If kids can go to a restaurant to order from a menu the
foods they like to eat, then why can't kids go into their communities to choose from a
variety of work environments the people from whom they like to learn? When kids are put
into schools, the school system and its curriculum tell kids what to learn, how to learn,
and when to learn the same things at the same times. This is like going to a restaurant
where the waiter not only tells kids what food they will all eat, but has the audacity to
also tell kids how and when they will eat the food. For example, all of the kids will be
forced to eat liver, without using their hands, all at the same time.
Some kids will put up with this mistreatment, but most will
try to avoid it, altogether. We certainly wouldn't tolerate this over-controlling behavior
from a waiter, so why would we expect our kids to tolerate this manipulative behavior from
our educational systems? Is it any wonder then why our kids don't learn what they need to
learn to survive in our society? Schools fail to teach our kids what they want and need to
know, not because the teachers or administrators fail; rather, because the process of
schooling fails to meet the work needs of teachers and administrators and the learning
needs of kids.
Kids (and adults) learn best through play - the process of
continuously exploring their community to find those people from whom they want to learn.
Members of the working community can make time and space for their work environments to be
explored by kids. Teachers and administrators can act as consultants to the business
community, not by designing any pre planned curriculum; rather, by sharing a menu of
teaching skills with workers to assist them with their roles as teachers. Let's transfer
resources out of schooling (public, private, or home) and into community learning. What do
we have to lose, except those expressions of boredom on our kids' faces!
Community Learning1-3 integrates the
learning of all subjects relevant to children’s lives at each child’s unique
stage of development from daily experiences in the community. Community Learning
encourages kids of all ages to participate in the daily work activities of their families,
family coworkers, and neighbors. This exposes kids to a variety of learning activities
available in the community which allow kids to choose those learning activities that they want
to learn, in the style of learning that works for them (exploring and questioning
the people around them), at the unique time that each child is receptive to learn an
activity, and with whom they want to learn. In contrast, schooling sequesters
children from the daily work activities of their families in the community by saturating
their minds with irrelevant facts in a pre planned curriculum (public, private,
or home school) which are promptly forgotten because these facts are not applicable to
their daily lives. Schooling forces children to memorize and regurgitate back on
tests those facts required by state educators, in a learning style that is inconsistent
with their nature of learning (sitting in one place, listening to a teacher), at the same
time for same-aged kids, and with teachers they may not find interesting. We can’t
force learning upon our children any more than we can force growth upon seeds. We can
create conditions (community learning) that foster learning for our kids in the same way
that the sustainable living community creates conditions (sun, water, soil, carbon
dioxide) that foster growth for seeds.
There are two sources of knowledge that show us how community
learning better meets the learning needs of children (and adults) than schooling.
The first source of knowledge is acquired by studying human evolution which reveals that
community learning evolved as the common learning strategy that conferred survival for our
indigenous ancestors; therefore, community learning constitutes our instinctive
nature of learning. We humans evolved the tribe as the social organization that best meets
our needs.4 Due to interdependent relationships among tribe members, the
survival of an individual depends on the survival of other tribe members, thus creating an
incentive for tribe members to work, play, and learn together to meet each others’
needs. In the tribe children explore their community by learning "hands on" from
other tribe members those skills needed for survival. We are all genetically endowed with
this community learning strategy that we inherited from our indigenous
evolutionary ancestors. The second source of knowledge is acquired by directly observing
(and reading from others’ observations) the spontaneous community learning
processes of children (and adults):
Before Puberty—children’s tendency to
imitate the behaviors of those adults acting in parental roles (and secondarily, other
kids) they encounter in their community, and
During & After Puberty—teens’ and
adults’ tendency to imitate the behaviors of those peers (and secondarily,
other adults) they encounter in their community. I emphasize the word,
"tendency," to note that children and adults do not exactly copy what other
people do, rather, they integrate their observations of others’ behaviors into their
minds resulting in each person’s unique behaviors. Thus, there is a need for rules to
help us learn what was not transmitted as a "tendency to imitate."
Our culture tends to establish rules that are lists of
"should and should not" behaviors.2 These rules label disruptive
behaviors as "bad" or (more destructively) label the person who is exhibiting
the disruptive behaviors as "bad." Conversely, these rules label desirable
behaviors as "good" or label the person who is exhibiting the desirable
behaviors as "good." These rules denigrate and glorify behaviors which are all expected
as a part of our human nature. These rules generate unnecessary shame and guilt when
people display disruptive behaviors and needless arrogance and superiority when people
show desirable behaviors. Hence, these "should and should not" rules promote
inequality by dividing our society into classes of "good and bad" people.
