Alternatives to the standard form of education are required if the planet is to survive the advance of human beings. It is key to journey "with" rather than exhibit compliance with multiple prescriptions of how to travel to a predetermined destination.

Currently education demands, and prioritizes, compliance and conformity with content and behavior; passed down to those conscripted to learn from on high - the adult world (remedies from above imposed upon the excluded - Hawken). Telling is not teaching, a dialogue is required. In an educational context why do we treat children as answering machines?

Students should be allowed to lead their own learning journeys with guidance amd mentoring from their peers and those their senior in an environment created specifically to support personal growth, creativity and relatiopnships. Every time we 'teach' something we deprive a child the pleasure of discovery (Postman). The goal to be able to use one's mind well.

This is learning in concert with the journey of spaceship earth. Agree? Disagreee?

Why?

A community of teachers .... www.essentialschools.org ... and related publications by Deborah Meier and Ted Sizer.... to help teachers sustain themselves in difficult times. "Totto Chan: The Little Girl At the Window" is a delight to read that incorprates experiental education (Pestalozzi (?)).

As part of class requirements I ask (not tell) students to teach three others what they have learned that is of interest to them. A method to reinforce and share the joy of learning. It is a process that infects - in a positive way. Especially when students teach their teachers something about a different discipline - and a dialogue begins!

Palmer's book is on my bookself beside Dewey's "Experience and Education" and Kelly's "Education for What is Real."

The artificial quest for accountability at all levels (NCLB & Standardized Testing) could be replaced by very real interactions with the environment incorporated into the curriculum in a for credit framework. Recent earth science project, the replacement of a failing septic drain field, leading to the profound understanding that waste equals food and how this spaceship earth is impacted by our waste. Only part of half a credit, but it is a beginning.

Well received in the charter school environment but not in the traditional public school context.

Hey, all:

An excellent topic and wonderful ideas presented. I will have to look at the resources offered. I would like to add a couple of ideas that have been reinforced upon me in recent years, and while I am sure there is abundant formal nomenclature and research on them, I am clueless about it. These principles are, for lack of better names, teaching by example, and overcoming assumptions. They are well illustrated in the region where I live since bias and over-dependence on systemic institutions have been passed off as tradition and independence.

I live off-the-grid with Wind and Sun, plus I have a solar domestic water heating system, rainwater collection and storage system, and a dry composting toilet. There are several other items I either will or would like to have, but that is for another time.

Inviting people to come out and visit and accepting requests from others gives me the opportunity to practice both of the principles mentioned. Access to equipment and applying technology is well within the reach of billions of people worldwide, lacking only education and funding.

Teaching by example is obvious--I live this way, which shows others they can do it, too. I could be wrong here but this might be more effective on the young. In fact, after visiting here, the 13-year-old daughter of a friend has pushed her parents to install many of the same features as many who live off-the-grid have--a powerful influence. And even adults have concluded they can do it, too, and many have done so. Indeed, I would maintain that teaching by example/learning by imitation is the most primitive, instinctive, adaptive, powerful means known. It is also a default means, and can be misused unknowingly or deliberately.

Overcoming assumptions probably has to be focused more on adults, since age and experience instills assumptions. Some examples: years ago, I had trouble showing the county that I live where I do since I had no power bill or other utility bill as proof--odd that such extraneous means was necessary to show I existed. The assumption of course, is that everyone has such bills. Only when I had a physical phone line put in did I have the means to proof residence, and even that has met resistance.

I have had visitors come out, and at some point I always point out to them the absence of powerlines/poles to my home. A couple of times people had been here several times before I said this to them. I have had people SPIN around in amazement looking for lines and poles!!...and laugh with embarrassment, realization, and pleasure to boot. The obvious deep-seated assumption here is that everyone has powerlines.

My waterless composting toilet requires even deeper effort at overcoming primitive assumptions. My system (if it can be called that) is at the low end of available technology, and consists of a plastic box in the bathroom, and a separate box for peat moss or other organic material such as sawdust. The exterior part of the "system" is a compost pile. I casually ask everyone who visits the bathroom, "Does it stink?" And without fail the answer is a somewhat sheepish and somewhat self-disbelieving, "Uh, no." Sometimes I can't contain my satisfaction.

When I have had people use the shower, and then I remind them the hot water was produced without use of any energy source but sunlight, lights come on in their eyes. You can only imagine the satisfaction.

Now, I took education courses years ago (back when the earth was still cooling) so I know nothing of the terms that probably apply to the principles here, but they are powerful. Combining experiential learning with real-life examples of real existence should be even more powerful.

What a benefit it would be if such simple means of teaching and learning could be broadly instituted (or restored), which of course would require the extinction of such things as "No Child Left With a Dime", and it might jeopardize the success of such things as military recruitment and an eternal prison population. Oh, well, I am an optimist--sometimes hopeless, sometimes hopeful.

Teaching/learning to be green and sustainable is a long process, requiring commitment, money, time, institutions, leaders, and the knowledge that it is both a continuum and a continuing process. We also have to overcome the institutionalized resistance to sustainability, since it threatens those very institutions.

An excellent topic--thanks for the opportunity!

David
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!