DISCUSSION FORUM

Your Name and Title:  P. Aravinda

Organization or School Name: 

Co-Presenter Name(s):

Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Maryland

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Target Audience(s): Learners, including parents and teachers 

Short Session Description (one line): In defense of slow learning, in the spirit slow food, slow money and slow love.

Full Session Description (as long as you would like):  

Slow learning recognizes the learning that takes place because something else was not learned.  The “something else” typically belongs to a standard roster of learning outcomes, already known and classified according to the knowledge system in the community prevailing around the learner.  While not learning this prevailing knowledge, the learner explores other knowledge, with a freedom that depends precisely on the inability of the prevailing community to recognize and classify that knowledge.  The learner pursues knowledge as if doing it for the first time in history, regardless of its value or correctness in the prevailing knowledge system.

Therefore while typical education programs may have a checklist of learning outcomes that will be used to evaluate the learners, with more checked items indicating more learning and in turn greater success of the program, slow learning looks between and beneath the checked items to the inner curriculum driving the learning of the child.  In this sense, the fewer checked items, the more space for this inner curriculum to grow.

Slow learning empowers the learner over the learned and honours what is not learned and what is not readily recognized as learning by prevailing knowledge systems.

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session: