Isaac Graves – Education Revolution – Alternative Education Resource Organization

Posted on by AERO Webmaster

An Interview with Justo Méndez Arámburu

The following interview is shared with you by both Justo Méndez Arámburu and Isaac Graves. To learn about this interview series and reproduction, citation, and copyright information, please click here. To find out more about Justo Méndez Arámburu and his work, visit nuestraescuela.org and watch his TEDx talk, Todo por mi Estrella (with subtitles).

PART ONE

Isaac Graves: What does community mean to you?

Justo Méndez Arámburu: Community has several definitions. It can mean a neighborhood where people live in the area. In our case, in Nuestra Escuela, we have come to define community as all the participants who are gathered together and take part in Nuestra Escuela’s process. The Nuestra Escuela community is our students, their families, all of the staff, all the people that belong to the place where the site is and the allies who support the development of the project.

IG: How does community play out in your life?

JMA: In my life, community—it’s a key definition part of it because I have devoted my life to belong to a community, to take part in a community, and it has been always (for the last 44 years) underprivileged communities to which I have belonged. My life has been about working with that community to transform its situation into a better one established by a common vision of what would be a better situation for the community.

IG: What do you find most meaningful about community?

JMA: That everything happens in community. Life is life in community. It may be a broader community, a smaller community—but life happens in community. The most meaningful is that community is that place where the people who will be your relatives. You meet the person who will be your partner for the rest of your life. You have your kids, and they will be raised in, by, with the community. Your kids will belong to your family but also will belong to the community. They will learn what you teach in your home, but they will learn what they get as the community values.

IG: What's missing in community?

JMA: Yes, self-sustainability, above all things. In our very particular context, self-esteem. A different self-concept, empowerment—all of that is lacking in our community and is what defines our work, defines what we do. To believe in each member of the community, who is capable of achieving what the community wants to achieve, and to believe in the community as a whole that is able to achieve what we want to achieve.

IG: What is an ideal community to you?

JMA: I live in an ideal community. I devote my life to the ideal community to which I belong. It’s a community of love, it’s a community of learning, it’s a community of solidarity, it’s a community of every person being for the community. It’s a community of support. That’s an ideal community.

"Our communities are capable of building the education they need in order to build the communities they need."
—Justo Méndez Arámburu

PART TWO

IG: What does a democratic education mean to you?

JMA: Democratic education has an individual level and a collective level. On the individual level, it means student-centered and student-led education. The student getting to know and form a personal concept that considers and values all his capacities, all his possibilities, and prepares himself with the tools necessary to build that possibility. On the collective level, it’s a community that takes in account every student of the community—every member of the community, including young members, teachers, staff, old people. Considering everybody a student, everybody a teacher and giving real participation to each member of the community in defining the collective vision.

IG: How does education play out in your life?

JMA: Life is community, community is life because community manifests in life and life manifests in community—and it all happens via education. The activity that we do when we teach or form a class in Nuestra Escuela, or when we have a conversation in the hallway, or when we have an encounter between two of us or in a group, or when we are having a social activity, or when we are having a field trip. In all moments of our life, we look for what we learn from that experience.

IG: What do you find most meaningful about education?

JMA: That it has to be definitely democratic. It has to be because it has to take into account every member of the community. It has to consider and give value to the context in which each member of the community has come to be a person.

It must give the opportunity to each member of the community to see what’s happening, to understand what’s happening, to have critical thinking of what’s happening. To facilitate assuming a position about each situation and giving the tools to go for that position and to build that position. Whatever position, we have to respect every decision, every conclusion that each member who is part of the learning community takes. Education also has to create an environment in which everyone will be respected and every position of each member of the community will be respected. And give us the tools to build consensus on the different positions, and then decide a certain way in which we, as a community, will move. Not decided by a boss or by a leader but by the consensus of the community.

IG: What's missing in education?

JMA: All that I have expressed. That’s not the education that we have in our nation, Puerto Rico, and in many places of the world. What’s missing in education: respect for each member of the community. The teacher understanding himself or herself as also a student, the student as also a teacher. The word “democratic” is missing from education.

IG: What is an ideal education to you?

JMA: It’s in its essence democratic. That is the ideal education, that will just be the activity of a community—of a learning community. Learning together, everybody from everybody, and that builds community and builds respect for the individual criteria for every member of the community. That builds the necessary tools to build consensus, taking into account all those personal positions.

