“Thus the story of pedagogy is more a story of love than a story of didactic materials”
This publication relates one week of activity among students from different schools and backgrounds who tried to work their way back to the basis of education. This could translate to something as simple as: one person meeting another, sharing and exchanging knowledge in a generous and disinterested way.
As a small entity alongside institutional education, Parallel School tries to explore and question the limitations of the former.
Without any predefined rules aiming to prevent failure or disorder, the participants in the workshop organised themselves as a group united by the goal of creating something together during one week, without knowing each others in advance. The experience can probably be considered “young”, i.e., imperfect and criticisable. Nonetheless, it embodies a common desire for learning without neither geographic boundaries nor hierarchical pressure, allowing for failure, leisure and pleasure to arise. If we shift the focus from the act of teaching to that of sharing, exchange becomes a necessity more than a possibility, and engagement is born out of the assumption of the fundamentally mutable and open character of the roles of teacher and student. Each participant explored his own expectations, initiated an activity trying to teach or to make the others discover something and finally ended by participating in an activity initiated by someone else.
The short time spent on each activity naturally led to more spontaneity and ingenuous curiosity than to a concern with systematicity. In any case, or perhaps exactly because of that, this was definitely an encouraging and motivating work experience through which self-centered interests in education were transformed into a collective and generous process of sharing.”
Parallel School workshop Berlin: 29/06 — 04/07 2010
> Download the publication
> More about the Parallel School Berlin workshop on the Parallel School blog
> this post connects to ‘Parallel Reading‘
