FootprintsintheWind.com

What if we had reverse education, much as we have reverse mortgages? What if education arose out of the use of innate intelligence in an individual or a group? What would that look like? What does it look like?

Education is leading out. Can we lead ourselves and others out? Joseph Jacotot did his most significant teaching using this concept; so too Paulo Freire. Can we discover the world on our own? Where does learning come from? Does it come from our own efforts? Are children taught to walk, or encouraged? Surely we need the others around us for our learning and our very being, but the leading out we do for others merely leads them to the waters where they may drink. We learn. Teaching in the sense of pushing something in is a misnomer, a literal impossibility. Acceptance, taking in, is necessary.

So what does reverse education look like? A group of people set themselves a task, say to make the schools in their town more friendly to health and ecology and more sustainable. They begin by asking whom should they invite to the conversation. Then they begin to examine the ways the schools operate: the uses of papers and computers, the gathering of cars and buses at the start and end of the day. Soon they seek out alternatives to some of these practices: they research what other schools and towns are trying. From the moment they start asking questions, the leading out is underway. They find what they need to do that about which they most care.

:- Doug.