Ethos Conversations #1: with Manish Jain on re-imagining education as if life matters

What if we re-imagine education - as if life matters? What would that look like? How would it feel? How would we engage?

This Sunday, Manish Jain, a leading social and educational visionary, a global voice for the unschooling movement, joins the Ethos Fellowship and you are invited too. Don't miss this! 

We will explore unlearning, reimagining education, decolonizing ourselves and experimenting with possibilities for alternatives with young people – whose magic and work we desperately need today. 

This session hosted by Mahi Thakur, a member of the Ethos Fellowship who works closely with Manish Jain in India.

WHO IS MANISH JAIN

Manish Jain is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse knowledge systems and cultural imaginations. He has served for the past 24 years as Coordinator/Co-Founder of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development and as co-founder of Swaraj University, Creativity Adda, Learning Societies Unconference, Swapathgami Walkouts-Walkon network, and the Ecoversities Network. He has edited several books on Vimukt Shiksha (liberating learning). Prior to Shikshantar, Manish worked as one of the principal team members of the UNESCO Learning Without Frontiers global initiative. In a 'previous life', Manish worked as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley in the belly of the beast. Ever since, he has been trying to unlearn his Master's degree in Education from Harvard University and a B.A. in Economics, International Development and Political Philosophy from Brown University. He and his wife Vidhi have been unschooling themselves with their 20 year old daughter, Kanku, in Udaipur, Rajasthan. 

Manish talks about things such as Deschooling Our Lives. Decolonizing Knowledge. Re-imagining Education. Reclaiming Diverse Cultural Imaginations. Reconnecting to Ancient Wisdom, Sharing the Gift Culture. He is a Philosopher. Public Speaker. Filmmaker. Author. Educationist. Strategist. Gift Culture Economist, Unlearning Coach. Intercultural Dialogue Facilitator. Weaver. Slow Food Chef. Urban Farmer. Compassionate Clown. Manifestor of Ecosystems. Shape-shifter. Masti Yogi.

"When you start to help fields of trust with people, all kinds of crazy things suddenly become possible." Manish Jain

PLEASE WATCH THIS DOCUMENTARY FIRSS

NOTE: Manish asked if you could come prepared by watch Schooling the World documentary below, so the conversation can go to new places. 

Here are more links to explore too, mostly from Local Futures, our partner last month in World Localization Day. Local Futures founder and director, Helena Norberg-Hodge and Manish are close friends.

Unlearning Oath by Manish:
https://www.shikshantar.org/articles/educators-unlearning-oath

• www.shikshantar.org
• www.swarajuniversity.org
• www.ecoversities.org

WHAT IS THE ETHOS FELLOWSHIP?

The Ethos Fellowship is a global learning community that coalesced in 2022 to connect leading ecological thinkers of our time and youth [pr]activists. it is like a university without walls that runs in the gift-economy - hosted by Morag Gamble. The Ethos Fellows have come together because they are concerned with the state of the world and are interested in creating a regenerative culture, as well as cultivating systems change for planetary restoration.

The Ethos Fellows meet weekly and explore concepts such as systems thinking, warm data, [pr]activism, localisation, permaculture, creative communication skills, community, eco-humanitarianism, filmmaking and hosting workshops in collaboration with Ethos Education and the Permaculture Education Institute. Over the period of the year we will be collaborating with activist-scholar-author-artist--designers including Fritjof Capra, Helena-Norberg Hodge, Manish Jain, Nora Bateson, Looby Macnamara, Yin Paradies, Phoebe Tickell, Satish Kumar, Jeremy Lent, and John D. Liu.

Our members are from Australia, New Zealand, India, Uganda, Zanzibar, Kingdom of Eswatini, Ireland and UK. Contact us if you are interested in becoming a future Ethos Fellow (16-21 years old).