Thelongwalkup

Ideas' for a new Educational approach In this article I will be exploring the current approach to education as a passive process of consumption and its primary perceived location, The school.  I will then be exploring a Utopian vision for a new way to structure education as a thought experiment, the purpose of which to generate a new opportunity for perceiving education differently.  It Starts in School.. Lest Start with  The primary location for education to be 'done', schools serve an irreplaceable role in modern western society, that's right...caring for young people while adults get on with the business of living and working. The schools also then adopt the secondary role of delivering an education in preparation for joining the adults in life in the future. This may be a vast oversimplification, however the system is complex (not complicated, i see there is a difference) so i will focus my attention in the article around invariants and attractors of the educatio...

 What does a good teacher mean? Its important to preface this extract by stating that I don't believe that one can 'be' a 'good teacher', a teacher is not a kind of status (new, experienced, expert0 or a badge that can be attained and boxed away ready to be diploid when the need for a 'good teacher' arises. Rather, I believe a teacher is an infinite process of 'becoming' much like learning, teaching for me is a 'way of being' in the world. Its a way of being that relies on others seeking to be guided as much as it is a self driven journey. Teaching is about crafting with another being or whole class of beings as your join them on a learning journey. The learning journey calls for a correspondence between others. to bring the world into the realm of what can be 'known'. The key here is the language, Lets start be changing the term 'good teacher'. I prefer the term 'skillful guide'. As mentioned above, in order...

Learning knowledge is not simply a banking system whereby students can acquire and save knowledge about a subject to be studied. This duality results in the split between the student and the teachers in what becomes a didactic process of presentation and memorization. This approach is see's the world as something separate from human experience, a world that is studied from the perspective of the observer must be removed from context, seperated into its most simplistic components and re-assembled in the mind of the observer in an attempt to acquire some knowledge that can be banked and labeled as such. This removal of the person from the world is they come to 'know it' results in a sever in the intimate link between what can be known and what can be abstracted , one can only truly know something as it relates to everything that brings it into being and therefore this removal of what can be 'known' from the context that creates it and gives its meaning c...

  Learning To Know What does it mean to truly Know something? Learning to know - if we are learning to gather information then we need to listen (attend), watch (attend) perceive, its an active process its embodied and emergent. To know something is, to correspond with it. To attend as it is continuously brought into being. For example: Perhaps to truly to know a walking trail or path means to skillfully attend to it as you traverse the landscape. In this sense the correspondence is in the perception between information that is specifying the existence of that route and your responses to it. As you correspond you attentively adjust your movements along it, deepening your perception of it, and thus again expanding your perception of it, its infinitely complex. One could say, You come to know the path through your bringing of the path into being as you traverse along it. It is only truly the knowing of the path that creates the trace for others to follow. '...

  For Me intelligence is a form of 'knowing'. Its about knowing yourself and how you correspond with the world. This knowing allows you to explore anything from the point of curiosity rather than coercion. Intelligence should be an intrinsically driven search to expand the field of knowing. This was not the case in my own education which was based on labeling intelligence as something abstract and removed from the context of the world. A test score or a exam grade was an easy way to label intelligence as a kind of ability that one 'has' and therefore in the context of the education system, will always 'Have'. Consider the number of people you know who started in 'lower ability' and remained their through their educational journey. It creates a language of labeling instead of a language that is 'enabling'. This labeling of Children feed's the existing lack of opportunities for learners to exercise their own curiosity, instead it c...

  Where does knowledge fit in our journey towards understanding? Knowledge has been at the forefront of modern educational debate for some time now. In in increasingly technological age there are more and more questions surfacing as to what the role that 'teaching knowledge' Plays in the information rich age that we find our-self living through. Even now reading this blog (if there is anyone out there) you have probably stumbled across it, driven mainly by your own curiosity and the availability of access to information on your phone or Computer. But does this mean that we don't need to be 'taught' Knowledge anymore? Lets begin by examining the language here. The Etymology of the word Knowledge comes from the early 12c., word cnawlece  "acknowledgment of a superior, honor, worship;" ( https://www.etymonline.com/word/knowledge ) which rings true with the phrase 'Knowledge is power'. Its seems to be the popular rationale for direc...