SASSAFRAS COMMONS 

QUESTION | ANSWER | GOAL | PLAN

OPEN PROPOSAL, by Sassafras Wilds, a family owned learning community which has, since sometime prior to 1989, been proactively working to “change the system.”

POSING THE QUESTION:
I asked my daughter, Shalom, “If you wanted to build a world where there was no money, would you need money to do it?”

A budding young woman of fourteen and a bit annoyed at my academic intrusion of her Yahoo! Chat world (wherein a computer enabled, Internet accessed, headphone-geared digital voice conversation with girlfriend Danielle was in motion), Shalom dragged her doe-eyed gaze away from the LCD of our laptop, bestowing upon me a modestly petulant glare.

You know the look. A bastion of teenage inflection, it comes at you with half-masked declination, shrouding precocious niggles to dismiss all parents into oblivion. Sparking of unfettered courage and tenacious esteem, it is a gaze that asserts the authority to have things completely its own unique way, thus proving the innate human potentiality to be either a blessing or a curse.

Looking at me, graciously acquiescing to my parental capacity, Shalom thought for a moment. An insightful eye could actually perceive the wheels of imagination and intellect spinning, meshing together like gears on a virtual gristmill, rendering raw grains of ideas to a palpable expression of thought.

“No,” she reasoned, now smiling sweetly. “Okay, thanks,” I responded and left the room, wondering: “How do you prove a paradigm true or false?”

Can the non-traditional be constructed with the traditional?

Can war pave the path to peace?

INVENTING THE ANSWER:
Bill Ellis, initiating co-founder of the Learning Communities coalition, succinctly articulates today’s overriding educational circumstance. “The emerging information age demands life long learning.” But, Ellis chides us, conventional educational models are not set-up to accommodate the accomplishment of this goal.

Academic hierarchies, whether in education, health care, business or government, are rapidly proving themselves as failures. Dogmatic systems which rely on outside experts are imploding because of the vacuums at their core. Bureaucratic incompetence runs rampant. And, the quality of quantifiable achievement exampled by turn-of-the-last-century inventors -- none of whom ever experienced “school” as we know it today -- has been exponentially constrained by the educational paradigm we’ve superimposed.

Christy Koppisch, a self-learning proponent from San Diego, in a message posted to the Learning Communities listserv (dated 06/14/2003 12:04:24 PM), put it this way: “The whole idea behind unschooling is intuition and trust in each individual. So once we start providing these stats, and thus, proving ourselves, have we then compromised our belief system?”

To answer this question we first must assess our belief system about learning. That is, what exactly do we expect “education” to do for us?

Harvard M.B.A. Alan Lakein, author of the 1970s 3-million-copy bestseller, “How To Get Control of Your Time and Your Life,” and world-renown inventor of Time Management, offers an answer: “Critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, planning, goal setting, decision-making and analyzing are all skills which may be improved. People are paid for their thinking ability. Time-wasters and poor-thinkers, be they computer programmers, engineers, executives or librarians, will benefit from increased productivity, satisfaction and quality” by simply exercising their own innate thinking skills.

This educational focus on thinking, Lakein proposes, enables more effective learning and delivers paradigm-shifting approaches to productivity, satisfaction, and quality-of-life by amplifying efficiency and effectiveness. Yet beyond these quantifiable characteristics it is self-evident that inspired self-learners yearn and hunger for “something more.”

Parent-Directed Education, an education resource website, reverberates with the conclusion that: "No one should do your thinking for you, neither the public schools nor
education support organizations and businesses, but they will try! Groups, think tanks and experts of all stripes -- those who depend on our buying also need us to 'buy in' to the ideas and products and politics they have to sell. Buyer be a-ware -- think about it!"

Yet staying grounded in the knowledge that “there usually isn't a ‘right’ answer that fits everyone” takes a lot of pluck, especially when one resides in the midst of a socio-culture which prides itself on and procedurally demands the promulgation of and adherence to standardized academic norms.

A new book, "Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain," written by Dr. Antonio Damasio, head of neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center, adds new life to the educational debate. Damasio debunks Spinoza’s widely accepted perspective that “reasoning in pristine detachment from the physical world” is the consummate achievement of education, affirming with Descartes that awareness and consciousness (and thus all “quality” of life) is a complex, invisible property of individuated mind/body phenomenon without which “reason” would cease to exist.

Taking this debate as an example of the kinds of things that thinkers think about, we can perhaps discover something of substance about our own educational expectations by answering one simple question: Which of these two very different world views do we want our educational system delivering to our kids?

That is, which (if either) is “more” important: intellect or emotion? And if we could have only one without the other, which of the two would, in our own personal opinion, deliver more “good.”

While the ideal may be to have both in parity, if only one objective could be achieved by educational “world view” model, which do we choose? Warm-fuzzy hugs or intellectual acumen?

For myself, I want first and foremost for my child to know about and appreciate the multifaceted diversity we thinkers are capable to manifest by and through the simple act of "choosing." aka: Directing the focal point of our own free will.

I want my children to enjoin reality with a magnificent appreciation of and profound respect for the sublime complexities of “living life.” I want their lives immersed in caring for and about each other, satiated with dignity, wealthy with purpose, and effervescent with health, having an enjoying all beautiful things.

Nance, another contributor to the Learning Communities list, pointedly asks: “Is it possible to prove that something is beautiful?”

I want my children to experience bliss, harbor passion and exude joy. And of course I want them to do this as safely as possible while at the same time knowing how to add, subtract, multiply, divide and spell.

