We feel strongly for this day, education is our calling and field, and we want to honour it body, mind, heart and soul.
By starting with a paradigm that it is impossible not to learn, it is only possible to be unaware of one’s own learning. Only once we are aware that we are learning then we can say that we have developed a competence, and learning is not limited to gaining knowledge, that knowledge needs to be applied practically and become a skill, needs to resonate with our values and influence our attitudes towards what we have learnt in order to direct our behaviour towards embedding that learning into our identity. Unfortunately much of today’s education focuses primarily on knowledge and sometimes on skills preventing the development of so many competences which are available to us due to our capacity of reasoning. Nonetheless, we are competent in many important fields, and how is that possible? Quite simple, because we learn about life informally. We start by being unconscious incompetent, which means we don’t know that we don’t know, the next stage is be conscious incompetent, meaning we know that we don’t know, and then we learn and we become conscious competent, we know that we know, and finally reach unconscious competent, we don’t know that we know. Much of what we learn informally from life starts with “I don’t know that I don’t know” and goes directly to “I don’t know that I know” bypassing the other two. For example as a toddler I did not know that English language existed, then came across it and realised that I did not know it, in school started studying and lived in English speaking countries and now I speak it and read it without need of translation in my head, however should I want to teach it to someone I do not recall anymore the syntax and grammar, as it has become automatic and would not know where to start.
There exists an alternative, non-formal education, which is established in order to develop competencies consciously going through each of the passages, ensuring that all learning is conscious, applicable and tailored to the learning needs of the person through knowledge, experience, reflection and inclusion of the competence in the individual’s behaviour and values, and this is the method we use at Rescogita.
Rescogita is a training, coaching, consulting and capacity building firm centred on Ecopsychology, and as part of our mission we wish to honour both the diversity of humanity and promote the concept of a human culture different yet the same, in order to face and overcome the challenges our species and the whole biosphere are facing now.