Problem of Education
The puzzle of education remains unsolved in spite of efforts of many bright philosophers, mystics, scientists, educationists, teachers, psychologists. (Perhaps even occulists)
It's been more than a century since the discussions on transforming education began and the loopholes in our schooling system were exposed. Even most relevant texts in today's times, of Holt, Ilich, Bertrand Russel, Montessori, Gandhi are now decades old and we still seem to be almost in the same darkness.
Why has technology developed so much in last few decades while education remains almost the same at its core with just a few superficial changes ? Why Moore's law of growth (in electronics) has been surpassed while the dreams and efforts of many educationalists turned futile ? Why no fundamental transformation in education has taken place at large scale ?
When I began to think about these questions, one of the most important reason I realized was - "We simply don't know what to do !". The problems in education are so complex because it involves multiple dimensions. We do not have answers for most of the questions in education. What we have are few hints, few perspectives of few practitioners or philosophers. However most of these remain invalidated on large scale. This is why the radical ideas of J. Krishnamurti are limited to few schools, this is why most of us seem to forget the results of Free schooling by A.S. Neil at Summerhill, this is why John Holt's idea of homeschooling still remains with very small group of parents, this is why Ilich's idea of deschooling remains wishful thinking.
If we look around, there is not even one alternative approach to education that has proved better than our current education system on a large scale. In absence of evidence, we loose our confidence and are collectively fearful and cynical of other approaches in education. Hence, succumbing to whatever exists, even though we might not be really happy with it.
Naturic Education : Nature as our teacher, consultant
Nature is perhaps the biggest and best alternative school that exists right in front of our eyes. Nature has experience of Millions of years. All its solutions and approaches are well tested over time. But we have turned blind to all this. We have not learned enough from nature.
Scientists in various other fields like technology, design and biology realized it not too long ago and started to look at nature for the solutions. The result has been fantastic. It has given rise to a field called "Biomimicry" which means mimicing life. Biomimicry is a field that consults nature for our challenges and problems and strives to imitate solutions that nature already holds. Radar, Sonar, Nanotechnology, Swarm technology are few solutions imitated from nature. Following TED Video on Biomimicry explains the idea and some innovations very clearly -
While Biomimicry continues to inspire and assist scientists, engineers and designers, not many of us are looking at what could be our best teacher or consultant - nature, in the field of education. Upon googling I was able to find only couple of articles on Biomimicry in Education, the links are provided below.
http://www.lifelearningmagazine.com/1102/education_inspired_by_nature.htm ( Education Inspired by Nature)
http://www.ed4wb.org/?p=742 ( The Crying Engineer)
http://www.ed4wb.org/?p=19 (Nature as Teacher )
I, like the author in the posts above feel that nature can be our best teacher. I believe answers to many of our unsolved questions in education (in other fields as well) wait to be discovered in nature itself. I'd consider that its well worth an effort to turn to nature to look for answers to our problems in education. Perhaps we cannot and there is no need to mimic nature when it comes to education but we can certainly learn from it and be inspired from it. Hence a simpler, more precise and differentiated term (because "Biomimicry" seems to have gained various connotations in field of biology and technology) for having an education inspired from nature could be - Naturic Education. "Naturic", means "having nature of nature" or "similar to nature".
As Janine Benyus says - " We can learn - how to live from nature. " We can learn - how to learn, from nature. Following quote from the blog post provides a gist -
"How would Nature solve our so-called educational crisis? Biomimicry would suggest that education should be decentralized, self-regulating, co-operative, resourceful, always adapting and shifting in response to new information and changing conditions, active and always in motion, with built-in feedback mechanisms." (By Wendy Priesnitz, LifeLearning Magazine)
(PS : To give due importance to Naturic Education, Biomimicry in education, RIPeducation will have a seperate sub-blog dedicated to authors/ideas/inspirations/developments related to biomimicry in education. - http://naturic.ripeducation.com/ )
(Author would like to thank Megha for help in putting up this article and in forming a new word - Naturic)
