24h Education Hackathon Israel

On Thursday, June 12th, 2014 a group of wonderful people came to visit us here at the Holon Institute of Technology and share their vision of education with one another, and the world. For me, it is remarkable that this is happening at an old fashioned college, where students concentrate on muddling through exams and getting a diploma, without realizing that education should be much, much more. 

The wonderful people like to sit on the floor and walk around barefoot. Some of them call themselves “professional hippies”. They could never ever be president of our college. 

They talk about growth and like plants and vegetables. 

They are disorganized in an orderly kind of way. 

Some of them like to draw on walls. Michal asked for permission. I gave her permission, even though I didn’t get permission. 

She made a lovely wall picture. Now I am sure that I’ll get permission. I hope. 

Hagit loves to laugh, but sometimes she cries. She cries when she is happy, when she is excited, when she thinks of her children and when she has nothing better to do with her time. She wants to change the world. She wants to create a place where anyone can learn to bring their own personal gifts to the world. We need more people like Hagit in our world. 

Reut is a student at HIT. I know her. She likes to smile. Most of the students at HIT do not like to smile. But Reut does. She likes to smile because she can’t help being happy most of the time. Her project is to package her happiness and distribute it to other students at the college so they will smile too. I should add that we are not talking about chemicals here. 

Tsila doesn’t dream of changing the world because she already is. Her passion is to help people get in touch with their deepest passions. She helps them manifest it (it has to be a wholesome passion, though) and bring it to the world. For example, she co-created a school in Amsterdam called “Knowmads”. It is a laboratory for young adults. They combine entrepreneurial spirit with personal development and group work, and wait for the magic to happen. It’s not free. It’s not recognized or accredited by ANYBODY. 

And yet people come from all over the world. More than two dozen, divided into two tribes. They don’t fight each other. They actually cooperate. Wow! Tsila thinks that the most important people these days are the people who speak both languages – the hippy language, and the establishment language, and I agree (but don’t tell anybody). 

Tsila is a person who defies gravity. I like her. 

Maya Eshed wrote me a whole document. “When I was little, I walked the meadows. When I was a little less little I went to school. I studied a lot of things. It was cool. When I was even more less little, I went to the army. It was also cool . Then life. What is that all about? For me school was detached from life, spoon feeding with the wrong challenges. I want to grow together with the children of now, in the world, with the world. I studied science. Science divides and categorizes things. Surprisingly, I found that science itself is in search of connection with its various disciplines, it is now trying to connect all of the things that it once divided. I imagine a school that is part of a whole ecosystem. All the components nurture one another. 

Yoyo is very cool. Sometimes he is Yoyo, other times he is Dar. But now he is Yoyo. He has taken a year off to volunteer for the “Anat project”. He lives in Upper Nazareth and works with borderline youth, trying to develop their creativity, but in positive directions. He thinks that in life, grades just lead you from one small target to another, and they aren’t targets that you control in any way. It’s better to find ways to develop your own personal creativity and use it to achieve a goal that you set for yourself. The moment you develop your own path the target becomes much more tangible. One of our teenagers dreams about playing drums. Every time he went to an ‘official’ place (music academy) he failed because he couldn’t live up to their expectations. We are trying to help him learn and grow at his own pace. After one year, he’s already an amazing drummer!

Dror is behind the whole endeavor here. He thinks that education should be hacked. It needs to be a self-organized process. Both by the individual and the group. It should have the support of the community, the elders, and the parents. Education needs to focus on un-learning, and to challenge the students to take the responsibility for their dreams and passion, and give them the tools that they needed to bring it into the world. 

Philippe is over from Brazil for ‘edu on tour’, Israel. He thinks that we are experiencing a clash of the systems. A new reality is evolving and the old one fights for its existence. For centuries, we’ve been educating our students in a very authoritative way, and now we are experiencing a freer approach. Learning happens on a daily basis, everywhere around us. We have access to knowledge, with our mobile phones, internets, which no individual persona or institution can provide. Knowledge itself is worthless without the experience of stepping into the unknown, stepping into areas of creating new realities. Education has to move from a competitive to a collaborative mindset. The generation in control should make space for the new generation and let them ‘do’ without interfering. 

Liron carries out ‘mindfulness workshop’ for children, and also teaches mathematics.  Math is everywhere. Liron dreams of happy people that fulfil themselves, who do things because they want to, out of giving. She wants to see ‘active communities’, people working together to make a better world. More sharing of everything and better self-organization. Adults and their children should create the schools that they want, based on what they want to learn, and how. The most important thing is develop curiosity and desire for learning, exploration, discovery and excitement. 

Efrat likes to play with toys, especially ones we can build ourselves. She expects all of us to be childish. So do I.