As promised, we have prepared a list of recommended reads for those of you who are interested in joining our first We Discuss event!

1. Art(education) for Everyone by Mitha Budhyarto

“I realized that education is culturally specific: it must be adjusted to the culture where it takes place.”

In this column piece, Mitha Budhyarto discusses the importance of nurturing a sense of appreciation for art even in circles that have had little exposure to it. While Mitha does focus more on the arts, she raises a noteworthy point that extends to the general field of education: cultural context. There is no absolute template for education, as it needs to be tweaked according to individual needs.

2. Fashion Films and Feminism with Kathyrn Ferguson
“You can have a background in anything really, I mean it’s just having confidence in picking up the camera and trying things out. You know, obviously you have to have creativity but that can be in any form.”

In our interview with Kathryn Ferguson, a filmmaker from Ireland, she mentioned that it is not always necessary to be formally trained — at least in the case of filmmaking and the arts — because what is more crucial is having the will and confidence to experiment.

3. Design Education with Yongky Safanayong

“We cannot blame the students. These teachers have the responsibility to think about the future and their role in preserving and cultivating the arts and culture of this country.”

One of Indonesia’s most prominent figures in the world of graphic design shared his thoughts with Whiteboard Journal. Though he began his career practicing graphic design, he has been teaching the subject for approximately three decades. He believes that teachers/educators have a huge role on their students, and how they develop their skills.

4. School Blues by Daniel Pennac (featured on An Autodidact’s Paradise)
“What an evil spell is cast by the social roles for which we’re raised and educated, and which we go on to play ‘all our lives’, in other words for roughly half our time on this earth. Release us from these roles and we’re no longer the same actors.

When a career comes to a dramatic end, it evokes a feeling of helplessness comparable, in my view, to that experienced by the tortured teenager who, thinking he has no future, finds it so painful to carry on. Reduced to ourselves, we feel reduced to nothing. To the point where we may even destroy ourselves. This is, at the very least, a flaw in our education.”

Do you agree with Pennac? Has our educational experience become such an integral part of our identity that it becomes difficult to define our existence and purpose without it?

5. And here is something from Maria Popova’s popular website, Brain Pickings.
Popova dissects Kio Stark’s Don’t Go Back to School: Fuel the Internal Engine of Learning, and highlights some of the most important quotes from the book that tries to promote the virtues of alternative forms of education.

Event time and location:

Date
Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Time
7–9 pm

Place
Kinokuniya Plaza Senayan
Jl. Asia Afrika 8
Sogo
Plaza Senayan Lt. 5
Jakarta 10270

Please stay tuned to our Facebook page and Twitter account for more details! For those of you who would like to join our event, kindly register via e-mail with the subject title “We Discuss” at contact@whiteboardjournal.com! Or if you have questions, tweet us @wjournal.