Here is a selection of interesting papers for your summer reading:
- Is it time to unplug our schools? – Almost everything published in Orion is interesting. This article looks at what schools are doing to teach a deep relationship to nature.
- Altar calls for true believers – on the challenge of practicing what we preach with respect to sustainability. This is a good piece on why systemic change in general doesn’t necessarily correlate with necessity.
- Horse Power – Old technology for a new world.
- No coffee – A great piece on Jurgen Habermas, coffeehouses and the power of conversation.
- Modern Cosmology: Science or folktale? – I think the cosmic story is both. This article argues the same, but from the perspective of a skeptical scientist.
- World Bank economist Kirk Hamilton on the planet’s real wealth. – It turns out that the greatest resource the world has is “intangible capital” – people’s wisdom and labour.
- Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero. A review of a new biography about the Italian patriot Giusepe Garibaldi, for whom my local extinct volcano at the head of Howe Sound was named.
- Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch – Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom think it’s possible we live in The Matrix.
- Heretical thoughts about science and society – Freeman Dyson muses about the global warming crises. But he might be wrong. He’s been wrong before!
- The quandry of quality – a great blog post from Bob Sutton on what is hard to measure but essential nonetheless.
[tags]nature, sustainability, change, horses, Habermas, coffee, conversation, cosmology, big bang, human resources, Garibaldi, Matrix, Nick Bostrom, freeman dyson, robert crick, global warming[/tags]
On the OSLIST, Doug wrote:
Chris and all–
Fields work…
Hosting…
living in open space…
You seem to have these evocative phrases swimming about you, Chris. Would you be so kind as to wax a little more poetic about them, put some more meat on the bones? They are, I think, getting to the heart of the question that started this thread….
The thread was about whether or not the facilitator can take an active role in an Open Space meeting, and what or why not. It has been a good thread. I responded to Doug this way:
Well Doug, these phrases are sort of short descriptions of the work I do, and there is a strange thing about them. The more I try to define them, to less important they seem. To first phrase of the Tao te Ching is something like, “The eternal Tao is the Tao that cannot be named.” So if you can accept that anything I am going to say on these matters is actually NOT the practice of these concepts, and that defining them somehow constrains what they really mean, then we can proceed.
In terms of “fields work”, let me say this. I don’t know much about this subject so I describe it more as experience. I’m willing to be that most have us have had the experience of arriving at a venue for a gathering before everyone else, scoping the place out, senseing what it feels like and imagining how our event will go. Then we facilitate an open space meeting and, being the last ones to leave we notice that the physical feeling of the space is different. I wonder why this is?
I think that it has something to do with the quality of our personal experiences in these spaces. When we are engaged in an amazing collective experience, it creates some deep change, even to the point where a room “feels” different. We participate in these kinds of collective activities all the time, but to do so consciously – not in a controlling way, just in a more aware way – seems to be the essence of working in a field. It is then we become aware of things like the impact of our presence on the field (Lisa’s awareness of her power in a group) and we can do things with that presence. The essence of doing the right thing in Open Space with that presence is of course, not doing anything at all, or rather to use the taoist concept, non-doing. That is we make a conscious choice about what we choose not to do and in doing so, we help support a field that supports emergence, self-organization and real empowerment. Field working in this respect is dependant I think on our ability to work on ourselves first, hence when we adaopt as a practice, living in open space, it changes the way we see every field of human endeavour, and it does bring us much more in line with the essentials of running an open sapce meeting.
You ask about hosting as well. I’ve been working for a few years now within the community of practice gathered under the name “Art of Hosting” and, like Open Space, I can’t describe what it is very well. I think my book, The Tao of Holding Space (which you can have for free by downloading it from http://www.chriscorrigan.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Papers) is my attempt to describe hosting from the perspective of “holding space.” Hosting has to do with all of the capacities we use when we engage with clients around an open space. Some of these might include:
- Seeing and sensing patterns in the organization that help to find “accupuncture points” for change,
- Taking a courageous stand for clarity.
- Encouraging others who are finding their own leadership.
- Offering teaching where it is of benefit and having the humility to be learners in th every next moment. Being “TeacherLearners.”
- Trusting in the people and holding helpful beliefs about the potential of the people.
- Being prepared to be surprised, and delightedly hosting that surprise like a long lost friend coming to pay a visit.
These practices (among many others and we all have our own) are hosting, and if we extend these into the way we live our lives, it becomes very much a case of living in open space. For me, the four principles and the one law of opens spce (plus my friend Brian Bainbridge’s “Be prepared to be be surprised” and “It’s all good :-)”) are actually very useful principles for life. I really do consciously try to live my life this way, and in doing so, I have stumbled upon the idea of fields, hosting and so on. It has made me no longer a facilitator per se but more of what John Abbe and others call “a process artist,” living as an artist, trying to find the art in everything about process, including how I ride the bus and step into a venue to open space. Our family lives in open space: for example, our children do not go to school, instead they practice – consciously and fully – the principles which my partner and I share with our clients. They work with mentors aong the lines of “whoever comes…” They explore the world along the lines of “whatever happens…” and they are not constrained by artificial timeframes on things like learning to read and write, creativity or learning.
If we are in the world saying to clients that “If you are not learning and contributing, go somewhere where you can” why would we not practice that in our family and life? It is my ten year old daughter’s favourite principle for her life – last week she wrote it out on a piece of paper and taped it to the dining room wall.
