Learning Humanity Learning
The Centre for Humanity Learning will soon be announcing an invitation for enrolments and participation. This is an update on what has been happening in the background while we have been preparing.
The idea for formation of apitholo occurred in November 2015 to operate as a parallel to the existing Apithology Practitioner Course and practice community. Early in 2016 a design inquiry was begun using generative design principles. An invitation for enrolments was formed, an entrant survey and interview format were finalised and we trialed our enrolment process with invited applicants. What became apparent quickly was that people would be arriving for humanity learning as human learners. As apitholo was to be different to the Apithology Practitioners program, which welcomed individual applications of apithology – we paused and deepened the inquiry.
The question we asked was: “What are the preliminaries and pre-requisites for humanity learning – and do the learning to learn pieces fit into these, or between them, or before them – and what must they contain?”.
What we discovered is that in generative learning there is a premise that each learning must inform the next, with capacities enabling future capabilities, that actuate learner potentialities. To know the answer to what was required first, meant we needed to know how humanity learning might be, once eventuated. As we identified the different learning dependencies the pathway opened up dramatically.
We ourselves became the generative learners within the generative learning question. As is often the case in apithology, one has to go with the unfolding that is presented. The result was a fuller inquiry into ‘humanity learning’ in its entirety, with 53 sessions, over 5 years (1860 days), providing 1125 insights and 608 learning modalities. The jewels in this tapestry are immense, remarkable, and invaluable.
During this inquiry the Apithology Practitioner Community held six annual retreats, each of which moved the field itself forward 5-15 years. We also completed a decade of apithologues and five new forms of humanity inquiry to be done in community. The role for apitholo now, is to compile all these learnings and make them available in graduated pathways.
One small insight within this immensity, was how generative humanity learning begins where ordinary learning ends. In the field of apithagogy, there are eight sequential domains of learning. Each changes the forms and premise of learning significantly. The learning that occurs prior to this might be known as ‘acquisition learning’. This is the learning we ordinarily do as children, adults and sentient beings. It is where we select from our environment opportunistically with what interests us and serves our needs momentarily. The purpose of apitholo – is to do learning differently.
The courtesy of this post is to let you know the results of the inquiry that placed a temporary hold on the public invitation to ‘learn how to learn’ apithology at apitholo.
Our ‘preliminaries’ inquiry has now concluded – so expect to soon be newly welcomed …
© willvarey (2022)
