The basis: library & class rooms
The new Knowledge Centres are intended to be small centres for liberal education in the Humboldtean sense. They are located in rural areas and in the poorer districts of cities. They are endowed with 1- 2 classrooms and a library the scale of which is comparable to a central European city district library. This library consists of academic and intellectually demanding non-fiction literature and modern media (DVD, sound carriers, internet etc.) relevant to topics and issues of common interest and suitable for extending general education. The library will function as a small-town or village social meeting place in a local setting of about 10.000 people. The Knowledge Centres aim at fostering reflexive activities and tutoring the abilities and capacities necessary for this by reflecting on problems in the local setting on a high level and with a global horizon by elaborating solutions acting in concert with the local population, involving traditional lifestyle and observing the principles of sustainable lifestyles.
The Humboldtian Animators
A Knowledge Centre is under the care of 1-2 permanently employed Animators. They administrate the library and hold the local chair. These Animators are well aquainted with the local setting and the local culture, they underwent academic training and dispose of excellent general education. They are rhetorically trained in the classical sense, i.e. dispose of the ability to act „dialogue-oriented towards knowledge gain“. High attentiveness in listening and the ability to understand vague, inprecise unsystematic contributions to a discussion and to translate them into systematized and more more precise articulations are key qualifications. They are trained to assist people in articulating their views and to jointly evolve further thoughts. They do not function like school teachers, they are not the agents of a literacy campaign. Rather, they function as facilitators for reflection who act as „education carers“ in a local community and who steward the Knowledge Centre as an ideas smithy for a sustainable life.
Liberal Education
After having been called to their Chairs, the Animators enjoy autonomy within the framework of their activities comparable to academic autonomy. There is no curriculum given by default and no limitation of their reasearch activities. Concerning the Animators' scope of functions: they organise regular topic-oriented study groups in which 20 – 30 people participate two to four times a month regularly and long-term. Participation is voluntary, participants do not necessarily have to have undergone schooling. Participation is nor restricted by characteristics like gender, age group or walk of life, but these study groups are not school. They are study units which require a certain post-infant reflection capacity.
A network of nodes of innovation
For these knowledge centres, service centres for dissemination of technologies (biogas, solar cooking gear, solar panels et cetera) and consultation centres for other skills (cultivation methods, husbandry and others) could serve as a base. The internet provides fast cross-linking of knowledge centres, for example by generating special online platforms. Solutions and ideas developed in a suburb of Bangalore may prove useful for a local group in the area of Rio de Janeiro, and similar phenomena might occur when knowledge generated by a rural community in Kenia proves helpful in Bangladesh.
The beginning will be some pilot projects in order to gather first experiences. The ultimate goal is the establishment of an area-covering network of Knowledge Centres in rural areas in developing countries. The target scope is a coverage of 100 centres per one million people in rural, non-developed regions. The emerging network of Knowledge Centres must be understood as an autonomous sphere of knowledge production which, like traditional academic institutions, is independent from government control, religious restrictions and influences of ideological or economic institutions.
As supporting infrastructure, the following institutions are necessary:
Education centres training Animators in the spheres od key abilities described above, safeguarding the necessary general education and imparting systematic reflexive work
Administrative units which safeguard the calls to Animator Chairs according to an ordered appointment procedure, safeguard the means for the endowment of knowledge centres and allocate salaries. These administrative units will be roughly comparable to existing institutions dedicated to university administration, but their activities will be mainly coordinative. A broadly decentral autonomous administration by the Knowlegde Centres themselves is intended. In order to safeguard academic autonomy, the self-reliance of the Animator is preserved. As the Knowlegde Centres are a novel educational branch, they are independent from the administration od schools and universities.
Funds for collecting financial means for the sustenance of the network
A global foundation which acts as a facilitator for the establishment of these centres and which provides non-financial resources.
Involvement of Business
Business can participate contributing third-party funds. Companies may sponsor specific Centres or Animators which, in turn, voluntarily offer reasearch and study topics the results of which are of interest for these companies. For companies participating in these research processes there will be a direct knowledge dividend, i.e. innovations. Taking into account the comparatively small investment cost for innovation cores in developing countries the knowledge dividend may be much higher than from comparable projects in industrialised countries.