Contrary to "should and should not" rules, our indigenous human ancestors
evolved a common legal strategy—"rules of consequence"—that promotes
learning for all people by providing nonjudgmental statements of consequences that are
consistently applied in response to specific behaviors. These "rules of
consequence" model the structure of universal natural laws (i.e. gravity,
thermodynamics, evolution etc.) in that they are also statements of consequences that are
consistently applied in response to specific conditions.
Let’s see how these two types of rules are applied in
the example of a family that finds food left on the dining table after eating to be
disruptive. I am not suggesting that leaving food on a table after eating is a universally
disruptive behavior. For example, in hunter-gatherer societies people may leave uneaten
food for people and other animals to eat. Contrary to being disruptive, this behavior
promotes the efficient use of food by those in the surrounding environment. In our modern
society people may find value in storing uneaten food for use at a later time. According
to the "should and should not" rules, when people leave food on the table they
tend to feel that there is something wrong with them for doing this; or that they are more
holy than others for removing their uneaten food from the table. According to the
"rules of consequence," the rule might be stated, "When you leave food on
the table after eating, you will miss 15 minutes of time to play games;" or,
conversely, "when you put away food after eating, you will receive 15 minutes of time
to play games." When people leave food or put food away, they receive a consequence
which encourages the desired behavior of putting food away—no judgment, no shame or
blame, no guilt, no arrogance, no inequality in the treatment of people.
Young children (<5 years) exhibit community learning
by imitating and playing with their family and other adults & kids: learning
language(s); dancing; singing; drawing; musical instruments; computer; gardening; food
preparation; humor; special qualities of all life forms and material things; reading;
writing; arithmetic; and habits pertaining to eating, sleeping, and self-care, as
examples. All of this learning occurs in response to their exposure to people performing
these activities in their environment; learning happens easily, without any pre planned
curriculum from state educators! Our culture has deluded us into thinking that by age 5
years children "have to go to school" to learn. In reality, children continue to
learn most effectively and efficiently (including the 3 R’s) via this community
learning process throughout their lives.
Let’s look at the difference between children
"learning" from a pre planned curriculum versus learning from their community.
When I ask my kids, "What was fun and interesting at school today?" they usually
answer by shrugging their shoulders or relating one or two brief activities out of a 7
hour day that they enjoyed and had meaning for them. This means 6+ hours of their lives
each weekday is wasted because it provides no memorable, relevant, or meaningful
experiences for them. Now, let’s contrast that compulsory pre planned curriculum
experience at school with their voluntary, self-motivated activities that they have chosen
for participation. My 15 year old son’s interest in musical comedy leads him to
spontaneously inquire and search for songs that he practices and performs. My 10 year old
twins’ interest in playing music together with their friends led them to
extemporaneously investigate the musical instruments they chose to practice and play in
their band. I am not implying that playing a musical instrument in a band is an activity
that everyone will want to do; it is an example of an activity in which people can work,
play, and learn together as equals to create meaningful experiences. This kind of
cooperative structure that we see in a band can be applied to any other work/learning
activity so it better meets the social needs of the workers/students.
As in the saying, "Necessity is the Mother of
Invention," community learning focuses on what people need to learn to
survive and thrive. When children are allowed to explore their environment and discover an
interest to pursue, they integrate many realms of knowledge around their activity as
opposed to the disintegrated acquisition of knowledge (separate subjects) that typifies
the pre planned curriculum of schooling. In the example of my twins participating
in a band, kids integrate many types of knowledge automatically, such as: mathematics,
history, communication and cooperation, critical thinking, and varied means of
self-expression by coordinating their senses (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). In contrast,
the pre planned curriculum of schooling usually handles these elements
separately; consequently, kids are unable to connect these diverse areas of knowledge for
any useful activity that relates to their lives. Schooling stifles curiosity,
questions, and critical thinking in favor of memorization of extraneous facts; it takes
the fun out of learning, turning it, needlessly, into hard work that few want to do. Schooling,
at its best, is a very expensive form of baby-sitting; at its worst, is a form of
prison—an educational concentration camp. Whereas, community learning
sustains the perpetual 4 year old in all of us who yearns to ask, "Why?"