IG: What do you think people should know about the relationship between community and education?

JMA: That our communities are capable of building the education they need in order to build the communities they need.

Posted on by AERO Webmaster

An Interview with Dena Simmons

The following interview is shared with you by both Dena Simmons and Isaac Graves. To learn about this interview series and reproduction, citation, and copyright information, please click here. To find out more about Dena Simmons and her work, watch her TEDx talks, "What to do if a student comes at you with scissors?" and "It's 10PM. Do you know where your children are?" You can follow Dena on Twitter at @denasimmons.

PART ONE

Isaac Graves: What does community mean to you?

Dena Simmons: Community means sharing, collaborating, helping, respecting, supporting, and caring for others. Community is fellowship and belonging. Community could be based on geography, spirituality, race/ethnicity, values, sexuality, and the list goes on. As a result, I am a part of many different communities because of where I live and work and because of who I am. Additionally, building the type of community we want takes careful thought and hard work; it involves ensuring that all voices are valued, included, and protected and that none are excluded, ridiculed, or threatened.

IG: How does community play out in your life?

DS: In my life, and especially in my work in health, education, and public service, I collaborate, share, help, support, respect, and care for others and vice versa. Without my multiple communities, without others, my work would not be as seamless or possible as it is or has been. I appreciate being able to have the foundation and support of my many communities to take risks and to do the work about which I care. Everything I do, I do with my multiple communities in some way. My communities challenge me, keep me humble and honest, and push me to strive for my best. However, what I have found in my membership in more than one community is that some communities could be quite insular and could possibly benefit by collaborating and being open to learning from other communities.

IG: What do you find most meaningful about community?

DS: The most meaningful aspect of community is having support and guidance from others. I also believe that cultural awareness and diversity in a community allow us to grow, to learn, and to challenge ourselves accordingly. I feel blessed to say that I feel a part of multiple communities that sustain my growth to be a better me. My communities have provided me with a sense of belonging and of self—and with a strong foundation so that I can take risks with the knowledge that I’ll be held.

IG: What's missing in community?

DS: If I have to think of something missing from community in my life, I can’t help focusing on my geographic community. As a child growing up in the Bronx, nothing about where I lived sent the message to me or to my community members that we mattered. Our buildings were run down; our schools and hospitals were sub-par; our neighborhoods were unsafe, and the police did not respond promptly to safety concerns. That said, I can’t help thinking about how certain geographical communities lack access to quality schools and healthcare, to healthful food options, and to an infrastructure that allows for healthful living and a better quality of life. In my current community and the one in which I grew up, this inequality of resources is a sad reality. So, what is missing from community in my life is the resources needed to ensure a good quality of life and superb educational and healthcare options not just for the most privileged, but for all.

IG: What is an ideal community to you?

DS: I think what is ideal for me might not be ideal for someone else. Our idea of community depends on our identity and life experience. For me, my ideal community nourishes the mind, body, spirit, and soul; it provides opportunities and resources for individuals to realize their goals and have optimal quality of life, to live harmoniously with others, to contribute by filling in gaps in the community, to have a foundation of love, support, and respect.

"For me, an ideal education empowers all involved—the student, the teacher, the parents/guardians, the administrator, and the community. It is democratic, engaging, fun, liberating, culturally responsive, and allows all to feel safe, loved, and a part of a community. It is not confined to the walls of a classroom or school, and it allows individuals to learn by doing."
—Dena Simmons

PART TWO

IG: What does a democratic education mean to you?

DS: Democratic education is education that allows all parties involved to have a voice in how education happens. Democratic education is education that empowers all. It is culturally responsive; it validates students; it emancipates them. Democratic education provides students with the space to take ownership of their learning, and it allows school staff to guide students to achieve their goals.

IG: How does education play out in your life?

DS: My mother came to this country from Antigua. As a Black immigrant and single mother, she faced her share of injustices simply because of who she was. Nonetheless, my mother worked hard so that she could send my two sisters and me to the neighborhood parochial school. Watching my mother struggle to find educational opportunities for my sisters and me instilled in us the importance of education. My mother inspired me to provide others with what she provided us—a better life through education.

However, I had to leave the Bronx in pursuit of quality educational options. I attended boarding school in Connecticut and college in Vermont on full scholarships. After college, I returned to the Bronx as a middle school teacher because I always wanted to return to the community that motivated me to be who I am today. I wanted to provide my students with quality education that gave them access to a better life. I wanted to be a role model to other children like me.

