A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.”
— Thomas Carruthers
For ages and ages we have been trained to see teachers as infallible, so many hymns praising their glory and indispensability.
My philosophy on education is radically opposite. the best teacher is the one who makes themselves progressively less needed.
It is only when the “leading teacher” takes a break from the stage, the platform is available for other budding teachers to grow.
So our method of anarchist education is also quite the opposite of how teacher-centered schools function, in general.
Here neither the teacher or learner is at the center, but the process of learning itself, hence no hierarchy.
In this age when all sorts of information and knowledge is available in the internet, the role of teacher is to encourage self learning and peer to peer learning by BEING AN EXEMPLARY LEARNER, taking up new tasks, screwing things up and correcting them in due course of time relentlessly. Hence the enlightened Ekalavya will not be told to give his thumb finger to the demands of a dominant Dronacharya, but is set free to use the same fingers to scroll and swipe across the internet and learn as much as he can!
The main thing a teacher needs to do is to help steepen the learning curve by taking time to sort out the best content and motivate students to try and explore many methods of learning, and create meaningful challenges that test their learning in real life situation.
“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
― E.M. Forster
This way of education is definitely not comfortable for both teachers and students, but i am putting all my money in this to bet that it will generate a generation of rational independent thinkers and active social workers, and not just learned, hyper-obedient followers who know what is right and wrong but have never developed the guts to challenge any “authority”.
Its time for the enlightened Ekalavya, to instead of cutting his thumb with epitomizes independent thinking, just show a middle finger to the authoritarian model, in fact their tribe is increasing with increasing number of home schoolers!
So lets aim and strive relentlessly for learning and evolving!
Some references to anarchist education: