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{ World-Centered Education
Notes
Abstract
- What
- arguing that education should be world-centred rather than child-centred or curriculum-centred
- Why
- Is an urgent concern for education
- How
- existential orientation by reframing the role of teachers
- not just sharing knowledge but also getting students to face the world and find their purpose?
- existential orientation by reframing the role of teachers
Notes
ideas presented in this book can be seen as the culmination of the writing, speaking, and teaching I have been involved in over the past 35 years or so 2021-09-21 11:45 AM
Insurmountable experience and insight, lots of time to cultivate ideas and see the bigger picture
one thing that seems to be forgotten again and again is that “learning” and “development” are directionless terms. To the extent to which the word
“learning” has any meaning at all, 2 there is always the need to specify what the learning is about and what it is supposed to be for. And the same holds for development which, in itself, can go in any direction 2021-09-21 11:47 AM
So by world-centered is he implying that he wants more application in learning of the material learned?
I didn’t think of it like this, that learning is simply the action and is nothing by itself unless it’s for a specific reason/purpose
The main idea explored in this book, is that what is at stake in this relationship is not what the one “receiving” may learn from the educator or how the one
“receiving” the education may develop in response to the affordances provided by the educator. Rather the key issue at stake is what the one “receiving” will do with what he or she has learned and with how he or she has developed and with who he or she has become and, more specifically, what they will do when it matters, that is, when they encounter something in their lives that addresses them and calls for them. 2021-09-21 11:50 AM
A relevant idea to think about considering I just started uni and like Mark Blair said, I shouldn’t go through these countless days and spend all this money just to learn nothing by the end of it.
Ties to the idea in my highschool video on how I need to continue finding meaning in the work I do, and I feel like I’ve been slacking on making such connections recently with more technical courses like MACM101 and Education 100W.
What – or who – this “something” is and when and from where it may arrive, is something we can never know in advance, which also means that it is fundamentally beyond our control. It is given, not taken. 2021-09-21 11:50 AM
what is at stake in this risk is the very appearance of the “I” in the world 2021-09-21 11:52 AM
Failing to come to terms with our own personal growth and learning can truly ruin the rest of our lives, yet we have little comprehension of the true weight it can hold
It transforms education into applied psychology, applied sociology, applied neuroscience, applied learning theory, and so on, but forgets, even with an overload of good intentions, to pose the question whether anyone is “there.” 2021-09-21 11:54 AM
I have never had an experience in a technical course where I was prompted to think about the real world scenarios of what I was learning. This holds true especially for math-based courses.
to be educated “is not to have arrived at a destination (but) to travel with a different view” 2021-09-21 11:55 AM
Does a different view mean one of independence and relation to their own personal lives? Does it entail their personal role in the grand scheme of things, thinking about how they can take action on what they learned?
I am not presenting revolutionary new insights about education, nor am I providing a new agenda for education policy, or a new model or approach for educational practice. 2021-09-21 11:58 AM
This is perhaps the main problem with the language of learning, because as soon as we claim that education is “all about learning,” we quickly forget that
What Shall We Do with the Children? 3
what really matters is what pupils and students will do with everything they have learned 2021-09-21 12:00 PM
Okay so yeah, world-centered implies taking action
We are too quickly drawn into monitoring and measuring the learning itself, looking for the interventions that produce the desired learning outcomes, trying to control the whole machinery, and thus easily lose sight of the fact that children and young people are human beings who face the challenge of living their own life, and of trying to live it well. 2021-09-21 12:01 PM
After thinking about the technical courses I’m taking, this definitely seems to be the case; 200+ students handled by one professor, the constant barrage of new information with little time to apply and relate it to our personal aspirations, I can see why people struggle to find meaning in their schoolwork.
I will argue that it is this existential question – the question how we, as human beings, exist “in” and “with” the world, natural and social – that is the central, fundamental and, if one wishes, ultimate educational concern. It is also the reason for suggesting that education should be world-centred, that is, focused on equipping and encouraging the next generation to exist “in” and
“with” the world, and do so in their own right. 2021-09-21 12:03 PM
“pure” child-centred education that only takes its direction from how children learn and develop is actually “really stupid” 2021-09-21 12:06 PM
I’d like some elaboration, of course it probably is bad but I can’t really think of anything off the top of my head.
This is the reason why I continue to argue that language really matters for education (see Biesta 2004), and why I continue to develop new and hopefully more precise and more meaningful ways of speaking
“in” and “about” education. 2021-09-21 12:07 PM
The term education encompasses various styles and purposes
“education” refers to an activity, that is, to something educators do 2021-09-21 12:08 PM
In more everyday language we could say, therefore, that education starts with this simple question: “What shall we do with the children?” 2021-09-21 12:09 PM
I mean the whole point of education is to help the learner so
The question first
What Shall We Do with the Children? 5
of all highlights the existence of a “we,” and thus raises the question of who this
“we” is, that is, what the identity of being an educator is, and also what gives this
“we” the right of even wanting to “do” something with “the children” in the first place. The question also highlights the existence of a category called “children,”
which raises further questions about who is included in this category, what our notion of the child in the context of education actually is, and why “we” would assume that “the children” actually need education. 2021-09-21 12:11 PM
Okay this question has a lot more depth than I thought oops.
