Anatoly Volynets

“ First, a subject is presented to the students not as the firm and absolute truth but as a source of questions. Second, teaching is not done in the traditional manner but organized through dialogue and exploration. These ideas may sound pretty casual to the modern ear, but when specifics were considered the theory and practice of SDC appeared rather unique, effective, and appealing to my colleagues. They were intrigued by experiments I described. For instance, I told a story of first graders enthusiastically debating the human soul with Plato and Aristotle. ”

“ The explorers here are five first-graders and their teacher, the naive philosopher. The issues they are focused on revolve around exclusive rights. The teacher gets inspired by the discussions, writes down his own thoughts, has doubts and new ideas, brings those back to the kids, discusses them and writes again. Version II, Somewhat Fictitious It all started accidentally. I was talking to colleagues and happened to mention an educational experiment I had participated in, in the past. It was related to the School of The Dialogue of Cultures (SDC) . ”

“ The software development community around the US was outraged. Programmers staged street protests and started on-line discussions. My son Ilya participated in the protest in front of the Adobe headquarters, and this got me involved in the discussions. This is how this book came into being, piece-by-piece. It explores different aspects of culture, its relationship to human beings and to the human condition, to civilization in general and to economics in particular. ”