In sum, I view education as a way to empower others, especially based on how education has empowered me. Education was my way to gain access to a better life, to open doors of opportunity, and to earn social and cultural capital. For others, these privileges are given, but I had to earn mine. Education gave me access to resources so that I could strive for more and so that could do more for others. For that, the power of education will always have a primary role in my life.

IG: What do you find most meaningful about education?

DS: Education has the power to change a person’s life for the better. It empowers individuals with the knowledge they need to advocate for others and for themselves and to fight societal injustice—that’s what’s most meaningful about education to me.

IG: What's missing in education?

DS: In the current educational climate, we are so invested in the rhetoric of “reform,” so caught up in the pressure of “student achievement.” Consequently, we lose the now-ness in our pedagogy. We focus on state assessments in April and fear school closures in June. We are encouraged to obsess over test scores, which diminishes our work and dehumanizes students. In the process of standardizing students, we lose them. We lose ourselves. That is, we have lost the humanity and nowness in our work. In bringing students to academic and life success, we must educate the whole child, keeping in mind not only how well they do on academics, but also their social and emotional well-being and overall health needs.

IG: What is an ideal education to you?

DS: Again, what is ideal for me might not be the case for someone else, but for me, an ideal education empowers all involved—the student, the teacher, the parents/guardians, the administrator, and the community. It is democratic, engaging, fun, liberating, culturally responsive, and allows all to feel safe, loved, and a part of a community. It is not confined to the walls of a classroom or school, and it allows individuals to learn by doing. It involves opportunities for all to collaborate and to teach and to learn from each other. It provides students with the skills and knowledge they need to be successful on their own terms, and it provides the school with the resources and opportunities to contribute and to engage in the larger community.

IG: What do you think people should know about the relationship between community and education?

DS: I don’t think education could be devoid of community. To me, part of education is community. The ability to learn collaboratively and to work with others enriches our lives and education. Human beings are social beings, and education should happen with, around, in, and a part of a community.

IG: Is there anything else you would like to share on community or education?

DS: It is important to consider class, and especially race, when we talk about education in our country. We have to ask ourselves: who has access to progressive or democratic education? Who has access to private school education? And, who has access to public school education? We must also consider how where we live and who we are might impact our schooling. Additionally, when we talk about education reform, we must also ask: education reform for whom? Many education reformers spit jargon about opportunity and achievement gaps without a nuanced discourse of the history of white supremacy in our country. Without acknowledging the impact white supremacist ideals have had on the education of youth of color, we are carelessly doing more damage than good by erasing our students’ histories, identities, and cultures—and sending them the message that their lives do not matter.

Posted on by AERO Webmaster

An Interview with Chris Mercogliano

The following interview is shared with you by both Chris Mercogliano and Isaac Graves. To learn about this interview series and reproduction, citation, and copyright information, please click here. To find out more about Chris Mercogliano and his work, click here.

Isaac Graves: What does community mean to you?

Chris Mercogliano: I operate with a pretty strict definition because the word gets misused so much, in so many euphemistic ways. To me, the essential quality of community is that the members of the community are very closely connected to each other on a deeper emotional level beneath the superficial level. Those people—the members of the community—they trust each other. There’s a high level of trust, a high level of communication, and a high level of cooperation. There’s a few other characteristics to flesh it out. Communities aren’t exclusive, they’re inclusive, so that the members accept each other’s differences. In-groups and cliques aren’t communities because they’re exclusive. A lot of groups that might say they’re a community, or use that word in some sort of euphemistic way, that cuts them out because those groups are actually exclusive. They’re completely wrapped up around a certain piece or something. And you can see how that’s really important if you’re going to talk about—I assume you’re talking schools and education. So when we talk about schools being communities, in order for a school to be worth anything, to be a good place for kids and so on, it’s got to be a community in my book. It’s one of the most important attributes of any school, and so then all those characteristics that I’m checking off that have been really important—the exclusive part you see becomes important. In the strict sense, I would challenge some private school that wants to say: “Well we’re a community. We all trust each other, and we’re close.” But I would say, “Yeah, but you’re really exclusive.” Every private boarding school tries to make itself a community, which is good, the kids live there, it’s home, it should be a nourishing, supportive place. But if I was going to be picky with my definition, I’d say, “Yeah, but you’re too exclusive to be a community. I’m sorry.” Communities aren’t exclusive. And I just don’t think schools should be exclusive, so there it is.

