Category: Institutes

Free Schools India – work worthy of your support?

You might feel that this work is worthy of some support, we do;

Free Schools India is a small organisation made up of people dedicated to sustainable development, and to the ideal that all children should receive a free, quality, education. We are a collection of people from several fields who have come together to start a school for the children of the rural poor in several villages. From this idea our vision for this project has grown into something bigger, and we have already moved into the provision of health care also. Our plans do not stop here though. We would one day like to be able to provide full medical insurance for the families of our children and the wider community, and maybe one day start some micro industry.

The Inspiration

While working for an anti-child labour non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Delhi , Joanna Härmä and Gaurav Siddhu had the opportunity to speak with children in the city and in villages about their experiences with school. They found in one village that several girls could have attended school, if only it had been completely free of cost. Their families were not at all reliant on the income these children received from stitching footballs all day, but the costs associated with schooling were prohibitive for them, and yet they amounted to only US$15 per annum.

Go HERE to read more about Free Schools India

Go HERE to read BBC report on Free Schools India

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Starting your own school

Today someone wrote me from Mexico and asked about starting a holistic school or centre. Below is what I wrote back but I will add more as I think of it;

If I were much younger and was able to start a school, my hard-won general principles would include;

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1 Find the finance to buy a school that is already successful. Develop its potential further – including the summer period. Don’t change anything until you understand everything and fully have the trust of the parents staff and children. Alternatively if all you can do is teach 3 children under the village tree then do that. Or support others in home-schooling.

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2 Develop an MA course and get it accredited by an internationally acceptable university.

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3 Draw your MA students from around the world and pair them with classroom teachers for at least half of each day. The teachers with their MA student assistants would consequently be involved in on-going research that was classroom-inspired – what is the best way to teach Maths?, how can the spiritual dimension of all subjects be developed?, what is the optimum amount of physical expression e.g. drama, dance etc.

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4 Make sure that you eventually institutionalize the holistic procedures – one school I about to be holistic when the core charismatic teachers left.

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5 Live what you teach.

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6 Be democratic – use PFC Philosophy for Children but realize that your responsibilities as an adult mean that it is you that will be held to account! Make clear contracts between all stakeholders including children, teachers, parents, community members etc. Authority must be given to the Head – revising policy by others should be restricted to just a few meetings per year.

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7 If the children can help build and care for the school, along with community members, it would be very useful!

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Of course there are a whole bunch of more general principles that you can assemble – have sufficient finance to last if your development stages take 2 or 3 times as long as you expect. etc.

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One UK source of relevant advice is the Human-scale Education movement

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Metanexus Institute

tao-metanexus.jpg‘Tao’ by Andrew Ilachinski

I can recommend two offerings from the Metanexus Institute. Firstly they host a range of articles and secondly they are running a ‘competition’ organised by Andrew Ilachinski that draws together philosophy and visual art.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE


Will Ord’s site on ‘Thinking Education’

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Will Ord’s site on ‘Thinking Education’ will interest those of you that are interested in PFC Philosophy for Children and other aspects of thinking. You can find the blog here.

Will is chair of SAPERE the UK Philosophy for Children network

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Juxtaposition: Buddhist sand art and s…

Juxtaposition: Buddhist sand art and street paintings

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Source

From time to time juxtapositions come along i.e the placing of two or more views the dynamics of which create a rich text for philosophical inquiry and creative response.

I saw on TV a piece about Buddhist sand art. It was fascinating – a sense of the sacred – its destruction at the end of the celebration, the placing of some of the sand into running water so that the good might be more widely disperse, the giving all who attending the ceremony a small bag of the now mixed sand grains. Very powerful, very moving, very spiritual.

I also came across 3D street art as in these examples here

There are many examples of the Buddhist art. Here is one interesting application.

Suggested task: Explore these two forms of art and see how they inform each other within their cultural contexts. What questions arise? What creative expression opportunities arise? What is the dialogue between the philosophical questions and the creative expressions produced?

Am I right there is no subjectivity in the Buddhist’s monks art and in the 2D/3D street art it is highly (?) subjective? Is the first simply symbolic decoration? Is the latter highly disciplined or self-indulgent? What can we say about the fact that both forms have only a short life span before destruction? Des the pavement art get ‘dispersed’?

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE