THE PEER LEARNING INSTITUTE
The Peer Learning Institute is an entity, currently comprised of myself, dedicated to the principle of intellectual emancipation. Intellectual emancipation is not just a clunkier, more academic way of saying “free your mind:” it is the acknowledgment that all people possess the same intellectual capacities, the same ability to learn and to share. This means that not only are we each able to learn anything from anybody, but also that we are each able to teach anything to anybody; all that is needed is a shared sense of commitment. Teaching does not have to be a hierarchy, a relationship of enlightened master to ignorant student; it can also be a relationship of committed individual to committed individual.
To this end, the Peer Learning Institute – me – proposes to create a social network, or maybe an add-on to an already existing network, with the aim of linking people who want to learn to other people who want to learn. For instance, let’s say I want to learn French and you want to learn the history of urban planning in New York City. We find each other on the site (perhaps through mutual interests, mutual locations, or mutual preferred methods of communication) and decide to link up. Since you live in Stockholm and I live in New York, we obviously can’t meet in person, so we decide that we will meet over Skype once a week, maybe on Thursdays at noon EDT, and talk: I will ask you about the history of urban planning in NYC, you will ask me about French. What conjugations have I learned? When did Robert Moses push through the Verrazano Bridge? And so on. So you and I have gone from two people wanting to learn something, but perhaps being afraid or unsure of learning it by ourselves, to two people committed to each others’ learning, empowering and encouraging each other to fill gaps in our knowledge we’ve always wanted to fill.
I’m looking for programmers and some time. Maybe a Kickstarter in the future – we’ll see. Get in touch!
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