chaos theory

with Antonina Mamzenko

Hey,

Seth Godin in (I think) The Practice, writes that true learning (as opposed to schooling) is a voluntary experience that requires tension and discomfort. He calls this discomfort “the persistent feeling of incompetence” as we get better at a skill.

Ira Glass calls this discomfort The Gap - the point at which you recognise what “great” in your chosen field looks like, but you also realise that you’re a long way from getting there, and it feels like everything you do sucks and will never get better.

The only way to get over that gap is to embrace the (temporary) discomfort of incompetence - and that requires bravery to make mistakes, to look like a fool, to not know what the hell you’re doing. It requires being a beginner again - something particularly uncomfortable if you’ve reached a certain skill level in another field.

It requires a leap of faith and stepping onto the invisible path over the abyss (as I type this, this scene from Indiana Jones comes to mind).

Before I continue, a quick reminder that Words+Pictures starts on 16th of April. There's one space left on the morning group, and the evening group is still wide open, requiring a minimum of three people to go ahead. If you've been looking at it, now is time to take action. Have questions? Ping me an email!

To my own surprise, I recently got sucked into watching the popular steamer Ludwig travel across China on a motorbike. The twist? No maps, no smartphones, no motorways, and (mostly) no English when talking to locals. This is the second trip he did with his friend: last year, they crossed Japan north to south in a similar way.

Ludwig often describes himself as "dumb as bricks", and I don’t know the guy well enough to say if it’s an act or not - but what I saw was anything but dumb (well, apart from asking ChatGPT whether it rains a lot in China at this time of year and trusting the answer). This was someone who got excited by an idea that was well outside his comfort zone, spent months studying Chinese for a three week trip (and the year prior basically taught himself the basics of Japanese and picked up more along the way), and managed to navigate a completely unfamiliar country by speaking to strangers and making a ton of mistakes in the process.

It was unexpectedly inspiring.

***

It's not the first time I hear clearly capable adults describing themselves as “dumb”. This, I think, is an artefact of our Western schooling system which I have a huge problem with.

The obsession with box ticking above deep understanding, with attendance scores above mental health, with getting the correct answer over integrated learning, with constant progression that doesn’t take into account innate differences of people and natural fluctuations of learning capacities on any given day - all of it bothers me, a lot.

And then there’s also our preoccupation with learning ALL THE THINGS before you’re 18, completely ignoring the fact that learning is a life-long journey and you shouldn’t stop learning the minute you leave school or college.

We are so conditioned to think that education is something that only happens in certain places: a school classroom, a university’s lecture hall, an evening extracurricular activity. Therefore not only we are unable to see that learning happens everywhere, everyday, even through that seemingly dumb YouTube video your kid - or you! - is watching (I lost count of the number of times my teen betrayed knowledge of an ancient philosopher’s work and it turns out he learned that organically, on YouTube), that computer game they’ve been playing for days, or all the times they are stopping to look at a rock as a toddler or asked a bazillion “why” questions which you were too tired to answer.

***

I’m an unschooler. This educational philosophy - which I have recently come to realise very much informs my art practice and my mentoring work - has developed over the past ten years home educating my kid. He is 15 now, and has never been to school and has all the power to choose what he wants to learn, when and how. There's no coercion, no curriculum, no "grade levels", no pressure to learn something before he's ready. There's constant and evolving discussion - in equal partnership with my child - on what needs to happen in order for the next thing to happen, and whether something is actually useful and exciting for him to learn, or is just a box-ticking exercise (and if it is, whether it still worth doing it anyway in order to get to the goal).

I don't presume to know what he needs to learn better than him. Will he make mistakes? I'm sure of it. But that's also learning - in fact, probably learning of the best kind.

Antonina x

P.S. I don't presume that people are particularly interested in my home education and unschooling experiences, but if that's something you'd like me to write more about, let me know.

You might be interested in...

​Words+Pictures: Go beyond photography in this interactive, hands-on online workshop centred around creative play and experimentation. Starts 16th April. One spot remaining on the morning group, and three spots on the evening group.

​1:1 Mentoring: If you need help with a specific question, be it your pricing structure, feedback on your brand new website or portfolio, or need some thought partnership, 90 minute mentoring slots are available. There's also a solidarity rate for those who would not be able to access mentoring otherwise.

​Family Photography: This year might be the last I'm offering my signature Adventure Sessions, and my availability is limited. If you're overdue one for your family, it may be a good idea to pencil in a date now. Hit reply to this email and let's chat. Unconventional Family Portraits are also available for those local(ish) to me. If we've worked together before I may be open to travelling a bit further afield for those, so ping me a message.

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