Introduction
The Crisis in Education
The Paradigm Shift
HomeSchooling
Cooperative Community Life-Long Learning Centers
The Basic Need for Belonging
Learning and Civil Society
Conclusion
Notes

Community Life-Long Learning Centers

by Wm. N. Ellis

Introduction
In 1980 there were
In 1990 there were
In 1998 there are 		12,000 homeschoolers
300,000 homeschoolers
1,500,000 homeschoolers
At this rate of growth (20%) one quarter of all children will be homeschooled by the end of the next decade. The phenomenon has developed without leaders, without planning, without design. It is an example of "spontaneous self-organization on the edge of chaos." It is also a social phenomenon that will draw social and political attention. It also may provide models which can help understand the nation and the world in social organization beyond the narrow realm of the crisis in education and the crises of society.

The crisis in education

An increasing number of educational critics like New York teacher of the year, John Taylor Gatto, have decried the schooling system.1 They point out that early American schools were strict disciplinary centers in which students sat stiffly at their bolted down desks in abject obedience, while stern teachers taught them the three Rs by rote memory. The school's purpose, for well over a century, has been to prepare workers for an industrial culture. It worked well. Laborers in American mills and factories surpassed all others in bringing wealth to our nation.

Nevertheless, the critics contend that the current mode of schooling is now teaching the wrong lessons. Conventional schools restrict the individual's natural curiosity and desire to learn. They exemplify our authoritarian, hierarchical, and patriarchal culture based on self-interest, competition, and survival of the fittest. They teach by how they teach, as well as by what they teach. They teach obedience to authority, the calendar, and the clock. The teacher, under controls set by the state, and now the national government, determines what is to be learned. The clock and the calendar determine when and how long a child can learn in the disconnected elements of the school system.

Well before the current attacks on schooling and educating, John Dewey and other philosophers raised questions about this mode of education with their creeds of "learning by doing" and "child-centered education." Although the philosophy of education changed, the formalism didn't. Children are still gathered in rooms of 20 or so, each one trying to do his or her own thing. The result is that genuine teaching and learning are severely hindered. Many schoolrooms become chaotic. The educational system itself is now in age of confusion at the edge of chaos. It is ripe for a radical transformation.

The paradigm shift

Conventional schooling is in no way different from any other aspect of our dominant and domineering Euro-American culture. It is a hierarchical, patriarchal, and authoritarian system of control from the top down. It was molded by what Riane Eisler called the "dominator paradigm" that has been developing since the beginning of western culture. But this paradigm is now being replaced. Complexity, chaos, and Gaian theories are revealing very different concepts of the cosmos and of evolution. They are revealing that the Earth and its inhabitants have evolved as an interdependent network of systems within systems, known as Gaia. Each of us is a whole made up of smaller wholes and embedded in larger ones. Everything is dependent on everything else. This new scientific concept of the cosmos suggests a new worldview in which future society, including the future of learning, will be shaped. We call this new viewpoint the "Gaian paradigm."

Not only does the Gaian paradigm suggest that cosmic evolution--from the Big Bang, through the emergence of life forms, to social organization--is usually a leaderless, unplanned, undesigned, democratic spontaneous self-organization, it also suggests that it is often nonlinear. That is, many phenomena do not follow a simple cause to effect straight line. Like the weather, a small change in initial conditions can have a large future effect. Brain research has shown that memories and concepts are nonlinear. They are not stored immobile for all time in one place in the brain in linear chains of neurons as was once believed. Instead they are distributed throughout the brain in neural networks. Each new idea becomes a network within the holonistic interconnected neural networks intertwined and distributed throughout one unique brain. It is a nonlinear reinforcement that attaches onto all the ideas, memories, and concepts that already exist in that brain. The brain/mind is a whole in which each new entry is part, immersed and harmonizing with what came before.

With this understanding of the brain each new piece of knowledge must adapt to the existing knowledge in each brain. Expecting 20 or more students in a class to learn the same chain of new knowledge at the same time, in the same place, in the same way is a hopeless illusion. The reality of nonlinear learning suggests that a more individualized learning system would be more efficient.