It’s inherently fun, transforming work into play5—that process of
curiosity and creativity that self-motivates kids (and adults) to explore and experiment
with their environment. As adults we can appreciate the process of play, for example, when
tinkering with a machine to make it work, or collaborating with colleagues at work to help
solve a customer’s problem.
If community learning better meets the learning
needs of children than schooling, then why does our culture mandate schooling for
all kids? One explanation2 pertains to the relationships between educational
and economic systems in a society. In the same way that schooling operates under
the delusion that various realms of knowledge are learned as separate elements, our
society operates under the delusion that its various institutions (i.e. educational &
economic systems) function as separate elements. In reality, a society’s educational
and economic systems are intimately intertwined to perpetuate each other.
Among indigenous tribal societies, community learning
results in children’s incremental participation in the economy by learning directly
from fellow tribe members those skills needed for survival in their society (i.e.
identifying and preparing plants for use as food). In contrast, our society puts kids
through an extended adolescence occupied with schooling which delays their
entrance into the economy. When kids are finished with schooling, they are
thrust, abruptly, into an economy for which they are ill-prepared. A small proportion of
curricula in schools are devoted to exposing kids to adults working in their communities.
This may be helpful, but the children’s exploration of the work environment is
usually restricted by a curriculum that requires all kids to follow a uniform set of
objectives, thus squelching each child’s unique expressions of exploration and
inquiry.
Our school based educational system serves the needs of our
production <——> consumption economy. Our economic system exploits the earth’s
resources resulting in a minority of people controlling the resources (i.e. food, water,
energy, shelter) needed by a majority of the population. The majority are required to work
very hard to support the centralized power of the minority by producing more things that
people think they need to consume, which leads them to work harder to produce more, so
they can earn more money to consume more. This is in contrast to the economic system of
indigenous peoples, in which tribe members equitably share the resource allocations of
their local community to effectively and efficiently meet their needs. In our economy
great value is placed on the efficiency of production in the work environment. Therefore,
our culture does not want its workers’ time "wasted" on teaching kids in
the local community, when their precious time is "better spent" producing more
things for kids to consume, for example. After all, kids "get in the way" of the
adults’ efficient assembly line work. From our culture’s point of view,
isn’t it better for the economy to keep kids as consumers for as long as possible?
Why, if kids are able to learn to perform jobs that we restrict to adults, then we will
have too many kids competing with adults for work in the job market. Then, we will not
have enough kid-driven consumer demand to keep the production <——> consumption economy going. Of
course, kids don’t need all these things produced by our economy for their
consumption; rather, they need to establish a group identity associated with their daily
involvement with adults and other kids in their community. Thus, our economy’s value
of providing things for kids, rather than the social and educational
support they instinctively need from their community, appears to perpetuate our
educational system of schooling.
So, how can we move from an educational system that values
the seclusion of kids in schools and an economic system that values the provision of
things toward an educational system that values the participation of kids in
their communities and an economic system that values the provision of social and
educational support for its kids and adults? Daniel Quinn offers a modern example of a
tribal social organization that accomplishes these educational and economic objectives.6
He describes the original circuses as being a community of families working and learning
together to make a living and meeting all their needs. Kids grow up learning the skills
they need to participate in the circus economy from their community. In turn, the circus
economy benefits by gaining a steady infusion of well trained apprentices.
Our society is enamored by "How To" cookbooks for
everything from preparing food to effecting social change. Unlike the predictable results
that are expected when following a recipe for food preparation, the processes employed for
implementing social change (i.e. community learning) are inherently unpredictable and
varied. If the ideas of community learning become seeds of inspiration within us,
then they will grow (unpredictably) into a unique community comprised of various mutual
learning relationships (parents benefiting from the education of one another’s kids),
just as seeds will grow (unpredictably) into a unique community comprised of various
mutual relationships (bees obtaining nectar from a flower, which, in turn, receives pollen
from the bee to make a seed). The ideas of community learning broaden our unique
views of our community so that we can now see previously hidden opportunities for mutual
learning arrangements for ourselves and our children. Here are a few stepping stones to
help us along our unique paths for discovering community learning opportunities.
