Learnlife Blog

We talk a lot about Ikigai at Learnlife, as a way of distinguishing something beyond passion or purpose. Ikigai is really your reason for being, and the thing that gives you direction and motivation, but we thought we would take this opportunity to zoom in a little bit more on the concept, and why it is at the heart of what we do.

The traditional model of education tells us that as you progress, you narrow and specialise. But the future needs generalists too, who can connect the dots and see beyond the boundaries of specialism. So why do we still tell our children to choose one thing and do it well?

The world is full of successful entrepreneurs who were told in school that they would never amount to anything. So many people succeed ‘in spite of their education’ instead of ‘because of it’ tells us not only that the current system is broken, but gives us a yardstick to measure progress towards something better. When entrepreneurship finds its place in mainstream education, we might actually be getting somewhere and, to be honest, we’re not about to wait.

Literacy skills go beyond reading and writing, it covers how we interact with the world around us. To understand its scope better, here are 7 questions about literacy skills at Learnlife answered by learning guides, Harriet and Annette.

As governments and institutions rush to respond to the post-pandemic landscape in education, wellbeing for children is finally at the heart of policy. Dig just a bit deeper, however, and you’ll see that the majority of these strategies are temporary reactions. We discuss why wellbeing is the fundamental priority of learning environments and why that commitment needs to be permanent.

Interlingualism is quite a new word, but the concept is as old as the human story itself. At Learnlife, we welcome interlingualism as the chance to share together in the beautiful diversity of sounds and stories within our community, and to instil global citizenship at the heart of our experience. So what is it, and why does it matter?

Last month, we wrote about the neuroscience of learning and we gave fair warning that we would return to the topic. Sooner than you thought, perhaps, but we just couldn't wait. We wanted to zoom in on one particular area, and that is the joy of learning. 

Jago Bakshy shares his unique learning journey; from his birthplace in the UK, to India and most recently to Barcelona, Spain, where he is part of the cohort of the Explorers programme at Barcelona’s Learnlife Urban Hub.

Maths trauma is a real thing, and that should be an alarm bell for the way numeracy is approached in the traditional education system. From balancing our books to balancing our tables, numeracy skills are functional skills we need in today’s world. So how do we approach numeracy at Learnlife? What exactly is “soccermatics”? We put 7 questions to Learning Guide Adria Balcazar and got an exponential return.