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Re-imagining Education Workshop At Swaraj University

25 September @ 8:00 am 29 September @ 5:00 pm IST

“If we want to truly re-imagine education, we will have to re-imagine ourselves and the lives we are living…”

As their legacies, operations and assumptions become more available for scrutiny, traditional schools are becoming less meaningful and more problematic. The idea that children are meant to be enclosed in buildings, removed from their immediate contexts, policed and pressured to rise to imposed standards, branded and certified, and then released into a world that awaits them, is disconcerting – to put it mildly. In short, we need to listen to our children again – and, in the same gesture, find our way home. We have new response-abilities: to co-produce learning sites where our children can be free to do their work with the world, and to invite new ways of un/learning together that privileges play, community, ‘slow’ rituals, and earth-honouring practices.

But what does that look like? What about conventional education seems problematic? What haunts schooling in India and in most so-called ‘third world’ nations? Can the education system be reformed or does it have to be dismantled? What do we need to unlearn as educational leaders?  What kind of radical educational practices and experiments are happening and possible now? What are the possibilities and shadows we need to explore in ‘unschooling’ practices? What do we need to unlearn as educational leaders? How can you start re-imagining education in your community? And much, much more.

In this workshop, leading social and educational visionary Manish Jain will host unlearning conversations and exercises around reimagining education, experimenting with possibilities for alternatives, and learning to meet our children – whose magic and work we desperately need today.   

This workshop is primarily for those people who are working in education or want to build alternative learning centres or community spaces

This workshop will be also very useful for those trying to build new learning spaces in their own families, communities, schools and alternative education spaces. 

Apply Now: https://forms.gle/DKYhtaCbkPR6khiH8
Limited seats Available!!

Schedule:
We start the workshop on Wednesday, September 25th, 2024, 11:00 am and on Sunday 29th September we will have our closing by 4:30 pm in the evening.

About the Facilitators:

Manish Jain <[email protected]> is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse knowledge systems and cultural imaginations. He is one of the leading global voices for the unschooling movement. He has served for the past 25 years as Chief Beaver/Coordinator/Co-Founder of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development and as co-founder of Swaraj University, Creativity Adda, Learning Societies Unconference, Swapathgami Walkouts-Walkon network, and the Ecoversities Network. He has edited several books on Vimukt Shiksha (liberating learning). Prior to Shikshantar, Manish worked as one of the principal team members of the UNESCO Learning Without Frontiers global initiative. Manish worked as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley in the belly of the beast. He has been trying to unlearn his Master’s degree in Education from Harvard University and a B.A. in Economics, International Development and Political Philosophy from Brown University. He and his wife Vidhi have been unschooling themselves with their 21 year old daughter, Kanku, in Udaipur, Rajasthan. 

www.shikshantar.org

www.swarajuniversity.org

www.ecoversities.org

Contribution: 

Like many places across India and around the world, Swaraj University is experimenting with rethinking our lifestyle and our relationship with ourselves, our work, our resources, and our communities. We are questioning, challenging and experimenting with our conditioned notions of money. So, we welcome you to join our experiment and explore your relationship with money. However, it is important we all contribute and take care of the needs of the place and meet the actual expenses for hosting such a workshop. The suggested contribution for this workshop is ₹9,000 per person inclusive of food, stay and workshop facilitation. By contributing this amount (or more), you would also partly be helping those who find it hard to access these spaces due to financial constraints. Money should not be a barrier to your attending. Please ask for a partial scholarship if you need it.

About the host:

Swaraj University was born in 2010 as a holistic learning programme for youth. The focus of the programme is on self-designed learning, community living and on social entrepreneurship within the context of ecological sustainability and social justice.  This self-designed learning process invites learners to identify their hearts’ visions and engages them in developing the skills, relationships and practices they need to manifest those visions. We are in service to many different learners from metro-city youth to prison inmates to tribal farmers to dropout girls to unschooling families. The main campus also currently hosts the Unschoolers Ecovillage. Swaraj University is part of the Ecoversities Alliance.

There is NO degree or certificate required to join Swaraj University, and we do not give any degrees after the course. We are proud of being totally unrecognised and un-deemed, since we believe in creating portfolios based on one’s own experiences rather than degrees and certificates as a proof of one’s education. We are also part of the campaign, Healing Ourselves from Diploma Disease, a national campaign to say NO to degrees and certificates and promote a better evaluation framework such as that which is based on experience and  portfolios.  

Our  Tapovan Ashram Campus is a beautiful, tranquil, green, 15 acre campus located in an isolated,  scenic valley between two mountain ranges, 15 kms from Udaipur city in the western Indian state of Rajasthan. The Ashram has an organic farm, herb gardens and eco-living. Away from the noise and pollution of city life, it offers a serene and beautiful environment for reflection, self-exploration and healing.  There are a lot of opportunities for nature and wild-life lovers for walks and trails, and for some bird-watching or snake spotting.  One gets to witness a variety of flora and fauna thriving in the hills surrounding the Ashram, including foxes, hyenas, and leopards. Built within this greenery are the staying facilities, common kitchen, dining room, library, meditation hall, swimming pools, nature cure facilities, cow shed etc.

Please feel free to forward this invite to your friends, family, networks that you are part of and people you feel would love to be part of such a workshop.

Please call Sumit at +91 9890091899 or write to him at [email protected] for any details.

Regards, 

Team Swaraj Uni.

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