Lessons Learned

Simone Aspis: Twenty Ways of Looking


Simone was born in 1969 in Dollis Hill, London. She went to a residential special school in Cheshire from the age of four until sixteen. From there she went on to college and then university.

Here Simone talks about what was missing from her education.

  • Simone Aspis
  • Simone Aspis
  • Simone Aspis
https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/twenty-ways-of-looking.mp3

Transcript

Because what you didn’t learn at my school was, you know what, there’s twenty ways of looking at the world. Like for example history, there ain’t just one way of looking at history, there’s six ways of looking at history, depending who you speak to, depending on their politics and where they’re coming from, etc etc. I never knew that, but now, you know, obviously now through, you know, doing – since I did a sociology course at twenty two, hey! Light turned on, I can now develop ideas and construct ideas on how I want this world to be, that was something that I never learnt to be.

I just learnt at school the world is as it is and you will conform to this world, you have no impact upon this world whatsoever in terms of thinking about whether the world could be a different place and inclusive, in terms of being able to think about what you might want changed in the world so that you feel included. There was no opportunity for that, you just accepted that was the world the way it is, you know, for, you know, you didn’t have that opportunity to debate, to discuss and actually realise, actually the world is full of lots of different ideas, you have loads of opportunity to create ideas for how you want the world to be. And that was something that was definitely missing from my education when I was growing up.

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