In the last decade, schools have grown increasingly bloated, and the factory-model of education has become a multinational phenomenon. Across the globe, learning is traded and assessed as a commodity. Through vast banks of educational data, student scores are compared like quarterly earnings. Education has become a product, geared not toward the needs or desires of students, but to the improvement of test scores. The result is a widespread containment of knowledge and a standardization of educational practice. Much like McDonald’s, school is beginning to taste the same everywhere.

In the face of this dominance, subversive and alternative approaches to education are needed more than ever. One such philosophy grows out of the Taoist reverence for old, gnarly trees. As described in a parable told over thousands of years, the story involves a traveling carpenter who notices a herd resting under an ancient tree’s huge, spreading shadow. Taking its size into account, the carpenter dreams of the money to be made from selling the wood to build coffins. On closer inspection, however, he finds that the tree is unusable, noting its knotted wood, bitter leaves, and lack of fruit. Considered worthless, the tree was left to grow in its own way, uncultivated by human needs. The moral is that so-called worthlessness can be a great resource. In Taoist philosophy, unusable things often come to have hidden value – in this case providing sanctuary from the sun.

Our schools, much like our forests, have been transformed into monocultures. Through standardization, students across the globe now study identical curricula in identically sterile environments. For those looking for alternatives, the lessons of Taoism point us in positive, original directions. In education, the “unusable” are students who drop out or otherwise resist factory-model schooling. Often called “at-risk” or “antiauthoritarian,” these youth have been largely abandoned by the system. As a result, thousands of alternative education programs have being sprouting across North America to make up for this shameful failure of mainstream schooling.

The alternative movement has taken time to grow. During the ‘60s, high dropout rates and low participation pointed toward a failure of the school system. Alternative educators criticized schools for using coercion, regimentation, large classes, and rigid time structures to reinforce society’s stratification and produce a docile, conformist citizenry. Initially, a small number of wealthy private schools emerged. Less than a decade later, a strong second wave of alternative growth occurred in the urban public system, establishing many exceptional schools. Presently there is a third renaissance, with alternatives spreading to rural districts and even the suburbs.

In this post-Columbine landscape, academics, parents, educators, students and even the mainstream media have begun to question the value of large, impersonal education environments. It is not just rebellious “de-schoolers” but educational districts and government agencies who are recognizing the need for change. Alternative schools, having intuited this need four decades earlier, offer a variety of solutions. Like an old-growth forest, each of these schools is a unique entity. One principle they all agree on however is the concept that size matters. Instead of establishing larger and larger factory-modeled schools, alternative schools foster drastically smaller learning populations. The preference for small size reinforces the over-arching goal of such places – to nurture belonging, compassion and a sense of community.

Alternative educators have helped raise a generation of creative and radical thinkers, offering new definitions of what it means to go to school. Artists, activists, and compassionate educators have a responsibility to foster this growth, and exceptional schools – many of which are in dire need of community mentors – must be vociferously supported, promoted and publicized if this progress is to continue. The seeds of change have already been planted – what they need now is nourishment.

Kier Miner has 20 years experience in alternative schools and is working on a book entitled The Tao of School: Meditations on Alternative Education.

-from ADBUSTERS Magazine:
http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/60/Sowing_the_Seeds_of_Change.html

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