Homeschooling

What we might call the Gaian transformation of education was initiated two decades ago when some families started taking corrective actions one family at a time by dropping out of the school system. This movement has come to be known as homeschooling, and it began to emerge in the early 1970s after Paul Goodman's urging that schools make more use of community facilities and services, Ivan Illich's concept of "deschooling society,"2 and John Holt's analysis of how children learn.3

In the beginning, only a couple of decades ago, homeschools were autonomous family units, each one setting it own curriculum, and providing its own supplies and services. In 1980 there were perhaps some 12,000 homeschoolers. From 1990 to 1998 homeschooling grew from 300,000 students to some 1.5 million. At this rate of growth, nearly 20% a year, the 1.5% of American children now homeschooled would grow to 24% in 10 years. Since 1993 homeschooling has been legal in all 50 states, and participants have self-organized some 700 homeschooling associations in the United States. About 50 of these self-organized networks have a nationwide constituency.

A second phase of homeschooling evolved in the 1980s and 1990s as practitioners began networking to exchange information and to confront state laws that limited their rights. An aspect of this second phase of homeschooling was initiated when a few participants started providing special services for other homeschoolers. Most of the services provided to homeschoolers, like Growing Without Schooling, or Home Education Press, are primarily publications emphasizing exchanges among homeschoolers. Others organizations like the Clonlara School Home-Based Education Center provide a by-mail service with curricula, tests, and diplomas for homeschoolers. Still others are newsletters written and exchanged by homeschoolers themselves. A few like Home Schoolers' Legal Defense Association help homeschoolers with legal and legislative matters. One or two have books, equipment and other material for loans to homeschoolers.

Closely associated with the homeschooling movement are a broad variety of alternative schools, free schools, community schools and charter schools that are moving in the direction of child-centered education. Jerry Mintz in his Handbook of Alternative Education lists 2500 Montessori schools, 100 Waldorf schools, and 60 Quaker schools as well as the 700 homeschool associations.4 In additions to these, there is a growing number of Folk schools patterned after the Folk Schools of Denmark, "schools-without walls," "open universities," and learning centers which do not fall within the province of being substitutes for the K-12 public schools. It is this later group of learning facilities with which we are most interested.

Cooperative community life-long learning centers

A third phase of homeschooling and self learning has started to emerge in the last few years as local homeschooling networks and self-learners have started providing themselves with a new form of learning institution. They don't yet even have a universal name. To start examining them we could call them "cooperative community life-long learning centers" (CCL-LLCs). Every word in this label carries a different connotation from that of the Dominator Paradigm.

"Cooperative" implies that all the programs, supplies, and facilities are cooperatively owned and controlled by the member families they serve. The parents together buy and exchange equipment, provide services, and make decisions about what they will do together or do separately. Each cooperative makes its own rules, and sets its own standards.

"Community" has two connotations. One is what the learners get from the community. The other is what the learners give to the community. Every aspect of the community is an integral part of the learning program. Libraries, museums, parks, health clubs, shops, banks, businesses, town offices, farms, factories, the streets and the environment provide learning opportunities, facilities and services for self-learners. At the same time, learning becomes a service to the community as future citizens become involved in the local community taking part in any or all community activities.

Community, as we use it here, is not something imposed on us by the government or the place where we were born. It is a group of friends, a neighborhood, or any cooperative association for meeting common goals. It is an extended family providing the caring, belonging, and deep association that links family members with the world outside of it. It provides the diverse and varied human interactions that make life not only possible but enjoyable.

"Life-long learning" is the growing necessity of the Information Age. We no longer can learn knowledge and skills that will last a lifetime. Times change far too rapidly. "Graduation" is a concept of the past. Unlike schools, learning centers of the future cannot "graduate" their members in the sense of closing the doors to the facilities and services for learning. They must provide continuing learning opportunities throughout the life span of individuals.

Nor is "learning" something a superior authority does to a lesser one. "Teaching," "educating," and "schooling" imply that society, or the state, is acting on, controlling, indoctrinating and forming some amorphous lesser beings. But in the new paradigm, learning is an act of self-volition. It is a self-actuated process of creating skills, discovering knowledge, and satisfying one's own natural curiosity. It is built on, and it teaches, the inherent right and responsibility of every individual to set her or his own standards. It honors the diversity of evolution.

Learning is becoming much more than being educated to play a role in the industrial society. Learning replaces the materialism and consumerism that is so much a part of today's society by a deeper love. It is a love of learning for the sake of learning -- of gaining a sense of being rather than having -- of valuing knowledge more than things.

