Grace Llewellyn: Guerrilla Learning

Grace Llewellyn

I would love to see us as a society not thinking so much in terms of “education,” but rather thinking more broadly in terms of “life.”

We tend to see things in boxes and categories, which doesn’t always serve us. When people say “education,” sometimes I like to say, “If you substitute the term ‘life’ for ‘education’—every time you say ‘education’ or ‘learning,’ try saying ‘life’ instead—that might invite you to look at things in a different way.” (I probably stole that idea too, most likely from John Holt I suppose, it all starts to bleed together in my mind at this point: what’s his, what’s mine, what’s some other guy’s).

In broader realms, too, I would love to see us think less in categories: over here we have health; over there we have learning; and over here we have work. What about a life or a neighbourhood that mixes all three together so the edges are rubbed out? I would love to see a less institutional society and a more integrated society.

I have also edited a book about the African-American dimension of homeschooling. Freedom Challenge (1993) hasn’t sold many copies, which I’m sad about. I wish that more homeschoolers in general—not just African-Americans—would read it, because it’s important for us all to be aware of ways that we can be more welcoming, and understand more of what is true for sub-groups of the homeschooling community. I’d love to see more African-Americans reading it too.

In the African-American community, traditionally, there is a high value placed on education and, perhaps by default and through not being aware of other choices, that translates largely to a high value placed on schooling. So, I’d just love to see more African-Americans considering the possibilities, and then including the option of homeschooling in their dialogue about education, even if most ultimately chose to stay within the system. For whatever reason, people are way less interested in that book than in my other work. Nonetheless, I think it’s important, and I very much enjoyed working with the writers; it was a fun project for me.

Excerpt from  Chapter 16  Guerrilla Learning with  Grace Llewellyn in Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education.

Technology, Education and Poverty

In Ontario, there's a plan to provide every kid from grade 4 to 12 with access to technology (iPad, tablet etc). There's this idea that with technology in the classroom, school is going to be the "great equalizer" at last.
We are not so naive as to believe that access to technology in education will level the playing field and poor kids will miraculously have the same opportunities their wealthier peers have.

But while handing out ipads will not overcome poverty, access to technology will empower poor students in learning. Access to technology via ipads will offer opportunities for children to work together, research, and collaborate in areas that interest them.

Take for example Sugata Mitra’s experiment in Indian villages. Mitra installed a computer in a wall and documented illiterate slum children figuring out how to use it, and then actually using it to learn and share knowledge.
Mitra has since designed ‘School in the Cloud,’ a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other —no teachers present—using resources and mentoring from the cloud. Mitra proposes Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE), which he defines as “broadband, collaboration and encouragement put together.”

Fact is, school, as we know it is history. School is obsolete (especially relevant for poor kids). Done. Terminated.  Can I say it any more succinctly?
Today, students are called on to be the drivers of their own learning.

The internet offers an unprecedented opportunity to do so. We can find out what we want to know in seconds. We can connect in groups and across the world, with others who share similar interests and concerns.

Open Source Learning

Another way to understand where education is heading, what’s stirring in the Zeitgeist and taking hold of the imagination can be understood as ‘open-source learning.’
We have heard of the concept 'open-source' in internet circles; anything can be learned over the internet. There is a new openness to educational resources. Institutions of higher learning are offering free online course materials. MIT (Open CourseWare) has over 2000 gratuitous course materials, their motto being "Unlocking knowledge, empowering minds."
Open source learning is based on extending this idea to all learning, to everyone. It's a term that I believe was coined by none other than John Taylor Gatto.
Technology is lowering the costs of education: expensive textbooks will no longer be a barrier to education.

Joint Collective Agencies and Communities of Practice

It is happening everywhere; learning in communities, work groups and collaborations. ‘Communities of practice’—a term coined by John Seely Brown—is the new learning spaces and places representative of this new culture of learning.
Kids getting together and pursuing their passions in joint collective agency, is the revolutionary wave in education. Learning in community, engaging one another, practicing 'deep tinkering' 'marinating in the experience' are some of the ideas for a new culture of learning that Seely-Brown is popularizing.

My teen has been participating in virtual communities for years now, first following her interests in the arts and now focusing on anti-oppression, social justice activism. Exchanging conversation, picking up ideas, reciprocating with her fellow bloggers, the amount of learning she is doing through social media like tumblr is astounding.

Here’s where she goes to dialogue, critic, share, challenge and be challenged. Her virtual community supports the work she does and she in turn supports the work of its members. I never realized how powerful this tool for learning is until I saw the comments and feedback she gets from fellow ‘social justice warriors’—spurring her on to further work.
Online communities can provide the support that a kid might not otherwise be able to access (for example, children questioning gender). Shared experiences all factor into building the self-esteem that is critical in order to overcome abuse and injustices and yes, the trauma of poverty itself.

Not what you know but who you know.

Do you have a linkedin account? I do. We all know that developing personal networks is invaluable for professional growth. Who knows? We might get discovered or at least, land a job.
There’s the concept of personal learning network’ (PLN) to describe the cultivating of personal networks for learning opportunities. PLNs are those connections individual learners make to suit their specific learning needs.

Connections are being made on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Blogs, Google Hangouts and more. Ahead of the adults, young people connect online in a social context as well as a more strategic, intentional way in order to share, grow opportunities and stay involved and connected

For younger children, it is important to have the guidance and support of caring, knowledgeable, and trusted adults.

To wrap this up, I’d like to offer a quote from Mitra who says, “we need to look at learning as the product of educational self-organization. If you allow the educational process to self-organize, then learning emerges. It's not about making learning happen. It's about letting it happen. The teacher sets the process in motion and then she stands back in awe and watches as learning happens.”

Hand kids the technology, guide and counsel them, support their interests, facilitate their networking opportunities, and poverty will become less of a barrier to being educated.
Education is something that you have to want to pursue; no one can do it for you. But educators can pave the way.

A tribute to Roland Meighan: Contributor to the Natural Born Learners reader.

It is with great sadness that we learned about the passing of Personalized Education Now, founder and autonomy in education advocate, Dr. Roland Meighan. I had the honour of interviewing this inspiring gentleman and was thrilled that he consented to be included in the reader Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education. He did not live to see it in print. Here, in his honour I have included that chapter so that readers of this blog will see how visionary his message continues to be.

CHAPTER 4
A LEARNING SYSTEM FIT FOR A DEMOCRACY?
ROLAND MEIGHAN


For many years, I was a double-agent in education. On the one hand, I have been researching home-based education since 1975 here in the British Isles, and on the other hand, I was involved in the school learning system itself: training teachers, but trying to produce a different type of teacher who would share power with learners. This double-agent role gave me a very interesting basis of comparison between the two learning systems.
From our home in Nottinghamshire, we run two organizations. One is called Educational Heretics Press and, with my wife Janet, we have produced 91 publications. We have spent some of our time commissioning books and writing books, which are of a radical nature asking questions about education and what we should do with it, and where it should go. One exciting thing about our press is that we have commissioned writers to write books for us who would never have had their books published by the normal commercial publishers. In fact, I do not think any of our books and booklets would ever have been published, but for us. We are rather proud of what we have managed to do, in terms of keeping ideas flowing that the mainstream presses do not want to know about.
The other organization we run from here is called The Centre for Personalised Education. This is a trust that has been devoted now for many years to the idea of promoting and developing all of the logistics of personalised learning. One of the things about personalised learning is that home-based education is one of the contexts where you are most likely to find it. There is no guarantee that you will find it in home-based education, because some home educators work to quite formal programs. But there are plenty of home educators who do personalize the learning, and the learners do take over the management of it and have a great deal of say in what is learned, when it is learned, how it is learned, and why it is learned.

Democracy and Learning Systems

One has to say quite a few things about democracy, because it is much more complicated than meets the eye. First, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, is that democracy is the worst form of organization except for all the others. I think that is quite an interesting observation, because it proposes that we cannot expect democracy to be an ideal or perfect system, but it is, nevertheless, an improvement on the other forms of organization, which can be any of the standard tyrannies of dictatorship or totalitarianism or fascism or theocracy or monarchy or bureaucracy or capitalism. All of these are forms of authoritarian domination and dictatorship, and if you do not have democracy, you have one of these. Despite the limitations of democracy, you are usually worse off with any of the others.
There are perhaps three or four things you can say about democracy and education. The first is that there will be a variety of provision for learning rather than uniformity. In a democracy, we are talking about taking choice seriously. If you are involved in something, for example if you are a tax payer then you should have some involvement in the government that taxes you; you should be able to vote it in or vote it out. In education, if there are options to what you can learn, then these should be made available to you rather than imposing one set of ideas on you whether you chose them or not.
The second idea is that in a democracy you are allowed to have critical thought, rather than just believe what the rulers tell you. You are able to question what is on offer, and to question the questioners. The other systems do not encourage that. Whether it is totalitarianism, monarchy, theocracy, or bureaucracy, they do not encourage question-asking. They actually want you to believe that there is one right answer and that they, the people in charge, know it.

Then, in democratic education, you operate some form of power sharing rather than having things imposed on learners from above. You will be looking at the situation where people can choose from a catalogue of ideas, what it is they learn, and maybe choose to learn it together, or maybe choose to learn it on their own.
The fourth feature of democracy in education is that it promotes flexibility, rather than rigidity. I think one of the things we experience here in the United Kingdom is the enormous rigidity in the system, and very little flexibility, and it’s getting more rigid rather than less. Professor Bengu, Nelson Mandela’s minister of education, made this observation about democracy, which I really treasure: “Democracy means the absence of domination.” You can go on to say the maximization of consent. The schools here in the United Kingdom are riddled with domination. First you are forced to go there, then you are forced to learn the curriculum, which you have imposed on you, then you are punished if you do not learn it properly, then you are tested. The school-based learning system is riddled with domination, from start to finish, and I am sure that there are elements of this in Canada, too.
This is the whole point of democratizing education, that children are people too, that is, they deserve human rights, they deserve consultation, they deserve the dignity of doing things with consent rather than by being bullied into it. It is a radical idea, but we have to regard children as people worthy of consultation and worthy of being involved in democratic processes, and worthy of having choices in a variety of things on offer to them.
There are many other things you can say about democracy. One of the important things is that democracy can be around in a very shallow form and it can be a deeper form, and a very deep form. There are degrees of democracy, and this is the kind of thing that politicians hate us to say, but we have in Britain a very shallow form of democracy: indeed very little power sharing, and very little participation in decision-making in society in general, let alone inside institutions like schools.
If we wanted to make a deeper democracy, then we have to take power-sharing seriously, and take participation seriously, however inconvenient this is to the people who rule. Indeed, one of our politicians says that our rulers in Britain actually hate democracy, because it is so inconvenient having to consult people and involve them in decision-making. It is so much more convenient to be a dictator and to say “this is what we will do.”

