By Brian Van Slyke

This is the first in our new series “History of Schools.” Please note, also, that this is a first attempt and it needs some editing.

Introduction

The history of mass and forced schooling in the United States can speak a great deal to the current nature of our educational model. It can also help us understand the culture of work in this nation. Our contemporary structure of education prepares the vast majority of the country’s children for a specific form of work that mirrors the industries that arose during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Compulsory schooling’s legacy thus has much to teach us about our current society – and also where we can go from here.

Yet, when this topic is discussed, it is often dichotomized into a tail of heroes and villains, purely nefarious forces or people’s movements. In reality, as is the story of nearly all political, social, economic, and cultural histories; compulsory schooling was born out of a mixture of aims from different groups, movements, interested parties, and alliances. In the end, the alliance in favor of compulsory schooling was victorious. Resistance and non-compliance ensued; but the most powerful faction of the pro-compulsory schooling alliance, some of society’s elite citizenry and businesses, were able to effectively enforce the system and tailor it to their interests and goals. While humanitarian players were involved in the initial implementation of compulsory schooling, including anti-exploitative child labor concerns and labor unions, their struggles were usurped by the powerful and were instead used to create a mass population of diligent, obedient, and complacent workers and “Americanized” citizens.

It is therefore important to examine the driving factors behind compulsory schooling and its immediate aftermath. Such an exploration will allow us to exam what systems our current structure of education serves, how it came into being, and what lessons we can take away from these histories to help us work for a more just and equitable future.

This is the story of compulsory education.

Colonial Massachusetts and the Prussian Empire

It all began with Massachusetts. The first compulsory school attendance law in the United States was passed in this small, but powerful, northeastern state. While required attendance became law in Massachusetts in 1852, it is vital to realize that the story of mass education in the United States goes beyond this and has its roots and origins in other historical moments.

While still a colony of Great Britain, Massachusetts had its very first encounter with compulsory education in 1642. The rationale that lay behind this law was the colony’s need for both social control and economic survival (Deffenbaugh, 1914). At the time, Massachusetts was a small colony and a religious community struggling for survival on a vast continent it knew little about. Thus, in order to survive, these early puritans felt that parents had a “moral obligation” to provide an education for their children and apprentices, who were to be raised as proper puritans. In addition, the children were to be trained as “honest labor” – not part of a “pauper class.” Leaders of the colony became fearful that this obligation was not being met and that too many parents and masters were neglecting their child-raising duties and responsibilities. This, they believed, was putting the continued existence of the community at dire risk (Katz, 1976), (Ensign, 1969).

Education in the early colonial period was much different than that of one based around schools or school-houses. Rather, its primary focus was on work with parents, the passing on of chores, apprenticeships, or through some other form of work (Katz, 1976). However, the point of this new act was to especially focus, as the law proclaimed, on the children’s “ability to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of their country” (Deffenbaugh, 1914). While the law emphasized what should be taught, it did not give direction as to where this instruction should take place. It did not have to happen in a school room but could just be added onto the duties of parents or masters (Deffenbaugh, 1914).

This changed in 1647. With the leaders of Massachusetts feeling that parents and masters were still ignoring their duties and now also the law, an amendment to the 1642 decree proclaimed that any town with fifty or more households was to provide an instructor to take over the educational duties of the town’s children. The 1647 measurement proclaimed that the “old deluder, Satan” was infiltrating the Massachusetts colony and that the children must be trained in the religious, social, and economic structures of the colony and puritan life correctly. This was something that the leaders deemed they could no longer trust within the ordinary citizens to perform. Social, religious, and economic instruction and control was to be handed over to the colony elite (Deffenbaugh, 1914).  However, this compulsory education measure did not find much support amongst the population and parents, and it remained largely ignored. In the end, this first attempt at compulsory schooling failed because it lacked support and compliance from the towns and residents of Massachusetts (Katz, 1976). Although this effort died out, the idea of compulsion schooling as a means of social and economic control did not.

The story now jumps almost two-hundred years into the future, where the world found itself shocked at the defeat of the most feared French general by a small, resource-poor country named Prussia. Only a short time ago, Napoleon had trounced the heavily militarized nation into a panic. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the country turned the tables and helped end the rule of the mighty French Emperor. Around the globe, Prussia’s surprising victory was attributed to the basis of their new social and economic order: mass, compulsory schooling (Gatto, 2003).

What’s important to realize about Prussia is that they weren’t the first to implement compulsory schooling, but that they were the first example of a truly successful enforcement and utilization of the system. After a thousand years of a fragmented Germany, the divisions that kept it apart were finally mended by this new societal structure. And while it was a resource poor area, under the new system of schooling, private industry surged, and the Prussian army became one of the most powerful on the planet – demanding respect from leaders worldwide. (Gatto, 2003)

The Prussian idea of compulsory education, which was one of the most respected of the day, identified the following as the ideal outcomes of a centralized form of schooling: obedient soldiers, obedient and subordinate workers for industry and agriculture, and an almost total uniformity amongst the ideas and opinions of the citizens it produced – to name a few. This system, which was up and running in full by 1819, was recognized as the absolute best way to defeat the new and potentially powerful menace that was the industrial proletariat. As well, Prussia’s system of mass schooling seemed to create sudden material prosperity and military might for the German people all throughout the 19^th century. It is important to note that this impressive method of mass social and economic control would influence national leaders and elites all across the planet. In 1868, for example, Japan adopted large themes and portions of the Prussian constitution. With this, it also modeled the Prussian style of education (Gatto, 2003).

An Idea of Utopia

Back in the United States, the Civil War had shaken the young country to its bones. But it also gave rise to a new discussion and vision shared amongst the policy elite of the northeast. These were discussions of utopian visions, fueled by the newly founded conviction that the “productive potential” of machinery that ran on coal was limitless. Localized and village-central life was becoming a thing of the past – railroads and telegraphs shrunk distances, and a new governing mind was being born. It was essential to the triumph of this new vision that a vast amount of “human resource” could be manipulated and used as a massive “workforce” (Gatto, 2003). Industry had been shaken by the Civil War, but it was on the rise once again (Deffenbaugh, 1914).

Taking a hint from the Prussian success, these utopian idealists also considered compulsory schooling the key to defeating the power that the “idiosyncratic family” had over society (Gatto, 2003). The 1642 colonial law had been a failure largely due to this power, which had been regarded as the primary source of education for centuries. Children were taught almost all of their social, economic, and cultural beliefs within the family unit. This structure would have to be destroyed in order to make room for the new utopian way (Gatto, 2003): one which would depend on the Prussian model of an obedient, uniform citizen and a subservient worker.

Along these lines, before the country could become modernized, both the past and the present had to be completely uprooted. The village cultures, tight-knit family structures, “pious populations,” and an overall sense of an independent livelihood would need to be done away with. However, the United States lacked the structures of other industrializing countries to make powerful shifts in society – like the state religion of England and Germany and the centralized military force of France. However, with the innovative systems of mass and rapid transportation across great distances, these utopian visionaries saw that society could now function like an “orderly social hive.” These New England elites considered the chaos of the growing pains of cities and the unorganized immigrants as an advantage which they could utilize with mass regimentation. With great subordination, people could learn to emulate the actions and reliability of machines. The struggle to institute, expand, and strengthen centralized schooling in the United States was consequently a product of the country’s elite and powerful elements. The four major coal powers, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford all played a major role in the development in this new system. (Gatto, 2003)

Prior to the middle of the 19^th century, the responsibility to educate one’s child had remained firmly in the place of a child’s parent (Katz, 1976). This would all change and continue to be massively challenged when Massachusetts introduced its 1852 law. In fact, almost every advance in the expansion of compulsory school attendance and the child labor laws that were of the same movement can find its roots in the state of Massachusetts – or to those people who fashioned their visions inside of it (Ensign, 1969).

The Two Faces of Horace Mann

In order to understand the history of compulsory schooling in the United States, and especially its introduction to the state of Massachusetts, it is critical to recognize the two faces of Horace Mann. His name is invoked both by compulsory school critics and defenders, and his legacy is contrasted by these different parties as one of a school reformer versus a Prussian-influenced elite. These two historical memories may seem like completely different interpretations of a single individual, but instead they should be regarded as reconcilable.

In 1837, Massachusetts created a State Board of Education and it named Horace Mann to its secretaryship (Ensign, 1969), a position he filled from 1837 to 1848 (Katz, 1976). Horace Mann has often been lauded as a champion of anti-child labor legislation, but in fact he did not express direct concern with factory children until towards the end of his secretaryship. Yet, even when he did, he did not deem it important to resolve the unique problems that related education and labor. While he highly praised the factory act of 1836, which compelled children who were employed in factories to go to school twelve weeks a year, he complimented the factory owners and agents for their support of the law. Parents who attempted to evade these requirements, however, were to be condemned and Mann argued that they considered their children to be articles of property (Ensign, 1969). Mann failed to mention, however, that the family’s ability to scrape by a livelihood depended directly on the wages brought in by their children. Simply leaving work was not going to be so easy.

At the time of Horace Mann’s secretaryship, many political scientists deemed the parent control over a children’s upbringing and education to be a “principle of American democracy” (Ensign, 1969). While Mann wanted all children to be in school, he initially agreed with this sentiment. He wanted to battle the “evils of non-attendance” (Ensign, 1969) with other means than compulsion. However, Mann’s survey of the different European systems left him with a new outlook on what the functions and goals of education should be. There was one system in particular that impressed and convinced him more than any other: the now tried and tested Prussian method of forced and mass schooling (Ensign, 1969).

In Horace Mann’s Seventh Report to the Boston School Committee of 1843, he ranked the Prussian educational model as the finest system in the world (with England’s being the worst). In this report, he made the case to the Massachusetts State Board of Education that in order to catch up to the Prussians, the state and the nation would need to adopt their system of mass and compulsory schooling – before it was too late (Gatto, 2003). Mann had become convinced that the only solution to school non-attendance would have to be that of “state interference” (Ensign, 1969). In fact, he proclaimed that the State would have to assert itself as the “primary parent” of the child. On top of that, Mann argued, the school was “the cheapest [form of] police” (Gatto, 2003).

Furthering the message, Horace Mann argued that this system would glue together Christian ethics with democratic values; it would crush the wickedness of ignorance, as well as eliminating most crime and aristocratic privilege; and it would assimilate the immigrant masses, while morphing them into virtuous, industrious, and “Americanized” citizens (Katz, 1976).

It is interesting that while Mann promoted this argument, he also insisted that the common school knew no difference between the rich and the poor, or between those who were bond and those who were free. It would convert immoral individuals into do-gooders, and it was a tool to combat the evils that had rooted themselves in United States society and cities (Katz, 1976). This became the mantra that defined the pro-compulsory schooling movement and that was repeated to the masses and to the immigrants: mass, forced schooling would be a place where the playing field was level, where everyone was on the same stage, and where your class in society would not affect where you started and where you ended up. The rich would compete directly and fairly with the poor, and whoever was the best would come out on top (Althea & Woods, 2008). While this notion was a promising and appealing pledge, we will come to see that this was not what actually came to pass in the system of compulsion schooling.

An Industrializing Country

Early on in the 19^th century, the factory system of Massachusetts began to expand and grow in economic strength. Alongside this, the population of cities and villages increased significantly, and it was discovered that much of the manual labor that was needed to support this structure could be performed by children. As a result, those who were in poverty were exploited. Both children who had never been to school and those who were attending were taken from whatever life they were living and put to work in the factories and mines. Because of this new economic structure, many family incomes grew to be dependent on that which was produced by the labor of their children.

Especially in the forty years that separated 1820 and 1860, the enlargement of cities and villages changed the social and physical landscape of the United States. Before 1820, only five percent of the nation’s population resided in cities which contained more than 8,000 people. But by 1860 that number increased to over sixteen percent. In a matter of only decades, small towns turned into industrial “meccas” (Katz, 1976). A large portion of the increase in population was due to the waves of immigrants that poured into the country. This resulted in the dissolution of existing heterogeneity, and forced the United States to adopt a new dimension. The influx of new immigrants simultaneously fueled industrial growth while putting strains on the normalization of the “social fabric” (Katz, 1976). The city of New York alone had its population increase by tenfold between 1800 and 1850. The physical segregation of economic classes deepened, and the population increasingly depended on institutional resolutions to social troubles. In a response to this, social reformers attempted to rationalize charity, homogenize schools, and imprison vagrants. As Karl Kaestle, quoted in “A History of Compulsory Education Laws,” stated – this was “[a] general effort to impose systematic solutions on chaotic urban conditions” (Katz, 1976).

As different European groups entered the country, they brought their diverse cultures, customs, and languages with them – making major challenges to and reshaping the “character of the population” (Katz, 1976). This incoming of peoples was not welcomed by those who were both hostile to change and foreign languages and customs. The feelings of such people can be heard in the words of John Commings, as quoted in Compulsory School Attendance & Child Labor, “the number of destitute, ignorant, and criminal… increased until they began to press heavily upon the ways and means of public charity” (Ensign, 1969). Quick and continuing institutional and technological transformations put even further strains and struggles on city dwellers. In addition, the mass arrival of immigrants fueled cries and warnings of a “breakdown of the American culture” (Katz, 1976).

This was simultaneously matched by the expanding corporate state’s demands for extreme quantities of hardworking and submissive workers (Katz, 1976). This so-called need was filled by the cheapest workforce it could find, the immigrants. The children of immigrants, in particular, were manipulated and abused the most; they were forced into factories and mines, working for low wages and in horrible conditions, while the structure of the new industrial-economic system forced their families to become dependent on the wages they earned (Gatto, 2003). As child labor was increasingly being used and abused by the industrialists and factory-owners, adult laborers continued to lose their jobs and found it increasingly difficult to find new ones – as the children were willing to work for much lower wages. In 1842, a Massachusetts law restricted all children under the age of twelve to the maximum of a ten-hour workday. It is important to note that this bill also made significant changes to the labor-attendance law of the state, and gave more power to local school committees to enforce school attendance and prosecute for non-attendance. This law was backed by labor unions and was regarded as the first victory for organized labor in the lengthy drive for a shorter-work day, as well as a sign that labor unions were increasingly becoming involved in the extermination of child labor in order to provide more work for adults. It became increasingly obvious over time that the concern of working children was closely tied to that of labor unions and adult labor. (Ensign, 1969)

The Compulsory Schools

Thus, we can see in detail here how numerous forces came together in a complex web to drive Massachusetts to passing the 1852 compulsory education law: the craving to “Americanize” (Katz, 1976) tens of millions of European immigrants who were seeking employment; the effort to free millions of youth caught in an abusive system of working in the factories and mines; the tremendous dedication of labor unions to protecting adult labor and eliminating labor taken by children; and those who were influenced by utopian ideals, the Prussian example, and/or who wanted a subordinate workforce and an obedient civilian population. It is now important to examine what forces drove the influence of the continued development, expansion, and implementation of the mass education idea.