"Centers" implies a library-like service center. Learning centers may provide counseling, mentoring, books, supplies, equipment, tests, facilities, workshops, laboratories, and classes. Each center is designed by, and to meet the needs of, the members of the participating families. For some it is little more than an Internet file to which member turn for mutual aid. For others it may be a data bank of learning opportunities in community, national, or global organizations. Still others may want a fully equipped building not too unlike the schools of today, but operating more like a library providing services as called for.

Cooperative community life-long learning centers (CCL-LLCs) may be one of the most seminal innovations of the past decade. They may be the seed for a deep fundamental change in the education/learning system of the future. CCL-LLCs are to some extent an outgrowth of the rapidly growing homeschooling movement. But, as this book shows, models and resources for self-learning surround us on every side. As the body of this self-organized learning system grows, it is conceivable that CCL-LLCs could completely replace the state controlled schools.

The basic need for belonging

The emergence of CCL-LLCs reflects much more than a change in educational practices. It is a transformation of the whole mindset of the value of knowledge, and the value of the person in society, in close harmony with the Gaian paradigm. The emerging view of learning respects the new understanding that each of us "belongs" equally to Gaia. "Belonging" in this sense is much more that merely "being a member of." Belonging is the scientific fact that we are all interdependent systems within systems. Belonging, then, implies not only being a whole within a larger whole, but being dependent on the wellbeing of the larger systems of which we are part. "Belonging" is a protoethical value inherent in the new science/social paradigm. It says that each individual is an integral part and responsible for the health and wellbeing of the family, the community, and the Earth. That is, to Gaia. Inherent in this scientific concept of belonging is much of the perennial wisdom of the sages which have recognized that humanity cannot continue to exist on Earth without rules of conduct which emphasize our responsibility to and for one another and to our ecologies.

Learning and civil society

This transition from "educating" to "learning" is being recognized by a wide variety of scholars. Management guru Peter Drucker in his Post Capitalist Society writes of a society based on knowledge, one in which all society is an open life-long learning system in which every person can enter any level at any time.5 From the other end of the spectrum, peace scholar Elise Boulding reports that a common feature of the many "World Without Weapons" workshops she has held with people of all walks of life and all ages, was the vision of a "localist society" in which communities were self-reliant and "Learning appears integrated into other community activities. ... everyone is a learner, and education is lifelong."6

This theme of the "Learning Community" is fully integrated with the growth of civil society and all other aspects of the emerging Gaian Cultures.7 Around the world grassroots organizations (GROs, sometimes called nongovernmental organizations or NGOs) are proliferating. People everywhere are solving local problems with local skills and local resources. They are taking over where government and "the market" have failed. Within the industrial society citizen initiated social innovations are empowering people at the grassroots and promoting local community self-reliance.

In our food system organic gardening, community supported agriculture projects (CSAs), farmers' markets, and co-op food stores suggest that a new localized agriculture and food system is emerging. In hospitals, acupuncture, nutrition, mind-body healing, and a long list of alternative health concepts and practices are being accepted. In housing, intentional communities, CoHousing, ecovillages, solar building and other technologies and techniques are gaining acceptance. In economics, local exchange and trading systems (LETS), socially responsible investing, local scrips, cooperatives, community land trusts, community owned corporations, peer lending, and credit unions are among the ideas taking root. Transportation, communications, religion and all other elements of society have similarly started creating a post industrial world.

Conclusion

The transition from the dominator paradigm to the gaian paradigm is happening. It is hard to see how this social transition can come to full fruition as long as our future citizens are confined throughout their most formative years in the schools of the industrial age. The next millennium requires some reconstruction. We need to envision where society could go and how it might get there. Networks of networks of cooperative community life-long learning centers could become the foundation for the global transformation. If our future is to be based on mutual aid, belonging, caring, cooperation and community, our future citizens should start their lives belonging to caring cooperative communities involved in mutual aid.

Notes

1.

John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1992.
2.

Ivan Illich, Deschooling Sociey. New York: Harper Colophon, 1970.
3.

John Holt, Instead of Education. New York: Dell, 1976.
4.

Jerry Mintz, The Handbook of Alternative Education. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1994.
5.

Peter Drucker, Post Capitalist Society. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
6.

Elise Boulding, Building A Global Civic Culture. New York: Teachers College Press, 1988.
7.

William N. Ellis, Editorial, TRANET #92, January 1995.

* * * * *


© Copyright 2000. William N. Ellis - All Rights Reserved.
tranet@rangeley.org