Episodes
Sunday Apr 18, 2021
Sunday Apr 18, 2021
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's podcast I speak to Professor Gregory Cajete from Santa Clara Pueblo and the University of New Mexico about indigenous education and what contemporary western education can learn from such rich traditions. Among the topics we discuss are:
- Belonging to the Tewa tribe and what is particular about that tribe.
- Numbers in different tribes such as the Navajo, Cherokee, the Hopi and the Tewa.
- Being the first member of his family to attend public school
- Previously native Americans would have attended federal boarding schools (created by Pratt), with a basic academic curriculum
- Professor Cajete refers to “Charles Pratt” but this may be a mistaken reference to Richard Henry Pratt, to whom the expression “Kill the Indian, save the man” was attributed.
- Tribal College Union established in the 1970s (36 colleges – like first and second year of colleges; giving 2-year degrees)
- Defining indigenous education: Distinction between native American students attending US public schools (including the Bureau of Indian affair schools and religious denominational schools) – education as assimilation versus traditional indigenous education including stories, history, customs and language of the people.
- Relationality as the basis of indigenous education – developing a relationship to the place in which we live
- In indigenous education people ask the question, “how am I related to this?” versus the predominant “western” question “What is this?”
- Currently attempts are being made to introduce native American language, culture and traditions into US public schools
- Epistemology (how we come to know what we know) of indigenous education involves storytelling, ceremony, participation in community, rhythm and dance.
- Axiology (what is the focus of/what has value in?) of indigenous education is about establishing a balanced relationship with your environment, including human and other-than-human entities; a place-based world view (based on where you live).
- Logic of indigenous education is ecological and is one of balanced interdependence. It is part of an understanding that everything you do impacts everything around you.
- The Lakota people say “We are all related.”
- The “intractable conflict” between indigenous education and public school education in the United States
- Why the curriculum focused on subject-matter is object-focused and parts-oriented whereas native education is ecological, sustainable and holistic.
- Shortcomings of the subject-based curriculum include that it doesn’t teach for relationality or about the ecological mandate, the pre-requisite for sustainability; these are “specialised fields” whereas in indigenous education, you learn these from the day you’re born and reinforced consistently throughout one’s lifetime. Consequently you acquire a life-centred focus.
- Many native artists are entrepreneurial while maintaining a traditional viewpoint. An economic focus is on benefiting the community, not just oneself.
- Gary Nabhan is not native American but he writes about native forms of agriculture.
- Enrique Salmón too has written on this topic.
- Books Greg Cajete has written:
- Look to the Mountain
- Igniting the Sparkle: An Indigenous Science Education Model.
- Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence
- Spirit of the Game.
- Indigenous Community: Rekindling the teachings of the seventh fire.
- Native Minds Rising: Exploring Transformative Indigenous Education
- Sacred Journeys: Personal visions of indigenous transformation
- Values that underpin indigenous education
- O. Wilson’s biophilic sensibility – caring and empathy for each other, caring and empathy for the natural world and caring and empathy for your soul
- The indigenous stages of developmental learning; finding the essence of your soul.
- Question: What does it mean to become a full human being? Chant: One must first find one’s face (you identity), one must then find one’s heart, finally one must find one’s foundation (what you stand on) in the context of relationship, responsibility, respect and resonance, with one’s self, one’s community, one’s place, then with one’s world, within the context of your relationship with the cosmos.
Wednesday Sep 30, 2020
Podcast 405, Teaching to Help Students find Purpose (30-9-20)
Wednesday Sep 30, 2020
Wednesday Sep 30, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's podcast my guest is Professor William (Bill) Damon from Stanford University Graduate School of Education where he directs the Stanford Center on Adolescence. He is the author of many books, including The Path to Purpose. We discuss how students can be helped to find purpose in life. Among the topics discussed on this week's programme are:
- Many young people looking for something to believe in - about a quarter of them “drifting”
- Responses to being adrift: hedonism, anxiety.
- Being adrift originates in not finding something that is a positive direction for themselves.
- Profile of young people who are drifting
- How young people have found purpose in previous eras (national, economic…)
- Difference between seeking a purpose and seeking a meaning in life
- How having a sense of purpose can help you have a psychological balance
- Any activity can be purposeful if you believe in it, do it well and give it your all
- How teachers can model a purposeful life for their students
- Profiles in purpose
- A teacher’s role in helping students find their purpose
- When parents dislike the purpose chosen by their daughter or son
- Most of us have multiple purposes in life
- The link between purpose and entrepreneurship
- Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal
- The relationship between mission, commitment and purpose
- Where people find purpose
- The importance of “why” questions for teachers
- How exams could be purposeful
- Barriers students encounter in trying to find their purpose in life
- How he conducts his research
- Questions to help people find their purpose
- Diane Ravitch
Wednesday May 20, 2020
Programme 402, Derek Sivers on Learning, Creating and Educating (20-5-20)
Wednesday May 20, 2020
Wednesday May 20, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
This week on the podcast my guest is Derek Sivers, a musician who founded the CD company CD Baby before leaving it to write and practise philosophy. His website is well worth checking out. Among the topics we discuss on the podcast are:
- We all have the ability to be smart or to be stupid and how some environments reward stupidity and others reward being smart
- Thriving educationally in and out of school: being engaged and receiving direct feedback
- The power of finding the intersection between students’ interests and a nudge from parents’ towards learning/growing experiences
- Why being smart (critical thinking, challenge assumptions, look past the obvious, to question the world) is more impressive than being educated (you’ve done the assignments)
- Naval Ravikant is an example of someone he thinks is smart.
