Transforming Education

[Glory Ressler]

Hooray for Chris and the Camp!!!
BTW - I'm appreciating deeply this discussion...
best wishes for a joyous and meaning-filled Holiday season,
glory

Chris Weaver wrote:

> 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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