the joy of learning
Convivial Education in a Connected World
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Sir James Ralph Darling
“Nations live by the quality of their culture, and
the culture depends upon the quality of the men
and women whom it produces.”
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Ivan Illich
“I consider conviviality to be individual freedom
realized in personal interdependence, and, as
such, an intrinsic ethical value.”
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the joy of learning
Convivial Education in a Connected World
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www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/
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Video clip replaced by YouTube link to original
Aiden McGeady & Scott McDonald
Aberdeen .v. Celtic
10th Feb 2008
Aberdeen 1 Celtic 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8GdizWrCSQ
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Pedagogical theory is not only technical
but cultural, ideological and political.
If it is to have any impact, it must be
self-consciously all of these.
Jerome Bruner
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\"The windmill gives you society with
the feudal lord; the steam-mill,
society with the industrial capitalist.”
Karl Marx
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I cannot help feeling....that writing is
unfortunately like painting; for the creations
of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet
if you ask them a question they preserve a
solemn silence.
Socrates
Ugarit Script
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The spoken word is....
....an intelligent word graven in the soul of
the learner, which can defend itself, and
knows when to speak and when to be silent.
Socrates
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The spoken word is....
...the living word of knowledge which has a
soul, and of which the written word is
properly no more than an image.
Socrates
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Socrates never knew the
secret at the heart of
reading: the time it frees
for the brain to have
thoughts deeper than
than those that came
before.
Maryanne Wolf
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Proust knew this secret, and
we do. The mysterious,
invisible gift of time to think
beyond is the reading brain’s
greatest achievement; those
built in milliseconds form the
basis of our ability to propel
knowledge, to ponder virtue,
and to articulate what once
once inexpressible.
Maryanne Wolf
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In schools, print shifted the emphasis from
oral to written and visual communication.
Teachers who had been only partly concerned
with instructing their students how to read
became by mid-16th century concerned with
almost nothing else.
Postman &
Weingartner
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At the same time, the printing press provided
the wide circulation necessary to create
national literatures and intense pride in one’s
native language. Print thus promoted
individualism on the one hand and
nationalism on the other.
Postman &
Weingartner
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Being illiterate in the processes of any
medium.....leaves one at the mercy of those
who control it.
Postman &
Weingartner
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From the perspective of those interested in
maintaining social order, industrial-era
schooling had no problem about the kind of
social bond that the majority of its pupils
would need to internalize.
Pat Kane
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Children would have to to accept their
position in the division of labour and
professions, get used to their status in a
workplace hierarchy and educate themselves
to function within those organizations.
Pat Kane
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James Gleick
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“Education is an old
ramshackle windmill
that goes on flapping
its great arms
long after the miller
has left.”
RF Mackenzie
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“I choose the term
‘conviviality’...to mean
autonomous and creative
intercourse among persons, and
the intercourse of persons with
their environment....”
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“....and this is in contrast with the
conditioned response of persons
to the demands made upon them
by others, and by a man-made
environment....”
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“I consider conviviality to be
individual freedom realized in
personal interdependence, and, as
such, an intrinsic ethical value.”
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“The transformation of learning
into education paralyzes man’s
poetic ability, his power to endow
the world with his personal
meaning.”
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“Man will wither away just as
much if he is deprived of nature,
of his own work, or of his deep
need to learn what he wants and
not what others have planned that
he should learn.”
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Tools
People
ity!
vial
vi
on
C
Collective
Interest
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Tools which foster
self-realization
Learners &
Teachers
ity!
vial
vi
on
C
School as a Focus
for Collective Interest
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“Education cannot....be limited to
short term aims, such as the
production of technologists or
technicians, or even physicians or
surgeons....”
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“It cannot, without grave danger,
be directed toward tangible
objectives, such as high honours
results at matriculation level,
university scholarships, or even a
collection of quantities of higher
degrees.”
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“It must not be corrupted by the
application to it of commercial
values which, dangerous enough
even in their own sphere, are
wholly alien to the educational.”
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“Its objective is a development of
the whole man, sensitive all round
the circumference, for whom all
experience and learning and
experiment are food which he can
take into himself and use for the
growth of his whole mind.”
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“This is the sensitive
and civilized man.”
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Whose voices are loudest in deciding education policy?
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• Fetish for examination and testing ad nauseam
• Education’s aim becomes accreditation
• Narrowing of the curriculum
• Teaching profession is neutered
• Teaching becomes just a job
• Micro-control by the state
• School is used for social engineering
• Schooling is mistaken for learning
• Society is deemed more important than culture
• Education for a new barbarism
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Fanaticism consists of redoubling one’s efforts
after having forgotten one’s aim
George Santayana
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What are people’s needs?
• The need for other people
• The need for good communication with other people
• The need for a loving relationship with other people
• The need for a workable concept of self
• The need for freedom
• The need to know how to learn
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y!
la
P
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NEOTENY
....the retention of immature, juvenile
qualities into adulthood....
Dr Stuart Brown
Institute for Play About Us
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Play deprivation
....the absence of play and a progressive
suppression of developmentally normal play
from childhood....
