Homes, public spaces, and educational institutions as spaces for awakening to our inherent potential rather than being conditioned by predetermined notions, as spaces for the (Re) creation of knowledge rather than analysis information- From schools to 'higher' education.

Freedom to be is the most fundamental ‘right’ which is being denied due to misunderstanding the purpose, process, and content of learning. In a typical chicken and egg situation, we are not sure how we got conditioned as we ourselves create the conditions for our formation. At this juncture children, the process of knowledge creation and what constitutes true knowledge itself seems to be the most misunderstood aspect of modern human beings as even the basic knowledge that is required to sustain life seems to be missing which is to bring up children. Parenting workshops happening all over the so-called developed world is proof of this. We seem to have forgotten our true biological nature which is what connects us to the rest of nature and life.

Human beings are biologically equipped to create knowledge autonomously by directly engaging with their context. But if this inherent ability to create knowledge is hindered, then the process-oriented cognitive system which is what develops creativity and intelligence will not get developed. So, the development of CREATIVITY, INTELLIGENCE, AND SENSITIVITY are directly connected with autonomy and what the child gets to do. In the early stages of the child, the most important thing that is hindering this development is the misunderstood notion about play as an activity and toy as a well-defined product to 'play with'.

Playfulness is a quality in children and they are playfully exploring the world with total attention, involvement, and seriousness to make sense of it and in that process, they use whatever objects that they are able to get hold of as props to recreate their experience. So how children understand their experiences are to recreate them in a very systematic manner to decode various aspects of the experiences. All phenomenon/ experiences can be understood in terms of form (what is seen/ heard etc), function (purpose of the event/ product), process (how it is done), structure (how it is held together), quality or property of various materials that can be used for making.

What the child gets to do or experience is as important as autonomy because the wiring of the brain depends on what children engage with. Children make sense of what it EXPERIENCES and if they are exposed to literacy, they will develop a cognitive system (tools, abilities, and processes) to understand the linguistic 'world' and if they are exposed to digital tools (television, computer, mobile phone, etc) the cognitive system will get developed to understand the virtual 'world'. Continuing the same logic, if children experience the act of TEACHING children learn to teach whereas if children experience the act of learning, exploring, doing, etc children develop their inherent ability to learn and make sense of things autonomously.

A crucial condition for the development of creativity is that children are in the realm of UNKNOWN, and they are discovering..... Education starts with the known and naturally their system gets wired to analyze and store this un-experienced and dis-jointed information. Children in Bangalore slums learn 4 to 5 languages by the time they reach 4 years of age and they also learn most things that happen at home- cooking and related activities, small repairs and most of them learn cycling and even driving at their young age with no one teaching them. They are learning because there is no one teaching as learning is our inherent ability. So, if any re-imagination and redesigning of the learning system are to be attempted the inherent nature of our biological potential for autonomous learning and the creation of knowledge needs to be taken into consideration.

There needs to be fresh experiential research in this field.

But…..

Another chicken and egg situation is that in order to understand wholistic nature we need to be whole. But having been fragmented how do we transform ourselves in the process of knowing the whole. The real crisis is that children and the educated adults belong to two paradigms of being- one of presence, the other of absence, one in the process mode the other in the product mode one open the other closed!