Alternative Learning
We learn all the time, at all places!
The chapter “Learning” and all the questions regarding, is definitely critical for the structure and development of every society. Do people long for knowledge or does knowledge need to be forced on them?
In Stagones we are aware that systemic education is problematic, since the children’s personalities are being crushed in the cult of uniformity. Children are being obliged to sit still in front of their school desks for hours, regardless of their interest in the subject and are being instructed to conform to the teacher’s orders, who states what is right or allowed to do. In a few words, instead of learning how to develop their talents and skills or define their mark as free and active citizens, children get used to accepting what they experience without raising objections. They endure, patient and confused, while they witness their dreams fading away.
The ideal school
Someone once said that “we start school with intelligence and we leave school in ignorance”. We believe that humans are natural learners, knowledge doesn’t need to be forced on them. They only need to have a saying on what they learn, how they learn and who with.
In Stagones we search for alternative, self-directed models, where children can primarily focus on their interests, developing at the same time their social skills. Where they can learn how to recognize and express their needs, how to deal with the responsibility of being free and how to interact with others, friends or family in a harmonious way.
Where school, ideally, is the centre of an agricultural/scientific and artistic community, a space where children and adults co-exist and co-create.
Experiential Workshops
Children ask questions but they are not dependant on our answers. They discover themselves and the world around them, they listen to an opinion but may not relate to it. They play along with the never-ending game of existence, the game of self-knowledge, by broadening their understanding and practising freewill.
Stagones organize and host experiential workshops, during which children can spread their wings. And we grown-ups can realize that, the more we intervene, unconsciously most of the time, by endlessly urging children to reproduce our adult world, the more we force them to hit the same dead-ends, as we do.
The frame of reference in our workshops is Agile Learning (Agile Learning), a self-directed method (and philosophy) based on trust, aiming to authenticity.
Stagones organize non-formal educational workshops, sponsored by the European programme Erasmus+, like the Community Toolset: Exploring Tools to create Sustainable, Resilient and Democratic communities in the 21st century, Europe. For more information and an informative video press here. Stagones also implement volunteering programmes sponsored by the programme European Solidarity Corps.
The Hara-Goe project | stagones
For now, our intention to contribute to a frame that supports less institutionalization and more joy through knowledge, is expressed through the Hara-Goe project | stagones. By modelling a micro-cosmos, where education, culture and arts are being holistically approached, the Hara-Goe project | stagones frames an experiment, where living is undivided.
Its values, beliefs and practices are being eventually embodied into a new approach, a new attitude towards life, a new human culture. For more information please press here.