The 1852 law demanded that all children between the ages of eight and fourteen attend school for three months a year. This was unless these children could prove that they already had a handle of the material (Epstein, 2007), if they were participating in some other form of instruction that would result in a similar educational outcome, if they were physically or mentally incapable of attending, or if they lived in an extreme state of poverty. In that same year, a maximum incarceration of one year in a county jail was made the proper punishment for a truant child.

However, until about 1873, the compulsory schooling law was regarded as primarily a dead letter and unenforceable (Ensign, 1969). There were several reasons for this. The forces that influenced the adoption of the 1852 law were primarily political, including that of organized labor and philanthropy. Large quantities of the donated money came from the four major coal powers of the United States, and especially that of Rockefeller and Carnegie (Ensign, 1969), (Gatto, 2003). In addition, Horace Mann’s great influence had secured the support of many of Massachusetts’s political and economic leaders, and had convinced them of the “evils of non-attendance” (Ensign, 1969).

While the state’s elites may have been convinced, it did not seem as if the rest of the population was. Towns and cities were provided the ability to enforce truancy laws in 1850. This capacity was slightly strengthened in 1852, and even more so in 1859. Yet, these towns and urban centers did not take even modest steps towards using their new enforcement powers. Thus, in 1862, the law was amended so that it became mandatory for the towns and cities to “care for their delinquent children” (Ensign, 1969). However, the law still lacked any capability to coerce a community into enforcing the compulsory schooling requirements, and only seventy-seven out of three hundred-seventy five towns had completely addressed these obligations. Some pro-compulsory education forces grew increasingly frustrated, feeling as if Massachusetts was wasting years of precious time with the futile hope that towns and cities would respect the law without muscling them into it. As one educational report in favor of compulsory attendance laid out in 1969, “[Massachusetts thought] she might nurse her delinquent children and still more delinquent parents into voluntary conformity with her lofty ideals of education” (Ensign, 1969). On the bright side, these same believers argued, the continued attempts to put mass and forced schooling into action kept the subject alive and served as a method for convincing public and elite opinion. In addition, Massachusetts held great influence over some of the younger states, and its actions would help persuade them in adopting compulsory schooling laws (Ensign, 1969). The more states that used forced schooling, the easier it would be to impose in general. Regardless, compulsory schooling laws remained mostly unenforceable everywhere. An 1888-89 report by the United States Commissioner of Education chronicled one failure after another in implementing the new educational method. Another major factor was that in the early years of compulsory attendance, the states that had adopted this method had failed to develop an “administrative machinery,” reflective of the corporate and bureaucratic model, to enforce such laws (Katz, 1976).

This lack of enforcement due to an absence of any “administrative machinery” was only exemplified by the near impossibility of locating immigrant children in large cities. However, new measures continued to be implemented in the hopes of tracking down such evaders. These efforts were driven by the belief that, as one 1914 report from the Bureau of Education illustrated, the “welfare of the nation depends upon the control of illiteracy” (Deffenbaugh, 1914). Though thousands of immigrant children escaped attending school, and there were almost no records of their existence, the pro-compulsory agitators argued for a massive campaign to compile lists of all of them. With the access to such information, the school authorities – by way of aid from the police – would be able “enroll immediately all who belong under their control” (Deffenbaugh, 1914). As the demand for well-trained labor grew alongside an increasing population, more capital, effort, and support were allocated towards creating a functioning and effective bureaucratic machinery for enforcement (Katz, 1976).

Some of the earlier compulsory laws in different states excused children from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Though this was a relief to a number of immigrant families, many members of school committees and bureaus argued that it was necessary for the states to educate both the wealthy and poorer classes. Who was benefiting, these voices argued, if one class was getting educated while the other was not (Deffenbaugh, 1914)? While it is true that this concept has egalitarian overtones, the class dynamics of it are apparent. Those from wealthy backgrounds and neighborhoods were already able to impact their schools more and fit it to their ideals. Poorer neighborhoods and families, however, had access to less wealth and thus were not able to afford the same amount of influence over the schools that their children attended. The schools that were comprised of immigrants and poor children were more dependent on what the state supplied and ordered, increasingly subjecting them to the “good worker” attitudes of the compulsory schooling movement. Those from higher income backgrounds, however, were able to pay their way out of such situations. Parents who did not send their children to the schools were deemed selfish and regarded their children as nothing more than property.

Yet, it should be noted, that some measures were taken in select states to encourage children from poverty-stricken homes to attend school. Michigan, for example, paid some of the lost income to a family whose child left work for school. The Michigan measure allowed for “not more than $3 a week to be paid a family for one child, nor more than $6 a week for the children of any one family” (Deffenbaugh, 1914). Other states, including Massachusetts, decided to take a different approach to the situation and argued that if a child who was working in the factories or mines was not forced into the schools and given an education, they would always remain an “unskilled laborer” (Deffenbaugh, 1914). If this same child received an education, however, they would receive more earnings in the future and would raise the child out of the ranks from “a class verging upon pauperism” (Deffenbaugh, 1914). While this argument had merit, it came directly from those who were not dependent on their children’s income and thus could not realize the immediate pain and pinch that such a loss of wages would force. Much of the burden for truancy in the early days of compulsory schooling is often put on the children or the families from poorer backgrounds, but it should be recognized that other factors played into the continued lack of attendance. One such example of this is that, even with the new compulsion laws, some school authorities were not overtly enthusiastic in upholding this law – others were outright hostile. These authorities did not want the “poorly trained” and the “uncultured” children of the factories and mines in their “well-ordered” schools (Ensign, 1969).

Resistance and Enforcement

Except for the 1642 Massachusetts law, the family was largely the responsible body for the education of children in United States history. The family unit was regarded by many as not just a “principle of American democracy,” but also the bedrock of the population’s social organization. Thus, the new system’s goal of replacing the family with the State as the “primary parent” of the children met with resistance. This resistance was not only limited to avoiding compliance with compulsory attendance. Rebellions at schools, both by parents and students, took place – some examples include: the burning down of school houses, students locking teachers in building, or parents breaking in to free their children from being held after hours for detention (Gatto, 2003). Both the refusal to comply with the new system of mass schooling and the rebellions once at school were reflections of an immense resistance to an attempt to uproot and change the social order by an elite class. It was also defied by those parents that would have preferred their children to not work in the factories and mines, but who were dependent on their income to sustain a livelihood due to the poor wages they were paid in their own employment. The previously mentioned 1914 report from the Bureau of Education divides the stance against compulsory schooling into six distinct arguments: (1) although some crime is deterred through putting children in schools, a new societal crime is created; (2) it interferes with the liberty of parents; (3) new powers are arrogated by the government; (4) it is un-American and not adaptable to the country’s “free institutions,” (5) compulsory and forced schooling is monarchal in both its origins and history; and (6) school attendance is just as great without the law (Deffenbaugh, 1914).

The pro-compulsory responses to such arguments can be represented in an 1872 letter from B.G. Northop, the secretary of the Connecticut State Board of Education. In this letter, Northop attacked each individual point. In his argument, he claimed that compulsory schooling should create a new crime and that to bring up children in ignorance was a crime in itself. Northop asserted that all “modern civilizations” and legislations have created new crimes in order to address the otherwise barbaric world that lives on within societies. Each child put in a factory, Northop held, was a crime itself and could only be solved with the crime of compulsory schooling. As for the liberty of parents, it was his view that this autonomy ought to be violated. If parents couldn’t or wouldn’t provide the basic needs to their children, the government had the right to address such needs and become the new primary care-holder. “The child,” Northop wrote, “has rights which not even a parent may violate. He may not rob his child of the sacred right of a good education… When a parent is disqualified by intemperance, cruelty, insanity, society justly assumes control of the children.” The State would thus protect the “helpless,” who would otherwise become “vicious as well as weak” (Deffenbaugh, 1914). This argument, of course, implied that the income provided to families by child labor was for some personal gain of selfish parents – ignoring the realities of the economic strains put on immigrant and poor families by the new corporate state. Northop also dismissed the importance of new powers assumed by the state without a right to do so, claiming that all new laws have such results – including hygienic regulations. Ignorance, however, was just as “noxious as the most offensive nuisance,” and it was more “destructive than bodily contagious.” Thus, this arrogation of powers was an act of self-protection from the ignorance of the masses, and self- protection is a “fundamental law of society.” The freedoms that were restricted due to compulsory laws were pre-emptive measures. The secretary from Connecticut argued that if the child was not dragged by police to school if necessary, they would just be dragged to jail by the police a few years later. Northop also continued to make the case that it was the compulsory education laws that were responsible for awakening the original interest for public education, and therefore they should be protected in order to continue the teaching of the public in regards to the benefit of such a system (Deffenbaugh, 1914).

Yet, as the promotion and agitation for compulsory education persisted, the length of school years continued to expand (Althea & Woods, 2008). Alongside this growth, the bureaucratic machine for enforcing the adherence to such laws was strengthened and perfected by putting more power into the hands of the state (Ensign, 1969), and more and more children (including those who were child laborers and those who were not) were funneled into the system of mass schooling. The new corporate and industrial systems began to absorb increasing amounts of time from the parents, who worked long and difficult hours in the factories and the mines for little pay. As a result, the schools progressively began to fill the role of the family (Althea & Woods, 2008). Following this breakdown of the home and village life, and the industries that arose alongside the destruction, a new way of learning began to develop. This would come to take the place of the traditional learning processes – such as by the passing of chores and the apprenticeship system. As we will see shortly, this would allow those who held the financial control over the schools and educational system to create and maintain an army of workers to be trained in large scale production and the division of labor (Gatto, 2003).

Largely in part because of Horace Mann’s legacy and efforts, and his emphasis on the “evils of non-attendance and truancy” (Deffenbaugh, 1914), the 1852 law was passed in Massachusetts. But by 1900, thirty-two other states had implemented similar mass schooling laws. Finally, in 1918, Mississippi approved of a compulsory attendance law and all existing states implemented mass education. As in the 1914 Bureau of Education report, it is claimed by many that these laws, and especially in Massachusetts, were passed because “public sentiment” demand such measures (Deffenbaugh, 1914). Yet it is important to question such notions. What is meant here by “public sentiment”? The general population, immigrants, or those who had the resources and the necessary social prestige that was required for making ones voice heard and respected? The early laws were mostly records of failure and were regarded as dead letters (Deffenbaugh, 1914). If “public sentiment” had been so aroused in order to pass these laws, why was there a small record of volunteer obeying? Why did the school and state authorities find them so difficult to enforce? It seems extremely possible that this was because the “public sentiment” voiced was disproportionately represented by those of powerful elites and other dominant members of society. It is undeniable that the call for compulsory schooling also came from the labor unions of the time, but it appears that the masses of the nation as a whole did not choose to accept and comply with the law and the arguments behind them. The lack of the ability to enforce these laws was a direct result of disinterest and disagreement with their purposes by the majority of the population. Yet, those authorities and powers entrusted with the responsibility of enforcing the compulsory attendance laws were about to get a shot in the arm in the 1890’s from some of the most powerful individuals and groups in the nation.

The Industrialization of the Schools

Between the years of 1896 and 1920, a select and small collection of industrialists spent more money on mass and compulsory schooling than the entire government of the United States. These funds came through either philanthropic donations or their private charitable foundations. They also began to subsidize university chairs, university researches, and school administrators. As late as 1915, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were spending even more (Gatto, 2003). It was because of this that their voices and desires held more sway than that of any public. For an entire century, Prussia had served as a mirror to this group of powerful elites as to what the United States could become with discipline. This point was emphasized in 1871 when Prussia crushed France in a lightening war. Suddenly, the entire world’s attention snapped back onto this “hypnotic, utopian place” (Gatto, 2003). An obvious link became forged between the Prussian ways of government, the academic mind, and industry. Simultaneously, coal was making ordinary citizens both physically and socially more dangerous. Simple citizens could now travel great distances quickly with revolutionary ideas or rebel with the actual explosive power that was contained in coal. The Coal Age also furnished the rise of industries that depended on wars for economic growth. For a combination of all of these reasons, it was becoming even more imperative to have a workforce that was tame, dependable, and submissive (Gatto, 2003). The mass and forced system of schooling, which had worked wonders in Prussia, was a source of inspiration as to how this end goal could be reached. With the influx of immigrants, now concentrating from eastern and southern Europe, there was a continued loss of any sense of religious consensus in the nation. Business leaders recognized, as had the Prussians, that best way to shape a new social order would be with the use and manipulation of the growing power of the school systems. The compulsory schools were to undergo a massive and systematic restructuring process to reflect the needs of industrialization. It would be the steam and coal powers of the country that would provide the required funds necessary to establish and maintain such a colossal national system of elementary and forced schooling (Gatto, 2003).

As a disorganized population, immigrants and folks from impoverished backgrounds served as easy targets for this novel system of mass schooling (Gatto, 2003), (Althea & Woods, 2008). A 1912 essay, entitled “The Country School of Tomorrow,” composed by Rockefeller’s General Education Board stated this (as quoted in The Underground History of American Education):

We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is a very simple as well as very beautiful one… we will organize our children… and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way…

(Gatto, 2003, Page 174)

Prior to 1900, school boards were large in membership and functioned as clumsy organizations, but a seat was available to represent almost every interest. Following 1910, however, they were dominated by concentrated and small groups of businessmen, politicians, and lawyers. This business interest and involvement in elementary education was complimented by the fact that child labor had been deemed unnecessary by 1900 due to a rapid onset of mechanization in factories and mines. In addition, child labor was becoming deemed a detriment to business interests because it kept workers too unskilled, and did not allow them training in the art of obeying orders. In fact, by 1905, industrial corporations employed up to seventy-one percent of all wage earners in the United States and mining companies employed another ten percent (Gatto, 2003). Thus, one of the major shifts to mass education for mass production was to support a new mass population, whose offspring would enter the mass education system, and who would then be trained to work in this new mass production economy. It is here that we can see a self-supporting cycle of mass education for mass production.

