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Airport sounds from a distance, blurred, incomprehensible,
then suddenly loud and clear. "Flight sixty-nine has been..."
Static ... fades into the distance ...
"Flight..." Standing to one side of the desk are three men, grinning with joy at their prospective destinations. When I present myself at the desk, the woman says: "You haven't had your education yet."
William Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams
Who be teacher, I go let you know...
Fela Anikulapo Kuti, "Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense"
Here are some recent projects at Chimurenga
Chimurenga Magazine: www.chimurenga.co.za
Chimurenga Library: www.chimurengalibrary.co.za
Chimurenga Library Exhibition: www.chimurengalibrary.co.za/ctlibrary_about.php
Chimurenga Library Exhibition photos: www.chimurengalibrary.co.za/ctlibrary_photographs.php
The curriculum teaches you what’s going on,
how to think and feel about what’s going on,
what used to go on and what could go on.
It teaches you who to be afraid of and who to aim to conquer.
It teaches you what you can do and what you can’t.
It teaches you how to make people love you and how to sit properly in company.
It teaches you how to see and how to hear.
The curriculum is everything.
The curriculum is everything, and everything is in the curriculum.
It’s hard to design a curriculum without reference to what you went through yourself at school.
Harder still if you’ve also been a teacher.
So, as a starting point, perhaps agree on a few familiar landmarks:
students organised in groups or working alone,
moving from stage to stage in learning processes,
encountering bodies of knowledge and skills that increase their ability to do something, or be something.
All of these landmarks can be demolished;
but they would have to be replaced by others that also function creatively for the student.
Perhaps agree on a few familiar bodies of knowledge and skills:
languages, literatures, visual and musical arts, dance, computer science, carpentry, cookery, mathematics, history, natural sciences.
All of these can be demolished, etc.
Perhaps choose a model of learning structured in terms of the old craft mastery system;
or one defined by values such as spontaneity, happiness, implicate order.
And a model of what is worth knowing and doing, with whom and for whom.
Perhaps name some favourite states of being that the curriculum should aim to make possible:
kindness, bravery, stillness, agility, irony, curiosity...
And think about how the curriculum and the student will find each other:
face-to-face, skype-to-skype, by sms and jpg, by walking and flying,
through networks and paper, under trees and in shopping malls, in libraries and bedrooms.
In the end, start simply by asking what could the curriculum be
if it was different from the one that exists now?
if it was designed by the students who have to follow it?
if it was designed by the people who dropped out of school so that they could breathe? |
