I can do whatever I want. I can even be in a classroom without actually being there.
I’m not talking about online classes.
I’m talking about having a device that distracts me, keeps my attention on random games, shopping and social media while I’m being loud, talking sideways and ignoring others. I’m talking about making conscious choices about learning.
I’m talking about a teacher’s failed commitment and utter incompetence to the generational divide he’s supposed to be bridging and the way the issue becomes a justifiable drama about how education is a lost cause. I’m talking about deliberate choices about teaching.
If only courage could prevail. A student who is not interested in a subject has to change the goals that were originally set. Quitting is a positive action when you know that loss is a constructive mechanism for experience and learning. A teacher who postpones updating the curriculum and the right communication technique must do the same.
In simplistic terms, both would be happier doing something else.
We are only fooling ourselves if we perpetuate these decomposing environments that continue to hold out a rotten chance of innovation and prosperity. I am incredulous at how both communities have drifted apart, denying the opportunity for symptomatic collective learning. There are exceptions but the general apathy and disconcerting unhappiness can be found publicly in every conversation we have about school (and teaching classes).
We never smile when we talk about school.
I don’t understand how people can thrive and take a proper role in society (considering architects as the those who build the medium in which humanity resides as an experiment) and be a part of a decaying process that should be proposing something better at its core.
Who is to blame? What is to blame? Is this the new social contract of education? Are we totally independent of institutions? Are institutions becoming disciplinary entities without human relationships at their core? Are we relentlessly pursuing our selfish interests? Do we no longer care about ourselves? Do we think of others?
We are creating aggressive environments for learning. This disturbs me and I refuse to conform and comply. I have to disobey and propose an alternative by simply acting. Both students, teachers and institutions are denying themselves a much needed evolution as a community that defines itself in a socio-spatial dynamic pedagogical device. Both collectively and individually, the learning framework must envelop the curriculum with modernity, and only then is it much more organic than a simple space and a specific time.
The framework must connect the contemporary with the historical and use the locality as a background noise for sharing, exchange and laboratory research within a studium system.
What people don’t want to face and change is the potential for transformation.
Academia is not lost, people’s relationships are.
Let’s start there and build.