A Return Journey to Wisdom

The Future of Smart

Today’s episode is an invitation to consider how mainstream western definitions of learning and education are really just relics. When we use these terms, and when we design – or redesign - schools and curricula, we’re often using templates that were invented back in the 1500s in Europe. Before this period most societies viewed the world as a living system; humans thought of themselves as part of that whole–immersed in it, subject to it, and in awe of it. This is the basis of what we can call a holistic-indigenous worldview. The Future of Smart podcast promotes an approach to education that is grounded in holistic-indigenous views of what it means to be a person, what it means to exist in community, what counts as knowledge, what it means to learn and succeed. Today’s guests are working to further such approaches in American education today and we’ll hear from them about the joys and challenges of bringing it alive in our dominant culture.

Resources

Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete
Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade

Cultivating Sacred Spaces: A racial affinity group approach to support critical educators of color
Farima Pour-Khorshid

If you are new to this podcast, we suggest listening to episodes 2-4 to build a foundation for the concepts and principles we'll keep returning to on the Future of Smart.

E.2 - From Brain Bound to Our Extended Minds

E.3 - A Return Journey to Wisdom

E.4 - Using Science to Imagine a New Purpose and Design for Education with Dr. Pamela Cantor