This extends to parenting. One of our writers, Jan Fortune Wood, has written a book called With Consent: Parenting for All to Win (2002). It is about parenting. She is advocating that parenting should be about the whole idea of achieving consent from all concerned: the parents and the children agreeing on the rules, agreeing how they can do things together. Operating on the basis of consent and agreed rules and not on the parents saying “because I tell you so.”
Democratic institutions do exist. I think the most prominent example of a democratic institution is the public library. The point about the public library is, first of all, it is professionally organized. It is not a random collection of books and learning resources. Professionally trained people properly organize it, but the professional activity stops there, at the point of having organized the places where books and things are available in a systematic way. The librarians then say, “It is over to you now, you are the learner, here are the resources, we have organized it for you. You choose what you want to learn, when you want to learn it and take the books away, or read them here. We shall not be testing you, we are not keeping records of what you are learning and it is your private business what you learn.” This is a deep-democratic learning institution which says, “We respect you as the learner to decide what to learn, and how to learn it, and when to learn it.” The librarians do not devise a national curriculum. They actually organize a catalogue curriculum, and you make your own way through it as fast as you like, at any age, via any pathway, any time, and any place. That is the philosophy of the public library. That should be the slogan of all the education systems, in my view. The best home educators do it that way.

I am a great fan of John Holt, and met him over here in England and we became good friends. We were collaborating on a few projects before he suddenly died of cancer. I have written two books about his ideas: John Holt: Personalised Education and the Reconstruction of Schooling (1995), and John Holt: Personalised Learning Instead of ‘Uninvited Teaching’ (2002). I think John Holt was one of the people who are committed to this idea of taking personalized learning, and personalized education, and making it the cornerstone of education.
We have to point out to people that we are not talking dreamland here. We do have public libraries; they have been going for over 100 years operating on exactly this principle. We just have to adopt those principles to the other places of learning. I do think this means that we have to, eventually, recycle all our schools into better learning places. Places that are learner-friendly, places that invite people to come and learn rather than command them to come and learn.
Now that takes a big shift in thinking, but the idea that we cannot do it is nonsense when you think the public library does it without even blinking. We can do this, but it does mean that we have to abandon some of the ideas that currently operate within the system.

Recycling Schools

The Centre for Personalised Learning had an inspiring weekend on the whole theme of recycling our schools. We came up with many different ideas for increasing the variety of choices for learners. Some of these ideas are very familiar: First, we should make home-based education properly available and supported rather than a kind of odd thing that some odd people do, and it should be declared that this is a valid form of education. People can choose to do some home-based education anytime they want to. Second, home-based educators working in cooperatives are also a valid form of education. There are arrangements operating in North America called the City Colleges. They are places that do not have an actual building because they are organized on the basis that people will learn in the city and in the places for employment, in the museums, and library, and elsewhere. They will choose the kind of experiences in the city that they think are important and construct a program out of that.
Then, there was the idea of flexi-schooling, where people can spend some days in school and some days learning at home and work the two together as a program.

There is currently a program here in Britain called Notschoolnet. It is interesting because it takes people who have been rejected from the system, or excluded from it, and starts by consulting them, asking what they would like to learn. Then it says, “We are not going to call you students anymore, we are going to call you researchers. As researchers why not start researching the kinds of things you want to find out about. Now, we will help you. We have got people we can contact and put you in touch with, we have got resources that we can put over the Internet to you. Start learning the things you want to learn, in the way you want to learn them and we will help and support you.” The interesting thing is how this program turns ugly duckling into swans. It takes people who are supposedly hopeless in learning, and by using the personalized learning approach, they gradually become turned on to learning and become better and better at it. Some end up where you would not have expected, in colleges and universities later on. There again is evidence that we can do it. The Notschoolnet program is not an impossible dream: it has been going for over ten years.

The other idea I would like to see adopted, on the basis of personalised education, is an idea used in a number of USA schools called Year-round Education. Year-round Education recycles schools by being open 8am until 8pm everyday of the year, weekends as well, and offer choices about the kinds of things learners can come to learn, sign up for, and get interested in. Learners choose which they want to do. But also, say at the moment the program is not offering a certain thing, and some would like to have that, learners can ask for them to organize it. The answer has to be, “Yes, we will make it available to you if we possibly can.” When I was at school, I wanted to learn Esperanto, but Latin was imposed on me instead. Now, I would hope my choice would be made available to me.
I think when you start doing all these things together, properly supporting home-based education, supporting home-based education cooperatives, and supporting the public libraries, the City as School (again, this is not the same as City Colleges, and the only references I could find on Google were for bricks-and-mortar campuses—it’s a cool idea, but I’m pretty sure there is no real example of it yet), the Notschoolnet programs, flexi-schooling projects, and Year-round Education, you can see that this can offer the learners a whole portfolio of ideas they can build into their learning programs.

