During our journey abroad, whenever someone we'd met along the way asked us how we had come up with the idea of embarking on this adventure, Diana and I would look at each other with a certain degree of anxiety, as if hoping the other one would answer because, frankly, we were starting to forget how it happened.
As I promised some months ago, I'm going to share with you some aspects of the logistics and planning of our trip. These are many and diverse, but since I don't want to go on endlessly, any curiosity, doubt or suggestion you may have, please send it to us via the comments below. It would have been awesome to have a list like this beforehand, and would have saved us so much googling! So we hope it will be useful to you if you ever plan on doing something similar.
We thought that today, being women's day, would be a good time to share our readings with you. In the world of education, women's voices are many. I would even dare say they outnumber men's. Their voices and their words, not always hearkened to, but so often unerring, have told us that education is something we should all have a say in, but children especially. At least that's how Maria Montessori saw things. An avant-garde educator who imagined a method that puts children back in the spotlight, where they deserve to be.
In 1974, the Irishman Michael Craig-Martin –a conceptual artist of minimalist descent– exhibited for the first time his work “An Oak Tree” at the Rowan Gallery in London. As you can see in the picture, this work consisted of a shelf –the sort that can be found in toilets– with a glass full of water standing on it. The accompanying text contained an interview with the author, as follows:
When I found out that UNIA (the International University of Andalusia) was about to contribute venture capital in a public contest to fund educational innovation projects, I didn't have a clue what UNIA or venture capital were, nor what the call was about. Fortunately, these things get sorted out in information society, so I read the rules, I checked out what UNIA stands for and what venture capital meant. Almost simultaneously, I was trying to involve my sister, my partner and a friend in writing up a collective and hurried project proposal we decided to name #Protexta, and which we turned in at the eleventh hour.
The fact that I should decide –at forty one years of age– to take a break from work in order to peep into the world of education is by no means a casual thing. I am a qualified engineer with a technical profession, a frustrated aeronaut and convinced atheist who refuses to accept esoteric explanations, incarnating rationalist discourse through lifelong daily observance, having never practiced –at least not consciously– meditation for a single minute… I believe this is no casual thing. But let's see –if only just to provide myself with an explanation– who and what has led me to think this has not happened out of mere chance.
