Breviloquent Ruminations #1: Jinan on Learning

"I think the most important thing to be kept in mind is that children will imbibe what the adults do. So how we access knowledge is an important thing to explore.

Children are spontaneous learners whereas the educated adult is a fragmented learner. This means the mind learns first from an outside source- books or authority- and then apply that knowledge. The meaning of a schooled mind is this. There is no authenticity in learning. So what the children offer is to help you to de-school. It is not the other way round. You are not the one de-schooling the child. Your option is whether do you want to school the child or do you want to de-school yourself.

 Children can help you to be present, sensitive, and spontaneous. That is to reclaim the feminine qualities, to re-integrate the masculine and the feminine, the intuition and reason. Homeschooling and alternative education can become more dangerous than mainstream schooling if we don't understand this simple fact. As of now, the difference is very little. Mainstream schooling happens in the classroom, alternative schooling happens under the tree and homeschooling happens in the house. The rough teacher is replaced by a loving teacher and then by the loving parents. As long there is teaching and instructing we are schooling the child. Similarly, as long as the content of learning is within the control of external authority we are schooling the child.

 What the adults need to do is to learn to observe without any categories and frames. Just observe. This will slowly make you sensitive. Sensitivity is the ability to understand without the help of language. Once you become sensitive, children also retain their inherent sensitivity. They anyway learn through sheer observation".

 P.S 1. I met and spent time with Jinan many years ago, during my restless travels of self-discovery. His work with children and tribal artisans gave birth to re-discovering cognition in the wild. He made me rediscover the biological process of cogniti0n and learn how to simply be alive and present with a child. This video could be a great introduction to his works, if you are interested.

P.S.2: As a parent of a nine-month old, I have been working towards unschooling myself to explore the possibilities of homeschooling, if my child is open to it. If I am serious about living in the post-industrial, post-carbon, networked age of the 21st entury, I think it is critical for all of us to unlearn the toxic habits of schooling. Jinan's words bring the much needed clarity to wade through the slippery category slopes of homeschooling, unschooling, deschooling and various other ways in which you could understand alternative education paradigms.

P.S.3: I have had a unhealthy bout of writer's block and many of my articles on agriculture have been in the oven for far too long. I hope to break the jinx soon.

P.S.4: I have had a odd feeling that my long form articles have been mostly about the stuff I am working on, and not about the things that I care deeply about. I hope to bring more colours from the rainbow of my self here in these spaces. You can check out my older breviloquent ruminations here.