One question that the modern educated does not ask is how knowledge is created. It is really surprising that in all the attempts in reimagining education the process that leads to knowledge creation has no place. But it is understandable as the realm in which they are located has no possibility of engaging with this question. This is because the process lies outside the realm of the mind and outside the linguistic paradigm. The operating system of the modern educated is formed by the rules and properties of language — the written down version. Their cognitive source is language, and their cognitive process is reason and understanding happens in the realm of the mind. The engagement with literacy from childhood wires the formation of the neural network accordingly and totally shapes the contents of their cognitive system. The modern man’s linear, fragmented, decontextualized, compartmentalized beingness is the direct result of imbibing the properties of written language. The rationality they boast of is very narrow and distorted. This rationality comes from the way language is organized and not from the way nature functions. In the context of ‘life,’ rationality and spontaneity are so well integrated.
Modern education is more like a religion where the devotees are made to believe in what is claimed as knowledge. Just like the way various religions proclaimed superiority, modernity is imposing another belief system and in order to establish superiority making all kinds of claims. Just like the religious texts the ‘knowledge’ is also given. The only choice left for us is to either believe in them or else get excommunicated and degraded.
Naturally, each and every word will be appropriated to suit the story of modern education- words like intelligent, creativity, abstraction, scientific, etc. and it will invent more words like systems thinking, critical thinking, design thinking, etc. to retain its hold.
Certain common-sense questions are to be held if one wants to explore this further.
For instance, what is knowledge? How is it created? Who creates this knowledge? Can it be transferred? Do animals need knowledge? If so, how is it being created? What is the role of language? What are its limits? Can it ever be the cognitive source?
Have you wondered why have we turned against life? What caused our alienation? How have we become fragmented? Why are we never present? Why are we not being ‘whole’?
Will the answers be found in language, through reasoning, from another book, or from another ‘expert’?
But one thing to be kept in mind is that the way each religious adherents defend their beliefs, the converted ‘educated’ will also do so as their own livelihoods are totally entrenched in believing this. More than all this just by going through education their ego gets boosted and naturally, they will have to find all the means to defend this. The way religions have different streams so also the ‘educated’ have. This is formed by their own convenient belief systems and schools of thought. From Montessori to Rudolf Steiner, from John dewy to Ken Robinson from experiential learning to play way method and even the newly made-up ideas about gurukul and Vedic systems are nothing but the same story in different bottles. None of these address learning as a biological response that life itself has endowed all living beings to sustain life, that knowing is the very nature of life- effortless and spontaneous.
The biggest trap of all this is the way the process of indigenous cultures is being appropriated to offer another way. And of course, the ‘discoveries’ by the cognitive scientists who conveniently overlook some common-sense facts. That if children are being taught from childhood what will happen to the formation of their neural wiring? What will happen if senses are never being used and if children are made to read instead of seeing/ sensing, and experiencing the world?
Look at our lives. See how we have turned pregnancy and birthing into a disease? See how parenting has become the most difficult thing so much so that parenting workshops, books, etc. are springing up everywhere. A species that doesn’t know how to look after its own newborn what can you say about them? It doesn’t know what food it should eat. Even that requires an expert. Mind you, all educated are eating poisonous food and still claiming its superiority!
What is missed is that the very paradigm within which all these inquiries are happening is itself distorted- linear, decontextualized, fragmented, and compartmentalized.
The main reason for this is that we are using the faculty called reason to ‘understand’ the fragmented, compartmentalized linear linguistic inputs that are being fed into us with various tag names like science, art, psychology, philosophy, etc.
Are you willing to explore outside the realm of mind, thought, and language? Are you willing to let off the conscious reasoning faculty? Have you ever thought about how this very faculty destroys creativity, intuition, playfulness, and spontaneity?
But don’t get trapped in the latest story being made by modern people called ‘embodiment’. Embodiment is the latest invention of the mind to retain the modern man in the grip of the mind.
The Koan for the modern mind is this — ‘let go without effort!’ or Being effortless without putting an effort!
How do Children Create knowledge? How teaching is detrimental to a child’s learning?
https://youtu.be/s3A-8iI4Py4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3A-8iI4Py4
