Today we will have a classroom without walls! More specifically, a walk without walls.
The purpose is twofold: explore language by means of silence and reflect upon how we use words, one word in particular - borders.
1. Remain silent thoughout the lesson.
2. Go for a slow walk outside. Take in the sights, the colours, the hues, the sounds, the scents.
3. Sit on a bench or on the grass.
4. During your walk and your sitting consider the word "borders". As you walk, perceive the borders and make a mental note of them.
5. Write a reflection of at least a 100 words as a comment to this post.
Christo: The Floating Piers
7 years ago
It seems to me that there are two related borders that get transgressed frequently.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, the border between silence and talking - why is it so much easier to talk rather than to remain silent?
Secondly, rules - why is it so tempting to transgress the rule, cross the border between obedience and disobedience?
What I noticed while outside was the fact that boarders existed everywhere, the grass was a boarder, the walls. Where we could walk was also a boarder – the pathways told us where to walk there was almost an invisible boarder that told us only to walk on the grass or path but not inside the high grass. When I closed my eyes boarders no longer existed – I was still in the same place as before but with closed eyes no boarders existed I could imagine what I wanted. Silence prevailed but you could still hear the sound of other animals, winds and creatures that could not be told to “shut up.”
ReplyDeleteInteresting: closing your eyes extinguishes borders. Does that mean being blind is a liberation from borders?
DeleteIdeas, memories, wishes and hopes all circulated through my mind when I was sitting quietly. The breeze and simple sounds of the outer world surpassed me as I watched. Sitting on the bench that is just on the outskirts of our School Campus, I thought about what it would look like if there were no buildings. It would all be forest, all green, all trees. Yet, we build a border between what was and what is now. The borders are built by us, and they can be broken by us. Nothing is untouched.
ReplyDeleteYou are a poet Philipp. It seems to have stimulated your imagination. All the more reason to get rid of our gadgets sometimes.
DeleteA border can be anything that differentiates itself from another. Everything we know is built up of something (atoms) and that is building up to something else to create what we know as “things”. If we break up everything down to something smaller, let’s take a table for example. A table has borders from itself to the floor; the border there is visible to the human eye. If the table is broken down we would get to the cells that make up the wood. A tree (the wood) is a plant meaning it has cell walls, and cell walls have border separating itself from the other cells. Once we go even deeper we know that everything is made up of atoms, and atoms make up different elements. This means that there must be some sort of border for the atoms; otherwise we wouldn’t be able to create or have a different selection of elements. At the moment we only know of quarks that are the smallest thing on earth, that make up atoms and so everything that we see has borders, and if we brake that down there are even more borders. So by these rules everything we see and know is built up of borders and even if we think something feels “smooth” there is a crack in everything that is made up of even more borders until we reach the smallest thing we know as quarks.
ReplyDeleteErik Nilsson
Interesting remarks about the microscopic level (actually, much smaller than the microscopic level). I suppose one could argue that atoms are not things as such, as you call them. Atoms are more like fields of energy - but even that is too concrete. Another thought: when you do the opposite to what you have done - go outward to the really big - and look at a photograph of the entire earth (or one half of it)taken from outer space, can you then see any borders?
DeleteDuring our walk without walls class we got the chance to explore our campus and its surroundings in a different way than we normally do, in silence. Listening closely to our school environment you can most definitely say that it is a peaceful and quiet environment which we don’t often get the chance to appreciate and enjoy. Language is such an essential part of our daily routine that it takes getting used to when we can’t use it. The word border is a word that surrounding our school does have an impact, when I look at our school I see an enclosed campus, separated from nature, and the local Swiss community, not only physically but also in the way our school community carries itself. I think that this also has a lot to do with the fact that we are an “International” school, isolated from the local town of Adliwswil.
ReplyDeleteInteresting idea - we are international, yet we form a border, maybe even a shell, around ourselves and exist like a shell or a bubble, excluding the Swiss world.
DeleteWhen we think about it consciously, we are surrounded by boarders everywhere we go. The most common ‘border’ that pops into our minds is either a physical barrier between two things or a border in the sense of rules. Both of these are very common to our everyday routines. Along with those borders there are also language borders. These are represented through the silence between words and phrases. Borders signify an end to something, as well as introduce a new beginning of something different. This is supported through the act of speaking and suddenly going silent. It is also seen in nature- the fence between the park and the apartment shows the end of nature and the beginning of man-made constructions. A few borders came to my realization, during out ‘walk without walls’, however the most significant one was the border between nature and humanism.