- Smart is something you do, not something you are
- A list of books Derek Sivers has read and the notes he made on them.
- A great teacher or educator interrupts expectations: teaching a mindset (questioning assumptions, interrupting expectations) rather than delivering information. Teaching students how to carry on or learn on their own, to be smart out in the world).
- You don’t have to copy the teacher's example all the time; as long as you get the gist of an idea, you can get creative within it.
- Impact of Kimo Williams on Derek.
- Why the typical school curriculum goes way too slowly
- Being in awe at the patience of public school teachers
- Intrinsic interest in music following an initial foundation in music
- Moving from being passive in the education system to taking control of his own education: from mediocrity to excelling. His love of learning came after school
- The importance of having something to pursue, something you want, something you’re driven towards – whatever it is. By learning to be great at that one thing, you learn everything else (how to learn, improve, practise, mastery) as a side effect.
- How well his education prepared him for being an entrepreneur
- Why he things entrepreneurship cannot be taught successfully (it’s very holistic, about psychology, thinking about things from the customer’s, client’s, partner’s point of view), being out in the world staying at the forefront of people’s minds, bring flexible.
- Seeing learning as a key to his success; loving having his brain tickled – learning new ways of looking at things
- The need to have a focus for what you want in life. His current focus is on being a great writer, programmer and dad.
- Recognising that sometimes we just stumble into things (e.g. circumstance or a recommendation from someone we admire) or deliberately spreading out in other directions.
- Audio version of The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson:(listened to after hearing a podcast between Tyler Cowen and Emily Wilson)
- Avoiding distraction by finding work that is not so easy that it’s boring and not so difficult that it’s overwhelming as described in Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Maintaining focus by hating having something unfinished
- Learning for the sake of creating something
- Pain and anger as sources of ideas.
- Things he wants to create (build a house from scratch; a company that will host websites after you die); a forum on which to highlight the next generation of musicians (BMajor); build a 100-acre forest over 15 years; create an app to connect people who like talking on the phone; and Cloud Free a service to teach people technical independence
- Finding something that is endlessly interesting (computer programming for him)
- Learning from different media and perspectives: reading diverse books, listening, multi-media videos, courses that give assignments
- Mastery School (with coaches) sivers.org/masch: Pick something to do and make it happen
- The Flipped Classroom
He recommends the following books, article and pieces of music in the course of the interview:
- Total recall Arnold Schwarzenegger’s autobiography
- Guns, germs and steel by Jared Diamond
- Cows, pigs, wars and witches by Marvin Harris.
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- Charlie Tips on How to Raise Your Kids as Billionaires
- Black Sabbath Iron Man
- Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley
Saturday Apr 25, 2020
Saturday Apr 25, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's episode I speak to Professor Yong Zhao from the School of Education at the University of Kansas. Among the topics we discuss on the episode are the following:
- We currently have the opportunity to reimagine education without schools: Do we have to do these subjects? Do we have to teach this much?
- A good time to teach global understanding, empathy and competency
- Innovation in education
- The importance of having an entrepreneurial mindset
- The Digital Pencil
- Alternative ways of organising the education of young people
- Difficulty of finding like-minded people in a small school
- Globalisation as the “death of physical distance”
- Globalisation is localisation of global forces
- Implications of globalisation for teachers
- Why everyone should have a local identity and affirm the identities of others
- Your uniqueness can only become valuable when it’s valuable to others
- Why schools encourage people to be independent and selfish rather than interdependent
- Schools as a place to bring about a better society
- Students as job creators versus job hunters
- Enhancing entrepreneurship in students
- Unintended consequences of education policies
- PISA test scores and the illusions of excellence, science, progress.
- His experience of being educated in China
- The impact of technology on education
- To compete with a machine, a person must avoid becoming one!
- Be unique and great in your own way; understand yourself, your talents and virtues.
- "Creative" means identifying problems worth solving
- Empty creativity versus good creativity – the need to have a domain to excel in
- What schools should be for: a place to equalise community resources
- David Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle The Manufactured Crisis.
