During one of my graduate classes, a fellow student wrote her final post on collaboration in education (or the lack thereof). Her main premise was that collaboration needs to exist on all levels within the education world - nation, state, county, school, administrators, teachers, parents, students. Unfortunately, as we all know, this is not the case. My students complain about getting conflicting messages from teachers, teachers complain about getting students who have not been taught "basic" skills, and administrators complain about the lack of parent involvement.
Since education directly leads to how one lives their life it is no surprise that we have created what is dubbed the "Me Generation." Sure, educators promote cooperative learning projects or peer buddying but these activities are usually limited to the classroom. In the quest to promote social skills and collaboration in our individual classrooms, we have forgotten the big picture. The big picture goes beyond our classes, our subject areas, and our selves.
Which brings me to the inspiration for this posting - Sharism. I came across an interesting website arguing for the Sharism philosophy. According to Isaac Mao, "Sharism is also a mental practice that anyone can try, a social-psychological attitude to transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain." He goes on to argue that "The more collective our intelligence, the wiser our actions will be. People have always found better solutions through conversations. Now we can put it all online." And if it has not been obvious by the classroom practices that I try to promote, let me just state, I completely agree.
Please take some time to read about Mr. Mao's Sharism ideas. Maybe afterward you will become a "share-a-holic" like me!
1 comment:
When I first saw this blog I saw "Sharism" and "Isaac," and I thought, what a coincidence, that's pretty close to my name - but that's irrelevant. Although it was a challenging read, the Sharism article was actually abit enlightening, and provided a new way of looking at conversation and interaction. I'm pretty sure I understood the gist of it. The idea that Sharism is something for everyone was interesting. That different and distanced people can come together through the ideals of this...Sharism, becoming more involved and better educated from people they might not be familiar with is likewise a positive outlook for the future of our world.
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