Summarized highlights from Humanising Education – A Conversation With Karima Kadaoui, Tamkeen (Future Learning Design Podcast)

The initiative began with an inquiry before 2009 about “a lack of progress on the Human Development Index and why that was”

Initial social concerns centered on “the despair of young people who couldn’t get jobs”

Tamkeen represents “a process of inquiry, growing, learning and understanding” rather than a fixed program

The approach involves “a felt sense of potential, rather than an agentic purpose setting”

The work involves a shift “from exercising agency to design and create something to address the deficits, to a different form of agency which is about creating the conditions, nurturing the garden, and trusting the process”

“We are the garden as much as – more than – the gardener. So this brings a different sense of agency”

Transformation happens through “co-reflection, co-creation, co-imagination – seeing each other differently, re-prehending in our common humanity, in trust”

The process moves “from exploring a question to living the answers to a question, by exploring other questions: What surprised you? What manifested/emerged from the process? What are the openings or apertures where you can see new fields of possibilities?”

“Gardening as an expression of trust and love, creating conditions for flourishing, for harmony. And then, gardens create their own conditions, so it’s really about co-creation, co-facilitation. We are all part of the garden”

The approach involves “nurturing, gardening, flourishing, with trust – trusting the seed, creating conditions for the flourishing”

This represents “community-based learning and understanding ecosystems, suffused with trust and love”

“The trust is watered by, and waters, the process. And that trust in humanity is love”

“How little we need when we come together to feel and experience our common humanity. A sense of proprioception for humanity”

“With a sense of proprioception, you can point to your nose. But without that sense you can’t, and you need a mirror”

A powerful example of transformation: “I have seen the light in myself and now I want others to see the light in themselves” – what a student who had participated in the model United Nations said to Karima

“Transformation in a humanizing (connections of love) direction. An emerging and humanizing education system. ‘Every step is the direction itself’”