- David Berliner as a former guest on the podcast
- Diane Ravitch’s blog: https://dianeravitch.net/
- If we want a better life in the future, we need to help our children create a better life for us
Tuesday Mar 31, 2020
Programme 395, Home Education Network (31-3-20)
Tuesday Mar 31, 2020
Tuesday Mar 31, 2020
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I speak to Lorna Tormey and Pauline O'Reilly from the Home Education Network. Both Lorna and Pauline have decided to educate their children at home and the share the experience for the benefit of listeners who might be interested in doing the same, in the immediate term or in the future. Among the various topics we discuss are:
- Why they began home educating their children
- A typical day of home educating
- Unschooling
- Autonomous Education
- John Holt
- Not following a specific curriculum
- A weekly routine that constantly changes
- Giving up a career to home educate
- Choices about secondary schooling and going to university
- Learning algebra
- How different families approach home education
- Helpful sources of information for home education
- Steiner Education (bringing together hands, heart and head)
- Dealing with challenge
- Dealing with boredom
- How active parents are as home educators as children grow older
- Difficult days and creating space for parents’ own projects
- Support of the Home Education Network
- Opportunities for children to socialise with other children
- Play-based learning
- World schooling
- Advice for parents who are currently involved in involuntary home education
- Deschooling
Wednesday May 29, 2019
Programme 368, John P. Miller on Holistic Education, pt 2 (29-5-19)
Wednesday May 29, 2019
Wednesday May 29, 2019
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
Theme tune by David Vesey
On this week's programme I bring you the second and final part of my interview with Professor John P. Miller from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. John P. Miller is the author of The Holistic Curriculum, the third edition of which was recently published. Among the matters we discussed on the programme this week were:
- The importance of examining our beliefs
- The soul as the unconditioned self
- The connection between holistic education and mental health
- The relationship between holistic education and affective education, humanistic education, confluent education and transpersonal education.
- The Holistic Ed Review started by Ron Miller
- The lack of university programmes in holistic education up to doctoral level
- What school is for
- The Sudbury Valley School
People mentioned by John P. Miller
- Suzuki Roshi (Zen mind beginner’s mind)
- Richard Alpert – Ram Dass
- Joseph Goldstein (meditation)
- Norman Feldman (meditation)
Books/authors mentioned on the programme:
- Education and Ecstasy by George Leonard.
- Carl Rogers Freedom to Learn
- The Tao Te Ching
- Emerson’s essays
- Thoreau’s Walden & On Civil Disobedience and his journals
- Maslow Toward a Psychology of Being
- Parker Palmer The Courage to Teach
- Gregory Cajete. His book is Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education (1994).
- Embers by Richard Wagamese
- Ron Miller What are schools for?
- Handbook on Holistic Education edited by John P. Miller et al.
- Love and Compassion: Exploring their role in Education by John P. Miller
- The Magic of Conflict by Thomas Crumm
Wednesday May 22, 2019
Programme 367, John P. (Jack) Miller on Holistic Education (22-5-19)
Wednesday May 22, 2019
Wednesday May 22, 2019
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
Theme tune by David Vesey
On this week's programme I speak to John P. (Jack) Miller, of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, and author of of The Holistic Curriculum, about holistic education. Among the topics discussed on the programme are:
- What is holistic education?
- In a tradition from indigenous people, Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Rousseau, Emerson, Thoreau, Peabody and Tolstoy up to Waldorf, Montessori and Reggio Emilia.
- How The Equinox Holistic School in Toronto was inspired by and follows the ideas in Miller’s book, The Holistic Curriculum. The story of the school is told here.
- Use of textbooks and a holistic curriculum
- What is the experience of a holistic curriculum like for a student?
- Autonomy for children in holistic education settings
- Characteristics of teachers to teach holistically
- Difference between teaching a subject holistically and teaching the same subject conventionally
- Planning for holistic teaching
- James Bean and integrated curriculum
- Susan Drake and integrated curriculum
- Relationship between holistic education and wisdom
- The difference between contemplation and reflection and mindfulness
- Religious education and spirituality education
- The work of Thomas Moore on Spirituality and Education; also Parker Palmer and Rachel Kessler
Wednesday Nov 05, 2014
Programme 194, Steiner Education and The Teaching Council (6-11-14)
Wednesday Nov 05, 2014
Wednesday Nov 05, 2014
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
On this week's programme I spoke to Lindsay Myers, the organiser of a conference on "The Art of Education in Steiner Waldorf National Schools" about Steiner Education. Lindsay Myers is also involved with Galway Steiner School.
I also brought you the first of a two-part interview with Tomás Ó Ruairc, the Director of the Teaching Council. On this week's programme he spoke about the Féilte event, about Continuing Professional Development, and about research and teaching.
Thursday Jun 27, 2013
Programme 182, International School of Dublin (30-6-13)
Thursday Jun 27, 2013
Thursday Jun 27, 2013
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney. On this week's programme I spoke to Sarah Pepper who is the Principal of the International School of Dublin. You can learn more about the school here and here. This is the final Inside Education programme for now. Thank you for listening and I hope to be back some time in the future.
Tuesday Apr 26, 2011
Programme 91, Fighting Words (10-4-11)
Tuesday Apr 26, 2011
Tuesday Apr 26, 2011
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney On this programme I spoke to Alan Bennett of Fighting Words, a creative writing initiative in Dublin's inner city to get children of all ages writing. It was set up by Roddy Doyle and Seán Love, inspired by 826 Valencia in San Francisco. The programme also featured a brief snippet of the interview with Mark Patrick Hederman, Abbot of Glenstal who featured in a recent programme. This was a clip that I was unable to bring you in the previous programme due to lack of time.