A Coalition for Self-Learning 
This book has been written by an ad hoc Coalition for Self-Learning. Most of us have never met one another face to face. We met on the Internet on a listserv <CCL-LLCs@onelist.com>. Our common interest was the future of learning, and the potential impact on society of the cooperative community life-long learning centers (CCL-LLCs) that are spontaneously emerging and self-organizing from the rapidly growing homeschooling and other self-learning movements.
This social phenomenon is spontaneously self-organizing without leadership, without planning, without design and without being noticed. It is a microcosm of the larger progressive, alternative and transformational movement(s) that are creating a transition from the Dominator Paradigm (to use Riane Eisler's term) to a Gaian Paradigm (to use Fritjof Capra's term). The transformation of the learning system is more than a related building block of the cultural transition. It is a fundamental foundation for a deep fundamental holistic cultural change.
Future citizens learn from birth the role they will play in society. Today's schools teach by the mode they use -- hierarchy, self-interest, authoritarianism, patriarchy, competition, materialism, and survival of the fittest. Humanity cannot continue to exist with this value system. The Gaian social paradigm is based on the scientific revelation that everything is connected to everything else. We are interdependent entities, systems within systems in a grand and mysterious holonistic cosmos.
Our common interest tells us that all is not well with society. The family, community, values, economics, schooling, and other aspects of our culture need to change and are changing. All of the educators, homeschoolers, autodidacts, futurists and others involved in this listserv are playing one role or another in transforming the learning system. After some discussion we decided that the importance of learning to the greater society was too important to be ignored by the progressive movement, the cultural creatives, and society at large.
The book grew leaderless, unplanned and undesigned, like cosmic evolution, like biological evolution, like social evolution and, like homeschooling itself. To use Newton's statement, "we stood on the shoulders of giants."
* * * * *
© Copyright 2000. CCL-LLC - All Rights Reserved.