IG: How does community play out in your life?

CM: In my personal life, it could play out a lot more. But what used to be our Free School community doesn’t really exist anymore… I miss that actually. Maybe this is too much information for you, but I still feel that those of us that have been here a long time have a community and we operate as a community, which is good. But there isn’t the dynamism there was when there were so many people of different ages. You know, we’re a pretty homogenous group—we’re all white, we’re all the same age, there’re no children anymore. When the Free School community was thriving, it just had a lot of diversity—not so much racial, but there was a little racial diversity—but certainly an age diversity and all kinds and types of different thinking. Us old timers here, we’re pretty homogeneous in the way we think and kind of the way we live. There’s nothing wrong with that—but you see in my definition of community it doesn’t quite fit.

And then that’s changed, even for us old guys. We don’t work together as much either. We’re much more living our separate lives, than we used to when we were involved with the school. Then, we were working together a lot and we had a big common task that held us together, and that’s changed because we’ve gotten older. We’re not involved with the school anymore directly, everyday. I miss that. You know when the Free School community was really working well, it was just a really cool place to live, really wonderful way to live. You live amongst people where you’re honest with each other, you trust each other, you know you’re not going to be excluded, and you know more or less that you’re going to be accepted. If you act like an asshole somebody’s going to tell you, “You’re being an asshole.” People just looking out for each other and sharing and supporting each other on all kinds of levels—supporting each other with parenting, supporting each other with projects, working on each other’s houses, just that level of cooperation. It’s just a sweet, lovely way to live. You feel very connected to others, and I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t want to live that way. It makes the fabric of your life richer, and it’s also easier. There’s just a lot of support, you don’t so much have to slug it out yourself in the typical American fashion with all of us being rugged individualists.

You always know you have help if you need it. You don’t have to do it yourself. You don’t have to do it the hard way. Just right around the corner, right next door, “I don’t have to move this thing by myself,” or “I don’t have to fix this thing by myself.” Or, if you don’t know fix something, “Oh I just can go next door, Howie will know, Mike will know—Frank will know. I just got to go see Frank. He’ll practically drop what he’s doing and come and help me fix x, y, or z.” Or if you have a legal question or problem, “I can just call Larry. It’s not a professional thing. He’s part of my community, so he’ll help me figure out this mess.”

It just makes life a lot easier – tremendously. You don’t need as much money, there are practical levels to it. That’s partly what made it work here. Mary’s secret to keeping the Free School in business was we actually always spend as much money as was coming in. You didn’t set a salary first, you didn’t set a budget first and then, “Ok, now well hopefully we’ll get that much money.” We said, “How much money do we have? Ok, well we’ll divide that by 7 and that’s the salary. So we’re all going to get $150 a week right now because that’s how much money there is.” Obviously, it was never enough money. The Free School salaries have always been a joke. No one else has ever run the school for so long, paying teachers so little, but that’s where the community came in partly. You didn’t need as much money because you didn’t need to pay lawyers and doctors and nurses and babysitters. There was so much stuff that we could handle ourselves—stuff that you would ordinarily pay money for. You didn’t have to go to the movies, you could just get together with 5 other people and whatever watch a video together or sing songs, generate your own entertainment. It was practical.

IG: What do you find most meaningful about community?

CM: The most important piece is feeling connected to others. Or at least for me, it’s very important. I don’t like feeling isolated, particularly. Not that I don’t like being alone or doing stuff on my own, I’m very independent, but at the same time, that’s what kills people in this country – loneliness. That’s the leading cause of death. Of course it’s not loneliness itself that does that. There’s a pretty famous cardiologist had made the statement that loneliness doesn’t cause a heart attack, but if you look into people’s backgrounds and who are having heart trouble, very often you’ll find they are lonely. It’s connected. Then the physical body, immune system, everything suffers as a result.

That’s a frequent condition in our country, especially with nursing homes and families busted up and spread apart. You end up with older people very often feeling isolated and really being not just feeling. They’re feeling it because they are isolated! They’re not part of a community—they’re just living off in their senior citizen apartment, their families live a thousand miles away, and they’re lonely. They don’t feel connected and it has a huge impact on health.

IG: What's missing in community?

