(Re)imagining Pedagogy:
The Cyborg Classroom Manifesto
Knowledge, Power, and Orientation
In an age of information pollution,
where endless digital stimuli fragment attention rather than deepen knowledge,
we are practicing a pedagogy of curation—attending to knowledge with care—and orientation—mapping possibilities in uncharted domains.
The digital classroom is not merely a space for consumption,
but a site for critical navigation through information landscapes.
We seek not just access, but meaningful engagement.
Paradoxically, artificial intelligence can allow us to become more human,
more curious in our questioning, and more courageous in our explorations,
by serving as both mirror and window.
Embracing Hybridity
We recognize the hybrid nature of contemporary existence:
Languages intermingling (Arabic, Hebrew, English) that reflect our Jerusalem context,
where we live and learn together across differences and similarities,
Identities converging across digital and physical realms,
Neurodiversities (Dyslexia, ADHD, Autism and other cognitive variations)
offering unique ways of learning and processing.
Following Haraway, we embrace the cyborg as metaphor and reality—
not a transcendence of humanity,
but an acknowledgment of our always-already technological existence.
Education as Liberation Practice
With bell hooks, we understand that:
The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility.
Education is not neutral but always political.
Teaching must engage the whole person, not just the mind.
We seek pedagogies that acknowledge power differentials
while creating spaces where transformation becomes possible
for first-generation students, multilingual learners, and those
historically marginalized by traditional educational structures.
Learning Through Play
We recognize play as a form of embodied theory— where abstract concepts transform into lived experience, where complex conversations become possible within safe boundaries, where curiosity replaces embodied echoes we repeat.
Following hooks' vision of theory as liberatory practice, we create spaces where learning happens through doing, where games become vehicles for first exploring difficult terrain— trauma, identity, power—without retreating into binary and flat thinking.
Play becomes a tool for players to explore beyond and reimagine together. Encouraging possibilities for connection that transcend limitations.
Play allows us to practice intellectual humility and emotional resilience, to handle complexity without demanding simple answers, to seek understanding across lines of difference. Play creates spaces where mistakes and misunderstanding are not only welcome but valuable, where we can express hurt and vulnerability while knowing all participants are held safely, where each person can take small steps or bold leaps in reimagining how we think, receive, and create knowledge together. In this atmosphere of generous experimentation, learning becomes joyful discovery rather than fearful performance.
Digital Communities and Solidarity
Inspired by Benedict Anderson's concept of imagined communities,
where shared imagination creates powerful possibilities,
and Victor Turner's communitas, where transformative moments emerge in liminal spaces,
we (re)imagine how our digital/physical environments can foster meaningful educational exchange.
Just as Anderson recognized that social formations beyond direct experience require active imagination to exist, our Cyborg Classroom invites the creative
(re)imagining of educational spaces beyond traditional boundaries and limitations.
Following contemporary digital activists,
we question who controls knowledge and how it circulates.
We ask not just what technology can do,
but who it serves and who it silences.
Theoretical Frameworks
Not to find definitive answers,
but to ask better questions about how we might learn, live together and apply in a dynamic way, ways of seeing through theory.
Our Commitments
We commit to:
Curation over consumption: Developing skills to navigate information abundance
Hybridity as strength: Celebrating the mixing of languages, cultures, and ways of knowing
Sharing with critical awareness: Mapping access to knowledge while examining the politics and ethics of digital distribution
Community through difference: Building solidarity without erasing particularity
Ongoing questioning: Maintaining a critical stance toward our own assumptions
The Cyborg Classroom
is a continuous process of (re)imagining of what learning might become
when we engage thoughtfully with each other
across and through our technological extensions.
SAHAYA 31/03/2025
in Jerusalem القدس ירושלים