Freelearning

Learning From Pre-scientific Cultures

In the push to distribute a laptop to each child in the world, we are risking the destruction or extinction of valuable knowledge.  Native American children were found to know nothing of their natural environment because the only knowledge they thought was valuable was what was found in books.  They had not learned from their grandparents because they had come to value books to the exclusion of oral history.

If children come to see (parts) of the internet as a higher source of knowledge than information passed down orally, then local knowledge about ways of growing food on nearby land will be lost.  Knowledge of medicinal plants may no longer be available.

The scientific approach looks for what is verifiable and can be observed over time.  Science that is most revered is that which can be generalized the farthest.  Laws of physics are taken to be universal.  I believe that attention to knowledge at the abstract level to the exclusion of location-specific knowledge will lead to the loss of valuable information.

A Slow Alternative School

Link: A Dangerous but Powerful Idea - Counter Acceleration and Speed with Slowness and Wholeness : The Knowledge Tree. 

Geetha Narayanan worked with the designers from the MIT Media Lab who developed the after school Computer Clubhouses for inner city children to create an education that would work for slum children in Bangalore, India.

The need seemed to be to re-envision and to design a new system - one that supports both personal and social transformation and creates 21st century learning. This thinking resulted in the birth of Project Vision.

The Project Vision Learning System is dynamic and is made up of four distinct, distributed, interactive and inter-related components that work in coordination with one another.

1. The Community Learning Centres (Spokes-located within each slum community)
2. The Idea-Media Centres (Hubs or Workshops-which serve different purposes and are common and shared spaces)
3. The Expedition (Using the complexity of the real and the natural as sites for introspection, contemplation and active, participatory learning)
4. The Network (Wired/wireless- links that integrate the Drishya Community members with each other and with the outside world)

This conception and actualization includes nature experiences and computers.  It includes ideas and hands on learning.  Topics for learning include student and community priorities.  Art and science are combined.  Learning is done in a slow fashion (a la Slow Food movement) based on rhythms of nature, not technology.  Times for centering and thought are included as part of the learning system.