Over a period of time, say ten years, they might include quite a few of these into their own learning.
There is another idea that I would like to see, which is from Denmark, where adolescents and others are invited to spend a year in a residential community focusing on one activity. It could be dance, it could be music, it could be ecology, it could be drama, it could be languages, or it could be one or two of these.
Another idea is that a learner could choose to study their locality. Their program would be for a year studying everything in the area: the history of it, the operation of it, the businesses, the facilities, and going to places of interest and seeing what’s going on there. The project would be to get to know the locality in more breadth and depth rather than the young learners spending yet another year in the day prison.

I regard schools as day prisons, a really unimaginative and dull and anti-democratic kind of idea. As John Holt put it, school is not a good idea gone wrong, but a bad idea from the start. The best we have achieved so far is a national chain of day prisons in the name of education. Why are we fooled into thinking this is a good idea? Well, as Everett Reimer observed, some true educational experiences are bound to occur in schools, but they occur despite school rather than because of it.
School is such a convenient place for parents to leave their children and teenagers, that critically thinking about what is happening there is suppressed. As the contemporary writer John Taylor Gatto says, schools operate to dumb us down using weapons of mass instruction. I think we come back to home-based education because it does some learning very effectively, not always. Home-based education is much more part of a solution when it operates as personalized education than when it tries to ape schools. When it is practicing personalized education, it is pointing to all sorts of things about the way we can go about things: how the learners can understand learning; how they can be involved in consent-based program, an invitation-based program; how they can use a catalogue curriculum to make their way around the whole world of learning; how they can operate a learner-friendly situation as against learner-hostile situation; and how they can use purposive conversation as a tool of learning, which is a much more efficient way of learning than, say, formal instruction.

Formal instruction has an efficiency rating of between 5% and 10%. Purposive conversation, which is used a lot by home-based educators, has a 50% efficiency rating. You remember 50% on average, of what goes on in a purposive conversation, whereas you only remember 5% to 10% of a formally taught presentation.
There are many things in home-based education that are pointing the way and becoming part of the solution. Unfortunately, I do not think school is part of the solution, it is actually part of the problem. This is why we have to consider the whole idea of recycling schools into more intelligent arrangements for learning, developing a learning system fit for a democracy.

An audio version of this piece appears in podcast and can be found at: Meighan, R. (2006, December 13). Interview by B. Ekwa Ekoko [Podcast]. Edu-ocracy: Education Fit for Democracy, Radio Free School. Hamilton, Ontario.
Retrieved from http://radio4all.net/index.php/program/20894

References

Fortune-Wood, J. (2002). With consent: Parenting for all to
win. Derbyshire, UK: Education
Now Publishing Co-Operative (ceased to trade). Available at Educational Heretics Press.
Meighan. R. (1995). John Holt: Personalised education and
the reconstruction of schooling. Nottingham, UK:
Educational Heretics Press.
Meighan. R. (2002). John Holt: Personalised learning
instead of ‘uninvited teaching.’ Nottingham, UK:
Educational Heretics Press.

_______________

Roland Meighan is a writer, publisher, and consultant/researcher on learning systems, past present and future. His work on The Next Learning System has been translated into more than twelve languages. He is Director of Educational Heretics Press, and Director/Trustee of the Centre for Personalised Education Trust Ltd. Roland began researching home-based education in 1977, appearing as an expert witness in key legal hearings. He continued as a ‘double agent’ by training teachers for the school system at the same time. This gave him a unique comparative perspective on the two learning systems.
http://www.rolandmeighan.co.uk/

My crystal ball predicts the future of education

This morning, I looked at my crystal ball to see the future of education and what's to come in 2014 and on to the end of the decade. Here's a quick run down of what I saw:

The school 'monopoly' on education is crumbling and will continue to loose ground.
Education will be democratized—the internet has taken care of that.

It's all about my education. What do I want to learn? Students will demand more freedom in learning. Students are already working for more self-determined learning opportunities.
The power of educators is being transferred to the learner: Learners in control. Education will become more personalized. You can see this already with the cropping up of learning studios, centres, informal groups, informal arrangements for skills-building, training and general learning etc

People are looking for more creativity, more uniqueness, more opportunities for expression and DIY is all the rage. In the future it will be all about your skills and you ability to meet the needs of the community you serve.
 We will see 'passion-driven' learning result in heightened mastery and specialization; thriving, vibrant communities of knowledge holders, contributing towards stronger communities.


The role of teachers? Alvin Toffler says it best in an interview for Edutopia:

I think (and this is not going to sit very well with the union) that maybe teaching shouldn't be a lifetime career. Maybe it's important for teachers to quit for three or four years and go do something else and come back. They'll come back with better ideas. They'll come back with ideas about how the outside world works, in ways that would not have been available to them if they were in the classroom the whole time.

So, let's sit down as a culture, as a society, and say, "Teachers, parents, people outside, how do we completely rethink this? We're going to create a new system from ground zero, and what new ideas have you got?" And collect those new ideas. That would be a very healthy thing for the country to do.

What do you predict for the future of education?

Diverting Learning

My three year old nephew goes to afternoon 'school.' I asked him one day how he was liking it.
"I like it but my friends interrupt me when I'm doing something," he frowned. "They keep interrupting me."
His sulky comment is the crux of the problem of how we divert learning from happening. We place kids in situations where they are unable to carry out their thought processes to the higher levels.
At school, we move children from subject to subject so that they have no time to sink their teeth into material they might, given peace and quiet, gain meaning from.

