Quick Hit: Adventures in Free Schooling

Hey all, I’ve started a new project called Adventures in Free Schooling. Check it out.

Don’t worry, I’ll still post here all the time! In fact, I’ve got two posts planned for this week.

-Brian

The Young and the Leftless

This is a document written by a few young members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. I don’t really have many thoughts on the document, other than that I think it’s pretty sound all in all. I don’t know that much about Freedom Road, to be honest, since they’re primarily based on the West Coast. But they seem pretty decent for considering themselves inheritor’s of Maoism – looks like they picked most of the right ideas to hold onto and most of the right ones to get rid of. It definitely has a good take on the status on the Left in the U.S., especially from the perspective of the generation born right around when the Soviet Union “collapsed”. We never knew orthodox Marxism, but we knew that we are the inheritors of it and that there was something about it that rubbed us the wrong way. I’d be curious to hear other people’s thoughts though. (Please note: I had no part in writing what is posted below.)

Read the original document on Freedom Road’s website.

The following letter, written by young members of FRSO/OSCL, is an attempt to bridge the generation gap on the question of organization. In our years of work in mass movements and Left organizations, we have found that the questions, and the challenges, posed by young people are quite different from those of our movement elders. This letter is written as a supplement to Which Way Is Left? in the hopes that it will encourage more young people to participate in the conversation on organization and what we need to build a revolutionary movement. Please read it, distribute it, and let us know what you think of it by leaving a comment on our blog.
A Struggle Paper. That’s what our elders in the movement would have called what you are about to read. But not a lot of young folks use the words “Struggle Paper,” so consider this a love letter. It’s a poignant prod at the sectarians and a come hither nod at the independents. It’s a potluck discussion and a midnight session, and if we could play something hot in the background while you read this, we would. It’s a challenge, because we love you, to think about what it’s going to take to actually start building a revolutionary movement in the belly of the baddest beast this Earth has seen. We’ve got some thoughts about ORGANIZATION, and we want to know what y’all think.

A Guide For Developing, Starting, Or Learning About Free Schools

This was originally written as a proposal for a free school in our surrounding area, but we thought it could also serve as a helpful outline or guide to how free schools function. Obviously, this is not a strict rule book – and not all free schools operate like this. Think of this as more of a guide for free schools as we see them.

Trying to define how a certain free s-chool would operate before it starts is a little difficult, because by its nature a free s-chool is based off of the needs and wants of the community and individuals that comprise it. However, below is a rough sketch of how a free s-chool operates differently than a S-chool,* and then some of the basic principles that have encompassed free s-chools in our experience.

*John Holt defined a “S-chool” (big S) as a place where learning is done onto a student and a “s-chool” (little s) where individuals do learning for themselves.

Some Main Differences Between Free s-chools and S-chools

1) Your typical American S-chool is not a place of democratic learning. Almost all decisions, from finances to who teaches what, are made from the top down – an elite (mostly unelected) few decide the vast majority of things for everyone “under them.” Free s-chools are generally, at the very least, democratic. How this is accomplished varies. On occasions, free s-chool participants will elect members to accomplish or head up different tasks (organizing, outreach, financing, etc.). Other times, most things are decided in a “general assembly” format. Some free s-chools operate as collectives or cooperatives. Of course, these different methods are sometimes mixed and matched.

2) S-chools are compulsory (at least until the age of 16), and almost all S-chools give out rewards and punishments. This is a method of control over the learners. Free s-chools do not attempt to coerce, bribe, or force their participants to attend or learn. They are places of voluntary association and effort, where learning is not driven by force or rewards – but by the learners’ desires and wants.

