Last year I was introduced to the idea of ‘systemic biomimicry’ while researching a community project in South Africa (a short post about the experience can be found here). This thought has since been behind much of my subsequent inquiry, and in this post I would like to explore the idea a little further. The … Continue reading
Latest Entries
Facilitating living systems: Part 1
Although at first this might seem like a diversion from the topic of education, I would like to share a passage I recently discovered in Oliver Sacks’ Hallucinations: “There is an increasing feeling among neuroscientists that self-organizing activity in vast populations of visual neurons is a prerequisite of visual perception- that this is how seeing begins… … Continue reading
Encouraging S.T.E.M. and other vocational fields in schools
The recent spate of articles across the UK highlighting the need for more graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics has highlighted a key point about educational reform that is often missed. Let’s call it socio-economic feedback; what is missing is communication between employers and students. I’m not talking here of those ‘graduate job fairs’ that … Continue reading
Keep sustainability in the national curriculum!
Keep sustainability in the national curriculum! With all of these current curriculum reforms in the UK we are in serious danger of losing sustainability altogether from the curriculum. Sustainability in classrooms in the UK may well have a long way to go in terms of being truly effective, but what little there is has been … Continue reading
Farm-to-School Programs
Farm-to-School Programs Apologies for the temporary silence due to technological issues, but now that seems to be resolved I thought I’d add a quick link to an example of an initiative that I believe to be growing (ha!) momentum all over the world in primary and secondary education. In this article the purpose of farming … Continue reading
Originally posted on Mobilizing Ideas:
By Gabriela Gonzalez-Vaillant and Michael Schwartz Student movements have played a crucial role in many major social and political transformations, at least partially because of their unique social status. Students are young and relatively unencumbered; students as individuals inhabit a transitory identity that they will soon leave, usually without sticky…
‘Earth Sciences’
Simon’s post about Henri Bortoft has brought me back to an old question of mine: why is ‘Goethean’ science so important to education? Now my first experience of Goethean science was as a rebellious teenager under the stern tuition of Margaret Colquhoun, founder of the Pishwanton Project. Her lessons were strict, and the first time around … Continue reading
Originally posted on Transition Consciousness:
I thought that in addition to the many tributes which have been written for Henri Bortoft, it would be a fitting celebration to collect Henri’s own words, especially to provide those of you who may not be familiar with his work just a small flavour of his philosophy and wisdom.…
The conundrum of praise
Most of us (I would hope) are lucky enough to remember a point in our childhood where we were praised for doing something well, and it felt good. For those of us who lacked this feeling in early childhood it is increasingly well documented how this can lead to an ongoing need for parental approval, … Continue reading
New Year, New Hobbies…
Whilst spending the year’s turning up in Scotland I was introduced by my brother-in-law to something I wish I had known about earlier: Geocaching. For those of you unfamiliar with the activity, at its most basic it comprises a set of coordinates that lead you to a ‘cache’: usually a small box containing a logbook … Continue reading
Graceful Education 