This cycle, based on the industrialization of the country and the solidification of the compulsory schooling system, would depend on a new trend and direction: industrial education. This method of education intensely influenced later compulsory legislation in Massachusetts and elsewhere. The importance and stress that was put on this new method of education can be found in that previously mentioned report on education and child labor from 1969:

The industrial education of the twentieth century is but a part of a great social movement arising from the new philosophy of education which demands that every child be given opportunity to develop such abilities as he may potentially possess, to attain as nearly as possible his maximum capacity as a contributor in an economic and broadly social sense, not as an individualistic exploiter of the goods of life, but as a social unit whose welfare cannot be considered apart from that of society, and in whose limitations society must also suffer.

(Ensign, 1969, Page 74)

Children, then, were to be trained as good foot soldiers in the economy. This becomes evident in the industrialization of the schools.

In 1870, the Massachusetts legislature decided to insert drawing as a subject mandated to be taught in every school across the state. In towns and cities of over 10,000 individuals, instruction in both industrial and mechanical drawing skills were made obligatory. Industrial education continued to make grounds, and by 1884, training in manual labor was authorized by law. Then, in 1895, this became a requirement for high schools within cities that’s population exceeded 20,000. Three years later, this mandate was expanded to elementary schools. The trend continued, and in 1906, some form of the manual arts was a compulsory component in elementary courses of study. However, this was no longer restricted to the cities – but was expanded to the smaller towns as well.

Yet, something about the schools was still bothering the business interests. As the industrialization of the country continued, labor unions were rapidly gaining in strength against big businesses (Althea & Woods, 2008). The failed populist revolt of 1896 most likely fanned these fears, as industry leaders were becoming increasingly nervous by the strength of the ordinary worker (Gatto, 2003). Responding to these concerns, the senate and the Bureau of Education released several reports indicating that education was providing workers with too much power in the workplace. On top of this, workers were becoming too aware and discontent with the poor conditions that they lived and worked under. As a direct response, critical thinking classes were cut from curricula. These classes included philosophy and any other subject that raised questions about economics, justice, and society. The funding required to make such drastic changes in the schools possible were provided by none other than Rockefeller and Carnegie. Recreating a controlled-factory environment, bell systems were put in place throughout the schools. And even though it had been promised that schools would be even playing fields, were class backgrounds were of no importance, schools divided students into a system of levels – or “tracks.” This further emphasized the conditions that were characteristics of the factories and the mines. The working class children were most often kept in vocational and rudimentary classes. Children of wealthy backgrounds, however, were afforded more educational resources and independence. The worst and the fewest resources, however, were reserved for immigrants and children of color (Althea & Woods, 2008).

However, those whose voices were heard by the school systems remained dissatisfied with the direction industrial education was going. These influential bodies felt that there was too little power to enforce schools to follow the new industrial education laws and curricula. This was driven by the feeling that only a small number of children “destined to become industrial workers” were being trained in what the architects of the laws had “intended for them” (Ensign, 1969). For Massachusetts, if it were to maintain a status of industrial leadership, these laws would need to be respected. Thus, it was once again that the insistence for a new educational order came from business interests. In 1905, the Massachusetts Legislature commanded the governor to assign a commission to investigate the topics of technical and industrial education. Governor William L. Douglas, who was a successful manufacturer, designed a commission which compiled a wide-ranging study of industry, education, Massachusetts, and their relations. The 1969 educational report informs us about the conclusions reached by the commission:

After careful consideration of the entire industrial-educational situation the commission concluded that a radical modification in the school system was required. It was proposed that both instruction and practice in the elements of productive industry should have a place in elementary schools; that in the high schools, mathematics, the sciences, and drawing should be presented with particular reference to local industrial life.

(Ensign, 1969, pages 76-77)

It becomes evident that whatever egalitarian elements that were a part of the development of compulsory schooling laws had become completely overtaken by the interests of the economic elite, business leaders, and industrialists. Industry interests became the basis for the future advancement of schools. Indeed, the science, math, and drawing curricula of schools were adjusted by law to fit local industrial needs and wants. At this point, the synthesis of academic and industrial education became indivisible (Ensign, 1969).

William Torrey Harris served as the U.S. Commissioner of Education between the years of 1889 and 1906. Harris was one of the most prominent and influential educational figures of his time and was also a staunch supporter of compulsory schooling. Yet, the Commissioner also believed that children were property – and that the nation retains an undeniable right to use these children as it pleases. Mass and forced schooling, he held, would create a citizenry so reliant upon the State and the leaders that internal ruptures and revolutions would become a thing of the past (Gatto, 2003). This would seem to be a direct reference to the population in poverty, immigrants, and people of color. In his 1893 book, The Philosophy of Education, Harris had this to say,

Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual…

He took this concept further:

The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places… It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.

(Gatto, 2003, pages 105-106)

Developed, effective, and well-funded bureaucracy was the reason that from 1900 to 1930, compulsory schooling laws were significantly strengthened in many states. These laws were no longer dead letters, but instead effective statutes (Katz, 1976). The materialization of efficient enforcement methods resulted in the success of a massive attempt at social control and manipulation. Mass schooling was transforming from just a legal standard into the normalized social order. On average, over one high school a day was opened in the years between 1890 and 1920 – this is a four hundred-sixty seven percent increase compared to the thirty years before (Katz, 1976).

The population of the United States exploded from 31 million to 91 million between 1860 and 1910, almost tripling over fifty years. Communities were experiencing a massive transformation from “simplicity” and “lack of differentiation” into metropolises of specialization, urbanization, and industrialization (Katz, 1976). This societal change was matched by a new influx of European immigrants from the southern and eastern countries of the region. Normalized citizens and the powerful elite were becoming increasingly fearful of “crime,” “vagrancy,” and a class of foreign-speaking “paupers”. Schools were promoted as agents and tools of assimilation and social control for this intimidating, new society (Katz, 1976). While the concept of schools as a means of social control was nothing new, its popularity thrived as the concentration of immigrants exploded in the cities (Katz, 1976).

Conclusions and Implications

As we have seen, the development of mass education in the United States coincided directly with both industry’s need for good, obedient workers and a demand for social control by powerful business interests and citizenry. Yet, the initial introduction of compulsory schooling was a result of a multitude of factors – both egalitarian, nefarious, and everywhere in between. Even many of those who were attempting to implement forced schooling as a means of social control were legitimately working to eliminate the wretched conditions of such things as child labor. Every force, from the labor unions to the utopian idealists, believed that they were in one way or another doing what was best for society. These different visions and intentions, including all that were for and against compulsory schooling, would participate in the introduction of compulsory schooling in the 1852 law of Massachusetts. However, with this implementation, the powerful business interests and elite citizenry would be the ones to influence and direct what goals schools would strive for and the methods they would use for execution. Although the methods of the 1852 law were different, it would end up having an equivalent aim as the 1642 colonial law: cultural, social, and economic control over society. Thus, if the intention was to have a national workforce, the country would need a national and standardized education. The forced, regulated, and controlled distribution of knowledge served as a means of manipulation. The control over knowledge equaled the control over workers. Powerful and influential societal powers, such as Rockefeller and Carnegie, made sure that the means of mass education for production was actually a method of mass producing good workers and good nationalists. It is not unheard of, nor uncommon, for movements in the United States that have egalitarian intentions to be absorbed by those in power for their own interests, as did happen with compulsory schooling.

However, it is important to reject two arguments that generally accompany the critical analysis of the origins of compulsory education in the United States. The first is that the system of learning prior to compulsory schooling, through working and apprenticeship, is the model that we should return to. Such an argument ignores the truth of the difficulties that persisted, especially amongst children from impoverished backgrounds and children of color. In fact, the concept of mass education or education available to everyone is not inherently a bad one – but it is when the educational system is not equitable, and is used to enforce class systems and other forms of oppression, that we run into problems. Education that is used as a means for the collective and individual good, not for social control and the maintenance of power structures, and that allow for individual choice in participation, is essential for moving towards a more just society. Additionally, it is important to realize that if we were to suddenly abolish the system of education that we have in place now – children could once again be taken advantage of and used as instruments to grow individual elite’s wealth. In fact, it is irresponsible to deny that child labor has completely been abolished. Instead, it has just taken on a more invisible role to the larger society. Most child laborers who are being exploited today are from countries south of the United States border and work in agriculture. However, the difficulties that they face are extremely similar to the ones faced by immigrants of the late 18^th and early 19^th century: if they leave work and enter school, their families will be unable to sustain a living; and if they do not acquire some form of education, they will most likely remain in poverty. Such a social crisis must be faced with a three-pronged attack: first, the exploitative child labor must be abolished; second, families must receive just, fair, and more than complete compensation that they would lose because of this; and third, individuals must have their liberty respected in order to learn freely.

Finally, one last question should be posed. If mass education for mass production was so effective, shouldn’t that serve as a lesson for those of us interested in promoting alternative economics? Would it not follow that the best way to promote cooperative and democratic work would be through cooperative education? Forced schooling that followed the model of industrial work was the most successful tool used for creating a workforce prepared to toil under the conditions set by the wealthy business interests. If we are to take any lesson from this, it should be that the form of education a society of children experience will prepare them for a specific form of work. Cooperative, democratic, and equitable education are thus essential prerequisites for a culture of humanized work.

Bibliography

Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860- 1935. New York: University of North Carolina P, 1988.

Althea, Amina, and Amber Woods. “A History of Compulsory Schooling.” I Want To Do This All Day. Internet Archive. 14 Aug. 2008 <http://www.archive.org>.

Coleman, J. S., et al. (1966). Equality of Educational Opportunity. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Deffenbaugh, W.S. “Compulsory Attendance Laws in the United States.” United States Bureau of Education. Washington, D.C.: Washington Government Printing Office, 1914. 7-56.

Ensign, Forest C. Compulsory School Attendance and Child Labor. New York, NY: Arno P & The New York Times, 1969.

Epstein, R. (2007). “Let’s abolish high school”. Education Week. Retrieved April 18, 2007, from www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/04/04/31epstein.h26.html

Gatto, J. T. (2003). The Underground History of American Education. New York: The Oxford Village Press.

Gutman, Herbert G. Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America. New York, NY: AlfredA. Knopf, Inc, 1976. 3-78.

Katz, Michael S. “A History of Compulsory Education Laws.” Fastback Series (1976): 1-39.

Kendrick, Stephen, and Paul Kendrick. Sarah’s Long Walk : The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America. New York: Beacon P, 2006.

Langhout, R.D. (2005). “Acts of Resistance: Student (In)Visibility”. Culture and Psychology, 11, 123-158

O’Keeffe, D. (2004). Libertarian Alliance. “Compulsory education: An oxymoron of modernity”. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/educn/educn036.htm

Rothbard, M. (1978). “Public and compulsory schooling”. In For a New Liberty (chap. 7). Retrieved September 10, 2008, from http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty6.asp

UPDATE: You can now read my report on the Mondragón Cooperative educational experience here.

On September 27th, I will fly from New York to Bilbao, Spain. The purpose of this trip will be to participate in a program run by the Praxis Peace institute to learn about the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation. Specifically, I will be looking at how Mondragón functions democratically and as a worker cooperative, its relation to and involvement with education, and how themes of Mondragón could be related back to the learning-place democracy movement here in the United States.

What is a Worker Cooperative? What is Mondragón?

According to the International Co-operative Alliance, a cooperative is “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.” There are many different types of cooperatives, but in the United States two of the most common types are worker cooperatives and consumer cooperatives. Consumer cooperatives are businesses that are owned by the customers for the customers’ mutual benefit. Worker cooperatives, on the other hand, are cooperatives that are owned and democratically run completely by its employees. Thus, the workers are also the owners (worker-owners).

Mondragón is one of the largest and most successful worker cooperatives of all time. It has existed since roughly 1956, created in the Basque region of Spain during Fascist rule, and has only continued to grow since. While many other parts of Spain and its Basque region faced economic turmoil during and after Franco’s rule (1939-1975), Mondragón continued to prosper and exist as a democratic workplace in a fascist state. There are many reasons (while some are still being debated) for Mondragón’s success.

One particular aspect that the Mondragón experiment has been noted for is the fact that it is one large worker cooperative corporation that is made up of many smaller worker cooperatives. Each cooperative is its own individual entity while being connected through a cooperative bank (the Caja Laboral Popular), a Cooperative Congress, and other economic ties. This means that the worker-cooperatives that comprise Mondragón are both autonomous and cooperative: much like the individual worker-owners.

Education in Mondragón

Mondragón actively acknowledges the importance of education in a successful democratic workplace. A good education (one that is always continuing) is seen as the center of making workplace democracy a reality. From its origins, Mondragón has been linked with education and schools. The cooperative system was born out of a training school organized for industrial apprentices. José María Arizmendiarrieta, one of the main thinkers behind the origins of Mondragón (and the founder of the training school), wrote, “It has been said that cooperativism is an economic movement that uses education; we can also alter the definition, affirming that it is an educational movement that uses economic action.”

The Mondragón experiment already engages the education aspect of workplace democracy in many ways.  Mondragón contains cooperative schools and universities. On top of that, it employs programs that are designed to keep consumers and worker-owners educated. Additionally, some cooperatives are research cooperatives with the purpose of doing discovery work for other Mondragón co-ops. These are just to name a few.

What I Hope To Discover

The bold and thought-provoking history of Mondragón thoroughly ties together workplace democracy to the importance of education that prepares workers for cooperation and self-management. However, on this trip, I will hope to examine three things: 1) What connections can we draw between workplace democracy and learning-place democracy? 2) Is the education movement promoted by Mondragón also democratic? 3) How can the lessons of Mondragón, autonomy and cooperation, be tied together with the radical learning movement here in the United States?

1) If the Mondragón philosophy is that education is the central key to making workplace democracy successful, is it not true that learning and places of learning should also be democratic? What, then, are the connections between workplace democracy and learning-place democracy? In what ways are they dependent on one other?

2) We should not get lost in romanticizing Mondragón. While it is an impressive and important example in workplace democracy, it is true that it has existing problems and stains on its history. What I will attempt to find out on this trip is whether or not Mondragón promotes autonomy and cooperation in its school and educational philosophies as it does in its workplace. While the Mondragón educational programs are innovative in their own right, how do they tie together workplace democracy and learning-place democracy? How are they successful in this and how are they not?

3) Lastly, I hope to explore how the lessons of the Mondragón cooperative – the autonomy of individual worker co-ops with cooperation on a larger scale with other co-ops – could be implemented (and the importance of doing so) here in the United States with radical learning projects and centers. While there exist many experiments in radical education, they are for the most part autonomous without working cooperatively with other projects. Will they go the way of many worker cooperatives in the United States and disappear because there is no system of mutual support? Or can we take a lesson from Mondragón and find ways to be independent communities while working cooperatively for common goals?

