Freelearning

I Found My Community

As the daffodils came out this spring, so did the neighbors.  We live on an urban block in a University area.  Many of us have replaced all or part of our front yard lawns with flower and/or vegetable beds.  We've been working on our gardens after hours, early in the morning, and on weekends--when it's not raining.  And we've been crossing the street to chat.  After the isolation of winter when we wave briefly as we dig our cars out of the snow in the morning, spring is a time of greeting and community.  (I live in a part of the country (USA) that has been described as nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding.)

I've been in this neighborhood for six years and I recently realized I know who lives in every house but two.  Some of the neighbors use their porches every day in summer.  Others prefer the back.  As I think about it, the porches that face east in the evening are used and those that face west are not--that's reasonable.  My across-the-street neighbor who faces east doesn't have a porch.  So she put two Adirondack chairs in her front yard.  I felt her action pull me toward the front of my house in the morning before the hot sun arrives.

Our block is already a community.  A recent confrontation between an outsider and a babysitter who was unable to calm a bereft child, led to neighbors in action.  Some neighbors guided the interloper away from the house, others comforted the sitter and the child.  All the neighbors had heard the child's cries and read them as normal tiredness and upset for this child.  No one was concerned that the child was being mis-treated.  We rallied round the girl and the child.  This was followed by planning for a block party.

I'm inspired by the reality of community in which I find myself.  I've always wanted to live with a sense of community without living communally.  And I discover that I am.

Is Shopping the Answer?

This week we were told that consumer spending had only risen by .1% in the past month, a very low rate compared to previous months.  The implication seems to be that the economy will fall apart because we are buying less.  After 9/11 the President told us to be patriotic and go shopping.  Do we want to live in a world in which our welfare as a nation  continues to be built on "stuff"?

Many elders find themselves wanting to pare down their belongings and to simplify.  I imagine a world in which we share the things we seldom or never use.  Art supplies that pile up, coats and sweaters we don't wear, vases we haven't used in years, desktop sorters of three kinds, and sets of plates or bowls that are tucked away and never used.  This list reveals some of my stored unnecessaries.  With passing things around, could we have more people have the things they want or need and not have lots and lots to store?

Nobel prize winner Yunus has a 2008 book out on ending  world poverty.  He was interviewed on NPR and you can find an introduction to his thoughts here.  He worked with Danone (Dannon in US) to create a social business, i.e., a business designed to make the world a better place in which investors can get their money back over time but do not make any interest.  Profits are reinvested in the company.  This approach to business would certainly avoid the mess the US economy has gotten into by having workers that push financial papers back and forth between institutions making a profit but not creating value.  What if we were instead using a significant portion of our money to make the world a better place.  Yunus provides one vision of a way forward.

Today I received a link to a YouTube video from Barack Obama's campaign about students in the South Bronx learning about politics and coming to see themselves as able to do things -- "Yes We Can."  It shows a teacher who has used Barack's speech on getting beyond race to improve discussion and understanding in his classroom.  The enthusiasm of these students brought tears to my eyes.

What institutional changes will help us get out of potentially catastrophic financial woes?  What will open us to making personal commitments that will create new conditions going forward?  What is it about this teachers way of educating that results in having excited and involved students?

The Spring Pond

Tryangulation has a post today about the freedom for children to get dirty.  In response, I want to share my recent piece on my childhood play in the mud.

The Pond

Today's Saturday.  The sun is out.  I'm in second grade.  I have on my old clothes.  It rained Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday this week.  It rained lots last week, too.  The path from our front yard to the pond is squishy.  I can see the spot where there aren't any wheels of old Queen Anne's lace.   That's where the pond is.  It always dries up by the end of the summer and then comes back in the spring. 

Last year I caught pollywogs in the pond.  Mommy gave me a Mason jar to put them in.   I watched their legs grow and their tails get smaller.  Every day I'd check to see if they looked different.  I brought them back to the pond when their legs got big.  Frogs can't live in a jar with just water and no rocks.  They'd drown.  And besides we couldn't have them jumping around in my room.

