Dialoguing as if we're not that important

Ako and the more-than-human

Abstract

The idea that the world is interconnected foreshadows a massive change in how education is conceived and practised. It may even render ‘education’ non-existent. Māori philosophy centreing on the All – which is another term for interconnection but having a stronger flavour of unity between all things such that they are one – suggests that education, if it is to remain, must honour new ways of perceiving the world. Firstly, it must set about striving for an opposite goal, this being cultivating an uncertainty in students as they think about things in the world. Secondly (and relatedly), it calls for a self-erasure, which involves acknowledging the self’s vulnerability in the shadow of the All: this humility is not simply intellectual but bodily. In this article, I consider this self-erasure in the context of various korero (discussions) with an older whanaunga (relative). In these korero, we would be aware that there were phenomena that cannot be accounted for but that impinge on thought. These phenomena have implications for education – at least from a Māori perspective, despite the attempts of rational thought to evade them.