posted by Richard Fransham
Monica Truong is an AERO member known to many. She works tirelessly promoting self-directed learning in Calgary, Alberta. She founded Chinook Free Learners and is currently working with Unschooling School to establish a Calgary charter school for self-directed education.
Monica is also planning to run for school board trustee this fall and she sought my thoughts on it knowing that I was involved through Uniting for Children and Youth with the 2018 school board elections in Ottawa.
The following is a letter I have sent to Ottawa school board trustees. It results from my conversation last week with Monica and outlines some of what we should be able to expect people will have seriously contemplated if they want to be school board trustees. We need candidates for trustee to be flooding the AERO conference coming up this month. It represents where change is happening with its impressive array of thinkers and pioneers. It is where the stewards of public education can develop a vision of how to transform schools to apply what we know about nurturing children’s wellbeing and how they learn, and how to create the kinds of learning environments that maximize community resources.
I will be sharing the letter with Ottawa educators and parents urging them to attend the conference and to encourage their trustees and children’s teachers to attend. It is really about building public awareness that we do not have to come out of COVID to the same old schools. Anybody who can make use of the letter, or parts of it, to raise awareness of the possibilities in their communities is welcome to do so without permission from me.
Open letter to the trustees of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board
Dear OCDSB Trustee,
If you are planning to seek another term as trustee in 2022, here is a little of what is being discussed and undertaken by people who see COVID as having created an opportunity to remake public education to suit the times and the needs of young people. I’m sending this email at this time because the AERO Conference is starting June 24th. It has an impressive slate of speakers committed to raising awareness of educational practices that better serve young people and society. I am highly recommending that anyone concerned about education make it a point to attend the conference.
A time between worlds
The Industrial Age changed our culture. High-rise cities, paved roadways, climate change and community anonymity are characteristics of it that hint at the depth of change that occurred. Digital technology has us entering a new age that is likely to be at least as dramatically different from the one before. With the pressing global problems we face, it is essential that our leaders have a big picture view of what is happening and the urgency for bold action. Zak Stein who will be speaking at the AERO conference warns us in his talk at the 2021 Ecoversities conference that civilizations are mortal. They die if not properly managed. We have only a short time to avoid the collapse of our civilization, and Job #1 to prevent it is education. The documentary film Schooling the World conveys that if we want to change a culture in a single generation, we have to change how it educates it children. Abraham Lincoln shared a similar view when he said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
Students finding their voices.
Last November youth participated in the Ottawa Child Friendly Community conference. Resulting from it is a short video created by Wondering School titled Youth Perspectives on Sociocracy. School Circles is a full-length documentary about how to apply sociocracy in schools. An early fall, free viewing of the film is being planned and everyone is welcome to attend. Watch the Youth Rights Day Facebook group for details. The following provide some evidence of youth making their voices heard on matters that affect them: The Global Student Forum, The International Summit on Student Voice, and Up For Learning. A couple of good websites about “how to” meaningfully involve students in their education are Unschooling School and the Alliance for Self-Directed Education. The global Youth Rights Day, similar in nature to Earth Day, is a new initiative created to raise public awareness of how it is critical to include youth as equal partners in decisions that affect them.
Parents becoming more aware
There are signs of parents becoming increasingly aware that age-segregated, authoritarian learning environments work against the best interests of students and their communities. Of particular note, is the Progressive Education website, which is resonating with parents and teachers throughout the world. It is the work of Jo Symes who sent her kids to school with little more thought than: “It is what parents do.” She soon observed that something was wrong and began to look into it. The Progressive Education website presents what she learned, and in just two years her Facebook group has acquired over 4600 members. Fabienne Vailes is another parent who could not remain silent and founded Flourishing Education. Her Episode 67 podcast: Changing Our Minds with Naomi Fisher provides an example of the kinds of conversations parents are having and hearing.
Public schools are not conducive to democratic citizenship
Yaacov Hecht is another notable person who will be speaking at the AERO conference. He started the first PUBLIC school to be called democratic, and it led to a system of over 25 public democratic school is Israel, the only country to do this so far. The learning model he uses is more conducive to cultivating active democratic citizens than is the age-segregated, authoritarian learning environment with mandated curriculum that is typical of most public schools. Democracies are under attack and we need to decide if we are going to do what it takes to put them on a firm footing. This requires that students be permitted to do their own thinking and to question the authorities. People who think this leads to chaos need to spend more time developing an understanding of how democratic schools work.
Summary
COVID has revealed problems with public education that are not likely to be forgotten. The need to emerge from COVID on a clear course to something substantially better than what we had is real and likely to magnify. We need our educational leaders to rise to the challenges in transforming our schools. The place to begin is to create avenues for the early adopters of change to undertake the required pioneering work in ways that are scalable as more people appreciate the benefits to doing things differently. See the OPERI website for an example of the school-within-a-community school approach to school transformation.
Respectfully,
Richard Fransham
rfransham@rogers.com