Learning

Learning is life itself! For me there is a false dichotomy between teaching and learning. The movement of learning is itself the teaching, when it is free of coercion, influence or manipulation.

I think learning takes place when we have the key ingredients of interest, passion and timing. To really learn means to question everything, to resist reductive, generalised and packaged information. It means to have a muscularity of the brain to enquire and to enquire. Our greatest problem as human beings is that we settle for assumptions, for easy formulas and solutions. The activity of learning burns through these stifling things. I think questioning is an art and is antithetical to disciplinary thought. Learning is about understanding the nature of a question.

Answers are always static and lifeless. Life itself is learning!

Websites

Paulo Freire

Perhaps the most influential thinker about education in the late twentieth century, Paulo Freire has been particularly popular with informal educators with his emphasis on dialogue and his concern for the oppressed. Visit this site for a summary of Paulo Friere's thinking.

Jiddu Krishnamurti on the Sacredness of Learning

Jiddu Krishnamurti and his insights into education

Scott H. Forbes explores Krishnamurti's emphasis on education as a religious activity. (From a presentation at the first Holistic Education Conference, Toronto, Canada, 1997)

How can Values be Taught in the University?

Lecture by Toni Morrison, the great Nobel Laureate of Literature

Nobel Laureates and their Speeches

Michael Leunig

"Michael Leunig is known as a cartoonist, philosopher, poet and artist. His commentary on political, cultural and emotional life spans thirty-five years and has often explored the idea of an innocent and sacred personal world. He describes his approach as regressive, messy and vaudevillian - producing work which is both raw and sublime, loved and hated. His themes and images have been widely used and adapted in the realms of music, theatre, therapy, religious life and spirituality."