부산대학교 도서관

Summary: If education is to help individuals and societies address the pressing issues of local and global scale that we face at the dawn of the 21st century (i.e., poverty, famine, environmental destruction), it must help us to understand their complex and interdependent natures. Education must also prepare us to withstand the emotional tensions and conflicts that emerge within individuals and groups as we awaken to the true nature of these problems and our differing and competing attitudes, values, and needs. I argue that educational approaches organized around underlying assumptions of a machine-like world and mechanical metaphors lead to the fragmentation of life experiences and learning that impedes our ability to bring about desired changes. I propose a living education as an approach to education that values the holistic development and growth of the individual. This approach aims to build complex connections within the self and between the self and the world such that individuals are better prepared to live their lives as they transform them to be more in accord with their highest hopes, values, and beliefs. The approach draws on Winnicott's psychoanalytic theories of human development, the traditions and examples of the 19th century Danish Folk High Schools, Highlander Folk School in the United States, and the author's experience of creating Hearth Communities, an intentional community of individuals who participate in overlapping circles of activities and live within driving distance of each other. A living education generally becomes known and understood as participants "catch on" to it through their experiences as participants; it cannot be reduced to a "program" to be implemented through the use of a curriculum consisting of scripted lesson plans and learning objectives. My colleagues and I have developed and implemented offerings of a living education in both formal and informal educational settings. I have incorporated narratives of participants in various offerings to make visible how the approach has been implemented and to show the kind of (earning and value that these offering have had for participants. Additional considerations and plans for future developments of the approach are discussed.