Living in Open Space is a constant life practice. It is about living in alignment with an Open Space worldview. It helps support “that feeling” we get from a good open space meeting, and bringing it into other parts of our lives.
It seems to me that when we live deeply out of that place, the role of facilitator and participant seems somehow transcended, so that, while I appreciate the distinction in some settings, and I honour it quite firmly, I find that it is a distinction that in many other settings doesn’t necessarily serve. Living in open space means living in that flow, discerning the right time for the right view and being open to whatever happens as a result.
[tags]openspacetech[\tags]
In the Netherlands, a groupd of kids has challenged a government minister to see who can reduce their power consumption the most:
Being 14 is no obstacle to helping the planet, judging by the example of a group of Dutch school kids fired up by an idea as bright as an energy-saving light bulb.
The schoolchildren from Almere taking part in The Bet
Thanks indirectly to their efforts, vehicles at the Netherlands’ environment ministry will be running on natural gas by the spring of 2007.
The teenagers in Almere, a futuristic new town near Amsterdam, had called on the environment minister to outdo them personally in ways to save energy.
Over four weeks, and under the arbitration of environmental organisation Friends of the Earth, the two sides vied to come up with ideas for meeting the European Union’s minimum Kyoto goal of 8% savings.
Children from Helen Parkhurst School, which already has its own wind turbines, pursued The Bet at home, in class and in local businesses.
If they lost, the kids – average age 14 – would have to pull State Secretary Pieter van Geel around The Hague for a day in a rickshaw.
And guess who won? The kids reduced their energy consumption by 33% beating the minister’s 20% reduction.
This is an outstanding idea. I wonder what other challenges kids could think of to put in front of politicians? Pure passion bounded by responsibility.
We don’ susbscribe to a lot of magazines around here, but one that gets read the moment it arrives is Life Learning Magazine. There is always something interesting or inspirational in almost every article, a level of quality that is amazing – but not surprising – for a small circulation publication.
From an article in the July/August issue on mindful learning comes this great gem from John Holt:
Since we can’t know what knowledge will be needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.
Great advice to carry around, especially for designers of learning programs. The difference between training and learning is captured in that quote; those who confuse the two will find themselves heading down one path while the othe heads away in the opposite direction.
[tags]training, john holt, life learning[/tags]
Well, it’s been over a week since I linked to Alex’s post and unwittingly started a movement. For those of you following along, I was interviewed for a National Post article on the weekend and since then the phone has been ringing off the hook. I’ve done some talk radio and I have CTV Edmonton chasing me around BC, trying to get me on camera. This week I’m in Prince George, working at my real job, running a World Cafe and an Open Space meeting for the Urban Aboriginal Strategy in British Columbia.
But many people are calling and emailing about this homework ban thing, and we seem to have struck a nerve. What has been really interesting to me is that without exception, every journalist and producer that has called (and we’re talking twelve or more at this point) has started out by talking about how much they hate what homework does to their kids and families. Usually when they call they get interviewed by ME, for the first ten minutes or so, so keen am I to hear their story. It has really strengthened my confidence in our decision to unschool, although I appreciate that that isn’t for everyone.
Some of the nicest emails I have received have been from the authors of the two books that were recently published and which started this all off. Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth wrote to lend his support to whatever was going on, and I told him I’d send people to his site, which is a rich source of material about learning and working. So go read Alfie’s stuff, especially if you are thinking seriously about what is going on in school with respect to teaching, learning, testing and evaluating and you are wondering how to make a case for change.
And then on a more practical level Sara Bennet, co-author with Nancy Kalish of “The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It” wrote today and told me about the blog she is starting up at stophomework.com. For those of you that have written to me asking “what can we do?” Sara is the person to get in touch with. Their book even gives examples of emails to use with teachers and principals to get a homework ban going in your school.
And if you are tired fighting with the education system, you have many many options. If you are interested in unschooling as an option, which is what our family does, you can visit my own set of unschooling resources for some reading to get started.
This whole “Great Canadian Homework Ban” is actually just a provocative way to get people to really think about learning. We take so much for granted about the way the school system operates, and there is so much fear connected to success and failure in school that I believe strongly that we are creating a culture that blindly accepts some cultural story about what works and what doesn’t. The bottom line, in my own experience, is that every child has their own learning needs, and every parent can help meet those needs by keeping a few basic questions at the top of mind. Think about the school system, and what it teaches. Read John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, David Albert and others and think about the kind of learning environment that will best serve your kids.
And for all those who say “if kids don’t do homework they will just play video games” (which seems to be the last line of the crumbling defense) I challenge you to do three things: get rid of the PlayStation, cancel your cable subscription and intentionally spend time with your kids co-creating a list of things you could do together. Like any drug, it’s hard to kick, but you’ll be glad you did. Tell them that the deal is, you’ll support them NOT doing homework if they will engage with you to create real learning experiences outside of school, together. And then take all the free time you’ll have and enjoy one another. It’s not THAT hard to do.
PS…and because it’s a movement now I made a little seal (up above there, with the busy beaver as our mascot, too busy for homework) which you can steal and post on your own blog. Better yet, print out a sheet of them as stickers and plaster them on unfinished homework assignments. Now THERE’S an activity guaranteed to get kids and parents working together!
[tags]homework[/tags]