But it is not only at school that learning is diverted. We all do it. Our kid is in the middle of figuring out a tune on the piano, or noticing details about the way a tool is put together, or observing tadpoles wiggling about amongst the lily pads--and we are in a hurry to refocus him on what we think needs to get done. We demand that he leaves what is interesting to him at the moment and heed our perspective and enter into our concerns (which are vastly more important of course).

We do it to others, and we do it to ourselves. We are constantly being interrupted, or interrupting ourselves be in by social media distractions, multi-tasking, our families etc.
I have to admit that the week at home when our family had no phone and internet connection was  a very restful week where I was actually able to read an entire novel, go to bed earlier and actually gather my thoughts together!

Personally, I feel increasingly like less and less of what I do is done with my complete attention. I feel divided by multiple duties and expectations (my own, or those of others).

So for the next few days, I plan to make an effort to stop interrupting myself by checking Facebook, emails etc.  I plan to spend time working on stilling my chattering mind. I plan to talk less and listen and watch more. I plan to not be so available to the world.

What about you? How have you been diverting learning from happening and how are you changing that?

"I have a box and I know what to put in it!"

So my youngest kid has been in school since September-all of five months, after a life of unschooling. The biggest lesson she's learned there? How to pass tests. What do I need to 'know' to get a 4 plus? Is this work worth a 4 plus?
This is how it goes; the teacher hands out a sheet that outlines what you need to know to if you want to get  5/10, use two words.
If you want 6/10 give more content. For an 8/10 you will need to show that there is some mental processing going on. If you want a 10/10 you need to be able to show some originality.
If you hand it in late 10% will be deducted from your marks.
My daughter describes learning in school in a nut shell with the following words: "I have a box and I know what to put in it."

What's more, it seems that cheating is the norm: "Everyone is cheating and getting As. You're a fool if you don't. You'll be left in the dust!"
How does it work? "You get your paper and you stick it in the pencil case. No one is going to look in your pencil case. These are just the subjects you don't care about."

There you have it: "These are just the subjects you don't care about," says it all. If you don't care about the subject, what's the big problem if you cheat in order to pass into the next year? That makes sense to them. It makes perfect sense to me as well. The goal is to get into the next grade with good marks whether or not you deserve them. Here's why school doesn't mean education. Nobody cares about what is being taught. Why should they? It's someone else's interest; not theirs.
-----
One evening, at the dinner table where my youngest is studying for health test, my oldest (in grade 12 and at the same school) exclaims, "Did you know that this unit hasn't been changed since 1990? Since you were two! There is absolutely no accounting for the changes in awareness around issues like sexual orientation, gender etc. There is no context for learning this information."
How is this education? Information is useless without context.

Won’t be boxed.

Humans like to put things in boxes. Nice, neat and tidy boxes- categorized, classified, organized. We do it to stuff. We do it to people. You might know the classic song ‘Little boxes’ by Malvina Reynolds.The band 'Walk off the Earth' has recently covered it. It goes like this:
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same…
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same
And there's doctors and lawyers
And business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same……..

There’s looking ‘just the same’ and then there’s fixing people for life in those boxes so that they feel suffocated by other people’s impressions and expectations of who they are.

The other day, my youngest complained about ‘being boxed’ by well intentioned family and friends.
“You’re the soccer kid; the girl with the ball,” they’ll say.
“I am more than that,” she protests. “I can do more than that. Just because I love soccer does not mean I don’t want to do anything else.”

My daughter tells me how confusing it can become because getting annoyed at said people, she wants to stop doing what she loves just to show them she likes other things too. But that would be a betrayal of  her passion and she will only end up hurting herself.

"It’s like people act surprised if you express an interest in something other than what they know about you," she complains.
It's possible that kids may become wary of pursuing something new to them because that’s “so and so's” thing. 
"Sometimes, friends feel challenged-and even threatened- if you develop an interest for something they deem is on their turf," my daughter continues.

Boxing people also means that we perceive them in a certain way and we will continue doing so even though they’ve long since changed or are trying to change. Families do this especially. As a child you might have been shy. As a grownup, you’re not any more. But family still thinks of you as shy.

As parents, I think it is worth checking in on your child every now and then to see where they are at.
Be mindful of the changes that are going on so that you can help him expand the boundaries that have been set about him.

Web Video, Crowd Accelerated Innovation and Radical Openness?

Like most people who follow TED talks, I watch them to get inspired. A presentation with TED’s head curator, Chris Anderson was right on my ‘open source’ wavelength so that I had to write about it here.

Anderson opens his presentation by saying something awesome about what large human crowds can do.

Crowds can be overwhelming (I tend to avoid crowds like the plague). Our population explosion is terrifying. But sometimes, a large human crowd is a good thing.  Innovation emerges out of groups. As social beings, we spark off each other.  

In this ‘Age of Participation’ a fascinating example of 'open source' in action is taking place. It's a worldwide phenomenon that organizations and individual people can tap in to and Anderson calls it Crowd Accelerated Innovation (CAI).

 In brief, you’ve got these ‘cycles of improvement’ driven by people watching web videos.

Web taught? Absolutely!

Be it in the evolution of dance where you have dancers challenging one another to get better, TED speakers spending more time in preparation, or even scientists publishing peer-reviewed work on line,  poetry and spoken word and on and on, people can learn by watching the best and the brightest, and get inspired to step up their game.

Step your game up alright.

