Education: hierarchic amelioration
„I feel I owe you an apology. We have a rule.
We never free a mind once it’s reached a certain age.
It’s dangerous, the mind has trouble letting go.“
Education, as I see it, is a form of hierarchic amelioration. The body which comprises both mind and soul needs to offer a programme architecture serving both accumulation and change. It provides an institutional setting that focuses on the equal sign, on the structural integration function of the equation itself. The aim is to train appropriate and targeted behaviour. Education has a distinct long-term perspective. Experience tells me that s/he who educates must be of remarkable responsibility, divine patience and a fine sense of balance.
“"What you must learn is that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bend. Others can be broken."
We may marvel at its advantageous authoritative function, which it even holds both for trainer and trained (even in the marginal case when both are one and the same person). Individuals get empowered to temporarily acquire positions that go far beyond their capacity for either reciprocal exchange or symmetric interaction alone. Although paired with radical dis-appointment about potentials and restrictions of systemic relations, education is the mode sustained by deep belief. Here I get access to meaningful knowledge, train the ability to switch perspectives without logging out of my own identity and call for the immanent and external chance to choose between a variety of alternative courses of action. Comprising both past and future education fully embodies the present.
I had to learn that horrible abysses can be seen as beautiful gorges, at least as long as I do not fall into them. So is the illusion of determination, the hubris of being able to programme the equation. The farthest an educator can get is to teach an appropriate understanding of the equation and to train others and her/himself in reformulating it and raising its value. Education is painful enough for everybody involved. And its a lousy business for the educator: s/he who intends to raise independent mathematicians or artists of life at best sees enraged pupils turn not against the eternal rules but against those who gave good people bad news. Authority gives birth to defiance. It seems, after all, that education is a cult of the universe.
Selected activities:
Volunteering, EVS coordinator at Citizens of Europe, 2009f.
Teaching and Training in a formal and non-formal context
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