It’s cool to see that he brought up the question on whether the “children” even need education in the first place, as most of the time we tend to just follow orders and traditions without really questioning them.
Maybe I could even use it to think about the fulfillment of my youtube video ideas?
we could say that the children “authorise” the power enacted by the educator, thus transforming (unidirectional) power into (relational) authority 2021-09-21 12:12 PM
We can be lead to knowledge but it’s ultimately our choice to act on it?
It is, of course, still the child who will have to “enact” its own subject-ness, because that is the very thing the educator cannot do for the child. What educators can do, however, is encourage children to “take up” their subject-ness, helping them not to forget the possibility of existing as subject of their own life, and working on the conditions under which this remains a real possibility. 2021-09-21 12:18 PM
Common theme of encouraging action
The work is also difficult because, again, there is a risk that the subject-ness of the student is forgotten in the desire to make the work of qualification efficient, effective and eventually “perfect” (on the problems with perfection, see Biesta 2020a). This, as I have already pointed out, is a real risk in the “age of measurement,” an age obsessed with the production of measurable
“learning outcomes” rather than that it focuses on encouraging children and young people to become knowledgeable and skilful in their own right. 2021-09-21 12:19 PM
It’s hard to find a good mix of optimization and humanity
Right now, qualification seems to occupy the centre of the educational universe. Socialisation tends to enter the scene when there are concerns about the behaviour of children and young people, which often is the rationale for the inclusion of such things as values education, character education, citizenship education, or environmental education. In such a set-up, the concern for the student-as-subject and for the subject-ness of the student often appears at the very end, as a kind of luxury, when the alleged basics have been taken care of and there is still some time left – which means that it may happen for some and not for others, or may only happen haphazardly 2021-09-21 3:07 PM
To add on, I feel like it could also be hard to stay motivated without that sense of purpose, so I feel like balancing the three components should be necessary for optimal learning
without a concern for the subject-ness of the student, that is, for the possibility for the student to exist as subject, education ceases to be educational and becomes the management of objects, effective or otherwise. 2021-09-21 3:08 PM
Objectification, management over touching the souls of people
educational questions are fundamentally existential questions, that is, questions about how we try to exist as human beings, how we try to live our life in and with a world that is not of our making and that is under no obligation to give us what we want from it or expect from it 2021-09-21 3:09 PM
The idea that learning is integral to life is a bold statement to say the least
teaching that matters educationally – is never about controlling the student, but is precisely about alerting them to the possibility of their subject-ness 2021-09-21 3:10 PM
Just lines that ground the author’s viewpoint
I ask what society should “do”
for the school so that the school can be school, the free, emancipated time that can help in giving the next generation a fair chance at their subject-ness 2021-09-21 3:11 PM
Similar to the idea in the root word of scholar
educational questions are fundamentally existential questions 2021-09-21 3:12 PM
can’t help but just appreciate his boldness lmao
the idea of world-centred education, focusing on the question how best to understand our encounter with the world 2021-09-21 3:13 PM
Clearer description on what world-centered education entails
There are, however, quite a lot of things wrong with this suggestion. One is that life can never just be about adapting to circumstances and for education to provide the skills for doing so swiftly and smoothly. The first question that needs to be asked in any situation is whether the particular circumstances are worth adapting to, or whether there is a need to resist and refuse 2021-09-21 3:14 PM
Similar to how what you work on is more important then how hard you’re working
There is also the question whether the world is indeed changing that fast. This, I think, all depends on which “world” one is actually talking about. For some people in some parts of the world and with regard to some parts of their life, things have been changing fast and will continue to change fast. Work in modern Western countries has indeed changed rapidly, particularly because of the transi-tion of much production from the “West” to the “East” and the increased role of robots and ICT. But there are other parts of the world and other areas of life that have remained remarkably unchanged. For many people there is still the challenge of finding enough to eat, having clean water and proper sanitation, and the luxury of a roof above one’s head, and this also happens in the “West.” In this regard the idea of a world that is just changing rapidly is a typical example of an ideology: by expressing a truth it is “conveniently” hiding another. 2021-09-21 3:14 PM
Just a lot to unpack
Yet the main reason for highlighting the importance of the present for education, has to do with the simple fact that education has to take place in the here and now. The question what we shall do with the children is not a question for the future, not a question we can conveniently “bracket” until we have found the perfect answer. Education has an inherent and undeniable urgency. We cannot tell our children that they should wait until we have figured out what to do with them. And similarly, we cannot tell our students to go home and only return once
12 What Shall We Do with the Children?
we have found the perfect way of engaging with them. We are always already in the middle of education, and need to make the best of it – which is precisely why we need artistry as educators, not recipes or prescriptions, irrespective of whether they are evidence-based or not. That is why education first and foremost needs a view for the present in order to help educators to be able to see with more precision and clarity what is right in front of them, so to speak. The chapters in this book are intended as a modest contribution to this task. 2021-09-21 3:17 PM
If we were to postpone such a radical and important shift, it would still take ample time for adaptation, then even more time for results to show, by that point who knows whether the world would be still existing :/
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Created:: 2021-09-21