Tag: Education

The Politics of Play [Article]

In the Politics of Play, Jay Griffiths emphasises the need for risk for children while playing: 

The true opposite of obedience is not disobedience but independence. The true opposite of order is not disorder but freedom. Most profoundly, the true opposite of control is not chaos but self-control

While children must learn to control themselves, what they can never control is luck. They must learn how to live with it, how to dance with chance and mischance. Children recognize life is a huge adventure, and they must accept the dare.

Marilyn Monroe’s library [Article]

Open Culture has an interesting article about Marilyn Monroe’s personal library – it was quite contrary to the “dumb blonde” image that may have been projected to the world. Of course, it is entirely plausible that the books in her library were a show-case item, never read.  The list of books that were auctioned off after her death  by Christies is catalogued at Library Thing

Repairing the rungs on the ladder [Article]

This Economist article paints a rather glum picture of meritocracy – or rather, the paradox of meritocracy. The apparent benefit of globalisation and all those other fancy nomenclatures, was that money would flow to merit, rather than connections, as it had in the past. What is happening, at least in America as this article states, is that the clever rich are turning themselves into an entrenched elitist.  Education is at the centre of this transformation.  No point spending your live to reach the top of the ladder, only to find it leaning against the wrong wall?

Drawing is Thinking [Book Review]

Alberto Cairo refers to the masterpiece book by Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking, in a book review: 
Our entire educational system continues to be based on the study of words and numbers. In kindergarten, to be sure, our youngsters learn by seeing and handling handsome shapes, and invent their own shapes on paper or in clay by thinking through perceiving. But with the first grade or elementary school the senses begin to lose educational status. More and more the arts are considered as a training in agreeable skills, as entertainment and mental release. As the ruling disciplines stress more rigorously the study of words and numbers, their kinship with the arts is increasingly obscured, and the arts are reduced to a desirable supplement. (…) The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought.

Radically reviving the true meaning of education [article]

Susan Sontag was a prolific American writer, film maker, political activist and professor. Having been a part of the education system, she echoes Henry Miller’s words about what seems to be our theory of education: “…based on the absurd notion that we must learn to swim on land before tackling the water.” She wonders why not eliminate schooling between age 12-16? It’s biologically + psychologically too turbulent a time to be cooped up inside, made to sit all the time.”

Teach yourself?

An ambitious experiment by the One Laptop Per Child organisation in two remote villages in Ethiopia is trying to see if see if illiterate kids with no previous exposure to written words can learn how to read all by themselves, by experimenting with the tablet and its preloaded alphabet-training games, e-books, movies, cartoons, paintings, and other programs ,