An interesting idea from Alito Siqueira of Goa University's Sociology Department. If you share the dream, please contact him at alito_ at excite.com
PRAJNA Programme for Knowledge by All "Study is the patrimony of no one and the place of study where you carry out your work is the patrimony of no one - it belongs to all the people... and it must be extended to the people or the people will seize it" Che Guevara Democratising knowledge i.e. knowledge by all invites more members of the community to participate in the generation and accreditation of knowledge and stands in contrast to democratising learning opportunities i.e. knowledge for all. Apart from broadening the production base, the challenging aim of democratisation knowledge is to empower a community to start contesting knowledge, to enter the arena of the politics of knowledge.' Contemporary education is premised on fundamental chasms that separates the academic from the distributor o knowledge and they in turn from the learner, the producer from the consumers. This split constructed notionally in term of time i.e. that today's learner can and may generate knowledge only if and when learning is complete in the future. This separation and displacement of the knowledge creation of the learner, structurally denies the learner access to the mysteries of knowledge generation (problem-setting, methodology, information gathering) and denies participation in the authorisation of information into accredited knowledge by the mystification of verification procedures or at times through spurious institutional confidentiality in processes. Having created a narrow base whereby knowledge is controlled by an elite, all 'others' and their difference is relegated to the position of 'not knowing' and they are effect silenced and are reduced to a problem to be overcome in part through 'knowledge for all'. The excluded embrace the entire range of non western civilisations. For the 'other' at best the western system is like laying a thin socio-cultural membrane over indigenous society and norms, creating a sort of cultural schizophrenia which most of us share. At worst, imposing the western system builds a support mechanism for direct colonization, which has dogged non-western peoples for two centuries. Even within the hegemonic culture of knowledge there is the rift of 'words and things' and all that is non-cerebral is canonically undermined; the emotional, the literary, the somatic, the spiritual and knowledge from below. These excluded knowledges may sometimes be given a window where they is identified as such e.g. 'traditional systems of?.' Prajna (see attached note on page 5) attempts to challenge that which divides. It recognises that experience, creativity and knowledge generation are ontologically, epistemologically and practically both central and a necessary precondition to learning. The forum encourages participants to choose, control and be responsible for their own knowledge creation based on their own mixed and schizophrenic experience through workshops, courses, retreats, events, happenings, outings etc. Prajna goes beyond pedagogy (the art and science of teaching children) and andragogy (the study of adult learning) to heutagogy, (the study of self-determined learning). The forum emphasize the shared creation of some productive output related to ones own community or environment or life and learning skills from writing or research methods or performance or film making to serve the ends to expression, where participants may so choose to. The guiding metaphor is that of 'healing the breach' between 'words and things' and between forms of knowledge which are usually separated in our education: cerebral and emotional understanding; literary and scientific knowledge; the canonical versus the mundane chaotic; knowledge developed 'from above' or 'from below', knowledge about self and that of the world, between process and product. Above all it is a mode of being in the world. Recognising the exclusion of the learner a number of techniques and pedagogies have emerged which seeks to shift the centre from the teacher and the syllabus to the student and give larger autonomy to the learner in both formal and non formal knowledge systems (see glossary for a selected list). However, this innovation and democratising is more common at the centre of the hegemonic knowledge elite. Again within India these liberties are practiced only in elite institutions. Hence such measures most often bring limited gain for the relatively advantaged among the disadvantaged The run of the mill Indian Universities (already on the margins of global visibility) secure in the pretension that the modernist authoritarian pedagogy of chalk and talk, fear that any liberty and innovation will mean even lower credibility, missing the fact that they have already lost the learners due to the boring passivity that their methods demand. While globalisation makes possible the democratisation of innovation the psychological logic of prolonged exclusion fo these institutions has a built in mechanism whereby the excluded are bound to exclude themselves further? modern institution