Transforming Education

Chris Weaver chris at springbranch.net
Tue Dec 18 12:20:05 PST 2001


Hi Alan, & thanks Harrison for being the conduit!

I like your questions, and Eiwor's and Michael's responses (I had a feeling
this one would draw Michael out of the woods).

I have taught all grades kindergarten through 9th in US public schools.  I
studied a good deal of Educational Anthropology in grad school.  Currently I
am the director of what could well be described as an Open Space Camp for
children and youth, on 80 acres in the Southern Appalachian mountains.  I
will share a few reflections on your notions, one at a time.

- What if schools were formed as consciously self-organizing systems.

Life would be good!

- What if all participants (parents, staff, and students) were given equal,
democratic power and rights within the school?

Hm.
In the most enlightened educational organizations I've known, there's a lot
of open space.  But always, certain people hold the responsibility of
setting the themes and defining the great mosaic of givens, whether the
issue is school structure or curriculum (in the broadest sense).  To me, a
consciously self-organizing school doesn't concern itself with power,
rights, or even equality.  These words are like curious tools of a bygone
era, not needed (reactions, you might say, to a paradigm of dominance).
Leadership processes are always at work, with a varying pattern of
leaders...but effective leadership naturally claims its authority, within
the givens of time and space that call that leadership into being.  Parents,
students, and staff each have realms of activity in which they are called to
leadership -- with some cross-pollenization being very healthy.

- What if students of all ages were recognized as responsible for their own
learning?

I'm a constructivist through and through - people of all ages construct
their own knowledge, actively and creatively, reconciling their past
learnings of mind, heart, body, and spirit with their present experience (a
process that involves some disequilibrium!)  But are students of all ages
responsible for their own learning?  No.  If I'm their teacher, or mentor,
or coach, or guide, or even their transparent Taoist master, I accept and
claim a deep responsibility for the quality of their learning experience.
This is first because we all learn in relationship.  As the old teacher's
saying goes, a child doesn't care how much I know until they know how much I
care.

I also accept responsibility for their learning experience because someone
initially must set the givens!  Maybe the givens are a violin.  Maybe the
givens are a violin and a scale to play.  Maybe the givens are the materials
to make a violin.  Maybe the givens are a hundred books of poetry, or a
creek in the woods, or a diesel engine.  Yes, invite young people to choose,
and to direct their own learning.  But provide them with a whole village
full of mentors who love their students, who really know how to do things of
this world, and who love the ART of setting givens to establish open spaces
for learning.  Too much freedom and not enough conscious mentoring leads to,
in educator Lillian Katz's phrase, "a mutual exchange of ignorance."  (Also
see May Sarton's critique of Black Mountain College in her journal, The
House by the Sea.)

So yes, the student "does the learning."  But as the years go by I realize
that I can't overestimate the power and art of a great mentor to invite a
learning experience into being.  Mentoring is an ancient human birthright,
and to me the dream of the kind of school you invite us to think about,
Alan, is the dream of reclaiming the art of mentoring for all.

- What if this meant that there were no mandated classes, tests, or other
externally imposed requirements?

Lovely.
Though, in a different way than you mean, there are many externally imposed
requirements.  If a theme is, "How do we paddle a skin-covered umiak on
Puget Sound from Southworth to Suquamish?" (as it was for a group of
eleven-year-olds I once knew) then one externally imposed requirement is
that the current in Rich Passage runs four knots against you on the ebb
tide.  Not three -- four.  That is to say, a curriculum that is open to the
world is in continuous negotiation with the world's imposed requirements -
again, the givens.  These givens challenge and empower and sometimes
confound us.  What's funny is that even a standardized test was created with
these effects in mind - to challenge, to empower, to confound, in an
entirely measurable way, like a factory...the mechanics of learning with the
heart cut out.

- What if the only requirement for graduation is to defend (to the entire
school community) the thesis that you are ready to take responsibility for
yourself in the outside world?

An interesting notion.  Again, the language reveals our common way of
thinking in education (defend implies judgement; take responsibility for
yourself implies acute individualism).  But I get your drift - to present to
the community, in depth, your creative vision, your practical dreams, your
skills, resources, and capacities for a meaningful path of life.

So, as you can probably tell, I would never tire of conversing on this
subject.  I have opened space in public schools, and will do so again...but
I am at present exceedingly grateful to be working in an educational setting
(the camp) free of public schools' institutional constraints.  We have a
land base and near-complete curricular freedom.  And it's a back-door into
public education; this fall we gave 900 public middle school students a day
each of Open Space here, in groups of 75, with a great staff of artists and
other mentors, and many of their teachers were astonished to see that their
students know how to self-organize.  If we keep walking our talk as an OS
organization, we'll provide lots of children, youth, and educators with
experiences that will leave them wanting more...

Chris Weaver
Swannanoa, North Carolina, USA


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