Organic Learning

Yes, what is it? Organic learning does not respect anything. Curriculum, plaah, policy programs, plaah, notes, text books. It is when something evolves, flows, changes into something strange, something other, which moves, and shakes, and unexpected happens. Without it only no-thing exists, as it so heavenly does.

Organic learning is linked to Leif Segerstam's idea of 'organic musical kaleidoscope', and to Gramsci's 'organic intellectual.' It has to do with the ultimate moment of human democratic creativity, that is, to say no to obedience to authority, and to various abusive (or so used) object-subject -relations.

"However, only in an emancipated society, whose members' autonomy and responsibility had been realized, would communication have developed into the non-authoritarian and universally practiced dialogue..." Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 1971, p. 314

But, how to build such a society? Some educational progressivists have claimed that this will happen by focusing on critical educational contents and political activism in different fronts and fields. Others have stated that in the end, it is the (pedagogical) process and social relations of learning and teaching that counts. Yet other educational theorists, such as Henry Giroux, have emphasized the integrated strategy where the contents meet the pedagogical forms in balance (see Youngman 1986, p. 5). Common to these two parties is the conviction that various collaborative study methods are needed to replace the widely shared idea of learning - stated here by Edwin Mason in his book Collaborative Learning (1972, p. 30) - "as a process in which an agent - the teacher - does 'the right things' to a client - the student - in a prearranged optimum environment designed for the performance of the operation."