Invitation to open an Un/learning School

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”  - Bucky Fuller

Why?

Most education systems (including state and federally funded systems) are deeply compromised through their capture by the 1% and their many supporters. These systems are on the edge of collapse and, in our view, they should be allowed to fall apart as their contribution to ecological and social destruction, the oppression of intelligences and the subjugation of knowledges far outweighs their benefits to humanity. Attempts at reforming/reviving these bureaucratic dinosaurs only exhausts the reformers to little effect and draws their creative attention away from generating viable alternatives.

Some constraints and ironies

Were it the case that our current culture recognized the invalidity of the existing school systems (instead of highly prizing the capacity of these systems for inducing compliance amongst the citizenry) it would be active in funding explorations into fresh options. Instead, these explorations are frequently suppressed and/or excluded through such powerful mechanisms as that 'official funding follows accreditation and accreditation follows the program' pattern common in most countries.

It does not take much genius to notice that alternatives that seek to open up routes to meaningful transformation are not likely to be considered on 'the program' and will thus need to find their own routes to financial viability outside of the agency of both government AND foundations (see The Revolution Will Not Be Funded).

It may be a shocking realization that these intimately bound accreditation/funding systems, apparently intended for the purpose of citizen protection through quality assurance, turn out to function as almost insurmountable barriers to new entrants and innovators in the field. The scale of barriers like this are often not known by the public but a 2008 article by Bloomberg Business Weekly estimates that the cost of acquiring University accreditation for a new start-up in the USA amounts to 24 million dollars - clearly beyond the budget of a community group. This ensures that ownership of higher education remains the province of the very large and the very rich. Neither of these groups has the agility or the motivation to transition to a form(s) suited to the emerging needs of cultures facing into the hurricanes of climate change, climate justice, economic chaos and disparity and so on.

A second constraint is a collection of cop-in-the-head ways of thinking that, for example, propose that only experts can adequately educate others. And, that even those experts need direction and oversight from a bevy of educational specialists, administrators, accountants and more. Then the experts, their minders and their assistants all need housing in offices, laboratories, libraries, dining rooms, lecture theaters and other costly locations ... It's a tired old model for sure and yet, for everyone of us who can see just how dysfunctional it is there are a hundred more of us ready to dive into life-long debt to attend.  

These are hard lessons to learn and even harder to take to heart although many activists in the progressive education world can attest to these truths and have known them for years. 

Thus it is that small-scale self-funded initiatives (by parents, by students, by supporters, by allies and by volunteer staff) are, for the time being, high up amongst the most viable means of creating the disruptive, actionable un/learning designs required to transition our cultures into new, ecologically regenerative, socially just versions demanded by both conditions and human decency.

An attempt to outline the proposal

• That interested parties take possession of the open-source, open-content action learning Diploma* models (un/learning designs with or without curricula) developed by Gaia University and use these to provide low-cost, low-carbon, ecosocially constructive, self and ally guided learning and unlearning routes to replace the existing, conventional destructo-culture models.

• That, in the spirit of open-sourcing, all these parties combine their surplus energies into developing additional open source systems and resources to enable a viable work-net of un/learning schools for adults to come rapidly into being across the planet - this implies a) open books and b) partnering with existing, appropriate pioneering un-institutions for mutual benefit.

• That whilst people working to develop, operate and maintain these systems need to make a living the level of this living must be attainable by 70% of the world's population under current circumstances and by 80% within 20 years - this implies remmuneration by relative costs.

• That the fees for tuition should also be affordable by 70% of the world's population now and 80% in 20 years time - this implies fee levels determined by relative wealth.

• That these schools define their initial focus to include developing equitable economic systems capable of ecological regeneration and the elimination of oppression including the development of mutual credit complimentary currency systems and income and capital sharing schemes.

• That a federation of these schools and their allies form the accrediting agency that ensures that existing members of the work-net and new ones coming on stream are working effectively to meet the goals.

• That no more than 20% of the budget of any such school will be invested in buildings and no more than 10% of the land occupied by any such school will remain out of production.

  *Diplomas - why Diplomas and not Degrees? Because the current culture has legally enforceable rules about who can award degrees and it is active in using these rules. To avoid litigation it seems prudent, at this stage, to fly under this barrier and, instead offer Diplomas - these are not subject to such strict rules and, with a little effort a Diploma (or 2) can make up half to three quarters of the credits leading to a degree (at both B and M level) with any cooperating University. Gaia University (which operates only online and is not thus subject to the 'rules' ) is one of these.

  Interested?

  Gaia University can, at modest cost, provide all the necessary systems and platforms to make this a reality.

  Please contact <commonsprojects at gaiauniversity.org>