in a postmodern world? a symbol of what has passed. A synoptic account of the difference in learning paradigms may be seen as under: Differing Learning Paradigms Liberal Radical Primary Focus Different Learners Different Epistemology Relationship to the Broader System of Education Accepting the System Challenging the System Needs Analysis System-Driven User-Driven Primary Change Sought in Formal Education Access New Models of Accreditation Not Applicable right now Objective Universal Functional Literacy Universal Civic Literacy Guiding Vision Credentialism Empowerment Outcome Domestication Emancipation Prajna stands with the radical paradigm. To begin with Pranja offers a workshop in Creating Social Knowledge (see attached outline on page 8). Participants will begin by choosing a problem of their choice to research upon and then be provided a multi lingual environment and facilitator (who may be a resisting academic participating on the periphery of the dominant education system) to create an output which could be published in the local paper. Another activity could be a retreat 'Mind, Body, Performance and Dance'. The course through an exploration of the ethnography of performative ritual in the region and dance exercises engages with the problematic mind-body dichotomy the foundational canon of the dominant paradigm. Yet another activity could be a course on 'Visualising the neighbourhood'. With the availability of semi pro broadcast quality digital cameras and video editing software that can be installed on PCs (Aprox Rs. 3.5 lakhs) the art and techniques of documenting through video is turning increasingly democratic. The possibilities it offers participants is of capturing one's own environment (visually) and understanding it through the process of editing (selection of images, juxtaposition etc). This opens new and other dimensions for understanding an issue. It simultaneously opens up new areas of interest and enquiry on the interactive aspect of the medium and for broadcasting other knowledges. The workshops will have few participants to encourage interactivity. A broad outline may be suitable advertised and the actual syllabus may be defined and decided along with the participants and is constrained only by the skill sets available with the facilitator and the group. Interacting would be multilingual and at times and places chosen by the participants. This paradigm also opens up the truly inspiring goal that each class learns more than the previous graduating class further a participant from one course could as well use his knowledge in another area to design another workshop. Prajna may not offer credentials (though aware that too is form of credential). Rather it would leave its participants and facilitators to provide the credential for the forum following the age old popular wisdom of every teacher. Given the poor quality of skill formation and curricula of the formal system at least one college has offered to host the course on Creating Social Knowledge. In part it is hoped that the course may enhance the quality of skills of the students and the quality of output of their end course research project. While this may give an assured demand for the course and so also broadcast the difference in assumptions about knowledge work, it may also place expectations and demands in terms of the product for a system that itself is unclear of what it wants from its research project. So positioning Prajna as a extra-curricula activity of the existing formal system needs to be discussed. >From our origins, groups have engaged in educational activities that have experimented with collaborative and mutually supportive ways of learning. They continue to do so such as in farming, cantar (Song) writing competitions, theatre workshops, and journeys in self discovery. These activates demonstrate a heightened awareness of how educational policies and practices perpetuate exclusion. These groups may search for progression routes within the broader education system that validate their learning to date and that allow them to continue to learn in participative, collaborative ways. The majority have walked out, dropped out, been pushed out or just left out of formal education which could not include their experience. While they live of their wits they may at time want access to universities because they recognize that university qualifications are valuable currency in the labour market. However, they want more than mere access to the existing system. They want opportunities to participate in radically reshaping the system so that it can respond to their preferred way of learning and in so doing, acknowledge these as valid and worthwhile. Furthermore they are concerned that progression through the formal system should not entail renouncing one's identity or becoming alienated from core values. Parjna is one such forum poised to engage with the 'gate-keepers' of knowledge. The engagement reverses the direction of micropower by simultaneously suspending the academic's monopoly over authorisation, while it re-authorises a previously de-authorised voice or knowledge Prajna is premised on the now