Seeking Past Knowledge Through the Axe Handle Academy
It is amazing that in a world where new ideas shoot up like bamboo through the rainy season, some long-standing ideas hold their ground, acting like old-growth trees in the forest of my thoughts.
I was in a discussion the other day with a friend and fellow educator, Pak Greg, and we were discussing new potential courses that he may like to run in his High School humanities. He was keen to have a comparative studies class wherein two visions of a positive future for humankind were explored: a technophilic version where we find solutions in emergent technology, and another where we seek to better understand the technologies that have been developed over millennia as humankind learned to thrive in every bio-region in the world.
The latter brought my train of thought to something I explored during an indigenous education course at UBC: The Axe Handle Academy. While the idea has likely gone through many iterations since its original publication, I sought out the original publication to revisit this idea. One of the memorable pieces of the curriculum was that it had three orienting quizzes, each asking a driving question:
How well do you know your place?
How well do you know your culture?
What struck me as I went through these quizzes again was the level of permanence and relevance each of them had. The original curriculum was proposed in 1986, and the most recent update to the website was in 2009. Yet, reading through the questions of the first quiz made it apparent that these are eternally relevant questions. The same is mostly true for the questions around culture. Communication, on the other hand, has radically changed since the authoring of the Axe Handle Academy Curriculum.
It was also interesting to consider my own learning and understanding through such a set of questions. I have moved around a fair amount through my life, and so my responses to the prompts around the first two orienting quizzes have changed radically. In reflection on my time in Hungary, I recognized that over the course of two years living there I developed knowledge of the culture and place that would indicate a good deal of progress. I learned about geographic landforms, geological history, indigenous groups to Hungary, the political climate, and much more. However, there were obvious gaps in my knowledge as well, which the quizzes above could point out and lead to further inquiry.
Being back in Bali, I am in a place where I am far more embedded in the culture (largely through my wife and her family) and have established a longer relationship. I recognize that part of what makes me feel a sense of place is being able to address these questions in a more comprehensive manner. This long-term relationship also holds another benefit; in a time of rapid change having a working knowledge of what may be considered normal for a bio-region or culture has a grounding effect on my spirit. While I cherish variety and novelty, I also recognize the power of routine to help create the focus and open-mindedness I need to make sense of this rapidly changing global culture I live in today.
This introspective element you just read above is not a tangent… it is in fact a core focus of what the Axe Handle Academy recognized was needed. As they summarized:
By placing the focus of the Axe Handle Academy on the learning of the teacher we want to provide a model of skills in inquiry, discovery, and synthesis. We believe that the professional teacher who is actually learning together with his or her students is the only means of teaching this attitude toward life-long learning. This is why we have called our model for education the Axe Handle Academy.
Reading through the curriculum of Axe Handle Academy is bittersweet. The intention and values of their place-based model connect intuitively and deeply with where I believe education needs to go. However, education is a big ship and takes a long time to respond to the cues of those steering it. More worrisome still is that the Captain of the ship may not even be aware of these needs.
This analogy is flawed though because the world of education acts more like a swarm than a ship. There are a growing number of outliers around the globe, pushing forward with new (and old) models of learning that respond to some of the prompts of the Axe Handle Academy. The truth as I see it is that we have all the tools we need to create spaces for learning that not only can adapt to a rapidly changing future, but also recognize, honour, and empower the cultures that we are all still very much part of.
