Abandoning the teaching of subjects at schools

by Alon Serper - Tuesday, 24 March 2015, 8:59 AM

http://qz.com/367487/goodbye-math-and-history-finland-wants-to-abandon-teaching-subjects-at-school/

here is my gist of it

"Instead, the Finns are teaching phenomena—such as the European Union, which encompasses learning languages, history, politics, and geography...

No more of an hour of history followed by an hour of chemistry. The idea aims to eliminate one of the biggest gripes of students everywhere: “What is the point of learning this?” Now, each subject is anchored to the reason for learning it...

The new system is much more collaborative, forcing teachers from different areas to come up with the curriculum together."

-- 

This is a good start.  We need to connect it to current emotion-laden and embodied knowledge issues:  And of course, for me, the propositional cannot work and the dialectical is far superior epistemologically, ontologically and educationally.

Hence my exercises from yesterday as the issues of colonialism leads to emotions firing up:

Emotions without knowledge and critical analysis and dialectical scrutiny leads to indoctrination and exploitation and a feudal system of those who use the emotions without analysis and critical engagement, formulating questions, enquiring, co-enquiring and working at improving individuals’ lives using everything we have

Colonialism, Africa and South Africa - in light of the Rhodes status

by Alon Serper - Monday, 23 March 2015, 9:23 AM

As the Rhodes statue is rightly under attack for being a symbol of racial domination and oppression in the name of economic and racial colonialism, and as I have just read Mhudi

Sol. T. Plaatje.  Mhundi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago.  Originally published in 1930 by Lovedale Press. Reprinted 1970 by Negro Universities Press A division of  Greenwood Press, Inc. New York.

which I'll describe in the next post and which

describes the history and coming about of South Africa to what it is today, a tragic country of oppressed and oppressor, injustices and inequality. The roots were laid here at the time of the novel, the mid 19^th century.

the following questions come to my mind

Aren't South Africa and Africa colonialist constructs per se? That is, those very concepts and constructs are colonialist and colonialism.

They did not exist before the Europeans left Europe and arrived in the parts of the world outside Europe where they artificially drew lines on maps, colonialist constructs, and brought ethnicities, tribes and clans together on nation states, a colonialist construct,

They were constructed as colonialism.  So the statue is not colonialist.  South Africa and the rest of the world outside Europe is colonialist and require re-organization and reconstruction to shift colonialism into something else.

Hence, a shift from colonialism require the shift of Africa, South Africa, Latin America, the Middle East to completely different constructs

Perhaps as little clans whose members work together on their wellbeing and good quality life as what they want to be

Africa is an artificial construct that was invented by the colonialist as a colonialist construct. So is South Africa as the novel Mhudi beautifully demonstrates.

Hence, do not just  move a statue, end the artificial invention that is called South Africa, Kenya, Cameroon, Congo, etc etc and reconstruct something else -

Perhaps

establish small clans of equal members focusing on the wellbeing of its members according to their definition of wellbeing

The Arab spring had shown how the colonialist nation state is a trivial artificial construct that collapses when the restrain and terror on the inhabitants are lifted. 

We can use it as a dialectical exercise

Should South Africa and Africa be reconstructed into something else, that is no more colonialist?

Should we finish this whole colonialist construct that is termed South Africa and construct a completely new, or old, political entity, construct and a place   

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