Anderson notes three areas that are needed to kick start CAI:

1.       A crowd of people who share a common interest. They are creating the eco system from which innovation emerges.

2.       Light. Clear open visibility. The best of what people are capable of- that's where you will learn, get inspired and participate.

3.       Desire. Without it innovation is impossible.

So on the web, all these three elements are connected! "The crowd shines a light on them and fuels the desire." Anderson describes this as a self-fueling cycle of learning. The internet makes it easy to find the best stuff.  You can watch repeatedly and gain knowledge and skill.

This possibility of a new type of global recognition is driving huge amounts of effort. Because you can see the best, everyone can learn.

Anderson points out that this is a model any organization could use to nurture its own cycle of crowd accelerated innovation: “Invite the crowd, let in the light, dial up the desire.”

 But there is a catch. To tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace what has come to be known as ‘radical openness.’

What does that mean?  It means you have to share. You have to give. You have to let people see your deepest self.

When TED started opening up their talks to the world, billions of people started spreading the word. The idea of radical openness works for TED. And it can work for you.

It works so well this web video learning because our brains are uniquely wired to decode meaning through face to face. As Anderson says, “It’s an ancient art form gone global."

What does that mean for global education you ask? Chris Anderson asks, “Is it possible to imagine a similar situation? Does it have to be this top down painful process?

Chris Anderson replies, “Why not a self fuelling cycle in which we all can participate? Schools can't be silos we can't stop learning at 21.” 

 “For the first time in human history, talented students don't have to have their potential and their dreams written out of history by lousy teachers. They can sit two feet in front of the world's finest.”

We know it. The world's universities are opening up their curricula. Self-directed and passion-lead learning has never been easier to do. People are finding new ways to learn and to share data and knowledge. Our future is "many to many not one to many."

There’s a whole lot more that Anderson says but for this post lets end with this:

What if the crowd could be net contributors as opposed to net plunderers. Who is the teacher? You're the teacher. You're part of the crowd that maybe about to launch the bigger learning cycle in human history – a cycle capable of carrying all of us to a smarter, wiser more beautiful place. 

Yes!

What you want to know.

'If you meet a scientist, don't ask her what she knows, ask her what she wants to know. It's a much better conversation- for both of you.'

That's the concluding sentence to Stuart Firestein's 'Forum' piece, in Scientific American (April 2012). 

In his piece entitled 'What Science Wants to Know,' Firestein suggests that 'an impenetrable mountain of facts can obscure the deeper questions."

Welcome to a too familiar world- the world of 'Compulsory Schooling.' 

In school, you will certainly cover topics, you with undoubtedly gather facts (how many your remember is another issue all together). The truest fact though, is that you will not have the opportunity to ask those deep questions. Too busy going after more facts for that.

The other day, my daughter opened up a new notebook  purchased at the Dollar Store. She laughed. "It's the American schedule on the inside. They have 8 periods a day."

I sighed because again and again, the folly of dividing learning into compartments that you cover over the course of the day seems so unbelievably inefficient and brain numbing to me.

Now it's French. 30 minutes later, now it's Math. Now it's Art. Now it's Sociology. 

The mind being forced to switch gears at the sound of a buzzer is so radically in opposition to the the way we actually learn. How much depth of learning can actually happen?

Firestein agrees, "You have to know a lot to be a scientist." But that's not enough. "Knowing  a lot is not what makes a scientist. What makes a scientist is ignorance," he believes.

That's right. Ignorance. 

He says, "That might sound ridiculous, but for scientists the facts are just a starting place." 

Every new scientific discovery raise new questions, so ignorance will always grow faster than knowledge. Firestein, observes that one crucial outcome of scientific knowledge is to generate new and better ways of being ignorant: "not the kind of ignorance that is associated with a lack of curiosity or education but rather a cultivated, high-quality ignorance."

Firestein continues, "If scientists would talk about the questions rather than boring your eyes out of their sockets with reams of jargon, and if the media reported not only on new discoveries but the questions they answered and the new puzzles they created, and if education stopped trafficking in facts that are already available on Wikipedia-then we might find a public once again engaged in the adventure that has been going on for the past 15 generations."

Natural learning and unschooling  is one way to keep the asking of deep questions at the fore of education.

Begin with questions. Begin with interests and passions. Facts do follow-appropriately, necessarily, welcomely.

Success tips: 6 habits for truly memorable education.

Success tips: 6 habits for truly memorable education (based on the article ‘Success tips: 6 habits of truly memorable people,’ by Jeff Haden).

I am going to explain how you can make education a memorable affair based on tips from a rather inane article I just read on how you can make yourself a memorable person. I had to question though, why anyone would seek to make themselves memorable. It seems to me that being memorable is an outcome of following where your passions and interests lead and these then having an impact on the world around you- rather than consciously setting out to merely

‘be memorable.’

Anyway, criticism aside, let’s begin.

1. Don’t see. Do.

If you are familiar with natural learning and unschooling, you will recognize immediately in this idea that ‘doing’ is the biggest part of self-directed learning.

For a memorable education, it’s about gaining experiences, developing skills, pursuing your deepest passions. So of course you are going to be doing. It is not about being passive; lamely swallowing what is dished out for you like a receptor to fill. No. It’s about action;-having agency over what you want to learn and when you want to learn it.

Author, former teacher and natural learning advocate, John Taylor Gatto says it best: “You don’t get an education. You TAKE and education.”

