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Education: The Construction and Un-Doing of Wonder

For the last two days, I have been attending a workshop. It is being run by an organisation called Jodo Gyan (www.jodogyan.org) for one of the largest players in Education in India. What Jodo Gyan does and what Shahji, one of the principal researchers have been doing is trying to find ways to make Mathematics a relevant experience for children in school. Listening to him and the work of Jodo Gyan, has been an utterly beautiful experience. The joy of seeing an nimble mind in action, humbly but dexterously turning everything you 'know' (have assumed to be true) on its head, without condescending to 'teach' you but just to share an experience or to invite you to explore your own experience, makes for a fascinating learning experience.

I wanted to draw attention to the model of engagement that so many of us have become much more able to articulate but so few of us can pull it off with grace that only comes from compassion and absolute humility. Schools need to become spaces where the mind, the spirit and life can come together to breathe as one. Teachers unfortunately have little or no experience of this themselves, and so facilitators like Shahji make more impact by example than they do by what they teach. If the magic ingredient is being connected to one's own Self enough to find a reflection of the Self in everyone and everything around us (compassion), and thereby be respectful and humble, therefore be open to learning and actually listen to learners for what they know, so the boundaries of what not to teach expand, then the basic ingredient of sustainable, responsive education is spiritual in its core.

At the core of Conscious Living, is to my mind, mindfulness and an acceptance of the possibility that there is an unknown. Classrooms of the future need to be those that encourage this personal reflection and the comfort/awe of being part of an unknown whole.Then, there will be a chance that 'fun' will cease to be an artificial construction supported with transient tools that are produced and instead become reminiscent of childlike wonder. Then, there is a chance that the complex melts away to give way to the simple (what we give special status today and call 'profound').

Institutionalised education systems, the world-over systematically gun for the exact opposite, today with a much more confusing veneer of condescension for the curriculum I am sharing as well as a supposed shedding of the hard-nosed commercialised packaging that they were initially designed for. So now we have a chaotic middle path that brings with it little understanding of the immense vocabulary/jargon that is used to describe it, as well as total lack of skill or courage to actually inquire enough to change it. For me, it has been worth wondering about:What is worth teaching?What is the natural trajectory of learning for children?What is listening?Who is worth listening to?What needs be accepted?

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