Entangled life

We base our work on the insight that humans beings, as well as knowledge itself, is entangled to a larger degree than we often think of. We look to living systems in nature to see how they cooperate, develop and evolve. This is sometimes called systems thinking, or a systems view of life and we bring this perspective to all we do. It means we think that we need a deep shift in how humans think and a cultural shift in society to be able to build a sustainable or even regenerative world. Thinking and acting must be based on life affirming principles that govern living systems in nature.

Current mainstream thinking - disconnected

In contrast to this, the rational and reductionistic ideas of the enlightenment that came about some 200 years ago in Europe built on reduction and disconnection. It has enabled fantastic material progress for many but also created a disconnected way to think about reality, ourselves and the world. 

This has led to a culture of extraction and separation that misses to calculate for the destruction of common resources and has therefore given us climate change, biodiversity loss, species extinction, polarizing social media, mental health issues and a general longing for meaning. So climate change is not one isolated crisis but one of many following the disconnected thinking of humans. 

Current education - disconnected and broken

Our understanding is that the current education system in most countries suffer from the same disconnected thinking and design. Knowledge is chopped in to little pieces and served to students with little context. Students do not get to share their own voice and express who they are. Life in school is divided in 40 minute lessons in 15 different topics leaving students with a feeling of sitting on a conveyor belt. Assessment and grades in focus deprives students from both the joy of learning and the interest for the ideas and the content itself.

Many students get anxious from school, they drop out, they are prescribed strong drugs to be able to attend or even take their lives. Kids with other talents than those rewarded in our education systems are labeled as stupid. Students ahead of the learning curve are held back and often loose their passion for learning. Teachers quit since they are worn out and frustrated to have to grade loads of tests instead of working with students learning. Competition for standardised testing results makes it all even worse. 

Despite all this human suffering caused by education there is one even bigger problem. The current education system, built from the same disconnected mindset that brought us climate change, biodiversity loss and huge social inequalities will not give students the capabilities they need to solve these problems. Let alone new challenges like democratic collapse, mental health issues and to secure ethical development of artificial intelligence. 

Today’s students are being trained for scarcity, obedience and memorization instead of generosity, innovation, and cooperation that they will need to tackle these challenges that otherwise threaten to end the existence of our civilization.  

Purposeful Education

We work to bring an entangled worldview and systemic understanding to the world of education. By doing so we want to contribute to education systems where students want to participate, and feel a strong sense of purpose and where they are prepared to make the world a better place.

We propose a revolution in education where we put wellbeing for all, or even human flourishing, at the core of education. We want to make education purposeful to both students and the planet by putting people, not content, at the center of education. This shift will bring about human beings that understand and like themselves and knows how they want to contribute to the world. They will love to learn and explore and they will have the capacities needed to mend and evolve societies and our planet. A concrete way to do this is to make sure learning is; active, cooperative and contributive.