CM: I can tell you what I miss from the old Free School community. The weird thing for me now is all the Free School people all live here. They’re all over the neighborhood, they’ve taken over the neighborhood. There’s probably between 50 and 100 people now that are all “Free School people” and they own houses. And I don’t feel particularly connected to them, so that’s weird. It’s sort of like living in the suburbs where you say, “Hi, how are you?” but there’s no intimacy. There’s no real connection, it’s just superficial. So, it’s weird. There’s only ten of us—the people I say are part of my community. That’s not that many. There’s a lot more people that live all around this neighborhood that I formerly felt more connected too. A lot of that turned out to be an illusion on my part. I just don’t like that disconnected feeling.

But I think the younger people still think there’s a community. I think they still use the term “Free School Community.” I think I hear it once in a while. But I think it’s more at that superficial level now. I don’t get the sense there’s a lot of real close connection there.

IG: What is an ideal community to you?

CM: I don’t think there’s any such thing as that. That’s an important thing to understand about a real community – things are going to go wrong, people are going to piss each other off, people are going to do stupid things, there’s going to be conflict. That’s when people get close enough to each other. That’s inevitable—people are going to hurt each other’s feelings. I’m glad you asked that question. I think that’s part of the fantasy of community is it’s perfect, everyone gets along, and however else your fantasy runs itself or plays out. And that’s a trap. If that’s what your actual interpretation is, then how long is that going to last? Remember there were all these utopian communities back in the 1800s.

It was a big fad there for awhile in the late 1800s. They all crashed and burned because these people had this ridiculous idea that it was all going to be just wonderful. Then they couldn’t get along, and they didn’t know what to do when they couldn’t get along with each other. So, there’s no ideal other than maybe you could say that the ideal is that when things do go wrong, when there is conflict, and people hurt each other’s feelings; people are honest about it and they agree to work it out. Like a marriage, they agree to just hang in there and try to resolve the conflict so that the relationship will continue and go to a deeper, more trusting level. M. Scott Peck, was a psychologist for a long, long time and a pretty cool guy—he wrote a whole book about community called The Different Drum. One of the thing’s he is careful to point out is that conflict is a very important part. You can’t have community without conflict. It doesn’t even work if you just try to avoid having conflict, then people will never get close to each other. The magic of conflict, when you deal with conflict in the right way and don’t deny it, it actually brings people closer. Mary understood that at the Free School—that’s why we had council meetings.

Mary really understood that you had to just sort of hash it out in the moment if kids were mad. She understood when you do have conflict and everybody get involved in it, everybody gets a little dirty when somebody’s stealing something or kids are fighting, or whatever crazy shit might go on. That’s the glue, that’s what brings people closer – going through that process together, and being honest and being emotional. Let everybody see how mad you were when Jimmy was picking on you, how you really want to kill him actually, instead of the judicial council thing, “Well, we have written up that says that Jimmy’s picking on Johnny again. Well see, that rule 77… no, no we don’t allow that. Picking on each other’s not ok. And now Jimmy, here’s the punishment. Here’s the consequence for picking on. Next! Next case!” There’s no intimacy there, no connection—there’s no feeling. That’s why Mary didn’t do it that way.

IG: What does a democratic education mean to you?

CM: Not much. I’m not crazy about the term, but it’s bland. I understand it has an important function, because I personally think in the spirit of community, in the spirit of togetherness, when we’re talking about education and different kinds of schools. It’s important for schools to get together, work together, cooperate, form a movement—got all the strengths of community. It’s a good thing to do. I think there should be as much diversity as possible, again. If you’re going to have a strong education movement, then you’ve got to somehow be able to bring together schools of different kinds, schools with different flavors, different philosophies, different approaches, and yet establish enough common ground that they can work together, represent each other. So you have to have a label—an inclusive banner that you can all wave together. So, “democratic education” is a nice bland banner, a nice bland label that has enough vagueness to it that it allows for different kinds of schools to all call themselves “democratic schools”. What does it mean to me? I don’t know. It means to me that the students participate in the governance of the school, and I think that’s great. That’s the way schools should be. Kids should have a voice. I’m just not crazy about the political-ness of the term, that’s all. I don’t think you can get away from the political connotations any which way you cut it, and I think schools are just more than that. Then, I’ve already put my bias out there—I think one of the most important qualities for any school is community. I would choose “community schools” or something if I was going to come up with a label. But, that’s not going to sell—that’s going to be too exclusive a term.