I see the pond.  Crayfish have built little clay towers.  It looks like somebody used a cake decorating tube to squeeze ruffles of mud around their holes.   The holes are big enough for a snake to crawl in. I've never seen any snakes, so far.

Over there it looks like maybe there was a building.  It's a pile of melted clay bricks.  Some come together to make a corner .  The whole mess is the color of the bottom of the pond.

I'm looking for pollywogs. 

There are tiny fish swimming in a group.  They are kind of silvery and many colored like the inside of a shell.  I don't think they're tadpoles. Tadpoles don't turn up in groups.  I see a cloud of dust in the water.  There's a crayfish.  I poke a stick in front of it to see if it will grab on.  It just swims around it. 

A pollywog is near the edge of the shallow water.  I reach around behind me to get my empty jar.  I don't want to scare it away.  As I scoop up the water, the pollywog scoots away.  I try not to get my feet wet but I want to see where it went.  Water is starting to leak in through the sides of my sneakers.  I squat down closer to the water being careful not to get all wet.  I see another pollywog with tiny knobs where its feet will be.  I quickly scoop my jar through the water.  At the last minute, the pollywog swims out of the jar. When the water clears, I watch for another pollywag. 

After two minutes, another tadpole swims near me.  I scoop with the jar and as soon as it's inside, I put my other hand over the top.  I feel the tadpole bumping into  my fingers.   I keep my hand tightly over the jar until it is out of the water.  I look.  There is nothing in the jar.

My hands are cold and my feet are cold.  Does that slimy line mean there is  a snake?  I'll come back tomorrow and bring something bigger to put over the top of the jar.

I take off my shoes outside.  .  Mommy is in the kitchen making cookies.

“What's that pile of mud that looks like bricks next to the pond?”

“That was supposed to be a building but it washed away” Mommy says.

“Why did it wash away?”

“The blocks were made with clay from the pond and grass, she said.  “They were trying to use local materials from the landscape.  But it wasn't practical.”

I thought about that.  “Why would somebody try to do that?”

“Do you know who Frank Lloyd Wright is?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say.  “Daddy has pictures of his houses.”

“It was his idea to use the local clay.  I guess nobody told him how much it rains here,”  she adds.  “Help me roll the balls for these snickerdoodles,” she says.  “Wash your hands first.”

"Okay."

What I've Learned about Love

I enjoy reading books that talk about something I am experiencing.  They help me find words to understand my experience and often point me to insights I have not yet gained.  Reading bell hooks' Communion: the female search for love, 2002 has shaped my thinking about my relationship. 

By hook's definition, E and I have a love relationship.  E is one of the new men she describes who is in many ways freed from patriarchy.  He is able to relate to me in mutual sharing ways.  He is pleased, and surprised, when I don't bring power issues into the bedroom.  He listens to my doubts about my commitment to him without getting reactive.  He rejoices in my friendships with others.  He told me early on that he didn't fit the typical male stereotype mold.  I didn't believe him.  I was wrong.

Because E is different, I have to be different from what I learned in patriarchy.  It takes me a long time to trust that I can ask for what I want.  He used to thank me for telling him things I assumed would be hard for him to hear.  That helped to build my confidence.  I discover that when he is not in patriarchal thinking, I have to find new ways to respond.  I've grown from being afraid of being subordinated to him to enjoying him as a separate person.  bell hooks describes these challenges women face when they enter into relationships with new men.

 

E. and I have been together for almost 9 years.   I found him when I was searching for love.  I had analyzed my previous romantic relationships -- what I thought I was getting and what I actually got.  Then it was time to list what I wanted in a man.  I had 17 qualities.  E.  had all but one.

The first time we got together alone, E "didn't touch my hair".  His hand was so close to my head that it felt like the most gentle of touches.  We talked a lot.  He called me after he got home.  "I didn't mean to cut you off when you started to talk about intimacy.  I got scared.  I want to learn how to be intimate, too."

That's when I knew this man  was special.   He initiated talk about how things were going between us.  We were friends for almost six months before we changed our relationship.  Since the beginning we have each grown and changed.  Our connection is so strong that when one of us changes the other one is changing, too.  We aren't necessarily sorting things out on the same issues, but the growth we share enriches our love.

We live in two different towns.  We spend 3-4 days a week together and the other days apart.  E has jobs in both places.  In the past, I felt there was something wrong with us because we couldn't live in the same house.  Now I feel grateful that we are both aware of what we need and confident in our love for each other.  We have created what works very well for us.  We enjoy the coming together and the separation.  This arrangement does not fit into the arms of patriarchy.  bell hooks has helped me see that my negative judgment of what we've created is a remnant of what I learned as a child.  I want to leave that behind.

I try to understand why academe is so slow to adopt new approaches to education.  I recently helped a friend understand how to write a literature review.  He is in a graduate program and this is a completely knew activity for him.  I was able to give feedback that helped him shape his reading into a paper.  However, I found I needed to stop because my role became one of telling him what he couldn't do because it was not the  traditional approach.  He had integrated large amounts of information.  But he had mixed popular writing with academic, expansive thought papers with academic research approaches.  I thoroughly enjoyed talking with him about the subject (a school garden as a way to help inner city children learn more about their local ecology).  He is insightful and his work is exciting.  In trying to help, I became the enforcer of all the craziness of academic institutions.

March 14 bgblogging describes how students can learn breadth and depth from using the internet.  I particularly like her quote, " students come to see that in addition to the delights of grazing the possible, we can use the connective, collaborative practices of the Web to dig far more deeply into subject matter. . . ."    Instead of forcing students into preconceived molds she sees the opportunities in encouraging students to use the web to learn and participate widely.  At the same time she creates spaces and tasks for her students to use to work together, learning from the common focus on a task or an approach to a task while bringing a lot of individuality to it.  In her classes students cannot fail to participate.  The activities are designed to bring students to the heart of who they are and what they want to do. 

Why does academe favor limiting what students can and should read?  Why not evaluate what students produce, how well they are able to integrate and articulate their ideas.  Barbara Ganley has her students work from their experience and from reading other authors to see how those authors work as writers.  She encourages her students to respond to the writing around them.  No wrong answers.  When I took intro. to literature in college, our exams were frequently multiple choice.  That approach is predicated on there being right and wrong answers. 

I think the reaction against wikipedia is similarly based on a focus on right and wrong answers.  What if, instead of mocking students for using it, faculty had students participate in creating it.  Students could check on the accuracy of a topic of interest to them and join in changing it.  Concepts of a huge wiki created by the public, open source software, and creative commons licenses are difficult for many people to understand or accept. 

What about our culture needs to change for higher education to be more open to learning over regulation of knowledge?

Never too Late

My blog has lain dormant for almost four months.  Many of my entries have been about experiments in education.  They provide a context for my writing.  I think I am still looking for the kind of school I wish I had been able to attend.

I have spent the last three months working on a memoir of growing up in Michigan -- urban and rural, isolated and loved, breathing in nature and fearing industries.  I've captured each memory in a short, short story.  I've created 12-15 so far.  This focused, backward looking writing has overtaken my earlier experiment with a blog.

Now I'm ready to start up my blog again.  Barbara Ganley writes about her work with students at http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs/ganley/bgblogging/ .  She encourages the students she works with to blog their learning.  I aspire to blog my learning across disciplines, genres, interests, and roles I hold.  When I started my blog last summer, I read that it was important to pick a topic and to stick with it.  I tried to do that and found myself limited.  What I want to do is weave my personal/intellectual adventure into a distinctive fabric that reflects who I am.  I guess it is my person that will be the common thread.

I take out books from the library on a range of subjects each time I go.   Politics, religion, The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud (fiction), visions for the economic future of this country, a memoir of Hilary Clinton,  a biography of David Mamet, how to begin to do watercolors,  politics, and religion.  I use Amazon.com to read reviews of books if I want to get the gist quickly; sometimes I read the professional reviews but more often I find the users'  comments more  helpful.

