I needed to have an idea for the text, sorry for the delay...
Today is my birthday. I'm 44. It means that i have spent 40 years of my life, around 16 000 days, into various schools, first as student, then as teacher. But I wasn't an ordinary student because i hated the walls of my schools, and i'm not an ordinary teacher because i continue to hate the walls of the schools... I'm teaching in a public middle school in South of France, Provence... I like it, i need to talk every day with my students. I teach to them like they teach to me. Every day. But i taught in various schools. I taught in Africa, facing to 150 amazing children, with just a piece of chalk: I liked it... I taught in Middle East with a high-tech environment: i liked it. I taught to children, adults, teachers, prisonners in jails: i liked it. Now i'm able to teach to the world. Because i'm a dreamer. I dream all day long. I know that i am a new teacher in the globalized world. I have suppressed the walls. We are just a few in the world but we are strong, because we are dreamers. My classroom is now a flatclassroom.
I can invite anyone in my real classroom with my virtual classroom. Just need a webcam and a microphone... Last week i have invited my chinese friend Chen from South China,
and also Ellen from Portland. And i worked last week with Lorraine (USA), Ann (Australia), Helena (Portugal), Grazina (Lituania) and many others for global projects.
This is a new way for education. We are pionners. Our last frontier is free education for hundreds of billions people. It is our big challenge for the current century i want to share with you. We have just one God, our General Intellect... The last issue to improve the world is Education... I love you all !
Vincent, creator of the School Beyond the Walls
Dear Vincent
To answer your question regarding what I can give. My main skill is in asking questions, in maintaining agenda, in contrasting views and theories, and in sorting them out for relevence. I don't know if this is much or little in your view, but whatever is the case, I am at your service. Also I have a Phd with distinction, and am a gifted speaker and writer, with a wide scope of interests and creative and critical thinking.
I believe this will do for now.
Best
Chen
Sounds great ! Teaching/learning (we have the same word in french = Apprendre for teaching AND learning) is fist of all the art to ask questions and to be irrelevent, like Socrates, so i agree with you... I read in your nice profile that you are a pessimistic pessimistic optimist and i think i am an optimistic pessimist: dream team ! When we'll begin to work really (here it's just a begin-NING, introducing ourselves...) by building together a program according to our skills, we'll use a virtual classroom and we have a calendar to define agenda. So we'll need speakers and writers and moderators (i think that anyone can be a writer, a speaker, a thinker, a moderator). Welcome here, Chen !
Best,
Vincent
Thanks for helping me relearn a bit of my lousy schoolboy French. I am not sure whether the one word (Apprendre) or two (Teach and Learn) are most useful. We know that good teachers help students learn new things and to learn how to learn things. In English, teacher often implies a hierarchical, one-way process: Teacher ==> Student.
Sorry for the the delay in answering your question and "challenge"
I have been working as peace education orientator for 10 years with experience in working with children and adults.
Like you, i see educational pedagogy as the primary thing to adress in order to contribute for a more balance developed human being.
Our education has been frame worked within a cartesian-newtonian conceptualization wich brought out a fragmented and highly unbalenc developed human being, ie, we have our reazoning highly developed but we lack of emotional and spiritual development.
So, education needs to came out from the cartesian framework of adressing only the reazoning and the "manufacturing" and enlarge its focus to include also the ability to deal both with inner personal emotions as well as the emotional of others. In other words, an education who promotes the development of all inteligences:
logical-mathematical
verbal-lingustic
musical
spacial
kinestesic
intrapersonal
interpersonal
Further more, we need to change the metodology of an authoritarian setting where students are complied to accept an authority who tells them what to do and when to do, disregarding their interests and their momentary curiosity about the world.
So, yes, i very much agree with you that we need to take the walls out of the school but we need to also to remember to pay attention to the importance of getting out the alls of teachers minds; we all know that a student can only be lead by the teacher to the point of the path he himself has already gone through....
My experience...
i have been working with teachers on Holistic Education, trying to give my contribute on our education to be better agents of Unesco's Education Orientations for the 21st century
I have been sharing experiences with adults and young people in general through a metodology of Personal Ecology, Social Ecology and Planetary Ecology, experimenting instruments of attunement with our inner habilities to understand and use our body, emotional and spiritual inteligence and to do this also with others and with our planet.
So, because you have the overall view of the ipeace university project and managment, i leave for you to tell me in what way my experience can be use.
Thank you for your interest for this group... Your IPP sounds quite interesting. If you have some time, try to visit the international educational network of my own org "School Beyond the Walls" gathering around 800 students and teachers from all over the world... we have to find here a good way to work together on Education for Peace...