accepted position that knowledge is primarily a political not primarily an epistemological deployment. The contrast between democratising learning opportunities and those that promote democratisation of the processes of knowledge creation may be summed up as follows: "?knowledge-as-regulation, whose point of ignorance is called chaos and whose point of knowledge is called order, and knowledge-as-emancipation, whose point of ignorance is called colonialism and whose point of knowledge is called solidarity" Dos Santos Dos Santos uses the term 'colonialism' to encapsulate the narrow base whereby knowledge is controlled by an elite. Solidarity, on the other hand, refers to the end point of a dynamic process that perceives difference not as a problem, but as the prime site for creating new and purposeful knowledge. Selected References: Muller Johan and Nico Cloete: The White Hands: Academic social scientists and forms of popular knowledge production, Production of Popular Knowledge Critical Arts, Volume 4(2), 1986. Internet WWW page, at URL: http://www.und.ac.za/und/ccms/publications/criticalarts/v4n2a1.htm#intro (version current as of December 05, 2003.) Ryan Anne: The Challenge of Access: Confronting the Gatekeepers of Knowledge', URL: http://www.may.ie/registrar/access/main.shtml (version current as of December 02, 2003) Progler Yusuf: Contemplating an Education System for Decolonization and Rejuvenation. www.multiworld.org/m_versity/articles/article.htm (version current as of December 07, 2003) Progler J. A: Moving beyond western theories of education? www.multiworld.org/m_versity/articles/article.htm (version current as of December 07, 2003) Barr, Robert B and John Tagg: From teaching to learning--a new paradigm for undergraduate education, Change; Nov/Dec95, Vol. 27:6. Ingleton Christine, Margaret Kiley, et. al: Leap Into Student Centered Learning, www.acue.adelaide.edu.au (version current as of December 05, 2003.) E-learning at bath: Are you an objectivist or a constructivist, URL: http://www.bath.ac.uk/e-learning/pedagogy.htm (version current as of December 05, 2003.) ____________ This note is collage of ideas burrowed from different sources, sometimes verbatim. In the interest of brevity I have mentioned in the references only those pieces on which I have relied on most extensively. They ideas are glued together through my experience as a teacher, experiments at Goa University and conversations with numerous persons both sympathetic and antagonistic. Critiques, comments, suggestions and modifications are welcome. Alito Siqueria. [EMAIL PROTECTED] December 08, 2003. PRAJNA Mahayana is referred to as "the great vehicle" of Buddhism because it is vast and challenging and open to everyone. At the heart of the mahayana path are compassion, or karuna and wisdom, or prajna. For the practitioner, the challenge is how to bring these two together. Prajna is a Sanskrit word literally meaning "best knowledge," or "best knowing." Prajna is a natural bubbling up of curiosity, doubt and inquisitiveness. It is precise, but at the same time it is playful. The awakening of prajna applies to all aspects of life, down to the tiniest details. Our inquisitive interest encompasses all levels, from the most mundane, such as how do I turn on this computer, up to such profound levels as, what is the nature of reality? Prajna is symbolized in many ways: as a book, a sun, a vase of elixir, as a catalytic spark. One of the main ways prajna is symbolized is as a sword. When you think of a sword, it may make you feel a little uncomfortable. A sword can be dangerous and if you do not handle it properly, you can get hurt. So depicting prajna as a sword points to knowledge that's threatening. Why is prajna threatening? Because prajna is the means by which we perceive emptiness, or shunyata, it undermines our very notion of reality and the limits we place on our world view. Opening to the vastness and profundity of shunyata requires us to let go of our petty-mindedness and self-clinging completely. The sharpness of prajna cuts at many levels. In the mundane sense, prajna represents a sharpening of perception and inquisitiveness. As we go about our lives, and particularly as we enter a spiritual path, we are always raising questions. We are always trying to understand. Instead of just accepting a superficial understanding, we think deeply and ask, "What do I really understand? Does any of this make any sense whatsoever?" Prajna has this quality of creative doubt-not just accepting things based on authority or hearsay, but continually digging deeper. In addition to being sharp, swords have sharp points and they are able to puncture. The sharp-pointed sword of prajna punctures all sorts of delusions, all sorts of self-deception, all sorts of false understandings and false views. This puncturing quality of prajna is abrupt and immediate. It catches you by surprise. Another image for prajna is the sun: the sun of prajna is illuminating our world. If we're inquisitive, if we're attentive, a kind of natural illumination happens. There is light shining on the dark corners and a sense of being under the spotlight, totally