I am throwing off the strictures I put on myself about keeping to one topic and having several hyperlinks in each post and doing everything "right" (when I don't even know how to get the computer to do what I want it to half the time).  I'm going to write for myself, in public, for a while and see what develops.

Traditional Language and Advanced Technology

Seminole elders used money from their casinos to set up a school for their children that uses advanced technology and teaches the traditional ways.

Students at the school, which opened in August and cost $10 million to build, are learning how to navigate the 21st century while still retaining their culture. So in one classroom, children learn language arts -- by podcast. Down the hall, others recite words in Creek, the Seminoles' language. Outside, just beyond the school's fence, cattle graze.

Children use laptop computers and ipods.  They have classes in beading and other crafts.

Classes are small and the children enjoy learning.  They teach their parents the Seminole language and ask their grandparents for help with pronunciation. This is an experiment to see whether traditional ways and modern technology can both exist in a culture.

I wonder whether internet contact with other original peoples would increase the value students place on their language and culture.  Would interest from students in another part of the US who are curious about the Seminole students' way of life lead to mutual respect for native ways?

Successful Inner City School

Edutopia reports on an inner city school in Baltimore that is successfully meeting the needs of its students.  Out of 570 who have ever attended the Baltimore Talent Development High School , only 11 have dropped out.

An HBO series called The Wire has reported on the problems in city schools.  In its fourth season it tells the true story of a successful school.

. . . Located in the same West Baltimore neighborhood as the fictional school in The Wire, one small learning environment, Baltimore Talent Development High School, is doing this imagining in real life.

"The premise of the model is double dosing," says Robinson. Citing academic failure as the most significant reason for dropouts, he explains that Baltimore Talent students double up on classes in key content areas, taking the equivalent of two English courses and math classes in their ninth-grade year, with skill-building courses in the first semester. Because most Baltimore Talent students come in below grade level, this schedule "better prepares them to succeed and pass and move on to tenth grade," explains Robinson.

The principal knows every student by name and interacts with them lightly as he walks through the halls.  Adults separate the rules of the street, which they do not try to tell students how to deal with, and the rules in school that are to be respected.  University and community members meet with students to review their report cards and make plans for improvement.  Successes large and small are celebrated.

This school is more traditional than many I have reported on here.  It has the advantage of showing how schools might become more successful working within the school environment.  This example does not require a revolution.  It does show respect for students and a sincere desire to see them succeed, meeting them where they are.  Though it is not an example of "free learning", I suspect that the students graduate with confidence in their ability to learn.  Future lifelong learners.

Learning Centres Replace High Schools

No more school as council opens 'learning centres' Independent, The (London) - Find Articles.

The style of learning will be completely different. The new centres will open from 7am until 10pm in both term-time and what used to be known as the school holidays. At weekends, they will open from 9am to 8pm. Youngsters will not be taught in formal classes, nor will they stick to a rigid timetable; instead they will work online at their own speeds on programmes that are tailor-made to match their interests.

A school district in England, where many students had low test scores, has decided to develop an unorthodox approach to "school."  They are in the process of transitioning their high schools to a learning centers approach. 

Learning From Pre-scientific Cultures

In the push to distribute a laptop to each child in the world, we are risking the destruction or extinction of valuable knowledge.  Native American children were found to know nothing of their natural environment because the only knowledge they thought was valuable was what was found in books.  They had not learned from their grandparents because they had come to value books to the exclusion of oral history.

If children come to see (parts) of the internet as a higher source of knowledge than information passed down orally, then local knowledge about ways of growing food on nearby land will be lost.  Knowledge of medicinal plants may no longer be available.

The scientific approach looks for what is verifiable and can be observed over time.  Science that is most revered is that which can be generalized the farthest.  Laws of physics are taken to be universal.  I believe that attention to knowledge at the abstract level to the exclusion of location-specific knowledge will lead to the loss of valuable information.