The following is a learning activity I crafted for a class I was teaching on U.S. History. It was designed for teenagers, but I think it could be easily adapted for slightly-younger folks and adults.

Download it in PDF form here.

Activity: Underrepresented Peoples in U.S. History

• Goal of this activity: For the students to engage United States history by discovering what peoples go underrepresented in traditional tales of U.S. history. They will do this by interviewing community members, their peers, and themselves. This is both an individual and (can be a) group effort.
• Materials Needed: Community members to investigate, pens/pencil, paper. Optional: Note cards.
• Participants: 1-20 (or more, depending on your needs/ability).
• Time Needed: 45 – 90 minutes.

1. First, designate a community of people to interview: i.e. a school, a downtown, a class, a library, or etc. Give the following questions/guidelines to the participants (recommended on a piece of paper):

Who were important [your group] in American history? How did they impact the world that we know today? What lessons can we learn from them? (REMEMBER: important people don’t have to mean good people)

Go ask people in the area if they can identify any of the following groups of people in American history and ask them the questions specified above (and any other questions you think are important). Record their answers and think about why they gave the answers they did.

The students will fill in the [your group] bracket with one of the following possibilities:

• People of color
• Women
• Women of color
• Gender queer folks
• Lower-class folks
• Differently-Abled folks
• People of non-Christian faiths
• Immigrants
• Political dissenters
• [Add more that you see fit]

(You might want to lay these different options out on a table on note-cards for the students to choose from.)

2. Send the students out to engage with the designated community. A recommend time is anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. Depending on the needs of your class and your area, you may want to travel around with the students to help them find individuals to engage and help in facilitation.

3. After a sufficient amount of time, call the participants back. Amount a discussion as to whom they investigated and the answers they received. Here is a list of some recommended follow-up questions:

• Was it easy or difficult for people to think of individuals who have contributed to American History from your groups?
• Why do you think this is the case?
• Regarding African-Americans, is your list of individuals solely those who fought against slavery and in the Civil Rights movement? Why might this be?
• Did you notice any patterns in people given to you in your interviews?
• Who would you say still goes excluded from this list?
• In what ways do you think the influence these groups of people have had over the history of the United States has gone ignored or silenced?
• What are possible ways that we could attempt to change this?
• [More that you wish to include or that the participants inspire]
• Ask the students if they have any questions or comments to explore.

(Optional: Before starting the discussion, ask the students to interview each other with their specified groups. Also a good alternative if you don’t have a community available to access for this activity).

4. An Optional Follow Up:

Say to the class/participants: I’m going to recommend something for you to try after this class if you’d like to do something to follow up this activity and engage the subject matter further.

Pose this question to the students (on pieces of paper or etc.)

Choose a certain part of yourself, your whole identity, or some parts. By “identity,” I mean any way that you personally view yourself. If you can, talk to people with similar self-representations and ask them about how they think their image has been portrayed or represented in United States history. How well represented are you in traditional tales of U.S. history? In what ways is this identity talked about? What are some representations that you don’t associate with? How often and in what ways do you feel these identities have been portrayed in United States history? Do you believe these portrayals of different identities are fair?

Via Racewire:

Tell the State Commission on Juvenile Justice: Shut It Down!

On September 25th, the State Commission on Juvenile Justice — the agency in charge of setting the direction for the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) — will consider following the Little Hoover recommendation and closing the DJJ. The Commissioners need to know there is public support for this plan.

Please take a moment to tell your story or describe why you support shutting down the DJJ

This is definitely extremely important – and prison justice is definitely related to education justice.

For more information on the criminalization of youth – and especially its relation to how (the lack of) access to free education and learning tools is used to continue to keep historically oppressed people behind bars and dependent on the prison system – check out the HBO documentary Juvies. (I used this movie to introduce teenagers at North Star: Self-Directed Learning in Hadley, MA about the prison system and youth to great success. I’ll be blogging about this shortly.)

More info: The Real Cost of Prisons Project. Get Involved: National List of Books to Prisoners Programs

Edit: Oops, apparently there was a broken link on this post. It has been fixed now.

The history of Columbus is a turbulent one – and the way we are traditionally taught (and teach) about him is a way built into imperialism, racism, and is European-centric. Our nationally-supported tale of Columbus ignores his impact on the Native Americans he encountered and builds up a false mythology around him that we still worship today. Below is a board-game I crafted in order to help combat this. It is important to note that this game still has some problems and that it should not be regarded as an attempt to be the only way to teach about the history of Columbus. This game is still from the perspective of Columbus and Europeans, as most history of Columbus are, but that is because this game/learning tool is based off of the question: “We have a national holiday named after Christopher Columbus, which means we are supposed to view Columbus as a hero and that we should emulate his actions. So, what were his actions and would we want to live up to them? Would he be a hero to us? To all people?” This does not mean that this learning tool is an endorsement of Columbus – far from it. It just asks learners to take on the role of Columbus and see if his actions and impacts would be what they would view as heroic and good. However, I’m currently attempting to develop a teaching/learning tool that tells the same tale of Columbus’s arrival while the learners take on the role of the American Indians.

I should note a couple more things. First, this game was designed to be counter the traditional tales of pro-imperialism, pro-colonialism, pro-racism, and so on that compile the regular histories told of Columbus. It was also designed to show the impact of Columbus’s arrivals and actions on the rest of the world (including the Americas) and not just Europe – again, a habit of traditional history-telling. However, there was a couple of pit-falls that I fell into when I crafted this activity that I realized too late. The game does not provide a space to show learners how they can go on and continue their learning on the subject elsewhere. This makes the game semi-dogmatic. I have constructed a follow up activity to this game that can be used for that purpose, and that helps teach learners how to challenge and think critically about dogmatic histories – I will post this shortly.

On to the game – (OR You can download the maps, instructions, and game pieces HERE and the cards for the game HERE).

Activity: The Arrival of Columbus and The Importance of it Today

• Goal of this activity: To understand what the arrival of Columbus to the Americas meant to the entire world and the lasting impact it has had on us today, through an experiential process.

• Materials Needed: A board, paper, scissors, glue, writing utensil, change

• Participants: 1-4 per game board (or can make several boards and do it with more participants).

• Time Needed: 70-90 minutes

1. Before you start the board game (and after the game):

Before the game:

• On a board or some visible place, make three sections for the purpose of writing on: 1) What we know and feel about Columbus now (Pre-Game), 2) What we now know and feel about Columbus (Post-Game), 3) Who were the Arawak/Taíno people?

• Have the students go up to the board and write down what they know/feel in sections 1 and 3. All answers are completely acceptable – also, if there are any points of contention amongst the participants, allow them to talk it out.

• Also, pose these questions/problems: “Many states in the U.S. celebrate Columbus Day. This obviously means that we are supposed to treat Columbus as a hero, which means we are supposed to want to live up to Columbus an emulate the things he stood for. So, what exactly would it mean for us to live up to Columbus – and is this something we want to do?”

After the game:

• Ask the students to revisit the board and to address spaces 2 and 3 together (talking amongst each other is highly encouraged). Also ask the students if they can think of any other ways that this issue has influence over our lives today.

2. The Board Game

Instructions:

Introduction: This is a board game based on the expeditions of Christopher Columbus. In the Untied States, many students are told that Columbus “discovered” the “New World” in 1492 that led to Europeans “settling” the Americas. For the most part, the story is left at that. Columbus is treated as a hero and many U.S. states celebrate a “Columbus Day” in October. However, the story is much more complex and Columbus had a much larger and possibly different impact on the Americas than is generally recognized. (Ask: are the terms that are normally used – i.e. “settle,” “discover,” and “New World” – appropriate to use?). Because Columbus is thought of as a hero in many parts of the United States, this implies that we should look up to him and respect what he accomplished. Thus, in this game, players take on the role and the perspective of Columbus. It is not meant to endorse Columbus or his actions, but to simply demonstrate what it would mean to live up to Columbus and what he accomplished. This game uses primary source quotes and facts about Columbus after his arrival to the Americas.

Rules:

Objective: The object of the game is to pay off your debt to Spain and to make enough money to retire wealthy.

You Are: You are Columbus right after he has landed on “Hispaniola” for the first time, which is the island that makes up modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic. You will be making trips back and forth between Spain and the “West Indies.” In real life, Columbus made five trips to the Americas. There are four Columbus icons to choose from, each with a different depiction of Columbus. That is because Columbus never actually had a portrait done of him in his lifetime, and all portraits of him were done after he died by people who imagined what he had looked like.

How The Game Works:

Turns: Players move once a turn. They must do their actions when they land on a Space. They roll the die to see how many spaces they move. At the start of the game, each player will start at the arrow before the “1” spot on the West Indies. Every turn that you are in the West Indies, you must pay the Kingdom of Spain 2 gold. When the player reaches space “10,” they travel with their ship across the ocean. When reaching Spain, the player stops on the first space. When the player comes to the space marked “4,” they then head back to the West Indies on their ship. When arriving in Spain, you get 10 extra gold. On the departure from Spain, players get 2 extra soldiers.

Spaces: While in the West Indies, there are two kinds of Spaces. One is a Card Space and the other is an Action Space. In Spain, there are Card Spaces and Rest Spaces. Card Spaces: There are two different types of cards designated, one designated for use in Spain and one for the West Indies. When you land on a card space, read the “Info” section – which are facts about Columbus, the Americas, or quotes from the writings of Las Casas – and then follow the directions of the “Action” section. Action Space: The action spaces in the West Indies are spaces where you can use either your Priest units or your Soldier units. Ocean Space: Once you reach the Ocean Spaces, you must travel to the next continent. Roll the dice to see how many spaces you travel. If you roll a six, your ship shipwrecks (note: this is only true if a players rolls a six while on an ocean space). This means that players lose their ship (ships are put it back in the Kingdom of Spain). Players must begin again from the continent you started sailing on.

Units: There are three kinds of units in this game.

1. Ships. You start out with three ships. Each ship costs 20 gold. Your ships are your units which allow you to travel from continent to continent. You must always have at least one ships. If you are down to zero, you must buy a ship at the start of your turn.

2. Soldier. You start off with 2 soldier units. Each soldier unit costs 5 gold. You must at least have 2 soldier units at all times. If you start a turn with less than five soldiers, you must buy enough to get you to at least 2 before you move your Columbus icon. The soldier units are used for the action spaces; they are sent out on Raiding Parties. You have two possibilities for these spaces: -You can send a soldier unit out on a Raiding Party. Roll the dice. If you roll a 3 or above, the raiding party is successful and you receive 5 gold. If you roll 1 or 2, the soldier unit dies. Put it back in the Kingdom of Spain. You can only do this once an Action Space. -You can send out 10 soldiers. If you roll 3 or above, all survive and you get 30 gold. If you roll a 1 or 2, all die. Put five of them back in the Kingdom of Spain. You can only do this once a stay on the West Indies (meaning you have to wait to return from Spain for the next time to do this).

3. Priest. You start out with 1 priest unit. Each priest unit costs 10 gold. The priest units are used for action spaces. You send the priests to the Arawaks and African slaves to convert them to Christianity. You always have to have at least 1 priest unit. If you start a turn without a priest unit, the first thing you must do before you can move is buy a new priest unit. You can only use priest units three times total on a stay in the West Indies (meaning you have to wait for your return from Spain to use a priest again). -If you roll a 1, 2, or 3 your priest is killed. -If you roll a 4 or a 5, your priest makes 15 gold. -If you roll 6, your priest makes 25 gold.

Starting and Finishing: You start the game 200 gold in debt to Spain. You finish the game when you have paid off the 200 gold debt (extended game play: and then when you make 200 gold to retire).

Kingdom of Spain: A player in the game, or any independent individual (teacher/facilitator), acts as the Kingdom of Spain. The Kingdom of Spain is responsible for giving out and collecting the gold and all of the units. When a player has 200 gold, that player pays it back to the Kingdom of Spain (they must then make 200 extra gold to retire wealthy).

2. How to make the Board Game:

Constructing the board game takes a little time, but it is fairly simple. Here are some easy steps. Each material that has been included in this is represented by a number in the “how to” that corresponds with the number (#) that it is in the materials provided below.

• Get a large board/paper board (when I made the game, I used a blue board, to give the effect of the Atlantic Ocean).

• Cut out the map of the “West Indies” (1) and the “Kingdom of Spain” (2). Glue the “Kingdom of Spain” to the top right corner and the “West Indies” to the bottom left corner.

• Next to the space marked “1C” on the “West Indies” map draw a space and mark it “starting point.” From the space marked “4” on the “Kingdom of Spain” map, draw six spaces to the “starting point” you have just made – mark these numbers numerically (1, 2, 3, etc.). Then draw six spaces from the “West Indies” space marked “10C” to the Spain space marked “1” – also mark them numerically.

• In the top left hand corner, make three-inch wide spaces – and mark one “Soldier,” one “Priest,” and one “Ship.” These are where the game units will be placed.

• Cut out the four Columbus (3) pieces.

• Cut out the game pieces: soldiers (4), priests (5), and soldiers (6). (Because of space allotment, I did not put as many of each unit as are needed below. You may want to photocopy them to make more – or to simply cut them out, and the students can keep track of how many of each unit they are supposed to have on a piece of paper). • Cut out all the game Cards. Next to the “West Indies” map, draw another large box. Place the “West Indies” Cards here (7). In the Atlantic Ocean, between Spain and the Islands, glue down the Ocean Card (8). Next to the “Kingdom of Spain” map, draw a large box. Place the Spain Cards (9) here.

• For the “gold” pieces, you can use pennies/nickels to represent “5” gold, dimes to represent “10” gold, and quarters to represent “25” gold. Or you can come up with another measuring device, or the students can simply keep track by using math.

Here is an example of what the board might look like:

In the following pages, some of the different materials are provided. Remember, you might want to photocopy them if you might want to have more for the future. Or, if cutting/pasting/photocopying doesn’t work for you, you can simply draw the parts:

(Click on images for full-size versions. You can download them and print them, full-size to use on the board). OR (You can download the maps and cards in a PDF format HERE.) Just to note: You should probably make 20 Ship cards, 50 Priest Cards, and 100 Soldier cards. Of course, if you don’t have the resources to print/copy this amount of cards, you can just have the players keep tallies of how many of each units they have).