IG: How does education play out in your life?

CM: I still teach a little bit. I teach a little math over at Harriet Tubman and a little math at the Free School. I’m on the advisory board at Harriet Tubman. So I’m involved, just trying to support the school and help it establish itself. And I’m on the board at the Free School, so same thing there, trying to help them keep it together. And I’m writing a book about education, so that’s pretty much what I write about.

IG: What do you find most meaningful about education?

CM: I think the thing I still love the most is really being able to help a child get it—whatever it might happen to be, depending on the context of the situation. If it’s long multiplication or algebra, I just love that feeling as a teacher, just to be there when the student gets it like, “Oh, I get it!” It’s totally vicarious, but it’s just like I can say, “I helped him get it, or I helped her get it. That’s great! Oh good, you got it!”

Or it could be helping two kids work out their troubles with each other. That would be getting it – helping them figure it out, sort it out, so that they don’t want to kill each other anymore and they’re friends again. It’s like, “Wow, look at that! I helped them work that out! Now they’re friends again. Alright!” It’s that sense of satisfaction and seeing kids. Right alongside that, there’s a great pleasure in seeing kids thriving, being happy, doing their thing. I get tremendous personal satisfaction from that. To be close to that, that’s what you’re doing when you’re teaching.

IG: What's missing in education?

CM: That’s where I think you then have to differentiate. When I’m over at Free School now, it looks pretty good. The kids are doing their thing, and it’s just beautiful to watch the kids doing their thing. But anyway, mainstream education—what do I want to change?

I think mainstream education is a disaster, and it’s just getting worse. It’s just completely headed in the wrong direction. At the same time, it’s so resistant to change. It’s just very difficult. As an institution, it resists change. It’s so good at resisting change, which is why it doesn’t change. It’s really got so many self-protecting mechanisms built in so that it won’t change in the ways that I think it needs to change. It’s very discouraging.

At the same time, it’s very difficult to see schools like Harriet Tubman or the Free School the Village Free School or the Journey School or whatever, Brooklyn Free School, Manhattan Free School—schools that have established themselves outside of the mainstream and have established themselves as really good places for kids. These are places where kids really get what they need, really learn, really grow, or if they’re stuck and really not doing well when they show up, which is often the case, of course, they start figuring it out.

Places like that aren’t accepted. The mainstream does not accept them, doesn’t understand them, is frightened by them. Look at how mightily little schools like that have to struggle just to stay alive. And they don’t necessarily stay alive, they go out of existence because there isn’t even the minimalist amount of support enough just to keep their doors open. That’s tough. Beyond that, Harriet Tubman should have 100 kids. Look at all the kids in the capital district that could benefit from a school like that. Yet, because the mainstream considers a school like Harriet Tubman so unacceptable, the school just sort of stays invisible. Other kids don’t even ever get a chance to go there. They’re never going to hear about it. they’re never even know that option exists for them.

IG: What is an ideal education to you?

CM: Well, sure it’s ok to talk about ideals. Ideals are ideals—no harm in that. Especially if we’re talking about children opposed to college students or highschoolers even. If they go to school, and they’re not home schooled, their schools are communities that fit all the characteristics that I already talked about. Then it’s really rich in experience and other people and children are directing the process. That’s a key piece for me because I totally believe that children are capable of directing their own education and it works better when they do. It’s going to be a lot more effective, relevant, and meaningful when they do. So, how’s that for an ideal?

IG: What do you think people should know about the relationship between community and education?

CM: I’ll just stress again that I think community is an essential ingredient. I think we should look at education holistically. I think if we define education as just the training of the mind, it’s just about the brain and the mind and about rational intelligence, information. But that’s a really narrow definition of education. It certainly doesn’t address a wide range of children’s developmental needs. The kinds of learning that are important, especially to children, need that rich context of relationships and other people. It’s a critical ingredient.

Kids learn from other people. Kids learn so much of what’s important within the context of relationships with other people. It’s important for children to feel connected and to feel nurtured, especially if they’re in school and not at home with their parents or they’re not lucky kids who have this really cool connected family, family life that they can educate themselves within. Kids need to be in loving environments where they feel safe and accepted and validated and where they can learn about other people and how to get along with other people. There, they can learn about themselves in the context of other people. All that stuff’s so important, and you need a community for it.

