A school that has been non-compulsory, ungraded, no tests ....
Free to Learn: A Radical Experiment in Education from Isaac Graves on Vimeo.
Showing posts with label democratic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democratic. Show all posts
but would it work?
Many people think that community-run and voluntary schools are impossible on some sort of practical level. Of course, many people are surprised that Wikipedia manages to work.
Some groups can do some things more efficiently than defined hierarchies. An article in Yes! about people in Chicago participating in a democratic budgeting process:
Some groups can do some things more efficiently than defined hierarchies. An article in Yes! about people in Chicago participating in a democratic budgeting process:
On Chicago's far north side, citizens are taking democracy into their own hands. Through the first "participatory budgeting" experiment in the United States, residents of Chicago's 49th Ward have spent the past year deciding how to spend $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars. Over 1,600 community members stepped up to decide on improvements for their neighborhoods, showing how participatory budgeting can pave the way for a new kind of grassroots democracy, in Chicago and beyond.
militarization of schools
Good links on the militarization of our schools are here at Susan Ohanian's website. From the topmost link:
I posted about this issue from a workshop at the SOA Watch. And it is essential to remember that compulsory attendance, originally a soft paternalism for poor children, is a police system we enable across our country that has made us far more accepting of authoritarian structures, of coerced activity, and, at least in my opinion, contributes, on a psychological level, to our inability to stay out of war.
As the 20th century saw the demise of the community structures that surrounded the new public schools, the police system created by compulsory attendance laws remains stronger than ever.
Ohanian Comment: We need to protect our youth. Seattle is making an effort. They break up their student directories, giving parents the opportunity to opt out solely from the list that goes to military recruiters.
"People have to remember that Iraq is the size of California and Baghdad is the size of Los Angeles. If the news reported all the deaths in Los Angeles on a daily basis no one would ever go to Disneyland."
--Lt. Col. Patrick Nary, U.S. Army 6th Recruiting Brigade
I posted about this issue from a workshop at the SOA Watch. And it is essential to remember that compulsory attendance, originally a soft paternalism for poor children, is a police system we enable across our country that has made us far more accepting of authoritarian structures, of coerced activity, and, at least in my opinion, contributes, on a psychological level, to our inability to stay out of war.
As the 20th century saw the demise of the community structures that surrounded the new public schools, the police system created by compulsory attendance laws remains stronger than ever.
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