Ready4school and the tool EMANUEL is based on extensive knowledge about, and experience with children and their school start.

Here, you can read about the background for EMANUEL’s reccomendations.

The question about what we can really know, has preoccupied the human race for thousands of years. How can we obtain knowledge about something, and how can we assure that the knowledge really is correct?

Now-a-days, we often divide theoretical knowledge into two categories: descriptive and normative. While the descriptive theory seeks to describe factual conditions, that can be tested and proved scientifically, the normative theory relates to how things should be. Newton’s laws of physics is a classical example of descriptive theory, while normative theory can deal with, for example, systems of moral or political ideas.

The tool EMANUEL is, to a certain extent, established on normative theori, meaning that the reccomendations are based on a humanistic viewpoint, where a child is considered valuable in itself – regardless of origin, appearance, intelligence, physical conditions, or economical potential. This moral starting point cannot be proved, but is simply assumed to be given. By extension, EMANUEL is established (just like the education for teachers and pedagogues) on both Bordieu’s and Vygotsky’s normative theories about cultural capital and sociocultural, cognitive development respectively.

However, the tool EMANUEL is also largely based on descriptive theory. Since the 50’s, people in Europe and the USA have been intensively researching the effects of different forms of pedagogy, didactics, and psychology, and with the emerging of brain research in this millenium, we have gotten even more sources for reliable knowledge about how a childs surroundings affects their development. Today, we know that both inheritance and environment have a large impact on a childs development, and that we with relatively simple methods can reduce the risk of dissatisfaction drastically, and at the same time significantly increase th chances of effective learning.

Additionally, the tool EMANUEL is based on another form of knowledge, that we with an Aristotelian term can call phrônesis – or with Paul Riceurs more modern description can call practical wisdom.
Practical wisdom is the type of savoir-faire that a football player uses, when a penalty kick is to be taken. It is the carpenter’s measurement and execution of a roof construction. It is the jazz pianist’s fabulating solo or the lawyer’s advice about the testament. It is the investor’s succesfull hedging, and the painter’s quick shadow-strokes.

Practical wisdom is, with other words, the combination of deep subject-specific knowledge and long lasting, thorough training. An extensive, effective, and well-justified ability to make the right choices in often complex or unclear situations.