Reimagining Education
Manish Jain

4.00 – 5.30 pm BST
(david.lewin@strath.ac.uk)

It is my great pleasure to invite you to this event organised in partnership with the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB) Strathclyde-Glasgow branch: Reimagining Education with Manish Jain. I first came across Manish in the documentary film ’Schooling the World’ which you may have come across ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDxYWspiN-8&t=66s ). Manish will share his ideas on role of unlearning in reimagining education. The seminar promises to be very interesting.

Manish Jain is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems, cultural imaginations and inter-cultural dialogue. Inspired by MK Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Ivan Illich, his illiterate village grandmother, his unschooled daughter, indigenous communities and Jain spiritual philosophy, he is one of the leading planetary voices for deschooling our lives. He has served for the past 23 years as Chief Beaver of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development based in Udaipur, India and is co-founder of some of the most innovative educational experiments in the world – the Swaraj University, the Jail University, Complexity University, the Creativity Adda, the Learning Societies Unconference, the Walkouts-Walkon network, Udaipur as a Learning City, the Families Learning Together network in India, Berkana Exchange.  He co-launched the global Ecoversities Alliance with 150+ members in 40 countries. He is a senior advisor to the Economics of Happiness network for localisation. He has worked as a facilitator with Social Labs, Art of Hosting and World Cafe. Manish has been invited to give inspiring public keynote speeches on Reimagining Education in many countries such as the USA, England, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, India. He has edited several books on Vimukt Shiksha (liberating learning) on themes such as unlearning, hacking education, learning societies, gift culture, community media, and tools for deep dialogue. Prior to this, Manish worked as one of the principal team members of the UNESCO Learning Without Frontiers global initiative in Paris Headquarters. He has also been a consultant to UNICEF, World Bank, USAID in Africa, South Asia and the former Soviet Union. Manish worked as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley. He has been trying to unlearn his Master’s degree in Education from Harvard University and a B.A. in Economics, International Development and Political Philosophy from Brown University. He and his wife Vidhi have been unschooling themselves with their 19-year-old daughter, Kanku, in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Manish is passionate about masti yoga, urban organic farming, filmmaking, simulation gaming, bicycling, ultimate frisbee, trekking, clowning and slow food cooking.