WHY DO WE HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE PROCESS OF LEARNING??
The process of learning, the content of learning and children seem to be the most misunderstood aspects of modernity. This is because language and thought have become the source and means for exploration whereas the Real 'knowledge' lies outside the realm of language and thought. But, since we are trained to learn the word alone, we have allowed and developed our cognitive system to understand the word alone. The way in which language organizes the world also impacts the development of our cognitive system. We not only bypass the real world in this process but also numb our senses/ body related cognitive system.
Some of issues that human experience of the past 300 or so years raise are:
Is the language of earth taught in our classrooms or even families --co-existence, compassion and letting be?
The relevance --or desirability-- of Darwinism to the earth's well-being and human sanity? The language of Darwinism and development vs the language of children and earth.
How what we shape, shapes us?
Is there a better classroom than the earth? How do we go about it?
We know and understand what we are allowed to. Much that we aren’t allowed to. Social structures determine cognition.
Once children go through schooling, due to the numbing of their senses, their creativity and sensitivity are lost. No amount of art education or moral stories will help children or adults regain their natural and inherent possibilities. There accrues much unease in the adults' comprehensions and debates about elementary givens as Nature and Earth. Such mishap occurs when referents to understandings come from modern categories (whose foundations are laid in schools) as State, progress, democracy, development, economics, governance, market, equality, ecology and the rest. They have little or no echo in either in the child's experience or the adult's memory. As children we spoke the language of Nature, as adults that of the State. In folk/adivasi communities there is only a little difference between words used by children and adults.
The following questions are proposed to be explored during the workshop:
What is learning and how does what we learn, form our 'beingness'?
What is 'beingness' and how it happens?
Why do we need knowledge at all? Is it just for employment and career or are there any existential reasons?
How has 'school-ism' and celebrated careerism fragmented/destroyed Nature, Earth, knowledge and us? --Time to begin conversations/debate on this.
Just as for capital, how much knowledge do we require for a happy and healthy life? Were not folk/tribal societies (they are not mythical constructs) all over the world focussing on this dictum? Are not some pockets of them still doing it?
Similarly, how many words do we need to comfortably conduct our daily lives and relationships?
Are we now not victimised by the excess of our own creations, inventions and accomplishments.
Language as a means of communication and Nature as communion.
Why is that we are not aware of our own damage; The cognitive damages of the modern schooling process?
Why have we become blind to the inherent propensity and natural process of learning in children and later adults?
How children learn the real world and how are children misled from this natural process- the context and conditions and activities that are responsible for the ‘formation’ of the child’s being.
Is there a natural process of learning the world with the help of the word? Or what is the role of language in the creation of knowledge?
How do we know how our vocabulary and language shape us and our surroundings? How language --like capital-- is now a tool in the hands of a few.
The process of learning, the content of learning and children seem to be the most misunderstood aspects of modernity. This is because language and thought have become the source and means for exploration whereas the Real 'knowledge' lies outside the realm of language and thought. But, since we are trained to learn the word alone, we have allowed and developed our cognitive system to understand the word alone. The way in which language organizes the world also impacts the development of our cognitive system. We not only bypass the real world in this process but also numb our senses/ body related cognitive system.
Some of issues that human experience of the past 300 or so years raise are:
Is the language of earth taught in our classrooms or even families --co-existence, compassion and letting be?
The relevance --or desirability-- of Darwinism to the earth's well-being and human sanity? The language of Darwinism and development vs the language of children and earth.
How what we shape, shapes us?
Is there a better classroom than the earth? How do we go about it?
We know and understand what we are allowed to. Much that we aren’t allowed to. Social structures determine cognition.
Once children go through schooling, due to the numbing of their senses, their creativity and sensitivity are lost. No amount of art education or moral stories will help children or adults regain their natural and inherent possibilities. There accrues much unease in the adults' comprehensions and debates about elementary givens as Nature and Earth. Such mishap occurs when referents to understandings come from modern categories (whose foundations are laid in schools) as State, progress, democracy, development, economics, governance, market, equality, ecology and the rest. They have little or no echo in either in the child's experience or the adult's memory. As children we spoke the language of Nature, as adults that of the State. In folk/adivasi communities there is only a little difference between words used by children and adults.
The following questions are proposed to be explored during the workshop:
What is learning and how does what we learn, form our 'beingness'?
What is 'beingness' and how it happens?
Why do we need knowledge at all? Is it just for employment and career or are there any existential reasons?
How has 'school-ism' and celebrated careerism fragmented/destroyed Nature, Earth, knowledge and us? --Time to begin conversations/debate on this.
Just as for capital, how much knowledge do we require for a happy and healthy life? Were not folk/tribal societies (they are not mythical constructs) all over the world focussing on this dictum? Are not some pockets of them still doing it?
Similarly, how many words do we need to comfortably conduct our daily lives and relationships?
Are we now not victimised by the excess of our own creations, inventions and accomplishments.
Language as a means of communication and Nature as communion.
Why is that we are not aware of our own damage; The cognitive damages of the modern schooling process?
Why have we become blind to the inherent propensity and natural process of learning in children and later adults?
How children learn the real world and how are children misled from this natural process- the context and conditions and activities that are responsible for the ‘formation’ of the child’s being.
Is there a natural process of learning the world with the help of the word? Or what is the role of language in the creation of knowledge?
How do we know how our vocabulary and language shape us and our surroundings? How language --like capital-- is now a tool in the hands of a few.