An incomplete* pedagogy reader.
The following is a list of books, readings, and resources that helped me phrase my ideas about education. I might circle back in here later to add details and context, but for now, these are all things I recommend if you’re interested in thinking about thinking, or navigating how to better facilitate in your classrooms and manage up within a University structure.
If someone knows of a good history book about higher education in Europe sometime between 1200–1800, I’d be curious to take a look. That region forms a lot of the basis for how things get set up down the line, and seems like a good foundation. (Davidson’s book has a lot of the history for how higher education came to be in the United States. Fuller references some interesting early-Europe topics, but doesn’t cite.)
If someone has done pre-colonization research, or notes on how education is done elsewhere, again please send quality resources my way. I tend reference some Peter Senge stories, and mishmash longform articles I’ve read, which I’m fine with, but it could always use some additional sources and perspectives.
What does it mean that something exists? What does it mean, this is? It means it occupies space. To exist means to occupy space. That’s the scientific definition. Everything in this universe exists because it takes up space. If it doesn’t take up space, it doesn’t exist. Even a thought in your head takes up space. That’s why when you’re thinking, your mind is occupied. An emotion takes up space; your heart is full. Of course it’s emotional space, which means when you have an emotion, another emotion cannot come into that same space. When you have a thought in your head, you can’t have another thought in that same space. You have a book on a shelf, you cannot put another book in that place. A book occupies its space. So everything shares that same existence. Water, fire, stones, thoughts, feelings. Everything exists by this definition, it occupies space. — Rabbi Manis Friedman
Jacques Rancière and Kristin Ross, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (1987)
Cathy N. Davidson, The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux (2017)
Buckminster R. Fuller, Education Automation (1962)
Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (1970)
Rupert Sheldrake, Chaos Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness (2001)
Yuval N Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994)
Boris Groys, On The New (1992)
Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change (1990)
Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle, and Antonio Negri, Supercommunity: Diabolical Togetherness beyond Contemporary Art (2017)
John Dewey, Art as Experience (1934)
Sam Thorne, School: A Recent History of Independent Art Schools (2017)
David Reinfur, A New* Program for Graphic Design (2019)
Luis Camnitzer, Thinking About Art Thinking
Marshall McLuhan, The Future of Education: The Class of 1989
Alex Steffen, Talk is Action
Sister Corita Kent with John Cage, 10 Rules for Students, Teachers, and Life
Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity?