Establishing School and Business Alliances
One incentive for local businesses to provide learning opportunities for kids is to
prepare kids to become future coworkers in their respective companies. In my City of Santa
Clarita, the Santa Clarita Valley (SCV) School & Business Alliance was created to
provide the leadership, support, and assistance necessary to network educators (K-12) and
the business community for the purpose of implementing School-to-Career programs that
ultimately help students enter the world of work prepared to meet the challenges of a
global economy. In 1998, this partnership was awarded a School-to-Career grant from the
State of California, with the William S. Hart Union High School District as the fiscal
agent. The Alliance has been a grant recipient since then and has been working with its
partners to connect academics with the realities of the workplace. This Alliance connects
SCV businesses, students, and schools to help students explore opportunities for
internships, job shadowing, field trips, guest speakers and mentors.7
BizWorld provides programs to schools and community groups
that are designed for grades 1 thru 8 to engage students in real life business simulations
to: understand business, entrepreneurship, economics and money management; develop
critical thinking, communication, leadership, and teamwork skills; and explore their
entrepreneurial potential and future career opportunities they otherwise might not have
the chance to discover. BizWorld programs are taught by teachers, volunteers or community
group leaders, at no cost, due to support by BizWorld Foundation’s corporate and
private sponsors. In the BizWorld program students play the roles of presidents and vice
presidents of friendship bracelet companies to experience starting and running a business.
In eight hours of classroom time, students design, manufacture, market and sell their
products to another group of students or adults for "BizBucks." An analysis of
financial statements determines the company with the highest value that becomes the
"winning" BizWorld team. In BizWorld's Money$mart program kids learn core
concepts in earning, spending, saving and investing to gain necessary knowledge and skills
to make informed financial decisions. The BizWorld Foundation received a three-year grant
from the Merrill Lynch Foundation’s Investing Pays Off ® initiative to develop the
program, scheduled for launch in January 2004.8
Junior Achievement (JA) employs volunteers to present
curricula to students K-12 to teach them how they can impact the world around them as
individuals, workers and consumers. Junior Achievement’s Elementary School Programs
are the foundation of its K-12 curricula. Seven sequential themes, each with five hands-on
activities, help students understand business and economics:
Ourselves® explains personal economics
through a collection of short stories read aloud by the volunteer;
Our Families® emphasizes the roles people play in the local economy as
well as how they work together to make the place they live a good place;
Our Community® explores the interdependent roles of workers in a
community and how communities work;
Our City® studies careers, the skills people need to work in those
careers, and how businesses contribute to a city;
Our Region® introduces the relationship between the natural, human, and
capital resources found in different regions and explores regional businesses that produce
goods and services for consumers;
Our Nation® examines how businesses operate in the United States and
explores various economic issues that impact those businesses; and
JA Enterprise VillageTM simulates communities where students
assume the roles of workers and consumers.
Advantages of School and Business Alliances
Workplace simulations in schools provide kids with learning opportunities that would
otherwise not be provided in the traditional curriculum at no cost to parents or school
districts. These include exposure to: valuable processes of work, such as cooperation in
teams to earn a living; a variety of jobs that they find interesting; various means of
living within a budget; and adults in their respective work environments via job
shadowing, internships, and/or mentoring.
Disadvantages of School and Business Alliances
Workplace simulations in schools provide children with virtual reality tours of work
environments which are far less effective than providing kids with the reality of being in
the workplace. These programs do not question the values of our production<——> consumption economy which
encourages children to become "good" workers, that is, to slave away at their
jobs, working harder and faster to financially support the minority at the top of the
business hierarchy who exercise control over a majority of the business’
resources—human, other life forms, and material. These programs support the value of
"winning" by generating the most money (best looking financial statements),
rather than the value of promoting businesses as learning organizations designed to meet
the educational and social needs of their members.10 Current educational
programs supported by these alliances attempt to counter the segregation of
children in schools from the rest of the community. However, these programs can no more prevent
the separation of kids from the community any more than catching rain in buckets can prevent
the ground from getting wet. Both programs and buckets help a little, but are inadequate
to attain the objectives we want. Because these programs are based in schools, with
predetermined school curriculum for kids to follow, they do not adequately address
children’s needs to question and explore their community to find adults performing
jobs they find interesting. Despite the shortcomings of current school and business
alliances, they offer options for us adults to pave a way for our kids to spend more time out
of school and in the workplace, learning with adults they choose in their community.
