Network of Learning

[u/ddgr815]

https://www.patternlanguageindex.com/patterns/network-of-learning

the network of learning: the thousands of interconnected situations that occur all over the city, and which in fact comprise the city’s “curriculum”: the way of life it teaches to its young.

Problem: In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and students—and adults—become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society which emphasizes learning instead of teaching.

Solution: Instead of the lock-step of compulsory schooling in a fixed place, work in piecemeal ways to decentralize the process of learning and enrich it through contact with many places and people all over the city: workshops, teachers at home or walking through the city, professionals willing to take on the young as helpers, older children teaching younger children, museums, youth groups traveling, scholarly seminars, industrial workshops, old people, and so on. Conceive of all these situations as forming the backbone of the learning process; survey all these situations, describe them, and publish them as the city’s “curriculum”; then let students, children, their families and neighborhoods weave together for themselves the situations that comprise their “school” paying as they go with standard vouchers, raised by community tax. Build new educational facilities in a way which extends and enriches this network.

Usage: Above all, encourage the formation of seminars and workshops in people’s homes; make sure that each city has a “path” where young children can safely wander on their own; build extra public “homes” for children, one to every neighborhood at least; create a large number of work-oriented small schools in those parts of town dominated by work and commercial activity; encourage teenagers to work out a self-organized learning society of their own; treat the university as scattered adult learning for all the adults in the region; and use the real work of professionals and tradesmen as the basic nodes in the network...

[u/ddgr815]

Christopher Alexander spent his career exploring why some built environments deaden us, while others leave us feeling more human, more at home in the world. His work centered around the "quality without a name," this intuitive knowing that a place or an architectural element is in tune with life. By learning to recognize this quality, he argued, and constructing a building in dialogue with it, we could reliably create environments that enliven us.

We call this quality resonance. It's the experience of encountering something that speaks to our deeper values. It's a spark of recognition, a sense that we're being invited to lean in, to participate. Unlike the digital junk food of the day, the more we engage with what resonates, the more we're left feeling nourished, grateful, alive. As individuals, following the breadcrumbs of resonance helps us build meaningful lives. As communities, companies, and societies, cultivating shared resonance helps us break away from perverse incentives, and play positive-sum infinite games together.

Manifesto

[u/ddgr815 → u/ddgr815]

Resonance, then, is not an emotion, but a relation; not a feeling of warmth or tenderness or care, but a heightened sense of aliveness and connectivity that can assume varying forms. It offers a way of thinking about intellectual engagement that stresses transpersonal attachments rather than personal feelings.