Wikipedia History Wars

So, the idea of Wikipedia is pretty amazing. Frankly, I think it’s one of the best unschooling tools there is. I’m fairly sure Ivan Illich (who wrote the infamous Deschooling Society) would have approved. Illich, long before the time of the internet, called for “networks” to be made up of unschoolers, deschoolers, homeschoolers, and etc. These networks would be large contact books, file cabinets, written essays, learning tools, and so on composed by and for radical learners, teachers, and anyone else who wanted access to them. So basically, this was the internet – just without the internet part. John Holt (way before the internet as well) also called for free, accessible, learning tools that would help individuals explore, satisfy, and expand upon their curiosity. Wikipedia does all of these things, and additionally, it’s a tool that is mostly controlled by the learners. There is very little hierarchy in the world of Wikipedia when it comes to authoring and sharing information, and all knowledge is equally accessible to all peoples. At any moment when the learner has access to a computer, the internet, and a question – they can easily seek out an answer. On top of that, if they want, they can contribute to, change, or challenge the information. Most of the time, they are directly linked with the information they are learning. Wikipedia’s free, vast, and learner-controlled encyclopedia is only continuing to expand.

Unfortunately, that is all contrasted by one major problem: Wikipedia’s staunch dedication to “neutrality.”

Links for May 27, 2008

• The Cult of Veganism; or, Sit Down & Shut Up, Little Brown Girl – from the blog Vegans of Color

The essence of this comment is that those of us concerned with anything else rather than the suffering of non-human animals are divisive, are weakening the vegan cause, are traitors. And we should just stop complaining & hew to the vegan party line… Instead of critiquing white male privilege within vegan circles, let’s go do some “real good,” right? Because heaven knows opposing racism & sexism, especially if we — gasp — critique other vegans, is a time-waster, a distraction from the REAL issues… We’re being asked to identify as vegans over any other aspect of our identities & our lives. Again, the parallels with the feminist movement are just astounding. Women of color get punished for speaking up about racism in feminism. Vegans of color questioning whitecentric vegans also are penalized for such heretic thoughts…

• The Promised Land? – Conflict – 12 May 08 – Part 1. * The Promised Land? – Conflict – 12 May 08 – Part 2. * These are first two of ten minute videos from Al Jazeera about the founding of Israel, the Palestinian Nakba (translated to “The Great Catastrophe”), and the origins of the conflict. * Main Al Jazeera English YouTube page. They post almost all of their videos on this site.

• A really good interview with Howard Zinn from Counterpunch.

Enjoy. – Brian

A Proposal For a New History

“In [the student] comes, this curious, patient, determined, energetic, skillful learner. We sit [the child] down at a desk, and what do we teach [the student]? Many things. First, that learning is separate from living. ‘You come to school to learn,’ we say, as if the child hadn’t been learning before, as if learning were out there and learning in here and there were no connection between the two. Secondly, that [the child] cannot be trusted to learn and is no good at it… In short, [the student] comes to feel that learning is a passive process, something that someone else does to you, instead of something you do for yourself.”

-John Holt, The Underachieving School

Open Source Society

Hey all, on our downtime, I figured I would try to keep stuff going. Here’s a quick post about another website/blog that you should check out: the Open Source Society.

Apology

Hey all (if there are any readers left!),

Sorry about the serious lack of posting as of late. Jay and I (Brian) have been extremely busy with other things and have had to neglect certain aspects of our lives. This blog was one of those things that had to take a back seat for a bit. However, our lives are going to calm down quite a load in about a week – and we’ll be back on top of our game them. I’ll also have a very long and very liberating post (ha!) for you all shortly.

Thanks, and say tuned to the Liberation Frequency,

Brian

How To Release Your Own Album

Have you ever wanted to release your own music or the music of a friend? Well, it’s not as intimidating as it sounds. A couple of months ago I put together a How-To guide on this very subject for a couple of zines. Now I’m posting it here so that even more people might be able to have access to it. This all is the accumulation of what I’ve learned from putting out independent music for about three years; and I wanted to share this information with other people who are interested in being involved with independent music. I want to point out that this guide is definitely not the only way to do all of this – and I hope you share alternatives that you may know of.

Our New Banner

Thanks a lot to Ryan Zellman for our new banner. He’s a great friend and an all around great person. If you ever see him on the street give him a hug.