2.  Do something unusual.

Here’s a creed to go by for memorable education: ‘Create the extraordinary,’ or ‘Embrace the curious and the strange.’ ‘Unusual’ is thought provoking and stimulating. ‘Unusual’ is welcomed and celebrated. We aim to be intrigued.

3. Embark on a worthless mission.

While the writer recommends doing something crazy for the heck of it and see where it leads, just for fun, I want to say something about ‘worthless.’ Fun is not worthless. Fun is integral to being human and is necessary and valuable. ­Also, when ‘nothing’ is going on, often it could be a time where kids and grownups alike are actually emptying themselves of the ‘every day’ routine of life. What’s more, fun opens up all sorts of opportunities leading to life-long passions that who knows, might end up as an occupation.

4. Embrace a cause.

When you are following your heart, bumping up against like minded people pursuing similar interests is inevitable. Your education is immediately and effortlessly enhanced as you are doing ­­­­something that’s meaningful to you; within the company of collaborators and supporters.  

5. Let other people spread the word.

About how great you are, as the article suggests? Nah. Someone said it somewhere, “The more you know, the less you show.”What really happens is that when you are self-directed and pursuing your education through your interests, opportunity knocks, doors open, the universe aids you along.

6. Get over yourself.

This is my favourite. We are all learners, every single one of us. When you’re pursuing a memorable education, that fact is in your face. You don’t forget it. You’re not ‘done learning’ because you’re not in school, or because it’s summer time. You’re not going to stop learning because you’re too old. You ‘get over yourself’ means you don’t put limitations on yourself and you learn from everyone around you. You dare to try new things and new ideas.You contribute. And you nurture the ability to laugh at your mistakes and failures, and not let fear of ridicule stand in your way of learning and leading a good life.

She Uses School (My daughter, the Iconoclast).

Photo by Maddie 

While school uses most people (wasting their time with things they don't care about), my daughter uses school.
Let me explain. To my daughter, the school is a stage; an arena in which her drive to challenge the status quo plays out. Literally, she goes to school in order to test her ideas. She goes to school to pit her thoughts  against the 'the unexamined norm.'
In truth, she is the perfect student; any teacher should love such a student in their midst to stimulate discussion and challenge established traditions- and they do until it goes against their own believes.
At which point she is a rebel rouser. A nuisance. "Why doesn't she shut up already?" some think and many students say.
Who really wants an iconoclastic, sharp-minded 16 year old laying out cherished believes over the coal rack?
Frankly, it's uncomfortable.

She argues, judges, defends. A topic is presented; she -always the justice seeker- takes it to it's logical conclusion.
She brings up prickly or controversial issues- prostitution rights, gay rights, democratic process and the lack of it in obvious places.
Even what she wears, how she dresses is an exploratory act, or an act to make a statement on an issue. Grade 9 she was a boy. Grade 10 she painted her face- and I mean painted;-chess boards, dramatic masks, polka dots. Grade 11 she wears cabaret style dresses and lipstick.
She goes to school to create. She uses what is at her disposal to it's limits- video camera, editing equipment, paints, books. She has a vision- it might spark from her own take on what she is experiencing or reading, it might be introduced by the school or by the teacher. It might be an injustice she is experiencing (like when the school took the money she and her Anime Club fundraised for and withheld it because it was for an event that was not school sanctioned).
The classroom becomes a training field for the world of human rights activism, sometimes even a battle ground!
Often, she expands her education and knowledge of the world through reading news or listening to music on her ipod if the lesson is dull.
Thankfully she has co-op experience which brings her out of the silo that is school and into the world where she can bounce of her ideas within the adult world.
Her co-ops are both at newspapers and she gets the chance to write articles for the papers and interview people.
While she it is very intense being around my daughter because she is so intense as a person,she certainly forces people to question their ideals; "ideas not ideals" is a favorite saying of hers.
She has found a way to make school serve her purpose -which I think is a good thing. But I wonder how long will that last?

Crazy things I've heard recently about education

I am starting to collect startling things I hear about the way people think when it comes to learning and education. Here are two examples of that..weirdness, for lack of a polite word.

"I am a strong believer in kids getting their education first..before pursuing their acting career."

This is an acting instructor who said this to me when I was searching for opportunities for my daughter to act. It's what she wants to do with all her heart and is ready to give it her all.
What did this instructor mean? She meant that pursuing acting- which includes reading works of drama and the historical context that they are set in, watching and critiquing films, learning communication and analytical skills, learning to speak publicly, and emote and convey feelings, is NOT education?

I think she equates receiving that piece of paper from a high school showing that you attended the school almost every day for 4 years straight, with getting you've got your education. Or did she mean pursue acting only once you've got your university or college degree? How 'educated' must you be before you can pursue your passion?

The other crazy thing I heard recently is this:

I don't want him to stay out of school. He might find something he is really interested in and not want to go back!!"

This was a parent saying this about his son who just finished high school and wants to do something else before spending another 2 to 4 years in an institution. He meant he might discover a passion- something that he might really get into and love and enjoy and that will consume his life because it thrills him so much. He might even make a living out of it. He might even help others through this interest. But -no. Oh no. He won't be 'educated.'

Must we 'educate?'

"I am coming closer to a place where I can see how to lead my kids in to being interested, instead of forcing them to work."

I took this quote from a post, written by somebody on a list I'm on.

