So, while I am seeking a new forum//waiting for the dream forum to appear (cohort to be named BEAR in posts) I’ll explain a little bit about my concept of spherical education.

This idea came up for me through a senior-level humanities discussion class at UNC Asheville (spr 08).  Somewhere in a sexuality/tolerance/modern human behavior topic-cloud I began to think about the binary classification scale and how CRAZY it is that we as modern socialized humans still cling to this system that forces us into duality.

Any adult person (and most people age tween and up ((hey y’all))) knows about the GREY AREA that covers most of the ground in arguments/discussions of ANY and EVERYthing imaginable.

So, WHY DO WE CONTINUE TO SHAPE OUR EDUCATION AND WORLDVIEWS AROUND THE BINARY SYSTEM??  This is a question I don’t have an answer to, I have many.  Is this the way you readers feel about most things?  Well, that’s because everything has more than one “answer” or way of clarifying/understanding/thinking about things.

My argument for spherical education as a concept is that it is a REAL way of looking at relationships between different concepts in the REAL world.

My argument for spherical education as an applicable model for education is that learners of all ages have many different interests that can be linked together for a more stimulating and self-directed course of study.  People enjoy learning about what they are already interested in.  If this one interest is a jumping off point, and there are many relationships shown to other topics, suddenly the learner can see MANY interests interconnected to the original.

Encouraging learners to seek the relationships between ideas builds a much sturdier and expandable education that learning only the ideas.  In a time of ever-increasing lump-sum end-of-year standardized testing, traditional students are learning the end results (of history, culture, language, and mathematics) but not the processes forged to create these end products.  Additionally, these students are missing out on the information necessary to carve their own paths to brilliant ideas.

Right now, sphericaleducation.com serves as a beacon of hope for present and future learners, that there IS merit to the process of learning…LEARNING.  Learning is not about acing the tests (although you can do that too, and more easily, if you are genuinely interested in learning), it is about understanding the world you live in.  Sphericaleduation.com is interested in how we got to where we are now in all realms, and how everything is connected to something else.

In the future, I hope to have teaching tools and web demonstrations to help you find out more about what is going on in the world around you.

If you have suggestions, or are a like-minded linker, let’s work together.  The time is now.

This educational model will always be a work in progress, just like everything else.

“The only constant is change.” (Heraclitus (also attributed to Isaac Asimov…why is this?  Another question…)

With love,

c