1. Map of “West Indies”

2. Map of Kingdom of Spain

3. Columbus Pieces

4. Ship Pieces

Ship

20 Gold

5. Priest Pieces

Priest

10 Gold

6. Soldier Pieces

Soldier

5 Gold

Cards for the Columbus Game:

9. “West Indies” Cards (OR download the cards in PDF format HERE)

INFO: Christopher Columbus owed Spain a lot of money for financing his trips. He didn’t find “fields of gold” like he had imagined, so he had to pay back the Kingdom somehow. In 1495 he sent a raiding party into the interior of the island with weapons and dogs and captured 1,500 Arawaks. He then selected the best 500 of them to send back to the Kingdom as payment. In route, 200 of the Arawaks died.
ACTION: You have not located any fields of gold. You have sent a raiding party into the interior to capture Arawaks. Roll a dice to see how many you will keep as slaves. If you roll a six, you keep six hundred. If you roll a five, you keep five hundred. And so on. Send them back to the Kingdom. You make 5 gold for each slave you send back.
“Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.”
- Christopher Columbus

INFO: The search for gold, wealth, and the spreading of Christianity was extremely important to Christopher Columbus and all other European powers.
ACTION: You have sent a priest to the Arawaks. Roll a dice to see if he succeeds in converting Arawaks. If the dice is 3 or below the priest succeeds, if it is 4 or above the priest is killed and you lose 10 gold. If the priest succeeds, you get 10 gold from the converted Arawaks.

INFO: When Columbus returned to Hispaniola for the first time, with a small Army granted to him by Spain, many Arawaks resisted giving the Spaniards all of their gold and food. To set an example of what brutality Columbus and the Spaniards could achieve, they cut off the ears or nose of disobedient Arawaks.
ACTION: You send your soldiers to deal with the disobedient Arawaks. Roll the dice, if it lands on 4 or above none of your soldiers die and you get 10 gold. If 3 or below you lose 2 soldier units.

INFO: Many Arawaks resisted Columbus’s orders that they provide the Europeans with food, women for sex, and cotton. The Arawaks intended this to be a message for Columbus to go home but Columbus took it as an act of war. Columbus surprised the Arawaks and cut them down with volleys from guns and attack dogs.
ACTION: You get 10 gold from raided Arawak villages.

INFO: Columbus and his men began to hunt Arawaks as sport and kill them for dog food. They were forced into slave labor and had to pay tribute to the Spanish.
ACTION: You receive 10 gold from forced labor and tributes paid to Arawak.

INFO: Christopher Columbus would reward his men with Arawak women to rape.
ACTION: Uh… don’t make this a card. Find out a different way to portray it.

INFO: The Spanish actions on the islands known today as the Caribbean Islands destroyed the Arawak ecosystem and culture. New and horrendous diseases were introduced to the Arawaks, who had no resistance because they had never been exposed to them before. As a result, the Arawaks died off in great numbers. There may have been up to 8 million Arawak Indians on all of the islands when Columbus arrived. There were 3 million by 1496 (that’s 5 million less in 4 years). There were 12,000 by 1516, and, according to Las Casas, there were 200 by 1546. By 1555 they were all dead. Because of the large-scale loss of Indians, Columbus imported slaves from Africa. Thus, by sending Arawaks to Europe and Africans to the Americas – Columbus initiated the transatlantic slave trade that would last for hundreds of years.
ACTION: The imported slaves from Africa bring you 5 gold.

INFO: When Columbus met the Arawak Indians, they presented him with gifts made of gold and they wore trinkets made of gold – as was accustom in Arawak society. This, unfortunately for the Arawaks, intrigued Columbus greatly.
ACTION: You receive 2 gold from the Arawaks as a gift.

INFO: Columbus left soldiers on Hispaniola after he went back to Spain with Arawaks he had captured as slaves. He returned to find his soldiers killed in battle because they had roamed the island looking for gold and kidnapped women and children for sex and labor.
ACTION: You lose 3 soldier units and 5 gold.

INFO: Initially, too many Arawak slaves died in captivity to be profitable for Columbus. However, he had to make good on paying the Spanish Kingdom back. Columbus imagined huge fields of gold to be on Hispaniola, and thus he determined that he needed to fill his ships with gold to send back to Spain. Columbus ordered all Arawaks that were 14 or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months as tribute. When they brought it, they were given a copper token to wear around their necks. Arawaks who were found without these copper tokens had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death.
ACTION: You make 10 gold in tributes from the Arawaks.

INFO: Las Casas, from History of the Indies:
“…mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they [the Arawak men] dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines , the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside…”
Each crew of Arawaks was forced to mine from six to eight months. During that time, up to a third of the men died.
ACTION: You make 15 gold from Arawaks forced to mine.

INFO: Arawak men were forced to mine by Spaniards, and women were forced to work the soil for agriculture and for the growing of the prized cassava plants. This consisted of the difficult and strenuous job of making thousands of hills for the products desired by Columbus and the Spanish. Las Casas, from History of the West Indies:
“Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides… they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation… In this same way, husbands died in mines, husbands died at work, and children died from lack of milk… and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile… was depopulated… My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write…”
ACTION: You make 10 gold from cassava plants and other crops farmed by Arawak women.

INFO: When Columbus and his crew arrived to the Americas, they threw away their wool clothing for the American Indian’s cotton clothes. The cotton plant was native to the Americas and had been utilized for many different uses. Cotton, in turn, would have a major impact on European clothing and industry.
ACTION: You make 15 gold for shipping cotton and cotton plants to Europe.

INFO: Some Arawaks and other American Indians thought that Columbus and his crew were gods, with their ships from an unknown place and their mysterious guns. The Europeans accepted this notion until the Taíno started to test this empirically: by shoving the Europeans’ heads under water to see if they were actually immortal.
ACTION: You lose 5 amount of gold in dead crew and 2 soldiers.

INFO: By the time Columbus landed, the Americas had some of the most densely populated areas on Earth. Central Mexico, part of Mesoamerica, alone had 25.2 million people in it. To put that into perspective, Spain and Portugal combined had 10 million. This means that central Mexico may have had the most people per square mile, more than China or India. The year before Columbus arrived, the Americas may have been home to between 90 million and 112 million people. This means that more people lived in the Americas than in Europe.
ACTION: The islands that Columbus landed on were initially densely populated. The Kingdom of Spain gives you ten gold to help your journey so that you might bring back slaves.

INFO: The people who populated the Americas had also erected complicated and sophisticated societies. With the arrival of Columbus and other European powers, however, devastating diseases swept through the Americas. The American Indians had never been exposed to the diseases the Europeans brought with them and thus had no natural resistances to them. In the first 150 years after the arrival of Columbus, 85% of the people in the Americas may have died. If this is right, 1 in 5 people on Earth may have perished from these epidemics.
ACTION: Many of the Arawak slaves you’ve captured die of smallpox. You lose 5 gold in investments.

INFO: The Arawaks were a people who lived on the islands of the “West Indies,” mainly on “Hispaniola,” and were closely related to the Taíno who lived on what is today called Cuba. Europeans time and time again noted the Arawaks, like the people who lived on the mainland of the Americas, for their hospitality and their willingness to share. When Columbus arrived at their island, the Arawaks swam out to meet him.
ACTION: You make 5 gold from the friendly Arawaks.

INFO: Here are a few things we learned about the Arawaks from Las Casas’ History of the Indies:
-The Arawaks had canoes that could fit up to 40 or 50 people.
-Marriage laws were non-existent. Women and men could choose their partners equally and they could both leave each other whenever they pleased. Women were treated so well in American Indian society that it shocked the Spaniards.
-The Arawaks lived in communal housing and on land communally (meaning they shared the land, it was not owned privately by individuals).
-Whenever the Arawaks did battle, it was for personal grievances coming from the people, not because of orders from Kings.
ACTION: Women were treated so well in Arawak society that it shocked the Spaniards who were used to supreme male domination over women. As a result of your forced labor, you make 10 gold.

INFO: Bartolomé de Las Casas was a young priest who participated in the conquest of Cuba. He even owned a plantation with American Indian slaves on it for a while until he later gave that up and became a serious critic of Spanish cruelty. He would later write History of the Indies which described the American Indian people of the West Indies and Columbus’s actions against them.
ACTION: You lose one priest unit.

8. Ocean Card

INFO: Columbus and other European sailors shipwrecked off of the Caribbean islands often. When they did, Arawaks usually found them and took care of them for months on end until they were able to sail again.
ACTION: Roll the dice to move that many spaces across the ocean. If the die lands on “6″ your ship has shipwrecked and you lose a turn while you are being taken care of by the Arawaks. You must start sailing again from the continent you began on. You also lose 5 gold and 2 soldier units.

9. Spain Cards

INFO: When Columbus returned to Spain for the first time from Hispaniola, he brought back with him 25 Arawak Indians as slaves. The trinkets they wore and the gold jewelry on their bodies caused a stir in Spain. Columbus was sent back with a small army to capture more gold.
ACTION: Your Arawak slaves have caused quite a stir in Spain. The Kingdom sends you back with 5 additional soldier units.

INFO: Initially Columbus had a good outlook on the Arawaks, calling them an impressive people. His view changed later when he tried to sell them as slaves to Isabella, calling them stupid and brutish. For her part, Isabella would eventually side against the enslavement of American Indians. She and Las Casas would work together to make laws against selling American Indians as slaves. Unfortunately, other European powers saw profit in slavery and followed suit from Columbus. Columbus probably sent more slaves across the ocean than any other person in the history of the world: 5,000.
ACTION: American Indian slavery wasn’t always banned in Spain. You sell Arawaks as slaves for 10 gold.

INFO: The flow of crops between the newly connected continents was enormous. For their part, the Americas introduced such things as maize (corn), peppers, peanuts, cocoa, potatoes, and some kinds of beans to Europe and Africa. This is just to name a few. The introduction of potatoes in Europe caused a population boom in Europe and strengthened Europe’s economic standing and gave them the ability to send raiding parties to the Americas. The introduction of maize to Africa also caused a population boom there. This helped fuel the African slave trade to the Americas. This also caused the collapse of great Islamic Empires that Europe had been competing against.
It is estimated that anywhere from half to 3/5ths of the worlds current plants in cultivation originated in the Americas.
ACTION: The introduction of new crops brings you 2 soldier units for your ships and 5 gold.

INFO: Although there were many diseases that swept across the Americas after the arrival of Columbus that crippled American Indian societies and killed off entire peoples, the disease of Syphilis may have originated in the Americas and then traveled to Europe from Columbus’s crew.
ACTION: 5 of your soldier units die and others get sick from syphilis. You must pay 15 gold to treat the sick units.

INFO: Columbus’s re-finding of the Americas helped along the rise of capitalism. Because there was now so much gold and silver available to European powers, from the Americas, this became the replacement for land as the basis of wealth. This was undermining to the Islamic nations that had once dominated and rivaled Europe. It also caused Africa to only have one thing to trade that Europe desired: slaves.
ACTION: You brought back large quantities of gold from the Americas and made large quantities of gold from bringing slaves to the West Indies from Africa. You make 15 gold.

INFO: Isabella was the Queen of the newly unified Spain in 1492 and financed Columbus’s expeditions. Eventually, when Columbus continued to bring slaves back to Spain from the Americas, she would work with Las Casas to ban the slavery of American Indians in Spain.
ACTION: Queen Isabella supplies you with a ship to help colonize and conquer the “West Indies”. But you lose 15 gold from not being able to sell as many slaves.

INFO: During the time of Columbus’s expeditions to the Americas, starting in 1492, Europe was more organized than it had ever been before due to bureaucracy. Columbus had possibly learned about uncharted lands to the west from his visits to the Scandinavia area. The Vikings, who had originated from Scandinavia, had visited the Americas hundreds of years before – probably around 1000 AD. The Vikings had long interactions with the Americas, failing to establish settlements (due to heavy American Indian populations), but continued to export large amounts of wood from the continent for over 300 years. It is also possible that Africans, the Irish, and maybe even the Chinese had visited the Americas before Columbus.
Columbus’s arrival to the Americas was much more important in Europe during his time, though, because of the way Europe responded. Columbus also had the benefit of constant wars in Europe, causing an unprecedented arms race in the region. This gave him the benefit of large weapons unmatched by other parts of the world.
ACTION: You receive 4 soldier units.

INFO: Columbus convinced the King and Queen of Spain that he was searching for a route to India, although the place he was really searching for is uncertain. He also changed the distances his ships traveled in his captain’s logs in order to confuse European sailors that might try to follow in his steps. This way, he would be the only one with the knowledge of how to reach the “West Indies.” Columbus eventually died a very wealthy man.
ACTION: You are the only one who has knowledge of how to reach the “West Indies,” you make 10 gold on your monopoly of knowledge.

]]> http://freeschools.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/i-want-to-do-this-all-day-a-radio-documentary-about-free-schools-and-radical-learning/ Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:01:29 +0000 Brian http://freeschools.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/i-want-to-do-this-all-day-a-radio-documentary-about-free-schools-and-radical-learning/

I Want To Do This All Day is a radio documentary about free schools and radical learning spaces in the United States. I’ve read a lot on the topics of free schools and radical learning, but this is by far one of the best discussions on these topics that I have ever been privy too. Not only is it an incredible illustration of what free schools and radical learning centers are, but it’s also a bold critique of what they could still be.

Here’s a description from their website:

In March and April of 2006, we visited 23 free schools, community centers, after school programs, summer camps, skill shares, charter schools and private schools. We interviewed students, parents and teachers about their experiences with creating and sustaining radical learning spaces. We define this as non-compulsory, non-coercive physical spaces set up for various types of learning and projects. The documentary outlines a history of both conventional and radical education, explores peoples definitions of learning, highlights some interesting spaces as examples, identifies major themes common between spaces, and addresses the role of these spaces in the wider movement for social change.

The documentarians fill this dialog with their own voices, songs, the voices of students, radical teachers, change-makers, and more. They also don’t hesitate to point out something that we’ve been discussing on this blog: the need for free schools (and other radical-learning centers) to be more dedicated to those who are not of privileged backgrounds (track 13 discusses this in length) – this includes those who have mental disabilities. However, it also discusses in length some free schools that were specifically designed for people of non-privileged backgrounds (The Albany Free School, The Met School, and The Making Changes Freedom School).

There’s a lot in this radio documentary: from the history of compulsory schools (an amazing and brief track), to discussions with current participants in the radical learning movement, from problems in the free schooling movement, to what they could adopt from public (federal) schools, to what radical learning is, to what radical learners are doing, from how radical learners/teachers are shaping our world today, to how radical learning can become a sustainable movement, and so much more. Below I’ve listed the tracks of the radio documentary, but check back soon and there might be a .zip file to download that contains all of the tracks.

