Dear RN list, First, Antonio Rossin has a little message for us: The address I gave you for his web site in the Dec. 10 message on education does not work.: Hi all, let me correct and apologize. The above URL was mispelled and doesn't run. The correct one is: <http://www.mripermedia.com/Rossin/> Best regards, antonio ******************************************************************** Meanwhile, there are three excerpts on the theme of education which I would like to share with you. One is from a document Carolyn Chute, of the 2nd Maine Militia, wrote, called _The Really New Deal for America_. People who are subscribed to the Cyberjournal will surely remember being introduced to Carolyn Chute by Richard. She was quite excited to see his essay on overcoming the "left/right" divide (a divide which undermines the possibility of coordinated citizen effort to revitalize our democracies). (I believe the essay she saw was entitled "Who is the enemy?" and I'm sure Richard would be happy to send it to anyone who would like to see it.) On Richard's June/July trip to the Eastern US and Canada he got to meet Carolyn and she is indeed a marvellous individual. She has lived in real poverty much of her life, and even now when she is a best-selling author, money is still tight. This, even though Carolyn and her husband Micheal have "no phone, no fax, no TV" (and no e-mail, either!) Anyhow, here are some of Carolyn's ideas on education (Note: I'll try to leave some of Carolyn's interesting spelling intact.): "Burn down the schools. Oh, well, yuh, you're right, that's wasting a building. Shool buildings could be used as warehouses or places to grow mushrooms. Okay. We need to start by looking at the word "school" before we outlaw school. School was created by the Prussions to give people conformity. The Industrailists jumped on the bandwagon. They realised schools were the perfect tool for getting whole populations dependent on industry for EVERYTHING. People who lived off the land and traded within their communities didn't need FACTORY JOBS, paychecks or STUFF. So it was important to industry to take away all life-sustaining interdependent skills, crush communities and family. Take away the land. Get people to desire lots of STUFF. And it was important to divide the people into winners and losers. The honor group management group. And the worker ants group. And the extras group (to keep wages down). Schools have not failed. They are doing exactly what they were designed for. A peachy-keen job, I must say. Part of [what we need...] would be to redesign the learning experience to create the kind of society we really want. If you want grasping, sneery arrognat high-stepping honor types who speak of POSITIVE THINKING with bright sunny faces, who are really just a notch or two above the whole angry grasping frightened loney exhausted competative millions and the emprisoned trashed-over bottomed out total loss group, if this is what you want for America, then no change in the learning experience is necessary. But if you want vibrant honest back and forth business and self-employment and community farms, a world where all gifts are honored, a world of neighbourliness, INTERdependence, respect for others, leaders who are sages, not _winners_, self-discipline, excellence, curiosity, capability, skills, experience, loving families, shared work, shared history, shared place, but with open minds and respect for all the world, a world which is not a level playing field, not a chess game, not a free grab, but the planet on which many species call home...if this is the kind of society you want to create, you do not have flourescent-lit rooms of same age kids with identical _clean_ hands all striving for honors for twelve years. You do not have grades. You do NOT graduate. Ever. You do not graduate from learning. It is not a tournament. We are not fatted calves stepping off the box car, grade A down through cull. You do not create a space which resembles nothing else but an insurance company and cram all of America's children into this space and call it good. The Really New Deal suggests taht every community have a Good Neighbor Center ... or "village". The villae would have many "shops" where varieties of projects and expertise are housed. While the old schools offered desk work, art, computers and sports, the villages will ahve EVERYTHING. From "nursing" homes to forestry crews, from the study of DNA to boatmaking, windmill making, everything you need to know about solar (hands on), raising butterflies, growing and preserving food, physics, municipal law, corporate law, linguistics, animal husbandry, philosophy [...] and learning how to raise hell when the government betrays us. [...] These Good Neigbor Villages could be the heart of the community, library, resource centers, etc. CSA (Community Supported AGriculture) Farms would be encouraged. Yes, even in cities this _can_ be done. Small biz start-up seminars, and advisors. [...] In every region there will be larger Centers, convenient to serve many Good Neighbor Villags. Like universities, these will be places for serious research and specialized learning. Free. And no grades. No honors. If you want to go to Harvard, there are already existing prep schools for such and more can be made... or you can do an independent prep... perhaps other like-minded persons can form a prep group to be ready for those rigorous tests. And tutors. _Lots_ of tutorers. We are not doing away with acedemia. We are only eliminating the boxcar slaughterhouse mentality. We are building a community-minded America. We are honoring community values, Common Sense and Common Decency where nobody is trashed and where we Americans can learn passion and excitement for knowledge. And we will no longer be a bunch of dreamy passive-aggressive selfish stupid people who when we hear "The sky is green", "The sun is blue", "The chicken says Moo", we wil no longer accept such bullshit on faith." ************************************************************************* And here is more outspoken opinion: "Strong Words from the New York State Teacher of the Year" from _Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compusory Schooling_ by John Taylor Gatto : p. 75. "Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conforminst; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves doing whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die. What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is _one right way_ to proceed with growing up. That's an ancient Egyptian idea symbolized by the pyramid with an eye on top that's on the other side of George Washington on our one-dollar bill. Everyone is a stone defined by position on the pyramid.[...] [...]Rebuild these things [families and communities] and young people will begin to educate themselves -- with our help -- just as they did at the nation's beginning. They don't have anything to work for now except money, and that's never been a first-class motivator. Break up these institutional schools, decertify teaching, let anyone who has a mind to teach bid for customers, privatize this whole business -- trust the free market system. I know it's easier to say than do, but what other choice do we have? We need less school, not more." ********************************************************************** To close this posting, I would like to quote from one of my long-time favourite authors, Herbert Kohl. While Kohl shares many of the concerns with conventional education as expressed by Carolyn Chute and John Taylor Gatto, he also believes in "public education but [does] not believe that the public schools are providing an adequate basic education for our children." (_Basic Skills_, p. 4) Later in the book, (p. 107) he writes: "For me, the principles that are fundamental in a democracy are: 1. Everyone should have access to information and resources and be informed about how to use them. Without knowing what is happening in the world or without techniques to organize the flood of information available to us, we become powerless to act intelligently. And without resources we can't act. Young people need to learn how to gather and organize information, as well as understand what resources are available and how they can acquire and use them.[...] 2.People should have as much control over their onw lives as is consistent with not damaging others. This implies that maximum individual freedom must be allowed for, consistent with social coherence. Decisions affecting people's lives should be made from the bottom up - those people affected by a decision should have a voice in that decision whenever possible. Hierarchies should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Mutual respect is essential to democracy and cannot develop where hierarchies dominate. This implies that yound people whould know something about control, should have the opportunity to exercise power, and analyze the consequences of it. They should understand what it means to damage others and study the line between individual freedom and harming others. They also should understand that differences of culture, style and taste should not be viewed as threatening.[...] 3. Everyone should consider carefully the balance between fulfillment in their personal lives and service to others. It is fundamental in a democracy that service be not merely an obligation but a source of personal and social renewal. This implies that young people should experience cooperative work, should have an opportunity to learn in the community as well as in the classroom, and should come to understand how learning itself can be a lifelong source of growth and pleasure." Kohl then goes on to list what he feels are the six basic skills citizens need and to describe how we could teach them. And then he talks about what people can do _now_, given current realities. A useful book,if you asked me! all the best, Jan
