Coming Together to protect the educational commons

The size of this support from BP to the UC seems like it is little more then a public relations campaign. I bet that double this amount will be spent on publicizing the support and project. This is little more then buying the UC's legitimacy for an advertising campaign.

All of our educational institutions, from kindergarten to post graduate, have economic and political agendas being forced on them. The cultural realm of life, namely education, religion, scientific research, the arts, etc., must be able to operate in freedom in order for the full blossoming of human potential. If we could free up all of our schools, and allow the teachers to bring their full creative capacities to the task instead of being shackled with political and economic agendas that create unworkable systems, we would then create a future where new capacities and ideas would emerge from each generation that would carry us forward. This freeing up of the cultural realm has to start with changing the way we fund ALL of our schools. In the Netherlands, parents can send their children to whatever school they choose, be it public or private, and the tax money follows the child. We have to disconnect the money that we invest in education from the political and economic agendas - it has to go directly to the schools and the teachers and let them decide how to spend it. The teachers know best what is needed and they have no say in how the money is used.

I think we should consider widening the scope of concern to all levels of education, because the problem does not just affect the university level. If we are ever going to make progress on this issue, I believe that we need to change the big picture view of how we understand the role of education. Currently, education at all levels in this country is primarily designed to ensure the continuation of the status quo of our political and economic systems. That is maybe not all bad, but it is not allowing for the new ideas, new capacities and new impulses that each new generation brings to the earth to develop. In my opinion, education should be about uncovering the NEW human capacities that will carry us into the future, and not so much about preserving the old way of doing things. Each generation will confront different challenges and opportunities, and we cannot equip them to deal with those if they are only trained in maintaining the status quo. When human beings are free to develop all their capacities, all of society benefits. These new capacities and talents actually then feed and create the economic and political realms in the form of new discoveries, new technologies and new solutions, so it makes sense that the politcal and economic realms should fund the educational realm, but it must do so in FREEDOM, not with agendas and strings attached. Americans would never tolerate the government telling them what to think, or where to worship - why do we tolerate the government (and big business) telling us where and how we will LEARN? Learning is in the same catagory as thinking and worshipping (or not worshipping) - it is entirely an inner soul activity that is unique in every person. It cannot be legislated to produce equal outcomes, it can only be rightfully legislated to produce equal opportunity for everyone to get an education. After that, it should be left to the artists, the teachers who work at connecting with each individual student in a creative way. I describe teachers as artists because that is, in my opinion, what great teaching is - where a teacher uses all of his/her talents to reach each child and foster growth and development on whatever level it happens to be for each student. There is nothing rote or standardized about this process at its highest level - yet we have allowed the No Child Left Behind act to create a system that prevents teachers from teaching, ties up class time in rote test preparation, and brings political agendas to the teaching arena on every level. The corporate influence is felt in elementary and high schools in the form of the selling of advertisments on school property, soft drink machines, "educational" videos produced by corporations loaded with advertisments, hiring tutoring and testing and textbook corporations to implement the NCLB policies (which are now HUGE businesses), and according to John Taylor Gatto (author of "The Dumbing Down of America") the corporations even have a role in creating the state mandated curriculum, which stresses capitalism and other ideas beneficial to them. I support socially responsible capitalism, but even more so I support freedom of thought that will allow us to continue growing in our understanding of the best way to create healthy political, economic and cultural realms for our society. The stranglehold that political and economic interests currently have on all levels of our educational system needs to be transformed, and it can be transformed by working with the idea that all these edcuational activities must be fully funded in a way that acknowledges that all educational institutions have the right to independence and freedom in their work,and that by giving them that freedom, we will all benefit in the form of developing a truly educated society.

I joined this group hoping that it would be a useful resource for the young people and educators that we work with. In our circle, university students are moving towards establishing their own "FreeSkools", where they have opportunities to learn from grassroots leaders outside the corporate education system.
To accommodate the need for some structure, we have begun delivering hands-on education with our new College of Applied Sustainability. I hope that some of you will want to have a look through the info posted at my Wiser Earth page. Thanks for engaging in this important discussion.
...All My Relations