exposed. What is funny is that we actually think we can hide. How could we think that? How could we think that we actually don't know who we are? But a lot of times we take the approach of not really wanting to look too closely at ourselves or at our lives. We just look the other way and move on. However, there's no corner where the sun of prajna isn't shining. Prajna is like having a sun shining all around, everywhere, never setting. Once you open up to prajna, to this fundamental inquisitiveness, it tends to burst into full flame. It is like a little spark dropped into a pile of dry leaves. Once there is that little spark, that little bit of insight, that little bit of suspicion we actually know more than we think we do-it explodes, it's all consuming. Prajna is represented iconographically by the feminine deity Prajnaparamita and the masculine deity Manjushri. Prajnaparamita is depicted as a beautiful feminine deity with four arms. Two arms are folded on her lap in the classic posture of meditation, and her two other arms hold a sword and a book. Through these gestures, she manifests three aspects of prajna: academic knowledge, cutting through deception, and direct perception of emptiness. As the masculine deity personifying knowledge, Manjushri is also depicted holding a sword. Sometimes he also holds a vase filled with the elixir of knowledge, which symbolizes direct intuitive insight. The sword is the activity of prajna and the vase is the receptive aspect of learning. Sometimes Manjushri holds a book and a flower. The book symbolizes scholarly learning and the flower represents the organic unfolding of prajna, which like a flower, naturally opens and blossoms. It does not need to be forced. Prajna has to do with cultivating inquisitiveness of mind, cultivating deep understanding that is not a mere credential but transforms who we are altogether. How can prajna be cultivated? The process of deepening our understanding is referred to as the three levels of prajna, or the three prajnas. These are called hearing, contemplating, and meditating. The first prajna, hearing, is based on being open to new information, gathering knowledge, and really trying to listen. Although it is called hearing, in addition to listening with one's ears, it also includes reading and observing through all our senses. When you hear the dharma or listen to the teachings, you are supposed to be like a deer in the woods. You hear a noise-footsteps on leaves-and you don't know if that noise is a hunter or a mountain lion. At that moment your senses perk up completely. You are focused and ready to leap from danger, if need be. You are absolutely alert and absolutely tuned into the environment. That quality of refined alertness and attention is the quality of hearing. You need to listen to the teachings as though your life depended on it. That is the proper way to go about the first prajna. However, at this point, we see knowledge as something that's separate from us, an object out there that we are trying to figure out how to deal with. To go deeper, we turn to the second prajna, contemplating. Once we've heard or read or experienced something, contemplation means really chewing it over. We continually question what we have heard, looking at it from different angles, taking time to explore it. I remember my teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, saying that if you really understand the teachings, you should be able to describe them to your grandmother in a way that she can hear it. That's pretty challenging-you can't just march in and lay out your cookie-cutter talk or your many layers of lists and terms. You have to have chewed things over and really thought it through. You need to get to the point where you can express the teachings in your own words, your own images. You need to find your voice, and that takes time. That is the idea of contemplation. The third prajna is called meditating. This is the point where you have studied something so thoroughly, looked into it so completely, that it's not separate from you anymore. It is part of who you are, down to your very bones and marrow. The prajna of meditation means that you have actually digested the teachings. There's no need to try to call the dharma down from somewhere, or make an effort to reconstruct it, because it's already there. It's in your cells and your DNA. Hearing is like putting a morsel of food in your mouth. Contemplating is like swallowing that food and starting to digest it and seeing whether it gives you indigestion or not. Meditating is when you've already digested it and that food is a part of you. It cannot be separated from you; it is completely incorporated in your being. You have taken the essence and you've discarded anything that's irrelevant, the same as we do with the food we eat or the air we breathe. The whole process is as natural as eating. Usually we think that knowledge means having all the answers, but the quality of prajna is more like having all the questions. The phrase Trungpa Rinpoche used over and over again was, "The question is the answer." We're looking in the wrong direction if we think