{"id":6608,"date":"2016-04-14T06:09:46","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T06:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6608"},"modified":"2016-04-14T06:09:46","modified_gmt":"2016-04-14T06:09:46","slug":"questioning-the-metaphors-we-live-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/04\/14\/questioning-the-metaphors-we-live-by\/","title":{"rendered":"Questioning the metaphors we live by"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Circulate newsletter from late February has an article on\u00a0metaphors<\/a><\/p>\n

\"A circular economy requires us to fundamentally change our metaphors, our subconscious assumptions, about the way our economy works, the role banks and money play, how we think about the resources we use. \u00a0It requires a systems thinking approach to the economy \u2013 focussing on the interdependencies and complex nature of our world; becoming acutely aware of the underlying assumptions and simplifications of our models, or \u2013 with Lakoff \u2013 metaphors<\/em>.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is part of what it said about a forthcoming conference:<\/p>\n

In an attempt to strengthen these crucial critical faculties in its students, the International Baccalaurate (IB), an internationally recognised high-school diploma, includes a \u2018Theory of Knowledge\u2019 (TOK) course in its requirements since the mid-1990s. \u00a0It is certainly an unusual course for most educational systems, a branch of epistemology, rather than a philosophical course. \u00a0It encourages the questioning of the nature of knowledge itself. \u00a0In our current approach to schooling, every academic subject requires assignments and a rigorous way to deal with its specific expectations. \u00a0Students at the UWC Maastricht, one of 15 United World Colleges, wanted more than that and developed a student-led conference based on the academic subject TOK. \u00a0This year, the conference runs for the 5th\u00a0time with the title\u00a0\u2018Where do we draw the line?\u2019\u00a0and also features a workshop on circular economy, exploring the lines between individual, society, production and consumption.<\/em><\/p>\n

The aim of the conference is to take a giant step back from the knowledge the individual could gain personally through family, community or school to see it all more broadly; to gain the big picture of how knowledge is shared and how it all fits together. \u00a0This systems thinking approach, examining our world through a macroscope, is an approach that generally gets sidelined in current formal education systems. \u00a0There, the focus is often exclusively directed at understanding the smallest part of a system in detail, for example the process of photosynthesis in a leaf, without complementing this reductionist view with a whole-systems perspective zooming out to examine the tree, the forest, regional vegetation as systems. \u00a0In order to address challenges in our ever more complex world, it is crucial for learners to gain agility in using both the microscope and the macroscope. \u00a0To sharpen this agility is one of the objectives of the student-led TOK conference; to make links \u2013 trans disciplinary in nature, which are less likely to occur in single subject studies \u2013 is another.<\/em><\/p>\n

Through workshops and diverse discussions prompted by the participants of the conference, individuals investigate ideas to articulate and stretch their current understanding of the world. \u00a0They then place their own inquiry within the broader realm of shared knowledge. \u00a0The conference aims to heighten the awareness of its participants about important issues, in several domains, from ethics to global politics. \u00a0Developing the capacity of understanding different perspectives is certainly one of the priorities, enabling \u2018critical objectivity\u2019 or at least an awareness of the metaphors we live by.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It will\u00a0be good to see the evaluation of all this, given that such metaphors are usually hidden, unconsidered, deeply within us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Circulate newsletter from late February has an article on\u00a0metaphors \"A circular economy requires us to fundamentally change our metaphors, our subconscious assumptions, about the way our economy works, the role banks and money play, how we think about the resources...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}