ReplyDeleteStella N.
So borders can be negative, but also something positive (the end and the beginning of something)?
DeleteYes, I believe there are two sides to them. When they mark a border from something natural to something unnatural, they are portraying a negative aspect. However when they mark the opposite, from unnatural to natural, the show a positive side. When defining borders it is important to realize in what sense they are used, as they can express an optimistic, as well as a pessimistic side.
DeleteIs the "natural" always a good thing and the "unnatural" bad? For instance disease might be considered natural and medicine unnatural.
DeleteLanguage is a form of communication which is not only restricted to spoken language, but also comprises written and body language. Walking around in silent might seem normal when we are on our own, but feels completely unnatural when in company of more people. Language itself isn’t the border, but absence of language is. Without language we enclose ourselves into our own world of thoughts. Talking to other people enables us to express and exchange different opinions and outlooks on the same matter allowing us to gain further knowledge of the subject. During the walk I also realized that I focused much more on what I was seeing and hearing, in other words other senses were enhanced.
ReplyDeleteFranziska G.
But if language is so important, does that mean that silence is always negative, especially in the company of other people? What about when playing music for other people - isn't the silence between the notes important?
DeleteAs I was walking through the "nature" on our school campus, I tried to identify the "borders". Mankind has changed nature in order to match its ideals. If we look at the woods on the hill, the albis, we see it is densly populated by trees. If we just look at the nature on school campus, the trees are not very high and we only see a few trees. We see more of buildings and pathways and roads for us to walk and live in. We also see that the trees have been placed specifically to match the environment. This means we destroyed the nature to build houses and a place for us to live, but rebuilt or recreated nature for us to relax.
ReplyDeleteIs even the forest on the Albis natural? What does it mean to be in a state of nature?
DeleteThere are various borders, especially in the modern world of the 21st Century. When we went on our walk, I noticed that that people lay borders all around; the grass borders the road, the buildings near the park border nature, etc. The modern world has developed in a way the nature is being suppressed more and more each day, just to make room for the industrial world. Even though the borders to nature and the industrial world are becoming smaller with each day, humans have become more aware of the borders they are setting and how important it is to live in harmony with nature for a sustainable future. As we weren’t allowed to speak, I was made aware of the linguistic borders that exist today. When I noticed something and wanted to share it with a friend, I had to remind myself that I was not meant to speak. I realized that this scenario is very much like the situations that exist between languages. If someone only speaks English and wants to communicate with someone who only speaks Spanish, linguistic barriers arise and hinder communication. This made me think of “Esperanto”, which is a universal language developed by Sam Green. With people speaking the same language around the world, there would not be any barriers to communication.
ReplyDeleteWhen exploring the outdoors in our previous TOK class I was most intrigued by one instruction we were told to all maintain, silence. This sparked my curiosity to the 5 senses and how the lack of one enhances all of the others. In this case we were still told to listen but to not make noise; this alone enhanced our overall perception of the outdoors. This turned my thoughts to other scenarios when the blocking of one sense enhances all of the others. For example the blind have a much better sense of touch than those that can see, that is why this is their surrogate form of vision. Another example of this is seen in musicians. In particular those that can tune are quite often visually impeared and for some reason this has sharpened their ability to hear perfect pitches. In conclusion the barrier of communication which I experienced when outdoors resulted in a much broader view of the 5 senses and what effects them.
ReplyDeleteDo you agree, I wonder, that we privilege some senses over others. It seems to me that we privilege the sense of sight - we even say, seeing is believing.
DeleteAs I went out on my walk around the school campus, I began to wonder if we are overlooking the concept of borders as merely physical ones, (borders that separate one object from another, such as grass to gravel.) The reason to why I thought that is because the worldwide issues relevant to us today concern borders, or differentiation from a more ethical or religious perspective. This applies to situations such as the one in Syria. Religion in my eyes also has borders. Here, not only are there subgroups of religious views, but we also have completely different beliefs. part of the social disparities and difficulties in today's humanity is based upon the borders that we set because we believe they are correctly placed, ignoring our ignorance towards other beliefs.
ReplyDelete