Transforming Education

[Eiwor Backelund]

Hallo Alan,
in Sweden we have a certain way of educating adults. We call it liberal
adult education and the form is study circles. The meaning behind this
form of education is that you yourself are taking the whole responsibility
for your own learning. These study circles are to be free and independent
and noone can demand you to go to one. You decide for yourself what you
want to learn about and what you want to learn in that area.

We have a system of 11 study associations which have different
perspectives and founding members, some of them are connected to the
political parties, some of them to the churches or the sports teams or
other organizations. You can always find one that has the same basic
values as you have and that suits your picture of the world. These study
associations offer a lot of study circles with different themes, ie
english, weaving, fishing, dancing, politics, what you want to do with
your life etc. If you can´t find the theme you want then you can always
ask them to start a new study circle with what you want to learn. When the
association has got a group of people that are interested in the same
theme, they invite them to start the circle. On their first meeting the
group decide exactly what they want to learn, how many times they want to
meet and what books or material they need for the learning. The learning
is based on dialogue and reflection. That means that you read something or
do things together and then you talk them over with the group and there
must be reflection time between the meetings. Often the groups meet one
evening once a week for maybe ten times. You learn a lot together but you
don´t get any graduation papers.

So this is the essence of the study circle but as we live in a reality
where many companies only look for papers on what you know, some of these
associations have changed and started to also work with courses that gives
you some sort of paper on what you have learnt. My opinion is that this is
no good, because many of us learn best when the pressure is off and many
things that are valuable learning can´t be described on a piece of paper.

We also have schools for adults that are based on the same principles and
some of them use OS for larger meetings and that is always a start. My
hope is that this way of doing things can get in to the children´s schools
as well but there are lots of people that have a feeling they are loosing
control (as if they had ever had some) and they need to change their way
of thinking. The money that these 11 associations need for their work
comes mainly from the Swedish government and most of the regions and
communities. That is because the associations have the goal to get in
touch with immigrants and those who have no education or only very little
and let them grow so they can take part in the democrazy work. We believe
a country needs educated people (I think there is a better word which I
don´t know, that also includes the emotional and social competences) to
keep the democrazy alive.

About the children´s schools, we have a law that says the learning should
be based on what the children need and that you have to start with the
single child and build the learning in a way that supports that child. It
also says that the parents should be involved and decide about the school
together with the children and the teachers. Some schools have a board of
children, teachers and parents deciding about that school. And some
schools let the children do their own planning. And that is great and it
works in some places but when it comes to reality the picture is often
something else. There are always givens that tells that there are things
you can not decide about, and I suppose there must be but not so many as
we have today. So there is a lot of work to do. And of course Open Space
could work in school. Children know a lot of things but we never seems to
ask them about it.
Eiwor

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html