Self-education as seen by education (Belgrade, March 2012)
Text by the Deschooling Classroom initiative: Tkh generator, Belgrade and Kontrapunkt, Skopje.
Shortening and italics - mine.
Deschooling Classroom (o^o)
The main partakers in
the first discussion at the regional meeting of the participants of the
independent cultural and art scenes were the university professors: Miško
Šuvaković, Marina Gržinić, Milena Dragićević Šešić i Jasna Koteska. The
moderator of the discussion, Ana Vujanović, stated at the very beginning that
her choice of the participants had been based on their specific sensibility or
their susceptibility for the issues connected to the independent scene.
As all the participants
have also taken part in the Deschooling Classroomproject, the moderator
added that she had a feeling that all the lecturers would be willing to
introduce a self-educational initiative in the work framed by the institutions
in which they work. Therefore, she opened the discussion by posing a question:
what would be the role of a self-organized, self-educational initiative within
a large university: “Would our presence at university be perceived as a kind of
intervention, or would we be assimilated?”, she asked.
etc,
etc.
Me?
Jasna Koteska told us
about the summer-school application for she has once received, concluding that
she could not make out the real subject of any of the listed disciplines. The
participation fee for the three days event was €750, so Koteska started by
humorously mentioning all the things she would rather spend the money on, as
all of those seemed more worth it than the skills named: bridging or remodelling or
something equally abstract. After this, she noticed that every university is
constructed around false disciplinary partitions. “Self-education”, she said,
“can tear down the false discourse, by structuring learning around notions. A
notion can be butterfly, eye. A notion can be toilet, and all the notions can be
tackled through a variety of disciplines.”… She also reminded the participants
of a quotation of one of Sigmund Freud’s psychiatrists: “Theory is good but it
doesn’t prevent things from being.” … The interesting quote was followed by
laughter, while many of the participants noted it down. Koteska, then, drew a
parallel between knowledge and weapons (kill me): “There
isn’t a single movement which was created in the street”, she said. “Movements
are made in classrooms before they go out in the streets.” She mentioned numerous
historical examples in support of the thesis and, after asking herself about
the reason, she concluded that, regardless of the hierarchical structure,
university framework offers more freedom to its students than they would have
after they graduate and find the jobs in corporations and institutions. She
gave a detailed presentation about hierarchy, saying that it often contradicts
logics and common sense, stating charming examples from her own university
experience.
etc,
etc… most of the participants were (my humble opinion) bored to death, some laughed (at least), and most of them just happily waited for the restaurant aftermath. Hooray to that :]
P.S.
The discussion finished
informally, at the dinner in a restaurant which was especially chosen for the
participants by the TkH organizational team. The atmosphere was cheerful, so
here a few photos to illustrate it :) See
them for yourself: here
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