Curiosity Café: Education

We will be hosting our next Curiosity Café on Tuesday, October 27th at the Madison Avenue Pub (14 Madison Ave, Toronto, ON M5R 2S1). Come and hang out with us, grab food, and read through our handout from 6-6:30. Our structured discussion will run from 6:30-8:30pm with a 10 minute break in the middle.

Few people would deny that education is important, but what counts as education, and what is it really for? Should we think about education as a mostly practical matter concerned with filling heads with knowledge and preparing people for a job market? Or should education be more about growing and developing into a better or more complete version of oneself? Or should it be about something else entirely?

Whatever we think education is ultimately for, we can ask whether the institutes of education we tend to associate most with education - schools, colleges, universities, and the like - are best set up to achieve those goals. However, a lot of the education we receive in life takes place outside of the walls of a school, as well. What, then, are the people, groups, or institutions that educate us throughout our lives outside of school, and what should education look like in these contexts?

At our next Curiosity Cafe, we’ll discuss all things education, including such questions as:

• What does it mean to “educate” ourselves or others?
• What is education for? How does an idealized view of education map on to our own educational experiences?
• Should education be more about transforming learners into something new, or developing them as the people they are?
• What institutions besides schools educate people? Should different institutions be responsible for different aspects of education?
• What does education look like after you’ve graduated? Do we ever reach a point in life when we can consider our education to be complete? 

*hey community! Sophia here, Director of Community Programming. We ask that you consider that our ideal recommended amount for a ticket is now $15, and as you choose what to donate within the bounds of your own financial means, we ask that you keep in mind that your donation will go directly towards compensating those involved in making Curiosity Cafés happen so that we can keep doing this for you.

Please note that we still have 5 free tickets available for our attendees. If paying anything at all is not financially feasible for you, or our ticketing system presents some other barrier for you, please contact our Director of Community Programming at [email protected]. These tickets will be first come, first served, no questions asked! You can expect to hear back from her within 72 hours.

For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.

Some accessibility-related information* about our event and the venue:

• This event involves a verbal discussion, with a handout to guide the discussion
• There will be a large-print version of the handout available
• We ask the staff at the Maddy to turn off the speakers playing music in the room we are in. Unless we end up in their “VIP” room upstairs (very unlikely!), this keeps background noise to a minimum.
• There will be earplugs available to tamper background noise
• There are about five steps up to the entrance of the Madison, and another to get in the door. In order to get upstairs, where we sometimes hold our events, there is another set of stairs that are quite steep. While we hope to be in the downstairs room, we cannot guarantee this until closer to the event date.
• There are two single stall bathrooms located downstairs that we will have access to. The other bathrooms, located on the main and upper floor, are gendered.
• Should you be accompanied by a support person, please contact us in advance so that we can add them to our guest list. Their ticket will be included, for free, as part of your pay-what-you-can ticket.

*We recognize that this list provides a far-from comprehensive picture of accessibility-related concerns you might have. Please feel free to contact our team at [email protected], or the Madison Avenue Pub (416-927-1722) with any other questions or concerns you might have.

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Madison Avenue Pub, 14 Madison Avenue, Toronto, Canada

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