We are opening an international construction site for extracurricular education. What does “learning” and “teaching” look like worldwide?
Everything is growing – the global economy, GDP per capita, humanity. It’s a bummer that so much is shrinking and being lost in the process. On a large scale – natural resources and ecosystems, the livelihoods of far too many people and other living beings – and also on a small scale – open spaces for activities and experiments in ever more expensive cities.
How do we prepare for what lies ahead? What can we change and how?What do we need and what can be left out? And how do we learn all this? Do we become preppers, pull up the walls, learn how to assemble weapons again? No! Are we better off practising social prepping [1], forming international networks of support and learning, because we don’t simply hang up our faith in a good life for as many people as possible? Yes!
We need a WELTSCHULHAUS [WORLD SCHOOL HOUSE] Actually – so it seems – the knowledge of successful living together is available everywhere.
The world is a schoolhouse and in Berlin we find knowledge ambassadors from all parts of the world. What do we want to learn and how? We ask ourselves the question: what does learning and teaching look like on our planet? We set out together on a search and found the multilingual world schoolhouse, an educational experiment, an initiative.
Let’s start in concrete terms:
If the world has to move closer together, why should education here only take place in German or at most in English? Many young people who end up here have long been able to join in the conversation – in Arabic, Farsi, French, etc. And fortunately there are highly educated older people who are happy to communicate in their mother tongue. Knowledge is shared at experimental learning tables – a fresh treasure hunt begins every day and harbours finds of international knowledge that we carry around with us. And if we have questions? Let’s call our distant relatives who inhabit the same planet.
There’s a lot going on at the new WELTSCHULHAUS. If you would like to join in, have ideas or offers as a teacher, please get in touch with us – everything works like a small, experimental “Volkshochschule” [ adult education centre/German folk high school] and it’s easy to get involved.
