, where participating in a community with speech and practical activity is important for the professor’s own learning and professional. As a visitor in the kindergarten I usually take part in the on-going activities, observing what the various participants do, and collecting data. In this paper I give a presentation of what I learned and how my students can benefit from this short encounter with Ludvik.