1. Setting Up
2. Unraveling Radical Learning
3. Problems in Education Today
4. History of Compulsory Schools
5. Redefining Learning
6. Reinventing Education
7. The Albany Free School
8. Olympia Community Free School
9. Making Changes Freedom School
10. Not Back To School Camp
11. The Met School
12. Purple Thistle Center
13. Themes in the Movement 1
14. Themes in the Movement 2
15. Motion and Change
16. Wrapping Up

After the jump is a much more in-depth explanation from their website.

As people inspired by various philosophies of radical education, we have related a project aimed at exploring the deschooling/ radical education movement in the United States. Through conversations, interviews, field recording and other audio documentation we hope to illustrate this movement,and its overlapping, multi-faceted ideologies and manifestations, using living examples from a variety of progressive, alternative, radical, and free learning spaces. We hope to form this research into a cohesive, informative, creative, and accessible radio program for alternative/community/public radio with the following goals:

1. To support and legitimize the radical schooling movement.
• To create a resource and connection for people involved in this movement.
• To increase discourse a sense of cohesive community movement.
• To explore and compare how involvement in various types of learning and education has affected peoples lives.

2. To inform a larger audience of the existing trends in radical schooling and show the potential for growth in this community movement (including a call to action).
• To show the many interpretations of deschooling and inspire new interpretations.
• To find the best examples of people holistically celebrating life and learning.

3. To investigate for our own future benefit, and the benefit of listeners and educators/deschoolers, what approaches to radical education (techniques, infrastructures, curriculums, and degree of structure (or lack thereof)) seem successful or unsuccessful.

List of Schools Visited:

The New School in Newark, Delaware
Upattina’s School in Glenmoore, Pennsylvania
The Brooklyn Free School in Brooklyn, New York
The MET Center in Providence, Rhode Island
Albany Free School in Albany, New York
Dane County Transition School in Madison, Wisconsin
The Zoo School in Minneapolis, Minnesota
The Missoula Free Skool in Missoula, Montana
The Purple Thistle Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia
The Windsor House in Vancouver, British Columbia
Puget Sound Community School in Seattle, Washington
Clearwater School in Seattle, Washington
The Olympia Community Free School in Olympia, Washington
The Village Free School in Portland, Oregon
Trillium Charter School in Portland, Oregon
Not Back to School Camp in Eugene, Oregon
The Santa Cruz Free Skool in Santa Cruz, California
The Berkeley Free Skool in Berkeley, California
Making Changes Freedom Center in San Pablo, California
Oak Grove School in Ojai, California
Paulo Freire Freedom School in Tucson, Arizona
The Living School in Boulder, Colorado
Harmony School in Bloomington, Indiana

Common attributes to “radical learning spaces”: Qualitative criteria for selecting places to visit and document (we are interested in documenting schools with any or all of these qualities):

1. Places where living is equated with learning (recognition that learning is constantly taking place no matter what one is doing).
2. Locally based (educational needs of particular community addressed by the place).
4. Opinions of people of all ages are respected and valued.
5. Public and private places that operate with free, work trade or sliding scale tuitions that accommodate people from all economic backgrounds.
6. A self-directed approach to curriculum ranging from completely individualized (i.e. a student desires to learn about dinosaurs and is directed toward resources and tools) to student-input (i.e. while studying biology and evolution, a student wants to spend a day focusing on dinosaurs).
7. A democratic, community approach to governing and decision-making (rules, structure, conflict resolution, etc.).
8. A life-long approach to learning (i.e. kids can teach adults, students are not completely segregated based on age, and encouragement that learning goes beyond time spent in the place).
9. Involvement of greater community (i.e. kids volunteer locally, parents help teach classes, local mentors are involved as guest speakers or teachers, students orient school projects outward toward local community, such as murals or oral history projects).
10. Emphasis on experiential, holistic, interdisciplinary learning (all different learning styles and interests are valued and encouraged, hands-on experiences, contact with outside environment).
11. Non-competitive atmosphere and assessments with alternative measures of success (without simple reward-punishment systems).
12. Sense of belonging to or commitment to a broader concept of social change.

Visit the “I Want To Do This All Day” website here.

Posted in Reading Links.

There are many days in our calendar when the United States has an official or unofficial day of remembering important people in the development of the United States. There are some good (read: Martin Luther King, Jr.) and some bad (read: Christopher Columbus) that we are asked to remember and celebrate. However, the histories of these figures are usually distorted into two-dimensional memories. In our national celebration, we are taught that Christopher Columbus “discovered” the “new world” and that he “made all of this possible.” If it is mentioned at all, it is only mentioned in passing, that Columbus’s arrival to the Americas marked the beginning of an orchestrated genocide, slavery, and oppression of entire peoples (in addition to the spread of diseases that some historians estimate killed up to 90% of American Indians that were inhabiting the continents). As well, Martin Luther King, Jr. is painted as a pure pacifist who gave great speeches and put on some marches – instead of a community organizer, an educator, an agitator, whose views and rebellions took different shapes and tones throughout time. In short, we are left with historical figures without any histories – just figures that were stagnant in history. Often (but of course not always) these people are told in cut and paste stories. Their complex histories, the nuances, the controversies and conflicts, the true impact of their actions, the movements that they were part of, and so much more are all lost in the attempt to tell a singular, national story.

I think that many things could be done about this: including taking these days and altering what they stand for. For instance, Hampshire College students of color, international students, and allies recently led a series of protests, workshops, teach-ins, and so on to demand that the college become an actively anti-racist institution. One of their demands for the college was to shut down regular operations on Martin Luther King Day and Columbus Day to hold campus wide teach-ins about racism and imperialism. This is an absolutely amazing idea and should be implemented by other organizations and institutions (or at least to hold such work shops and so on during near-by days).

Another great idea is to recognize currently ignored or under appreciated days, events, and people in U.S. history surrounding anti-oppression themes. Free schools, and other organizations or institutions, could recognize such histories by holding workshops, classes, teach-ins, discussions, lectures, film screenings, a combination of these things, and so on. Hopefully, one point of this would be to create dialogue and discussion about these people/events/days – and for what reasons they happened, in what context they happened, in what ways their histories have been represented, and what impact they have had on our worlds today. These do not all have to be things that everyone agree were purely “good” – but were a part of a history in the context of standing up to or fighting against oppression.

There are a great deal of event/days/people that could be included in this, but I’m going to name a few now and hopefully some more later. Can you think of any to add?

• Harriet Tubman
• Ceaser Chavez
• The raid on Harper’s Ferry (note: this isn’t just John Brown, but was an event that included hundreds of individuals – including Brown, freedpeople, slaves, abolitionists, and more).
• Malcolm X
• Sitting Bull
• Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973)
• Stone Wall
• Huey Newton/Fred Hampton
• Worker Strikes/The formation of the IWW
• Shay’s Rebellion
• Nat Turner’s Rebellion

There are of course many more, but these were a few that came off the top of my head. These could be small workshops, or other events of varying size, directed over an assortment of days and times that correspond with these histories. Understanding the histories of people standing up against oppression, and why they did it and what has happened since then, is extremely important to understanding the world that we inhabit today.

So, I’ve been having some trouble writing this specific post – not because I don’t have anything to say, but because there’s so much to discuss on this topic, and I just didn’t know where to begin. Because of that, I’m not going to try to address everything regarding these issues just with one post (I think that would be foolish to attempt, anyway). Instead, I want this to become an ongoing discussion on this blog. Last week, I asked: “[H]ow can free schools (or the acts of unschooling and free schooling) be developed so that they are not just useful for the privileged – and be made accessible and useful for all people?” I also asked what issues of privilege do free schools face. Commentors (commenters?) had some wonderful feedback and brought up some great points. Here are some highlights:

Lydia said:

in answer to your question, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the most obvious- making the free school actually free of cost. but also making them seem really legitimate. maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like a person of a higher class might not hold something like a diploma in as high regard as a person of a lower class, maybe because they don’t need it as much to access things like jobs or status.

Grace brought up:

I would say that there are a few obstacles to implementing free-schooling programs in communities that are under-privileged (I hate that word). The biggest obstacle to free-schooling in general (as far as I can tell from my conversations) is a lack of confidence and trust on the part of many parents. They either lack the confidence to facilitate such an educational choice, or they lack the trust that would let them allow their children to pursue their own education. Most parents just don’t believe that self-education is something that will happen without prompting (usually in the form of cajoling and/or blackmail). [...]

I guess my first thought would be some kind of collective/communal alternative education center. Sharing solves a lot of problems. People could donate some of their time and money, and by pooling resources their children could opportunities for free education. The first obstacle would be convincing people that their children could truly benefit from such an education, as compared to the more usual school approach

Cvslevy had this to say:

I want to second the idea that lack of confidence by parents is a major challenge— especially in poor and working class communities. As someone who has spent time working with adult education on the West Side of Chicago, I know this well.

What these parents have observed and experienced is that for their children to overcome the burdens of race and/or class , they need to become better educated and work harder than their counterparts in more affluent communites who have the whole range of options in front of them.

For white and/or more affluent people, the opportunities are there for the taking. That is part of what is meant by “privilege.”

It appears that there is a general theme for today: People from privileged backgrounds already have loads of options open to them, and a degree (high school, college, etc.) is not necessarily a deal-breaker for them to get the kind of job, experience, or life they’re looking for. A diploma, “official” education, or a degree is the norm and their world of options are not necessarily limited by not getting these. This is not true for folks who are not of the same privileged background. The large numbers of people who are oppressed via either institutionalized and cultural racism, class barriers, sexism, and all the other oppressions that are so (historically and presently) ingrained into our systems of living, governance, and development do not have the same access to such “standards” of the privileged (the diplomas and degrees).

Why would they want to free school, unschool, or so on when basic measures of equality are not even being met for them? Already, many in their communities do not receive diplomas or degrees – or must struggle against opposition at every corner to get them (and once they do get them, their struggle does not end there) – but not by choice: but because they are denied the same equal and equitable access to these tools which would help and allow them to seek out the careers, jobs, lives, experiences, and choices that they might desire (things that the free schooling movement is dedicated to). In an oversimplified form, this is what it can come down to: people from privileged backgrounds can afford to free school, unschool, or so on and still have a large world of options available to them. People who are not from the same privileged backgrounds are not granted these same choices – the system will decide where there place in society is for them.

The free schooling movement’s largest problem is the same one that the standard educational system faces: making learning experiences and opportunities (and the choices that are available to them afterward) equal and equitable for all. That is the issue I will begin to address here.

(Again, I want to emphasize that what I’m about to say is not the end-all solution. It is just the beginning of an ongoing discussion that will be taking place on this blog.)

I want to first point out that there are free schools that have accomplished this. Take for instance The Albany Free School. In fact, the book about the history of the Albany Free School (Making It Up As We Go Along) was one of the first books I ever read specifically about free schools. The Albany Free School is set in the inner-city portion of Albany, NY – which is not necessarily known for being an affluent area. However, since the 1970’s, it has provided a free school environment for all people in the area – privileged, poor, white, people of color, boys, girls, and so on and so forth. I have never visited it, but it is one of the best examples of free schools providing equal and equitable learning experiences and choices for people of privileged and non-privileged backgrounds that I have read of. More historically, there was also The Modern School Movement which lasted from the 1910’s to the 1960’s. These are just a couple of examples – but they give us precedent that such goals can be achieved.

But, what are some specific ways that free schools can help (and also win the trust of) people from non-privileged backgrounds? There are two ways that I’m going to address in this post. The first is for free schools to actively work on social justice issues that specifically effect people of color, immigrants, women, poor, LGBTQ, and all folks that face structured inequalities within communities. The second is for free schools, while providing free schooling opportunities, to also address the issues of standard education inequalities.

One of the philosophies that free schooling is based on is the idea that learning primarily happens by doing. Thus, for a free school to actually learn about social justice issues (and actions and solutions), it must actively participate in combating institutionalized and structured injustices in our society. There are several ways that free schools can do this: either to start organizing on their own, to follow the lead of and support already established social justice organizations or groups, and to actively encourage community members to become involved in such actions. While I think providing workshops, classes, discussions, and literature about social justice issues is important – I want to forewarn against free schools only taking this measure. Again, I think these are EXTREMELY important but I personally believe that only taking classes, workshops, etc. about social justice issues can often be a guise for not becoming actively involved (also a way to learn) in addressing and fighting social inequality. Free schools must help organize events, programs, actions, and etc. that address social justice issues and they must coordinate with already existing social justice organizations and groups. Of course, this is a thin line to tread because free schools must not become involved in places they are not welcome or impose themselves and their views on those they are attempting to be allies with. They must work up the trust to become welcomed participants in the fight for social justice. Additionally, free schools attempting to work on social justice issues should not bounce from issue to issue with no consistency. Nothing screams “social justice playground for the privileged” like bouncing from issue to issue and having a social justice issue flavor of the week – these free schools should be reliable, trust worthy, and dependable allies.

In addition, free schools should work on issues that are specific to the individuals of the free schools and the communities that they are a part of. Working to directly improve the lives and communities of individuals that free schools are directly related to will help demonstrate how free schools can be reliable and helpful tools for those who are not from privileged backgrounds. Additionally, by combating (and hopefully succeeding against) social and structured inequality, free schools can begin to help tear down some of the walls that keep them from being true alternatives to all people.

The second topic that I wanted to address here is the need for free schools to help fight against standard education inequalities. I think this can easily be done by free schools with one important measure: to open their doors (and actively reach out) to people who are participating in the standard education system (high school, trying to get a GED, college, etc.) – and all people who may want to use its resources. There are many, many ways that this can be done, but I’m going to name just a few examples to start off with. Are there folks who are looking to get a GED? Organize free GED-preparing classes, study groups, tutoring, and so on. Are there immigrants in the region who are struggling not to be invisible and ignored (or attacked), but language barriers are keeping them at a disadvantage? Offer free group or one-on-one tutoring in English (while of course working against anti-immigrant sentiment). Are there non-privileged folks who want to stay in school to get a diploma/degree, but are struggling with a subject (or subjects)? Do outreach to help them find people who are willing to offer free tutoring, mentoring, or free school classes in the subjects. Why not provide “after school” or “outside of school” or weekend learning experiences that get people involved in fighting inequalities in their community – and do direct outreach to the folks who need it the most? Also – make sure the free school isn’t isolationist! Make direct contact and develop relationships with organizations, businesses, groups, and so on to get them in contact with folks from non-privileged backgrounds and get them jobs and internships that they may want. This is just the beginning of a list, but I think it demonstrates the point: it is okay for the free school to be a supplementary resource and tool for those people who are not from privileged backgrounds (and really, for all people). Such people may want a standard education and a diploma/degree, and free schools should help them in their endeavors – that is how free schools can be reliable tools for all people. Free schools should recognize that different people have different needs and wants, and it should be the free school’s goal to help all people learn in anyway that it can.