On the surface it seems great. You want them to want to learn of course. And yet, the idea of trying to 'lead' your kids into what you think they should be interested in is some what manipulative.

How about this one;
"I'm taking violin lessons so that I can be a good role model for them."

Let's look at it closer. You're doing this so that you can be a good role model? Something inauthentic about this. Kids smell inauthenticity and don't like it.

What if, instead you did a thing for the love of that thing; or you did it because you are duty bound, or because you have to? By this I mean what if your reasons for doing a thing were to be transparent?

I can't help thinking it is better to be honest with why we are doing what we are doing rather than doing something to trick our kids into doing what we want them to.

When you get to the root of the word, etymologically the word education contains educare (Latin) "bring up", which is related to educere "bring out", "bring forth what is within", "bring out potential" and ducere, "to lead." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education).

It's the 'bringing out' that interests me. Something is already present; we help the child/youth 'bring forth what is within.'

That's why, more and more, I feel uneasy about about attempting to mold a person. Maybe it isn't a bad idea to suggest that a person should be in charge of educating him or herself.
The 'material' for education is abundant. It is every where. Shouldn't it be enough to expose kids to what's out there and then follow their lead?

We need role models and leaders; of course we do. We need teachers. But I sense, somewhere in my minimal understanding of things, that a true teacher does not set out to teach. A true teacher acts first. His actions teach.
Maybe what is needed is more people who are available to show their skills and share their knowledge and what they do.

Take Back the Night Hamilton

"Can we go to 'Take Back the Night?' Please?" asks my daughter getting off the phone with her dad whose just announced the event's taking place this evening. I'm tired and not wanting to go but it's important to her,so we go. And I'm glad we do.

The energy is high; women of all ages wave their arms, singing in preparation for the march. Take back the night. There is excitement in the air as we begin walking down Main Street. Women we pass smile and wave. We are sensitive to the male on-lookers- be they honking their support from out of car windows or drumming their fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. Some stand by the side of the road in groups; small groups of men looking humbled and subdued-maybe considering the struggle women still have,maybe reflecting for a moment on the respect they deserve. We hope. Others clap with us, cheer loudly. Larger groups of males take photos of the parade of women going by-they are enjoying the free entertainment.

We continue up the road through intersections manned by motorcycle police who with a command of their hand wave us through;impersonal, burly men wearing tall,black leather boots stopping traffic, controlling the situation. I pause to consider the strange juxtaposition of this maleness in a sea of femaleness.
We go by a woman wearing a scarf around her head and face; she encourages a little boy in her arms to clap with us. We pass women at a bar who stand up and raise their beer glasses to us.
We pause to watch a group of young males breaking dancing, hip hopping, back flipping , somersaulting at the side of the road, their muscles strong and popping, slim, confident and agile; beautiful in their movements. We see all this as we sing and hold our banners high; educating our husbands and lovers, our fathers, our sons. Behind me a male (where did he come from?) begins the chant, "No means no," and a few people take it up but it dies away almost immediately. Who wants to chant when you can sing and dance and laugh? We are here to celebrate ourselves and our presence tonight is a testimony to the strength and joy that women are.

chomsky on role of education

Community vs Networks

John Taylor Gatto's We need less school not more:Families, Communities, Networks and the Proposed Enlargement of Schooling (1991) is a very useful read because he helps people understand the difference between networks and communities.

"Net works-even good ones take their vitality from communities and families," he says.
"What is gained from consulting a specialist and surrendering all judgment is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss of a piece of your volition."

Compulsory schools masquerade as communities; they are in fact networks.

"Networks--don't need or want the whole person, but only a narrow piece of him; if you function in a network it asks you to suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest-part, a highly unnatural act though one you can get used to doing.

It's this fragmentation of the whole person that hurts communities-diminishing humanity-"networks, unlike communities, have a very narrow way of allowing people to associate..."

Gatto continues, "Networks like schools are not communities in the same way that school training is not education. By preempting 50 percent of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we grade vegetables- and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways- network schools steal the vitality of communities and replace it with an ugly piece of mechanism."

"Nobody survives these places with his humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, and not parents."

Community on the other hand is a place "that faces people at each other over time in all their human variety, good parts, bad parts, and all the rest. Such places promote the highest quality of life possible, lives of engagement and participation. This happens in unexpected ways but it never happens when you've spent more than a decade listening to other people talk-and trying to do what they tell you to do, trying to please them after the fashion of schools."

It's a pretty long address but worth continuing;

"I belong to networks myself," Gatto continues, "but the only ones I consider completely safe are the ones that reject their communitarian facade, acknowledge their limits, and concentrate solely on helping me do a specific and necessary task. But a vampire network like a school, which tears off chunks of time and energy needed for building community and family- and always asks for more- needs to have a stake driven through it's heart and nailed into it's coffin. The feeding frenzy of formal schooling has already wounded us seriously in our ability to form families and communities by bleeding away time we need with our children and our children need with us. That's why I say we need less school, not more."


If the goosebumps are not sprouting on your arms by now, I don't know if they ever will.

Knowing is the Natural State of Being

"The natural state of being is to be creative. In the creative state we are authentic and original.
To be authentic and original means to be in touch with the source knowledge, to be true to our nature, to be discovering all the time. Our knowledge comes from our first hand experience. Our senses are our tools that connect us to the nature outside as well as our inner nature."

Jinan

www.re-cognition.org