What Education can learn from Travel?

Let us go back to the first day of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2014 again. I attended a session titled, ‘women Uniterrupted’ where Cheryl Staryed and Robyn Davidson described how they used travel to find a part of themselves they thought they had lost. Cheryl Strayed is the best selling author of the book ‘Wild’, where she described her experience walking alone eleven hundred miles of the west coast of America. She did this after her mother’s death from cancer, resulting in her family losing touch with each other. Her marriage also crumbled as a result of this. She thought it was the only way out.

Travel Writers and their stories

Cheryl also described how she always wanted to be a writer and did not want to write something until she knew she had something to say. Robyn Davidson described how at the age of 27, she set of from Alice Springs for the west coast of Australia with a dog and four camels. She faced several difficulties along the way but completed the journey eventually.

Robyn described how nine months on her own had changed her consciousness completely. It was like she became a completely different person. As two travel writers described their adventurous journeys, I reflected on the lessons travel had for me and I think may have for the self-directed learner.

I thought about the trips I was fortunate to go on in my life and what I had learned from them. There was plenty and it went as follows:-

Jaipur Literature Festival – Part 3 - Franzen (Writing) and Steinam (Activism)

Jonathan Franzen Notes

He spoke about his journey as a writer and his thoughts on the modern literature. He mentioned how earlier before the rise of novels, people had to travel or go to different places to understand them. But now you could learn about life in a prison or in Australia, by reading a novel about it. He described how his upbringing had a role in the development of the characters of his book.

A festival like no other indeed

He spoke about his favorite novel, ‘The Man Who Loved Children’ by Christina Stead and how this book had three fully developed characters, while most books have just one developed character.

He also spoke about the books he liked to read and why it was important to keep the page clean, avoid clichés and not waste the reader’s time. All this was information directly from one of the best contemporary novelists of our time. It was like I was in a classroom and he was individually speaking to me.

Gloria Steinam Notes

I then attended a session by Gloria Steinem, a writer, journalist, feminist and key figure of the women’s liberation movement of the 1960’s.  She described how there was no subject in the world of which women were not a part. I saw lots of parallels with the women’s liberation movement and the learning revolution movement I write about in this blog. The homeschooling, unschooling, passion learning schools, project based schools have lit a spark. We need to re-define the idea of schooling and learning. We need more people to speak out about how we can make Learning Beautiful again.

The audience focused on the stage

Why I Write this Blog?

We live in a period of drastic change and the way education and learning is done, is going to change completely very soon. We need more examples of people that have taken an alternate path and done something valuable with that the learning they received on that path. When people get examples of several other successful ways to educate themselves, they will be more open to taking risks and taking control of their own learning.

We need to write about our experiences as auto-didacts. When more literature and culture through books, films, blogs come out more people will get access to information on how they can control their own learning.

Let us Learn Together

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Sat-chit-ananda 

Conversations with Teachers in India – Part 6 - A heated discussion

This was in Chittorgarh, Rajasthan. I was working with an institution there, for some training sessions for the students.

Every Teacher has a wealth of
 knowledge we must tap into

A former IAS officer, was one such individual. We had several heated discussions over meals on that trip. Most of the time I was just listening. The individual had so much knowledge about such a large variety of issues. 

We discussed Subhash Chandra Bose and his role in the freedom struggle. We spoke about the political history of our country and all the parties that were part of it. He narrated stories of meetings with top politicians and leaders of the country. He shared his thoughts on books and movies that had an influence on him. The discussion got so heated and intimidating at one point, that I felt like I was part of the group and ideologies that he was against. I also found out about a,

Mega Learning Experiment – Part 7, Travel Shows, Sound Branding and Responsible Journalism at The Zeitgeist Media Conference

The Zeitgeist Media Conference at St. Xaviers

All Picture Credit - Zeitgeist Media Conference, St. Xaviers College, Facebook Page

After six days of festivals, talks, and performances, there was still more to go on this learning experiment.