Posted on by AERO Webmaster

An Interview with Pat Farenga

The following interview is shared with you by both Pat Farenga and Isaac Graves. To learn about this interview series and reproduction, citation, and copyright information, please click here. To find out more about Pat Farenga and his work, click here.

Pat Farenga

Isaac Graves: What does community mean to you?

Pat Farenga: Community is a group of people who share my interests, and I share theirs. I feel they have my back, and I have theirs. I think it’s all circles within circles. The more circles that you are a part of, the better off you are.

IG: How does community play out in your life?

PF: It's been an incredibly important part for me because, first of all, most of the ideas that I share are in the minority. It’s very important that I stay in touch with people who share that. At the same time, it’s very important not to get trapped in the echo chamber of those people. It feels very important to also be reaching out and be part of a larger world. I realized if I didn’t have my community of homeschool and other supports, I get a lot of support from non-homeschoolers, too. That’s the great thing about having been part of John Holt’s work—I've always had a strong connection with the alternative school community as a result of that. It’s not this monomaniacal view of community that we get in school, which is that everything has to be pointing toward improving a child’s test scores. It is the relationship that matters between a teacher and a child or a parent and a child. Our schools’ idea of community is really turning teachers into professional technicians. Students have to stay away from them a certain distance because they give off the professional teacher vibe. So I’m really glad that the communities that I’ve built up and been part of—homeschooling and alternative schooling—have been solidly built on this idea of friendships and relationships. I think that that is completely under siege with the technocracy that we have where everything has got to be reduced to a number and a monetary value and that anything that doesn’t serve that purpose is considered not useful.

IG: What do you find most meaningful about community?

PF: To me, having that knowledge that I am talking to a real person who will respond to me and respond to my request. Even my unspoken request—I say, "I’m fine," but they look at me and say, "No, you are not." That, to me, is not only a friend but also a community.

When I think about community and democracy, I really feel that we always err on one side or the other. There seems to be a real issue, that we don’t know how to be an individual and be part of a group. All too often, schools demand that we give up our individuality to become part of a larger group. Then, on the other hand, at the other extreme, you have some homeschoolers and alternative schools saying the individual and what they want is the most paramount thing.

I really feel it is the need for face-to-face contact that prevents you from turning somebody into just an object or something that is not part of your community.

IG: What's missing in community?

PF: I would say it is trying to find like-minded individuals who want to move forward on issues that are of concern to me.

Also, with the different initiatives, it’s really interesting to me how they usually fail because people just can't seem to sustain the effort for reasons that puzzle me. I know that certainly lack of funding is always a big one for us, but that’s never stopped anyone from trying. We are dividing ourselves and I see this in the alternative school community big time.

Everyone has their ideas about how things should be done, but there’s an attitude, "If you are not like us, then I don’t think we should really be talking." That’s bothered me a lot because I’ll talk with anyone. I’ve got my opinions, but that’s what it’s about. I’ll say my piece, you’ll say yours, and I’ve changed my opinions based on whatever runs through my life. It’s certainly one of the most important lessons I learned from John Holt. Right up until he died, he was changing his ideas about how children learn.

IG: What is an ideal community to you?

PF: Right now I would say an ideal community for me personally would be one that had young and old in it together. I really always enjoy that mix, and I’ve always enjoyed working in places that have a mix of young and old people. I would like it to have music because I’m a musician, so I love opportunities to play my saxophone and piano as much as possible.

I guess my ideal community would always have space for someone new. Too often, community gets into this idea that we all think the same, that we are all doing the same thing. I would like to find to another way to build communities—to have another place where people can gather that is completely unprogrammed.

IG: What does a democratic education mean to you?

PF: We live in a democracy. The United States is a republic, and we use a democratic process to run it. The idea is that you participate in a democracy, and that’s how you learn about it. We have this whole idea about learning about democracy in school that misses the whole point.

I think that democracy is best as a process. You learn democracy by doing it. One of the things that I really enjoy about the homeschooling community is that right now, Massachusetts homeschoolers are going to the State House. They are not going to the State House because they are protesting a bill or anything; they are going there to meet their legislators. To let them, "Know we are here, we are educated, we are enjoying ourselves, there is no child abuse. Our kids are happy and healthy." So let them see that they are regular citizens and that they are curious about what’s on the plate in the State House.

IG: How does education play out in your life?

