Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Alternative education and cohousing

[Roger Diggle (diggle]

Chris Biow, flaming political moderate, wrote:

<snip>

> Grace  Lywellen (name misspelled; I don't do Welsh),
> a former public school teacher, 
> makes the point that, if one actually puts in three hours a day of 
> honest learning, one will do far better than even the most 
> dedicated public school student. Her book tries to sell teenagers 
> on taking the initiative to leave school and arrange their own 
> education (legal or practical in most if not all states in the US). 
> In most cases, by maintaining official enrollment in the public 
> schools, a teenager may pick and choose activities and even 
> classes, while conducting the bulk of his education on his own 
> initiative. If he wants to study chemistry, perhaps he finds a 
> neighbor who is a retired chemist, and trades housework for 
> lessons. Ms. Lly... also does an excellent job of arguing that most 
> of what is wrong with adolescence in the US today is the fault of 
> our schooling system, which forces adolescents into tight, one-year 
> groups in a coercive atmosphere, cutting off as much as possible of 
> their contact with other ages. It's a recipe for pathological 
> extremes of adolescent rebellion.
> 
> This and other approaches to alternative education would seem to me 
> to be a perfect match with cohousing. Students could cooperate in 
> arranging instruction, and parents could efficiently participate. 
> It might not be unreasonable for the community to hire instructors 
> for a particular purpose, if that expense were spread across a 
> dozen families.
> 
> The big, political obstacle that I see is that alternative 
> education, being inherently an attack on public education, runs up 
> against some of the strongest political feelings in our society. 
> Particularly for the generation now in their 50's and 60's, public 
> education is the sentimental equivalent of, say, civil rights for 
> boomers. Criticizing it is unthinkable for people such as my 
> parents. But could cohousing provide a vehicle, despite the 
> political perceptions?

I've had cooperative home schooling (CoSchooling?) on my list of CoHousing
attributes since before I heard of CoHousing.  And I ain't even got kids.

There is no political issue I can think of that I've been more torn about
than the debate around public education.  I find myself agreeing with nearly
everything Gotto says regarding education, yet can't help but think he's
ready to throw baby out with bathwater.  A good public education system is so
important for those who are not well enough heeled to use private schools,
and it seems inevitable that, as more families leave the public school system
(or even a particular district) the more the system crumbles.  Yet, the time
I did in K-8 in the fifties ("did time," as in prison slang) was so
oppressive that I don't feel I could make a kid go through it.  It took 25
years to recover.

One of the up-front values of Porchlight CoHousing is affordability through
sweat-equity.  It seems that most CoHousing groups value sweat-equity.  I can
think of no better example of sweat-equity, taken in its broadest sense, than
home schooling.

I also appreciate the Llewellyn idea and ideal of self-education. 
Self-education was my path to recovery from my schooling.  Building CoHousing
is by nature a cooperative self-education project.

In the late sixties, I bumped into a book called _Summerhill_ by A S Neill. 
Although he was a bit too entangled in Freud for my taste, his design for a
democratic, child controlled school was a seed-crystal for my thinking about
what schools, as well as other democratic institutions (such as CoHousing)
could be like.

Self-education and cooperative democracy are, in many ways, what CoHousing
are about.

Roger Diggle, Radical Centrist.

- sent via an evaluation copy of BulkRate (unregistered).

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