No School
Education is the process of facilitating learning. Learning is about people acquiring new abilities, to become free individuals, aware of their collective responsibilities. However, the problem with any procedure in an institutional environment is that it becomes detached from the main aims that it tries to facilitate. Education is no exception. It is important to critically reflect on traditional learning, especially when it has been overtaken by bureaucracy and, ever so relevant, when it runs the risk of becoming misused by innovative technologies.
The No School project by the Professorship Art education as Critical Tactics (AeCT) started as a radical experiment in art-based learning. In conversation with the so-called creative industries, such as vocational training schools, it reflects on the nature of art education and tries to deconstruct its detachment from education as a tool for learning, sharing, and caring. Looking for ways to engage with knowledge meaningfully, the No School project tries to make the radical claim: ‘no’ to school, but ‘yes’ to learning.
As the project continues to unfold, it has already created a collaborative network of teachers and other stakeholders, a visiting professorship, an academic workspace with fifty teachers and students, several multiple-day symposia, two successful research grants, and dissemination of research through new practice sessions. Together, they are rethinking that which masks as ‘common sense’ in education and instead, propose new ways of thinking. With a hands-on approach, No School works towards facilitating meaningful education that is rooted in a natural inclination to learn, as individuals and as a society.