some path or some teacher or some book or some practice is going to provide us with "the ultimate answer." What we really should be looking for is the ultimate question. We could learn to trust our questioning mind. We could learn to trust our insight without reducing it or pinning it down into our conventional categories. In fact, prajna can't be pigeonholed. That would be like trying to put the sun into a pigeonhole. It simply doesn't work. Fundamentally prajna is big questioning mind. It is big questioning, not even mind. (compiled from Judy Lief's "The Sharp Sword of Prajna" [in Shambala Sun Online, May, 2003 and sent in by Dilip Loundo. I am not quite sure if our programme is too much to do with Vidhya while Prajna tilts towards jana. I would welcome suggestions and also a suitable acronym). Workshop on Creating Social Knowledge: Workshop Outline Objectives To define a social situation, event or problem that the participant would like to explore as individual or in groups. To collect and use information and analyze the problem and arrive at conclusion. To engage creatively with the rules and procedures of Research Methods. To prepare a creative product. To experience the joy of knowledge creation. Proposed Process The course is being carried on the assumption that one can learn but cannot be thought creative problem solving. If you are used to lectures this might be a bit strange to you. But if you think of the number of things you have learnt in life outside the classroom (and it is almost certainly they were the most important) you will soon realize that it is not so difficult after all and that it indeed could be a very enjoyable way of learning - certainly a much better way. Beginning with the choice of the problem, as a participant you will have to discuss and agree on the process along with your fellow participants and the facilitator. A suggestion is that you will have small tasks to be done during the session or at home. The outputs will be discussed in the session and will constitute the learning experience. Learning here largely depends on how active the participants are. You will get as much out of the course as you put into it. One or two facilitators will help you to develop a creative environment and direct towards and prepare relevant material, for learning techniques etc. to solve the problem you have chosen. Pre requisites: No formal qualifications are necessary. While facility to read and write would help - it is not indispensable, if you could find other participants who can help you. A keen interest to create your knowledge can more than compensate for lack or deficient literacy. Language: You can use any language of your choice (English, Marathi, Hindi, Konkani) and different languages of your comfort for speaking, reading and writing (as is often the case). This may increase the time for discussion as some translation may be required but it would also increase the different perspectives and allow us to experience different and divergent perspective. Reading material can be prepared by the facilitator in English only unless there be funds for translation. History: The course grew out of the sorry state of research projects at the BA and MA level - where students find themselves unable to do empirical research which average persons should be able to do. The fault is not of the students but that of the structure in which they learn. Number of Participants: maximum of 16participants at a session. Number of Sessions: 12 to 16 sessions once a week of 3 hours each with a 2O minute break in-between Date and Time: At the convenience of the participants. Costs Course material 14 session @ 20 pages/ participant 4480/- Additional Items to enhance the course if resources are available A part time associate to prepare the course material and translate it @ Rs. 4000/mont x 4 months 16,000/- An additional pat time assistant for 4 months to write a manual, log and a report @ Rs. 4000/ month 16,000/- Cost of material for participants to do their field work Rs. 200 x 16 3,200/- Xeroxing, Scanning, Printing, surfing 5000/- Traveling 3600/- Facilitators honorarium or fee (depending on availability) ------- Total 48,280/- The additional items listed above are largely related with the first course only. I do think that the experiment is given its best chance if no compromises are made as far as costs are concerned. Yet we can go ahead even if additional items listed above are available only in part or not at all. ------------------------------------------------------------------- To Subscribe/Unsubscribe from Goa-Research-Net ------------------------------------------------------------------- * Send us a brief self-intro to justify your interest in this "specialized" forum. This should be sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or to [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (NOT [EMAIL PROTECTED]) * Leave SUBJECT blank * On first line of the BODY of your message, type: subscribe goa-research-net [EMAIL PROTECTED] or unsubscribe goa-research-net [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------------------------------------------------
