By Hassan Dabbagh.
Have you ever thought about where this learning space we call the classroom came from? To truly understand where the classroom as know it came from we need look at the flow of knowledge.
Education: To be Educated is to be informed and to learn of new facts and skills handed down by others to you in to make our lives or the lives of others better. This is my understanding of education. This was the case until recently, now we learn to pass exams and get good jobs.
Rightly or wrongly our classroom structure comes to us courtesy of organised religion, “lets learn about God and how the world was created then we’ll learn about Maths and science. Evidence of this is in every town in Ireland. I was asked about how I find schools in towns in Ireland PRE-google maps, I said simple, look for the church and you’ll find the school. Try it, unless the national school is a new building it will always be near or even part of the church, remember, I’m not here to talk about how right or wrong it is just simply to look at the flow of knowledge. So, if we look at the church, which is a classroom, we see and hear the priest educating us from the alter about ………. Stuff……….. - its been a while - same happened in the classroom. Knowledge/information & Learnings that needed to get out was passed from the teacher / priest onto the students.
That’s well and good but what about in today’s world of instant information, the teacher doesn’t have to know everything anymore, the teacher doesn’t have to me part of the knowledge pipline but rather a facilitator, the old structure needs to be dismantled, I’m not saying get rid of schools, that’s just silly.
Let’s not be afraid to learn, lets not be afraid to say I don’t know. Lets create learning spaces where people can pass on skills to each other, let open-source learning in the community.
I’m in the process to creating a learning/makerspace, I want to offer a space to people (makers/hackers/inventors) who need a space to create and as payment I would like them once a week to pass on their skills and knowledge to anyone that wanted to learn something or learn a new skill.
So, if you need a space to create an “automated curtain opener” OR a “YOKE” that uses triggers to work then I can offer the space, with this hope you would share your knowledge with someone is willing to learn a new skill and maybe they are the internet marketing guru you need to make you “yoke” the best “yoke” in the world.
What’s your superpower ?
