oct16.update
An innate human inclination is to learn; intended or involuntary, it’s something we do every day. It’s a key part of our experience as living organisms however I feel our attitude towards it has become that of a commodity. Centres for learning - educational institutions - exchange fees for knowledge. We gather information as a resource and are given qualifications to prove our attainment. Post-industrial society does require this to an extent, however a blanket approach to the majority of learning in this way will hinder our experience.
The quantification of all information creates a facile representation of life - this simply cannot portray all aspects of the human experience. The vast, globally connected bank of this, is the internet. Bytes, comprising of ones and zeros, link people to each other and the stores of information that cover every subject matter imaginable. It grows continuously while becoming increasingly intertwined with our lives. The collaboration of knowledge this relationship facilitates has spurred an exponential shift in our evolution. An example being: a one-off incident fifty years ago that may have been experienced by those in the vicinity and passed on by media outlets, can now be observed and discussed amongst a global audience immediately after it occurs. I believe this new characteristic of information allows the opportunity to reassess our approach to learning. Learning as a means of exploring the human experience; an individual growth that involves stages of progression, and regression, which form our perceptions of the world and inform our interactions with it.
This is at the core of my Fluid Learning sessions which I hope to introduce to local primary schools for teachers to begin to employ regularly with their classes. Critiquing the state of the education system and it’s attitude to learning can only be useful if followed by an action - in this case, an attempt at intervention. This practise of gathering information and then acting upon it is another critical aspect of the sessions which are to be initially presented to 10 and 11 year olds. My own practice of imagining ideals and then designing real-life interventions to address them, is a key element of merging the virtual plane of the internet with the physical plane of day-to-day life. Creating more human experiences from those ones and O’s, one step at a time.
The next stage would be to further incorporate the physical body into the human experience. It’s current sedentary state continues to expose it’s flaws as we sink deeper into the virtual plane, seeking contentment in external bodies. Exploring body movement and how this can be further integrated into education will be my next step in the evolution of attitudes to learning.
