Transforming Education

[Averbuch]

Re: [OSLIST] Transforming EducationChris,

It is poetry to my ear!

Not only your way of seeing education and children makes perfect sense to me but it also made me clarify and deepen the answer to a question I am often asked: "How open is the open space"? 
Thank you thank, you and of course to Harrison and Alan for enabling it
!
Tova


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Chris Weaver 
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 10:20 PM
  Subject: Re: Transforming Education


  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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