Hi there, Just to say that there are now 124 people in Manchester Ragged University. The idea is simple and started five years ago from the realisation that I [Alex] – and some friends [Jes, Grant and Will] – enjoyed meeting in a pub (Rochester Castle, London) and getting the chance to spraff (chat 😉 about what had grabbed our attentions. We enjoyed sharing knowledge, and it was always an enlightening exchange… and a fun one.
Hello All, Firstly to welcome all those who have joined the Ragged University meetup since the close of the last years events. I am sorry not to have had time to individually welcome everyone, but there is not the time in the day, nor the hands on deck to hold all the conversations which I would like to. I am Alex Dunedin, the main organiser of Ragged University. Read more…
Francis Bacon insisted we must question everything and arrive at our knowledge through our grappling with first principles built on experience and engagement of the ‘thing itself’ – a commons which we all draw upon.
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This is a philosophical exploration of common sense and a theory of inherent knowledge, such that learning can be understood as universal. ‘What can I come to know ?’. As a starting point I have chosen ‘to look to the teacher of the thinker you admire’ as a place to evolve new perspectives and utilise convenient frameworks to create scaffoldings in my attempt to formulate this thesis of common sense. Admiring the stories written about Socrates, I thought it would be interesting to take the peers and teachers of Socrates as pivot points to generate thinking.
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Invisible Colleges are a significant part of our common intellectual heritage, a social behaviour which extends into the distant past.. The 17th century holds an important history in the development of thought. It saw people like Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes formulate questioning ways of thinking in our world, encouraging and establishing cultures of exploring the world in which we live, and cultivating a personal relationship with the knowledge of the universe. Read more…
In this article I am going to try and identify certain social justice issues involved with valuing the individual outside of the formal education context. I will be dealing with the premise of what a just society is, and suggesting that if a person has some knowledge which is prevented from being valued then they are being excluded from society. Their being is withheld from acknowledgement, and by virtue of that, their liberty is taken from them as they are prevented from engaging in and with a community of peers. Read more…
This is a podcast of a panel session chaired by Dr Andrew Whitworth (Manchester Institute of Education) entitled Information Inequalities: do they exist and are they a problem for Manchester? This session considers how policies other than strictly ‘education’ policies can impact upon access to informational resources, and thus the learning capacity of communities. Read more…