There are many opportunities for us parents to incorporate
our kids into our daily work environments. For example, parents working in a local
business can have their kids play around in their work environment, learning what
interests them from coworkers and other children. Maybe an open-minded school can
creatively show how the kids’ frequent field trips to local businesses meets and
exceeds state curriculum standards. In the case where a school is not receptive to community
learning, the parents may have to tell the school that they will be "home
schooling," but in reality the kids will be participating in their local work
environments. If enough parents band together to include children in their workplaces, the
community learning movement can gain sufficient momentum to create local
education/business networks that demonstrate to others in the community the benefits of
this educational system over state mandated curricula in schools. Teachers can be hired as
consultants by these networks to provide businesses with a menu of learning/teaching
skills that workers can apply to help kids find answers to their questions while exploring
the work environment. The Linx Institute in Metropolitan Detroit is an example of this
community learning model.11 But what can we do about the legal liability
incurred by businesses for having kids around? Businesses, as well as the rest of us as
individuals, are already being taxed to pay for all the expenses associated with
schooling, including school districts’ liability insurance. It turns out that schools
are not safe places for kids; they will likely be safer in the company of their parents
and/or coworkers who have a mutual interest in the well-being of their children.
When a community integrates children into all of its
activities:
- children benefit by discovering what they want and need to learn from
their experiences with a variety of activities and people,
- adults benefit by developing mutually supportive relationships with each
other in response to their roles as teachers for each others’ children,
- teachers benefit by developing roles as consultants to help workers share
their experiences with kids who want to learn,
- society benefits by not having to spend so much money on expensive
educational bureaucracies that yield such a meager return on investment because they
prevent kids from learning in a manner—community learning—that is consistent
with their human nature, and
- local communities benefit by nurturing the development of their children
into self-reliant, cooperative, and fulfilled members as they grow into adulthood. Thus,
creating and perpetuating well designed, functional communities that do not generate the
great suffering (i.e. isolation, depression, suicide, violence, crime, drug dependence,
running away) that is so evident in our communities.
There is an adage in our culture that states, "The
only things you can count on in life are death and taxes." In addition, I think we
can count on our lives being lived more meaningfully if we organize ourselves in ways
(i.e. community learning, tribal economy) that are consistent with our evolved human
nature. We can also count on the fact that when we carefully observe children, we adults
will learn not only the needs of our kids; in addition, we will gain a deeper
understanding of our own needs for incorporating the principles of community learning
in our own lives as well.
List 1. Resources Related To Community Learning
Songs by the late Harry Chapin:
Flowers Are Red—the most eloquent description of our culture’s "educational
system."
Cats In The Cradle—describes the process that perpetuates the disintegration of the
family from generation to generation.
Children’s Picture Book:
It Takes A Village by Jane Cowen-Fletcher is a beautifully illustrated and rhythmically
written story of the tribal life with its emphasis on the cooperative relations among
tribe members for the caring of their children.
References
1. Liedloff J. The Continuum Concept—In Search Of Happiness Lost (Classics
in Child Development series). Cambridge, Massachusetts: A Merloyd Lawrence Book - Perseus
Books; 1977.
2. Quinn D. My Ishmael. New York, NY: Bantam Books; 1997.
3. Hartmann T. Beyond ADD: Hunting For Reasons In The Past & Present. Grass Valley,
CA: Underwood Books; 1996.
4. Gowdy J, ed. Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A Reader on Hunter- Gatherer Economics and
the Environment. Covelo, CA: Island Press; 1998.
5. Bergen D. Play As A Medium For Learning and Development: A Handbook of Theory and
Practice. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann; 1988.
6. Quinn D. Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure. New York, NY: Three
Rivers Press; 1999.
7. SCV School & Business Alliance: Connecting Business and Education Communities.
Available at: http://www.scvalliance.org. Accessibility verified February 1, 2004.
8. BizWorld. Available at: http://www.bizworld.org/factsheet.html. Accessibility verified
February 1, 2004.
9. Junior Achievement. Available at: http://www.ja.org/about/about.shtml. Accessibility
verified February 1, 2004.
10. Senge P. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization.
New York, NY: Currency Doubleday; 1990.
11. The Linx Institute: Facilitating Collaborative Educational Experiences. Available at:
http://www.linxinstitute.com/index.shtml. Accessibility verified February 1, 2004.
About the Author: Gary S. Kodel, MD is a family physician in
private practice in Los Angeles, California, where he lives with his wife and 3 children.
Gary loves playing and learning with his family, colleagues, patients, pets, and fellow
community members. His e-mail address is: g5s5k5@sbcglobal.net