Note: I’m not saying all people from non-privileged backgrounds reject the idea of free schooling, but that this is one way to build trust in communities about the mission of free schools. Free schools should try to do outreach to all people the same, and maintain their views that the standard education system helps foster inequalities in our society – while recognizing that it should be everyone’s choice how they want to learn, and free schools should offer what they can do to everyone. Inequality in education can be addressed by both offering free schooling alternatives and by assisting those who want to use free schools as supplementary tools. Additionally, free schools should offer options at night and on the weekends – so that people who work/go to a standard school can have equal access to them.

Undoubtedly this is all a lot of work – but I’m not saying that free schools should try to take on every single one of these tasks immediately. Becoming overworked can cause unreliableness. Instead, free schools should work on each one of these tasks one at a time (or at whatever pace is doable) – until it can do the tasks reliably and add onto them. It would be counter-productive for a free school to become overworked and thus unreliable in its goals to help people from non-privileged backgrounds.

Again, this is just the beginning of the ongoing discussion on this blog of how free schools can be made reliable tools not just for the privileged. Please add your own questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, advice, ideas, and so on.

In recent discussions I’ve been having about free schools, and their roles/goals in communities, this issue kept being raised: how can free schools (or the acts of unschooling and free schooling) be developed so that they are not just useful for the privileged – and be made accessible and useful for all people? I’m going to write a post on this shortly, but first I want to hear ideas and stories from you. Feel free to comment or e-mail me at brian AT freeschooling DOT org. I extend this question to all democratic learning movements.

UPDATE: I’ve posted on issues related to this before, see here, here, and here. However, the discussion I want to have in the near-future on this blog is how can new free schools be specifically designed so that they are actively dedicated towards working with non-privileged folks – and so that free schools aren’t just social justice playgrounds for the privileged. I have many ideas that are swirling around in my head, but like I said, I would love to hear your perspectives.

If you can’t read what it says on the picture, here it is:

Planning to Change the World is a plan book for educators who believe their students can and will change the world. It is designed to help teachers translate their vision of a just education into concrete classroom activities. This unique resource has all the things you would expect in a lesson plan book plus:

• Weekly planning pages packed with important social justice birthdays and historical events
• Lesson plans and resources related to those dates
• Tips from social justice teachers across the country
• Inspirational quotes to share with students
• Thought-provoking essential questions to spark classroom discussions on critical issues
• Reproducible social justice awards for students
• and much more

This seems really cool. Two quick qualms I have with it are that there are re-printable “social justice awards” and that it seems kind of pricey (though it probably cost a lot to make). I always wished progressive teaching outlets like this would have some sort of “financial aid” for those unable to afford these types of things (and maybe they do, and I’m just not looking close enough). Either way, though, it does seem like an amazing resource. Go here for more.

Also, here’s something from the Education for Liberation Listserve that I thought was amazing, about youth collectivism and counter recruitment training:

Counter Recruitment Art in Action Training Proposal

The Nonviolent Youth Collective will be hosting a 3-4 day training in arts-based skill sharing, grounded in education and support around counter military recruitment and conscientious objection to the military. Workshops and skill sharing include topics such as design, storytelling, silk screening, dance and movement, street theater, action logic and creative nonviolent direct action. Also, time will be included for planning and strategy sessions in preparation for the May 15,^th 2009 International Conscientious Objector Day of Action, which we are encouraging young folks to participate in.

The goals of this training are:

**To strengthen the Counter Recruitment and Conscientious Objection Movement in the United States through skill sharing, creating imagery, visioning, and skill-based capacity development in preparation for May 15^th 2009 and beyond

**To network and build community among NVYC members and other young counter recruitment activists.

** To continue to build a network of young artists and activists committed to nonviolent, creative action in resistance to militarism at home and abroad.

Participants in NYVC trainings generally range in age from 14-26. In this training we are specifically looking to work with 15-25 highschool, college, and community-based youth that are involved in an organization or campaign that is resisting militarism or involved in counter recruitment work. Youth not involved will also be considered, but priority will be given to those that have an immediate way to put these skills to use.

If your organization or group is interested in having this event held in your city, please contact Brie Phillips at peacemakertraining@gmail.com by August 1, 2008.

This article, by Maya Schenwar of Truthout, raised a lot of questions for me about how the sexism in our culture may have found its into the free schooling/homeschooling/unschooling/etc. movement – and about how complex of an issue it can be. (I’ve taken long quotes from the article and copied and pasted them here, and I’ll be discussing it all at the end of the quotes).

[...] For these parents, “unschooling” is an attractive option. In this approach to homeschooling, kids choose what they’ll study and investigate their questions outside the confines of a classroom. In traditional homeschooling, parents play the role of teachers, determining the curriculum, handing out assignments, and administering tests. Unschooling parents, on the other hand, act as facilitators, guiding their kids’ explorations. Even though the diy approach may appeal to progressives who identify with the anti-establishment ethos of the punk movement, homeschooling still raises tricky questions for progressive mothers.

Namely, this one: Can women trade their careers for their families without sacrificing a few of their feminist values – the very values that inspired many of them to homeschool in the first place? It’s no wonder that punk feminist moms like Kim Campbell, who has homeschooled her kids for seven years, occasionally feel like walking oxymorons.

Despite her indie values, Campbell worries that her economic dependence on her husband could set a bad example for her daughter. “The first half year that we homeschooled, I had a complete identity crisis over the matter,” she says. “At the time I knew that I was making a great decision, but I couldn’t figure out how to square it with what I’d always considered my feminist sensibilities.” For Campbell and a growing contingent of other feminist unschoolers across the country, educating their kids has also been a process of figuring out how homeschooling jibes with their feminism.

Nina Packebush, a Washington state mom of three and self-described “radical parent,” started teaching her son at home because he was dyslexic and had ADHD, and his school wasn’t providing the personal attention he needed. As Packebush sought out teaching resources, she discovered a gaping hole in standard history textbooks.

“I noticed that women and people of color were virtually nonexistent,” Packebush says. “Don’t even try to find any mention of lgbt people in history. One thing led to another, and soon I was homeschooling because I was a feminist.” When her youngest child reached school age, Packebush chose to keep her out of the classroom solely because of its gender-biased curriculum. [...]

As challenging and rewarding as homeschooling may be, some don’t see it as real work. A slew of recent books, including Leslie Bennetts’s bestseller The Feminine Mistake, argue that while stay-at-home moms, like homeschoolers, may believe they are choosing to leave the workforce, their decisions are actually influenced by insidious patriarchal forces. Many homeschooling moms counter that removing themselves from the marketplace means freeing themselves from its many sexist influences. If they have the financial means – or the ingenuity – to opt out, they’d rather live outside the workforce. Schira says that by rejecting the idea that success is all about money, she’s reconceptualizing what happiness means. “I have come to recognize that I don’t want the kind of life being offered by our culture,” she says. “I don’t want things. I don’t want status. I want interdependence, harmony, new solutions to old problems.”

Of course, resorting to one income brings out the five-ton mammoth in the room: most homeschoolers are women and most of their income providers are men. Packebush, who was married when she began homeschooling, says that even in her “hip, alternative, feminist marriage,” she was the one doing most of the childcare and teaching. “The vast majority of the people doing homeschooling are women,” she says.

Often, that’s because moms want to be their family’s primary teachers. But raising radical, revolutionary children isn’t feminist if the mom’s individuality is getting lost in the lives of her kids. It’s tough for homeschooling mothers to maintain their free time. Forums for homeschoolers abound with tips for dealing with burnout. The workload can be overwhelming, and even with a “fuck money” attitude, it’s natural to feel undercompensated at times. Homeschooling mothers must negotiate a fine line between protesting capitalism and becoming unpaid labor. [...]

Along with the question of self-expression comes gender expression and unschooled kids are prone to ignoring (or at least toning down) the gender distinctions that rule most schools. Take Diana, a homeschooled 17-year-old from New Haven, Connecticut, who swears by Kate Bornstein’s book Gender Outlaw and is very grateful to have missed out on the school social scene. “Not going to high school or middle school, I’ve never had that onslaught of pressure to do all sorts of pointless competitive things, like lose my virginity before I wanted to, or be sexy so men will like me, or be queer for the enjoyment of an audience,” she says.

Avoiding homophobia is central to many parents’ decision to homeschool. Packebush thinks queer, feminist homeschooling is on the rise because parents see it as an escape from the rampant sexism, homophobia, and transphobia of public schools. “Gender construction is one of the biggest reasons I keep my kids out of school.” [...]

As the feminist homeschooling movement gains momentum, mothers will increasingly be faced with tough, identity-defining questions: Does being a feminist mean you have to have a paid job? What does it mean to raise a feminist kid? Is there a feminist definition of success, and should there be? It’s important to keep in mind that a homeschooling mom is many things besides a homeschooling mom – even if she can’t stop talking about her kid’s latest papier-m ch dinosaur. Forging these more complex identities entails recognizing all the hats they wear besides “homeschooler.” Packebush is a zinester, Schira is a webmaster and writer, and so on. They’re Marxists, or anarchists, or punks, or please-don’t-define-me-the-reason-I-homeschool-is-to-get-away-from-this-label-slapping-bullshit human beings.

As for Kim Campbell, she’s still unschooling and still fighting critics of her decision with a vengeance. When others question whether her decision to “stop working” is feminist, she responds, “Honey, you don’t know from work!”

So, there you go. The article was a lot more than just about what I’ve copied and pasted here, but it was a general theme that ran throughout it. I do recommend you go read it, though.

If what the article claims to be true about most homeschooling/unschooling/etc. parents being mothers, and I don’t doubt that it is, then it raises the question: why are the fathers the ones less involved? The article more then adequately covers the conflicting ideas that unschooling moms have to face in their decision and actions, but why are the fathers stepping out of the role and continuing in their culturally traditional roles as the “provider?” It seems that historically teaching has been identified as a “feminine” role, and taking care of kids definitely has been. So, unschooling then would be the combination of these two culturally-identified “feminine” roles. Thus, in a patriarchal society it makes sense that homeschooling/free schooling would be seen as a “woman’s role.”

I have a few of thoughts on this. First, if that’s what the mother want to do, then great! As a man who identifies as a feminist-ally, I believe that feminism is the right for women/female-identified people to have complete choice and self-governance over their lives (and also the intersections between feminism and all other oppressions). That means, if a mother wants to be a “stay-at home” mom to unschool her children – then that is her choice. However, that doesn’t mean that the father should accept that as a fact. This is a choice amongst the whole family, with everyone having an equal say.

Second, I know of some unschooling families where both parents work – but one parent works four days a week, the other works three, or some other combination. This way, both parents can have major roles in the unschooling process. However, this is under the condition that the family can afford this (just like the condition that one parent unschools while the other works). This demonstrates the kind of class issues that unschooling still has to face.

Third, why is unschooling/raising children not seen as “work?” It has been historically true that our culture, one based in capitalism, has not given value to effort and work unless it has monetary value and makes money. Thus, even though unschooling/raising children takes great deal of work, effort, and time – some people are saying it is an anti-feminist thing to do for the mother, because then she is a “stay at home” mom. This critique is stuck within the capitalistic mind-frame that without a sort of money-value, effort and accomplishment is worthless. I think this should be rejected, and that it should be understood that unschooling/free schooling/and so forth is a great deal of work that is worth a lot in its own way.

But, this leaves the question, one that I’m going to ponder, and I hope others can help me tackle: in what ways can we confront sexism in the free schooling/unschooling/homeschooling movement?

So, this post has been about families that have one father and one mother – but I recognize that not all families are this way. This post was simply a reaction to the above article, which was about families with one mother and one father.

This is very exciting. From July 30th to August 3rd, an event called The Northeast Climate Confluence will be taking place at the Epworth Camp and Retreat Center in High Falls, New York (a “center point” of the Northeast). It is a great opportunity for learning by doing – plus it is a cooperative gathering of hundreds of individuals in an attempt to share knowledge, coordinate, and take action. Here’s a brief description from the website:

THE CONFLUENCE is a week long event where we will come together to share ideas and skills, strengthen our relationships, and create solutions to take care of our basic needs. There will be workshops, performances, trainings and strategy sessions about the issues affecting our communities and our planet, from prisons and police brutality to food sovereignty, health care and disaster relief. It will also include a day of action in coordination with similar gatherings around the world.

Here’s more, taken from the goals section of the website:

The Northeast Climate Confluence aims to kick-start a regional disaster response network. We mean ‘disaster’ in a very broad sense; we want to be better able to respond to both ‘natural’ disasters and the unnatural disasters that people face in their communities every day. The main elements of this disaster response network might include local food networks, accessible health care projects, autonomous energy, first-responder trainings, access to land and housing, and networks of defense from violent authorities (such as police, prisons, and immigration enforcement). We’re going to need to figure out what to do if a major storm hits the Northeast and causes flooding and displacement. We need to be able to feed ourselves as oil becomes scarce and gas and food prices rise even more. We need to do everything we can to reverse global warming. We need to link struggles, get off the grid, stop being dependent on systems that threaten our lives and hurt our communities, and create a world based on respect and justice.

The confluence is making a particular point to address climate justice within its intersections of other oppressions – including racism, sexism, classism, and so on. On top of that, a major part of the organizing effort is aimed at youth via The Youth Track:

We, young people, the transformation of tomorrow, are one of the most important and most powerful forces of social change. As police continue to harass, beat, and imprison us, as our schools become more and more like prisons, as we are shipped off to die in senseless wars overseas, it is more important than ever for us to come together and figure out how to create strong communities that can resist all forms of oppression.

An important part of the confluence will be the Youth Track, a series of workshops & skill-shares organized by and for youth (ages 13-18 ) that will strengthen leadership skills and build networks of support and solidarity. Any young person or youth group can propose or organize an event at the confluence. Your ideas & knowledge are very important. Our generation will see the worst effects of environmental destruction, and even if we can’t vote, we have the power to act!

Read more about The Youth Track here. Additionally, the Confluence wants to make sure that all peoples can make this trip, and money/free housing and camping/food will be provided to those who can not provided it themselves. No one will be turned away because of financial reasons.

I’m planning on going to this – and please pass on this information to anyone you feel would be interested. Additionally, if anyone is from Western Massachusetts, I helped set up an interest meeting for anyone considering going up or who wants to make arrangements on how to get up. The meeting will be held on Tuesday, July 15th, in Amherst (MA), at the Robert Jones Library from 5-8 PM. Hope to see you there!

