<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Re: [OSLIST] Transforming Education</TITLE>
<META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META content="MSHTML 5.00.2314.1000" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Chris,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It is poetry to my ear!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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"? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thank you thank, you and of course to Harrison and
Alan for enabling it</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Tova</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A href="mailto:chris@springbranch.net" title=chris@springbranch.net>Chris
Weaver</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
href="mailto:OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU"
title=OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, December 18, 2001 10:20
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Transforming Education</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Hi Alan, & thanks Harrison for being the conduit!<BR><BR>I
like your questions, and Eiwor's and Michael's responses (I had a feeling this
one would draw Michael out of the woods).<BR><BR>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.<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE><BR><FONT color=#0000ff>- What if schools were formed as
consciously self-organizing systems.<BR><BR></FONT>Life would be
good!<BR><FONT color=#0000ff><BR>- What if all participants (parents, staff,
and students) were given equal, democratic power and rights within the
school? <BR><BR></FONT>Hm. <BR>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.<BR><BR><FONT color=#0000ff>- What if students of all ages were
recognized as responsible for their own learning? <BR><BR></FONT>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. <BR><BR>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.)<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR><FONT color=#0000ff>- What
if this meant that there were no mandated classes, tests, or other
externally imposed requirements?<BR><BR></FONT>Lovely. <BR>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.<BR><FONT color=#0000ff> <BR>- 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? <BR><BR></FONT>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.<BR><BR>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...<BR><BR>Chris
Weaver<BR>Swannanoa, North Carolina,
USA<BR><BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>