Yet in my pursuit of the fulfillment of my educational expectations I must exercise care. Prudence to guard my caution is requisite, so as to permit and in some cases enable the liberty of those I love to derive the “lumps of knowledge” which may only be earned by innovating on their own.

I want my children to enjoy balance, immersed in the richness of congeniality, enduring only those exquisite pleasures which stem from aspiring to achieve the highest of all standards: The ones they set for themselves. Thus I wholeheartedly accord the affirmation of the Parent-Directed Education group:

“Learning and community and citizenship are about human engagement rather than mere entries in a database or marks on a score sheet.”

Yet as every homeschooling mom or dad knows, we parents, as our children’s primary educators, “face problems” conjugating this (intuitive) knowledge to our offspring because the supplanting role of public education has been for 50 years inculcating a diametrically opposed “academically industrialized” world view.

Consequently, parents and teachers and all of us together alike are today struggling to extricate ourselves from a promulgated alchemical box which, even once removed, seems to re-propagate itself throughout our social vortex, continuing to engender constricting cultural constraints.

David & Jody Feavearyear also post to the Learning Communities listserv: “It seems that we compartmentalize ‘work’ much the same way we compartmentalize ‘education’ in our lives, as something different from what we do with the rest of our time. I'd like to see our lives more integrated... I’d prefer to find ways for parents to work less, work within the presence of children, incorporate children within their work, etc.”

With David & Jody, I want children everywhere enabled to enjoy an unprecedented holistic reverence for “community life” of the same high quality our grandparents and great grandparents enjoyed, only “better.”

I want “new and improved” to have tangible meaning, sans the exhausting “sweat-shop mentality” which seems to permeate our educational core today and renders us hapless victims to hardship, drudgery and toil. And, in accord with Buckminster Fuller, several of us are convinced that by coupling science with ideology, mind with body and intellect with emotion, the time for individuals to align all energies in the actualization of this achievement is now.

Thus this proposal seeks collaborative philanthropic participation in the implementation of an ideological “learning community schematic,” the fruition of which shall emancipate the following:

GOALS:
<> Establish many geographically fixed villages wherein the members of all family units may experience by immersion an environment which enlivens the practices of interdependent self-governance, egalitarian stewardship, and community good will.

<> Enable these environments with state-of-the-art technology so as to maximize the coupling of intuitive creativity with analytical skill by minimizing all forms of dull, irksome, fatiguing, menial or uninspiring drudgery, thus amplifying the potential for and ease with which thinkers discover and implement sought-for paradigm shifts.

<> Extrapolate from this convergent experience powerful ideas for new systems of community self-governance wherein each individual is cherished, celebrated, honored, nurtured, trusted and respected as a unique and priceless contributor to the aggregate well being of the community as a whole.

<> Expound upon all we learn, discover, enjoy and invent, freely setting forth in careful and elaborate detail the particulars of the paths we voluntarily choose to explore, the strategies we find workable, and the practices that sustain the collaborative well-being of the whole.

<> Actualize these goals concordantly with our perpetually evolving Charter of Community Conductivity, to wit:

ENVISION:
All people enjoying healthy integrity, celebrating peace and residing in harmony with and among each other, throughout our respective communities everywhere, all the time.

RESOLUTION:
Building on our own strengths we establish self-esteem, self-worth and self-confidence as beneficially contributing beings who appreciate the vital importance of working together in local, regional and global villages, sharing ideas, knowledge, resources, time and energy, continually discovering and implementing responsible strategies and practices of
stewardship, enabling an ever increasing richness of culture and a perpetual state of healthy well-being now and for all generations yet to come.

KEY VALUES:
<> Wisdom and Respect: Individual accountability to sustainable methods and holistic practices self-evidences as respect for the confluence of natural dynamics which sustain all life. Honoring the biological diversity of the Earth and the cultural ethnicity of its people actualizes the sacrosanct dignity of each person.

<> Liberty and Justice: Self-empowerment coupled with collaborative action ensures equal opportunity for each community member in education, transportation, health care, energy access, dispute-resolution, housing, nutrition and all social, political and economic affordability.

<> Egalitarian Democracy: Direct and meaningful participation in the making of any decision which influences the quality or quantity of the affected person's life, including the recognized right to further refine, enhance and vitalize this Charter, ensures healthy social, civic and business environments for all present and future generations.

<> Proactive Business & Foreign Exchange: Actions guided by knowledge of and dedication to engendering altruistic and idealistic behaviors as norms. Local ownership and personal negotiation of all business transactions, grounded in cooperation, understanding, compassion and trust, ensures social accountability, economic well-being and ecologic sustainability. Institutions and group efforts are focused on serving the health and well being of every individual.

<> Resource-Based Economics: Ensures that each individual is afforded the legitimate opportunity to seek and achieve his/her full innate potential by guaranteeing equal access to food, nutrition, clothing, shelter, education, transportation, recreational opportunities, artistic ambiances and healthcare. Recognizing that such access is the birthright of every citizen, all such goods and services are freely available in the common marketplace wherein the production and allocation of all goods and services is based entirely on the availability of resources to manufacture and deliver same, limited only by the capacity of the ecosystem to sustain such production while remaining in balance with natural environmental dynamics.

IMPLEMENTING THE PLAN
In a nutshell, our Sassafras Wilds project proposes to create a convivial mindscape in the midst of a multitude of comforting landscapes wherein individuals may savor the experience of doing whatever we all shall be doing as soon as we have the world we say we want.

In this interest, we invite you to join with us in co-generating an experiential taste of what Sassafras Commons is all about.