COMMENT: Beyond school?

By Adrian Barnes

When I’m in the mood to stir the pot and the topic at hand is education, I sometimes like to ask innocent bystanders this question: “What would happen if we just shut all the schools down tomorrow?” Laid off the staff, sold the buildings, and called it a day.

Would it be a catastrophe? Would ‘education’ end? Would a new generation of (even more) illiterate barbarians arise? Or would life go on pretty much as it always has? Hard to imagine, I know, given how deeply ingrained the idea of ‘school’ is in all our minds. But a question well worth asking at the present juncture.

We all know from personal experience that there are both good and bad aspects to school. On the positive side, there’s the opportunity for meaningful learning and the potential for socializing and community building; but, if we’re honest, we know there’s also a lot of bureaucracy, boredom, and wasted time. And we also know the system doesn’t work for all kids all the time. And for a significant minority, it never works any of the time.

So it’s worth pondering this question as the uncertain future of K-12 in Rossland looms larger and larger: ‘could we possibly get rid of the bureaucracy, boredom, and wasted time and still keep the learning and community?’

In 1971 Ivan Illich published the classic Deschooling Society in which he argued that hierarchical structures like schools can never successfully educate people. Rather, he argued for the creation of “educational webs” in a community--networks of mentorships between people with specific skill sets and those who aspired to learn those skills. These webs, he argued, would “heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.”

Under such a system, teaching would no longer be about the transmission of information in a top-down manner from teacher to student. Rather, education would become an organic, relational experience. And, importantly, one requiring no teachers, no schools, and no school boards. All that would be needed would be what Illich described as a ‘bulletin board’ where learners and mentors could be matched.

Now this sounds pretty utopian, of course, and I’m not suggesting that Rosslanders should just abandon the idea of schools immediately, but at a critical juncture like this, we need to think outside the box. Far outside the box. Then we need to kick the box to pieces.

Ironically, this year RSS has been working hard on its Blended Learning initiative, which promises, if sustainable, to move further and further away from the inefficient and expensive ‘one teacher staring at 26 students’ model over time. This, of course, is the very model that states, to the satisfaction of most district trustees, that our teens should be bussed out of town each day.

As we contemplate the need for an independent school, a municipal school district, or even the possibility of continuing along within School District 20 in some fashion or another, we should try to de-school our own minds while we think about our options. “Teachers” are not the only teachers, for example. We have a community filled with skilled, engaged people--mechanics, nurses, artists, engineers, cooks, lawyers, carpenters--many of whom would gladly shoulder part of our town’s need to educate its young.

Think how rewarding such mentorships would be for both parties. The best thing that ever happens within a conventional school is mentorship anyway--when a young person finds in a capable and enthusiastic adult a role model and an inspiration. But it doesn’t happen for every kid, or even most kids, under the current model. So why not explode the model and let everyone in the community with a contribution to make take part? Doing so would lower costs and increase success rates.

A world without schools may be a little too much to imagine, at least right now, but Illich’s ideas should at least give us all a sense that there are many more possibilities out there than those that have been laid before us by the powers that be.

At a time like this, when technology is increasing interactivity and efficiencies at astonishing rates, there’s no way that we here in Rossland should be decreasing the amount of education that happens within city limits. Rather, we should be increasing it. Dramatically.

Adrian Barnes is the editor of the Rossland Telegraph and president of Lone Sheep Publishing.