While this isn’t necessarily directly about free schooling, it is extremely important. Students in Baltimore are on a hunger strike in order to get funds from the city to help them participate in outside-school activities and jobs, which is learning by doing. These students are attempting to gain support for their efforts in learning through outside-school experiences and jobs that would normally be shut off to them. And again, free schooling is interlinked with all oppressions – and everyone should be given the opportunity to learn what they want to, how they want to, and when they want to. Read the letters below, they will tell you how to participate in solidarity.

Baltimore AP Students in Peer 2 Peer Hunger Strike for Public Education Support

June 3, 2008

From: Betty G. Robinson
Subject: Urgent: Baltimore City student hunger strikers need your support — please forward WIDELY!
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2008 9:59 am

---

From hunger striker supporters: Please read to get a full understanding of what you can do and why the students are striking. The amount of money is SMALL — .005 of the city budget and the students are just asking for the one year INTEREST on the rainy day fund. Sun Op-Ed at the bottom plus links to other media coverage. If you have friends and family in other states, please forward. They can help also!

Dear friends,

Why the Mayor thinks of the hunger striking students as adversaries is a mystery. They’re the solution, not the problem.

The hunger strikers are entering the third day, and are healthy–examined daily by a physician, spirited, but physically tired, of course. They have been consuming only juice and water since Friday. Great media yesterday on TV and in the paper publicizing the demand for $3 million for youth jobs in the knowledge-based economy. But we need much more.

Mayor Dixon refuses even to schedule a meeting with the young people. On the news she says she already has budgeted $14 million for youth programs. That is less than .005 of the city budget–less than half of one percent.

Students and Peer-to-Peer Youth Enterprises are asking for only the interest on the rainy day fund, Councilman Bill Henry’s excellent idea–not a penny from any other program, not even a penny from the rainy day fund, but only the interest.

Call Mayor Dixon today at 410-396-3100 or 410-396-3836
Email her at mayor@baltimorecity.gov

The students have recommended this script for supporters:

Hello, my name is……and I live in…….. I want to leave a message for the Mayor. I heard that Baltimore City students are on a hunger strike and I think that is outrageous. I am calling to urge the Mayor to fully fund Peer 2 Peer Youth Enterprises to create knowledge-based jobs for youth who might otherwise turn to street crime and violence to support themselves and their families. We must invest in our youth because they are the future of our city! Thank you very much, I will be seeing you at Mayor’s Night In on Monday.

Students are asking you to:

1. Call Mayor Dixon

2. Come to Mayor’s Night In, Monday, 6 PM, War Memorial–(or march with students from Pratt and Light at 5)

3. Donate money/supplies (water, juice, cups, vegetables & fruit for juice,) (call Jay at 443-248-9032)

4. Come to our rallies & bring your friends (next rally: Pratt and Light , Monday, 4:30)

5. Sign our petition

Talking points:

The young people on hunger strike are the solution, not the problem.

Peer-to-peer youth are:

• engaged, not apathetic
• educated, not ignorant
• committed, not distracted
• creative, not destructive
  
• peace-loving, not violent
• hard-working, not lazy
  
• united, not divided.

They’re the solution.

What’s the problem?

Call Mayor Dixon today at the main switchboard 410-396-3835 or if you can’t get through, (410) 396-3100.

E-Mail her at mayor@baltimorecity.gov

The following is a letter from Bryant Muldrew to the Baltimore Sun.

Fasting to give city kids a chance

May 31, 2008

I’ve lived long enough to watch my city descend through some levels of the underworld. I ask: Who will stand up to fix the problems of my Baltimore?

We students in a coalition called Peer-to-Peer Enterprises are aware of the injustices city youths face.

Peer-to-Peer organizations employ older youths to teach their younger peers skills and knowledge.

In the past few years these organizations have employed hundreds of youths, helped increase test scores, kept young away people from violence and drugs and established “families” outside the home.

These programs should be expanded and need sustained investment to grow their accomplishments.

The Peer-to-Peer coalition has requested $3 million from the city’s budget to create an additional 700 to 1,000 jobs and provide services to thousands more peers.

The funds would allow youths to participate actively in a knowledge-based economy. Peers help peers learn all kinds of things: public speaking and debate, algebra, theater and playwriting, drumming and dance, video production and much more. These technical skills help students plan successful futures.

The City Council unanimously approved a resolution in March requesting that the mayor include this $3 million in the city’s budget. But Mayor Sheila Dixon has refused the council’s request.

The City Council recently missed an opportunity to do something to help us by refusing to fund Peer-to-Peer Enterprises with the interest on the city’s rainy day fund (”Youth fund boost denied,” May 29).

The interest this year will be approximately $3.5 million on a total fund of $88 million.

We don’t understand why an investment in our youth can’t be made from the interest on money that isn’t even being used. In effect, we’re just asking for the loose change under the cushions in the sofa.

Why would the City Council unanimously pass a resolution in March but then tell us in May that we aren’t worth a little interest?

Having exhausted all other courses of action, we have decided that participating in a hunger strike is a way to take action against injustice.

We dedicate our bodies in solidarity with our peers. Educationally, we’re starving already. We choose now to represent voluntarily what’s already happening to us against our will.

We would love to eat of the fruits of knowledge-based jobs and quality education. But our city, not our peers, keeps us hungry.

Bryant Muldrew

Baltimore

The writer is a student at Baltimore City Community College who works for one of the Peer-to-Peer Enterprises groups and is one of the hunger strikers demanding city funding for the Peer-to-Peer program.

via The Algebra Project.

Posted in reading links.

(Right click, or control+click for macs, on the picture and select “View Image” to see full size. Recommended.)

I stumbled upon this last night from the website Education and Democracy, and it’s very cool: the online archives of The Freedom Schools and all of their curricula put together during the Freedom Summer of 1968. For those of you not acquainted with what either of these are, here is the start of the description from the website:

In the summer of l964, forty-one Freedom Schools opened in the churches, on the back porches, and under the trees of Mississippi. The students were native Mississippians, averaging fifteen years of age, but often including small children who had not yet begun school to the elderly who had spent their lives laboring in the fields. Their teachers were volunteers, for the most part still students themselves. The task of this small group of students and teachers was daunting. They set out to replace the fear of nearly two hundred years of violent control with hope and organized action. Both students and teachers faced the possibility, and in some cases, the reality, of brutal retaliation from local whites. They had little money and few supplies. Yet the Freedom Schools set out to alter forever the state of Mississippi, the stronghold of the Southern way of life.

Read the full description here. I have yet to sort through all the curricula, but you can find it partially in text form here or you can go download them in PDF form from here. Or just go to the main website. Well, I am very excited to go through all of this. These documents are not only very important historically, they could probably be reused to teach things for free and to teach about what was going on in the 1960’s via the Civil Rights movement (and to see what they were teaching/learning back then!). Here is a list of topics that is covered in these curricula and that was taught in the Freedom Schools during 1968 (copy and pasted from the complete curricula PDF):

• Academic Curriculum: Reading and Writing Skills
• Mathematics (Excerpt)
• Science
• Citizenship Curriculum Unit I – VI
• Citizenship Curriculum Unit VII, part 1
• Citizenship Curriculum Unit VII, part 2
• Statistics on Education, Housing, Income, etc. Iris Greenberg Collection
• The South as an Underdeveloped Country
• The Poor in America
• Chester, PA.—Community Organization in the Other America
• Guide to Negro History
• History addendum I
• History addendum II
• Negro History Study Questions
• Development of Negro Power since 1900
• Mississippi Power Structure
• Power of the Dixiecrats
• Nazi Germany
• Hazard, KY
• Statements of Discipline of Nonviolent Movements
• Readings in Nonviolence Iris Greenberg Collection
• Nonviolence in American History
• Voter Registration Laws in Mississippi

This is a great resource, historical document, and event to be remembered. I’ll have more on this once I finish going through the documents.

Posted in Reading Links.

Periodically I will be doing a section relating the various aspects and efforts of free schooling to the oppressions that plague our society. I am doing this because I recognized that all oppressions are interlinked and to ignore them would be to help sustain them and to be complacent in my privilege. I will attempt to follow each of these sections with some recommendations of what you might be able to do in your free schooling to fight these oppressions and to learn. Of course, I do not know everything, and I do not have the answers to everything.

Prisons are touted as a place where “criminals” are sent to “reform” their ways. Supposedly through isolation, alienation, and dehumanization these individuals will come to “learn” why what they did was “wrong.”

The United States has the most people behind bars of any nation on earth (with the possible exception of China). In fact, 1 out of every 100 people in the U.S. is incarcerated. In total, the United States contains 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prison population. (PDFs containing these figures available at the end of this post). In the early 1972, there were 375,000 people behind bars in the country.* Today, there are roughly 3 million. Those numbers are nothing but staggering and frightening.

How can defenders of the prison-industrial complex, which makes a profit from putting people behind bars and their forced labor, continue to claim that the system works? That it helps people? Granted, there are some that claim prisons should be for punishment only and to have people “pay their debt to society.” But what debt are they paying? Through the prison system, more and more people become dependent upon that very system for survival. It teaches them nothing. When they leave, they are worse off then before because they haven’t been given a chance to learn anything and they’ve been cut off from the world that they knew (not to mention they can’t make a living wage, they lose ties to the lives they already have, and so on). The prison system forces people (especially the poor and people of color) into a dependent cycle, where their knowledge and lives are based around remaining incarcerated, and when they leave they are less prepared to deal with the difficult world than before.

One-thing prisons used to have on a wider scale then they do today is the ability for inmates to access learning tools, including books and classes. Currently, those opportunities are severely reduced for several reasons. First, the prison-industrial complex is a system that is aimed at making profits, not “reforming” people, so it causes people to become dependent upon it (especially the poor and people of color, laws are made that directly target them). Second, many (mostly middle to upper class, white) people argue that prisoners shouldn’t be given the opportunity to access education or learning tools. “Why should they get a free education when they’ve done something wrong? Isn’t that rewarding them instead of punishing them?” Even dropping the argument that the prison-industrial complex might be inherently wrong, putting aside the notion that these people should stop being so obsessed with what is punishment, escaping for a moment the claim that our society purposefully targets historically oppressed peoples and “deals” with them by putting them in prisons – can they not see that without the opportunity to learn and grow (something that was denied to them on a scale that white, middle class folks will never understand), inmates will likely repeat history and return to jail? I fully acknowledge that the laws that are put in place to attack the poor, people of color, and so on should be addressed and confronted – I am simply adding that during their time behind bars, they should be given every opportunity to access learning tools.

Thus, free schooling is directly linked to the prisoners’ rights movement. I work with an organization called the Prison Book Project (PBP) in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts (note: my comments do not necessarily represent the views of the PBP organization). The front page of the PBP’s website states:

The Prison Book Project is a secular, volunteer collective that distributes books free-of-charge to prisoners in New England and Texas… We are dedicated to offering men and women behind bars the opportunity for self-empowerment, education, and entertainment that reading provides.

The Prison Book Project assists incarcerated people in their attempts to learn and to grow – the things that many prisons attempt to hinder. Prisoners write to the project and ask for a vast array of books. In my time, I have read requests from prisoners asking for books on topics ranging from romance novels, Indonesian histories, westerns, philosophy books, prisoner rights/other law books, spiritualism, learning the Spanish/English/etc. language, starting a business, mysteries, biographies, African American/Native American/other people of color studies, and on and on. Often times, the prisoners explain that they want the books to keep them from succumbing to complete boredom, other times they note that this is what they were studying before they were incarcerated, some individuals just had their curiosity sparked while behind bars, there are those who want to defend themselves or other prisoners from the law or unruly guards, and there have been those that want to do something immediately when they leave prison. These incarcerated people are free schooling. They are directing their own learning so that they may be stronger and more knowledgeable, defying the prison system. They are in control of what they learn and how they apply it (well, that goes for what we are able to send them and what the prisons will allow in – they often have tight restrictions). But, they are attempting to free school, to learn topics of their choosing for reasons that they need and want. They could not do this alone, however. They depend on the prison book projects that are all around the country, that bring the prisoners opportunities to read and learn – something their pitifully bare libraries do not offer.

My work with the Prison Book Project has also affected my free schooling and my learning. I’ve done extensive reading around the subject of prisons, but I never learned more about the topic until I started volunteering with the PBP a couple years of years back. For instance, here’s one nugget: The organization’s mission statement says “The Prison Book Project is a secular, volunteer collective that distributes books free-of-charge to prisoners in New England and Texas.” Seems random, right? Why New England and Texas – two very different places that are very far away from each other. Well, it just so happens that Texas has the most prisons in the U.S. out of any state, due primarily to financial successes of building prisons in Texas, and the large number of prisoners there could use all the help they can get. On top of that, huge quantities of New England prisoners get shipped out to Texas (again, for profit reasons). These prisoners get their lives ripped out from them and they’re moved halfway across a continent, locked up in an unfamiliar landscape with the people they know thousands of miles away. So, by sending books to incarcerated people in Texas, the PBP is in all likely-hood assisting New England locals.

I’ve read dozens of letters from prisoners, many of them explaining their situation and the lives they now lead, and I’ve even begun a dialogue with a few. Through these correspondences I’ve learned more about the lives and conditions of prisoners than I could in any other way. In the spirit of free schooling, my actions and do-ings was the true path to my learning and growth around this complicated and difficult topic.

So, what can you do? Well, you can free school, obviously. But around this topic, you can research and start to formulate your own views. Equally as important, however, you can start to take actions. Find a Prison Book Project-esque organization or effort that is going around in your area. Contact them and find out what they need. Volunteers? Try to organize a group of friends, or just yourself, to go and help out for a day. Funds? Set up a fund-raiser or donate any extra cash you might have. Books? See if you or anyone you know has any books that they’re willing to give up and donate to the organization. Every single effort someone takes goes a long way. Is there not an organization or project in your area? Contact an existing one and see what you can do to start one – or what you can do to help that existing one.

Our free schooling should not be reserved for ourselves only. There are those who want to free school, with whatever name they may give it, but face many obstacles that we might not currently endure or understand. Part of free schooling efforts should be to help those in need, those that want to learn, but who do not know how to or cannot for various reasons. When it comes to incarcerated people, they face amazingly difficulties and resistances in their efforts to learn, grow, and take action. There are many things we can do to help them in their attempts and free schooling, and we should act upon these things in whatever ways that we can.

*Statistic taken from A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

PDFs: Prisons in 2005, Pew Center for Research: 1 of 100, World Prison Population.