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Video clip replaced by YouTube link to original
Dr Stuart Brown’s TED Talk on
PLAY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHwXlcHcTHc
I excerpted two short sections:
1:20 to 3:27 - Polar Bear & Husky Sequence
4:45 to 5:31 - Mother/Baby relationship as the start of play
However, the whole video is well worth watching.
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State of play
....is an altered state....
....a differential in power that can be
overridden by a process of nature that is in all
of us....
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The play ethic
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The play ethic
Education has always prepared children for
‘society’. Yet ‘society’ has never been prepared
for truly educated children.
Pat Kane
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The play ethic
A play ethic asks teachers to attend to the inner
strengths of children, the subtle development of their
characters and personal resilience, in order that they
can ‘live in the strength of their vision’.
Pat Kane
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To be prepared against surprise is to be trained.
To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.
James Carse
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Culture is an enterprise of mortals, disdaining to
protect themselves against surprise.
James Carse
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=Shkole=
Shkole did not mean just “having time”,
but also a certain relation to time: a
person living an academic life could
organize one’s time oneself – the
person could combine work and leisure
the way that he wanted.
Pekka Himanen
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There has always been a shkole
hidden inside the school,
sustained by the idealism of
teachers and the desires of
pupils, a realm where “being in
charge of one’s own time and
efforts”, being a true scholar, has
glimmered as a possibility
Pat Kane
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But beyond that....education has
to begin to open children up to a
variety of post- and non-Judeo-
Christian world views, as much
for the way they can help them
understand a world of complexity,
as for multicultural tolerance.
Pat Kane
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Thinking in the West has been framed by the
Canon of the Occident.
We have to shift to a Canon of the Globe.
Lynn White
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We focus heavily on the Canon of Language and
Logic.
We miss the centrality of the Canon of Symbols.
Lynn White
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...logic and language are neither perfected nor
infallible, but rather they are simply two most
marvellous - and still evolving - human devices
closely related to a cluster of similar inventions or
symbolic intellectual instruments.....
Lynn White
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.....a symbol may be a novel, a creed, a formula, a
gesture, or a cadence, as well as an image, a word,
or a crescent, cross or swastika...
.....or a video, a blog post, an animation, a
computer game, or a wiki..... ?
Lynn White
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• the visual arts
• literature
• music
• dance
• theatre
• liturgy
• mythology
• formulations of scientific law
• philosophical patterns Lynn White
• theological systems
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• LITERACY - the ability to recognize patterns and value them
in context, with consideration of their evolution to this point
and their potential evolution if combined in new ways
• IMAGINATION - the flexibility of mind to manipulate existing
patterns into new ones
• CREATIVITY - the clarity of mind to apply new patterns
succesfully to solve existing problems
• INTELLIGENCE - doing all of the above!
Gilbert Harcrow
elementbendingeducation.blogspot.com
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Digital
Literacy?
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If you read old books you get a sense of how thin
the searchable veneer of the Web is on our world.
The Web’s view of the world is temporally
compressed, biased toward the recent, and even
when it does look back through time to events
momorable enough to have been digitally
remembered, it sees them through our digital-
age lens.
Roger Stogdill
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People believe that because we’ve done with the library,
we’re done with library science. They could not be more
wrong.
In fact, because the library is universal, library science
now needs to be a universal skill set, more broadly taught
than at any time previous to this
Mark Pesce
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Among the many foolish things Rousseau
said, one of his most foolish, and the most
famous, is: “Man is born free, and yet
everwhere he is in chains.”
This high-blown phrase obscures the
nature of freedom. For if freedom is the
ability to make uncoerced choices, then
man is born in chains....
Thomas Szasz
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....and the challenge
of life is liberation!
Thomas Szasz
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It is the death of education, but it’s the dawn of
learning. And that makes me very happy.
Stephen Heppell
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The civilized man or woman has....
“...aliveness of mind, sensitivity, humility...”
The Civilized Man...
The Barbarian...
...writes books
...burns books
...creates
...destroys
...loves his fellow man
...kills and tortures
...makes law
...breaks law
...enjoys nature
...exploits nature
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It is our purpose to
produce by education
civilized men and women
rather than instructed
barbarians...
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...but we are not noticeably
achieving our objective!
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Conviviality
Civilization
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the joy of learning
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THE JOY OF LEARNING
Web
www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/
Email
redpathjohn@mac.com
Skype
redpathjohn
Twitter
@JConnell
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johncon@cisco.com
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CC Images used in the Slide Deck
Thank you to all the originators of the images I used. If I have missed a reference, or if I have used something to which I am
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School is Fun on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
School is pure fun ... on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Happy Sunrise Rainbow Girls on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
School is fun on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
kindergarten is fun on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
The moment on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Freedom fighters on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Shadreck Mufute - Hartzell Primary School Headmaster on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Teacher & Pupils on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Reading Aloud to Children on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Industrial revolution on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Teacher on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Flickr Photo Download: CIMG1936.JPG
digital natives on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
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