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It is said that Plato put an inscription at the entrance to his academy, reading: “Let no on enter who is not a geometrician.” There was also a second inscription above the entrance, stating that whoever was unwilling to become entangled in love affairs with other visitors in the garden of theory should keep away. 1 Love and geometry seems like an interesting starting point for a curriculum, for a journey. Geometry, to question the outside. Love, to question the inside. Fundamentally, an attempt to render visible the infinite interconnections of space, therefore an opportunity to see education or knowledge as a source of infinite possibilities. What shape will this curriculum take? Would it be maleable, in relation to a center, to a core? Maybe spherical for efficiency and beauty. I am interested in a curriculum that yields a structure of hope. The core being: to be honest equals to have no fear, no fear equals freedom. Revolving around the core one can find the learning objective to this journey: To acquire the abilities to formulate the right questions that can lead to your own discoveries. “One is better served by gathering knowledge from a combination of the disciplines-from which artists constructs their vocabularies in different combinations depending on their interests and needs. “2 I would like to construct a vocabulary with the following(never finite) concepts:
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Philosophy/Anthropology (learn to wonder, to explore human connections)
Design/Fabrication tools (learn the power of creation, of observation)
Biology/Technology (learn infinite ways to see life, to see change)
Brain/Physics (learn perception, curiosity as source of joy)
Space for ideas/Geometry in nature (learn to materialize imagination)
Dance/Math in music (learn how to stop thinking)
Astronomy/Literature (learn the fundamentals of human adventures)
Guidance/Poetry (learn from others, to be vulnerable, to have no walls)
As I look back, I believe I was fortunate to have two parallel but distinct paths of education growing up. On one hand I went to a strict catholic International school where most teachers were nuns or nun-like women who’s idea of successful education meant discipline and structure. On the other hand, I had my parents at home who are both irreverent artists/designers who took me on adventures in the Colombian jungle and filled the house with music and poetry.
I understand now how much I needed that almost military structure that my school was giving me, but at the same time the only reason why I kept on dreaming and maintained an eagerness to learn, to discover to be amazed by knowledge was precisely because of my parents’ poetical and abstract ways. They talked to me about love while at catholic school teachers talked about sin. They talked to me about colors and patterns in nature, about creating out of necessity and giving value to everyone and everything around me; while at catholic school I learned about American history, trigonometry and how to be a “lady”. Do I needed both? Contrast gives you perspective, and one might find balance.
Certainly if I could go back and redesign a chapter in the curriculum of my education, there are a number of elements that I would modify, add or subtract. However keeping in mind that a balance is crucial and moreover that education is not a bubble. It might take the form of a sphere, but the infinite tangents that produce this circle (education) must be individually exquisite.
1.(Peter Sloterdijk-Bubbles.SpheresI) 2.(Pablo Helguera-Education for Socially Engaged Art)