New World Riser Sarah MacIntyre tells us about
the activism going on in her part of the world: free school!
"Here in Saint John, NB we are doing something called the Saint John Free School. The idea is that we are all teachers and students with something to share and something to learn. People can come to our day long events and do a workshop on something that interests them and anyone who wants to know how to do those things can come learn from them. We also provide free food and childcare and it doesn't cost anything to attend! We want to bring community together while taking the paradigm out of education"
A Free School is a decentralized network in which skills, information, and knowledge are shared without the hierarchy of or the institutional environment of formal schooling. Free school students may be adults, children, or both.
The open structure of free school is intended to encourage self-reliance, critical consciousness, and personal development. These free schools are, at heart, non-institutional, non-authoritarian, and counter-cultural.
Generally, they are formed at a grassroots level by a group of individuals acting collectively and autonomously to create educational opportunities and promote skill-sharing within their communities. Free schools often operate outside the market economy, in favor of a gift economy. Nevertheless, the meaning of the "free" of free schools is not restricted to monetary cost, and can refer to an emphasis on free speech and student-centered education.
While the philosophy and intention of free school projects vary, they share a desire to offer free ongoing education without hierarchy and outside of institutional control.
Free Skool Santa Cruz in California is perhaps typical of the current batch of free schools that are explicitly rooted in an anarchist tradition of collectivism, self-reliance, and mutual support, and feature informal, non-authoritarian learning outside of the monetary economy.
From the Free Skool Santa Cruz website: "More than just an opportunity to learn, we see Free Skool as a direct challenge to dominant institutions and hierarchical relationships. Part of creating a new world is resistance to the old one, to the relentless commodification of everything, including learning and the way we relate to each other."
These are on-going, informal learning networks, that focus on skill-sharing among adults as well as children. The boundaries between students, teachers, and organizers are consciously blurred, with some free skools claiming, "we are all teachers, and we are all students." Free skool "classes" are often autonomous workshops held in informal settings in homes, cafes, and community centers. Free skools typically offer a monthly or quarterly-produced free skool calendar.
Find a Free School in your area and get involved today! Just Google Free School + your state, and then go for it. I think you'll be glad you did, because the skills acquire and the people you meet and the things you do will be unforgettable.
Some of the information for this article was obtained from Wikipedia, the peoples' open source of info.