PF: Constantly. Personally, I love learning new stuff all the time—with my music, with magic, taking classes and stuff like that. Then I share that with the people in my life as I work, make music, perform, and so on. I now give magic lessons to kids in an after-school program during the school year; when I was homeschooling our daughter, Audrey, for three years we ran a magic club in our home, and it was great.

IG: What do you find most meaningful about your work in education?

PF: Well I have a problem with the word "education" because it no longer means teaching and learning. Teaching and learning are the verbs that I like to use; they make sense to me. A person is a learner; a person is a teacher. When someone is an educator, it only seems to me that they are working on me. Like they are trying to get me do something that they think is better for me. They want me to have a credential; they want me to be processed. There is a wonderful phrase from the ‘60s: "schooling is not the same as education." I think we need to get back to the ideas of teaching and learning and working individually and very humbly and with humility on those instead of these grand schemes to educate for the future.

A friend of mine just sent me this link in Forbes Magazine; Paul Thiel is a venture capitalist in California who was one of the early and big investors in Facebook. He has created a trust fund that will award $100,000 every year to 20 students who drop out of college to start their own business. Now that’s the sort of thinking I like; that’s what I want to see.

IG: What's missing in education?

PF: The reality is that we have a school system that is too big to fail, and most people rely on it. Homeschooling has grown to two million children now, but that’s nothing compared to the 64 million children who are in public schools and whose parents support it. I think we just need to figure out ways of opening up other places for people to go, on top of the existing system or alongside it. Right now, for a lot of us, it’s under it, like we are underground, but I think that homeschooling should be embraced by the schools. They talk about parental involvement—what could be the epitome of parental involvement and education beyond homeschooling? If we can come out and say that there are many different ways of learning, many different ways of becoming a success in America, then we can have many different types of schools and opportunities. We don’t even need schools. I would like to see more clubs. I would like to see more activities. Have a sports academy where you could learn reading, writing, calculation and art stuff by studying basketball, football, and soccer. That’s too much fun for educators to tolerate, I guess. If the kids are perceived as having fun, they are somehow perceived as not learning. Let kids talk and decide what they want to do on their own. You want an adult somewhere there to help them with their questions and to make sure that things are safe, but let them run the show as much as possible. I’m sure some parents would choose those learning situations.

IG: What is an ideal education to you?

PF: To me, it would be something that doesn’t even look like a program that’s being administered to somebody with the expectation of a degree. To me, it would be lifelong; opportunities to learn all the time in your local community and the world at large. The reward would be that I’m able to use this information for my own betterment or to satisfy my curiosity for a personal reason. The idea that education is only for kids from kindergarten until they graduate college, then after that you are “educated” or you have attained a certain level of education—that, to me, is crazy. We are learning constantly. I’m 57 years old, and I hope I continue learning until I die. Think of what we could do if we just stopped giving standardized tests and got everyone books, health care and good food with that money. That can make a big difference in people’s lives. I really see education much more holistically. I don’t view it as these little buildings where teachers teach kids. I view it as the whole society. That’s the other thing that I take great exception to—when people say, “The world is my classroom.” No, the world is not your classroom; the world is your environment. It’s your birthright that you live in it. Birds fly, fish swim, humans learn. To view the world as your classroom is to view the world like a gigantic school, and that is horrible. The world is the world; let’s enjoy it. Let’s embrace it so there are no dotted lines separating math from science from physics from reading and writing.

IG: What do you think people should know about the relationship between community and education?

PF: I think people should realize that there is a connection. It’s not just that the school is where you donate your services, run the bake sale, stand in the back of a classroom and do what the teacher asks you to do for your kids. That’s a very shallow community. For me the school has got to embrace the fact that kids learn and adults learn all the time.

I mentioned this book, Being Me and Also Us, by Alison Stallibrass. It’s about a place in London that existed called the Peckham Center. It existed in the 1930s, and then after World War II, it came back in the 1950s.

It was a community center, but it was more like a YMCA. It had a swimming pool, a gymnasium, a cafeteria. It had a lot of multifunction rooms, and it was a medical study to see what conditions created health in people.

They were looking for adults, but then once they started letting the kids in there, it was fascinating. Because then the kids started self-organizing and watching what the adults did. It’s a fascinating study, and I would love to see more places like that. Why must we have private health clubs where everyone is trying to get six-pack abs? Why can't we have government-sponsored places turn a school into this?