Holistic Learning Communities

In Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America, Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais include two chapters on education, “Building Better Learning Communities” and “Taking Higher Education Higher.” The first addresses elementary and secondary schools. The second looks at college and beyond. Progressive activists could well incorporate some of their ideas into holistic, life-long community centers that would foster personal development, mutual support, life-long learning, and informed political action.

In 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” This necessity is no less pressing today, as the millennial generation is demonstrating increased civic engagement.

Winograd and Hais rely on the “unified theory of learning” that emerged in a 1997 “year-long conversation on how to create ‘a society where all individuals fully participate in the development of their own and their community’s learning potential’” at the Institute for a New California. With an “emphasis on learning, rather than education,” the foundation formed a framework on four principles derived from studies at the Institute for Research on Learning:

• Learning takes place all the time.
• Learning is a process of friction between what we already know and believe and new experiences, people, or settings.
• Demands for learning never cease.
• The ability to know how to learn has become the most important type of learning.

“Real learning can take place,” they write, when we blend these four elements within a “social context of interactivity, exploration, and discovery.” All stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, and those who provide funding need to be fully involved. Students can play the role of teacher in peer-to-peer interactions and parents can be involved in choosing school policies and administrators. 

The Institute’s unified theory affirmed, “The most productive learning systems are built and sustained when the goals of the four domains are aligned through a process of consensus-building.” With that consensus, schools can then integrate “the constituent parts of learning—subject matter expertise, pedagogy, and developmental aspects of the learner—into an effective learning environment,” with the student “an active agent in her or his learning.”

Applying these principles to colleges and universities would, according to Winograd and Hais, require “everyone involved in education to give up their institutional silos and work across boundaries to reform the entire system” into a “learner-centered” community. Especially with the use of modern technologies (including online education), with this approach,

Distinctions between learner and teacher will become blurred. Students will co-design and even co-instruct courses, since sharing the knowledge among peers provides the best context for learning. To prove mastery of a skill or topic, students will produce new simulations or author Web sites, and these work products will be assessed not only by faculty but also by their fellow students, to capture the value of the contribution to the larger team or learning community.

The authors of Higher Education in the Digital Age describe the radically different role of the faculty in such environments in this way: “Faculty members of the twenty-first-century university will find it necessary to set aside their roles as teachers and instead become designers of learning experiences, processes, and environments…. They may be asked to develop collective learning experiences in which students work together and learn together, with the faculty member becoming more of a consultant or a coach than a teacher.” 

Winograd and Hais propose that students retain a lifelong membership in the university from which they graduate, research results should be placed in the public domain rather than copyrighted, and universities should forsake their individualistic focus in favor of a collaborative model. 

Since “millennials’ digitally native brains will not sit still for hours at a time listening to traditional lectures,” the MIT physics department adopted an interactive, immersive approach in their freshman courses and saw a dramatic drop in failure rates. Learning rooted in trial-and-error “produce[s] the most innovative and valuable types of information,” as ecosystems reward what works and discard what doesn’t.

Particularly encouraging is the development of “serious games,” (sometimes using video games and/or computer-based, virtual reality), that expose students to “comprehensive, realistic experiences that produce a sense of being immersed in the action.” According to D. Thomas and J.S. Brown, these methods combine “knowing, or ‘learning about,’ with doing, or ‘learning to be.” As one group of researchers on gaming and learning stated, “Whereas schools largely sequester students from one another and from the outside world, games bring people together, competitively and cooperatively.” These games tend to help participants evolve their individual and collective identity as they “learn to become.”

These gaming technologies demonstrate the potential of growing dispersed learning communities that integrate “the roles of learners, providers, payers, and policy makers…[in] powerful alumni networks that span the globe and last a lifetime.” By affirming individual responsibility and collective action, these learning communities can “imbue their daily routines with civic purpose and meaning in order to attract the full energy and enthusiasm” of their members.

Progressive-minded political activists, it seems to me, could fruitfully develop learning communities based on these principles, both inside and outside existing institutions.

Readers’ Comments

Re: Media Consortium Cab Ride 

I'm hoping that you have a wide and growing readership because your weekly thoughts are always filled with clear thinking and passionate giving-of-yourself.  You really do "walk your talk" and I have observed growth in strength, compassion, and patience.  Your synthesis of the several aspects that must conjunct together in order to make this movement - at this time - effective helps clarify for all of us what is "essential."  More power to you, friend!

in faithfulness and trust,

Marcella R. Womack
NEW DAWN Resource Development LLC
Organizational Consultant, Process Designer and Facilitator, Trainer, and Speaker
35 Years of Experience
Kansas City, Missouri

++

"Wade's Weekly" was especially good this week. Thanks! The Jonah Lehrer discussion on learning was especially useful. I looked up the original article and entered this material in my files:

[Stanford psychologist Carol] Dweck distinguishes between people with a fixed mindset — they tend to agree with statements such as “You have a certain amount of intelligence and cannot do much to change it” — and those with a growth mindset, who believe that we can get better at almost anything, provided we invest the necessary time and energy. While people with a fixed mindset see mistakes as a dismal failure — a sign that we aren’t talented enough for the task in question — those with a growth mindset see mistakes as an essential precursor of knowledge, the engine of education....

[Following a test conducted by Dweck and Claudia Mueller involving 400 New York City fifth graders] half of the kids were praised for their intelligence. “You must be smart at this,” the researcher said. The other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”

[On a follow-up test, the latter group raised their average score by 30 percent; the former group saw their scores drop by nearly 20 percent.]

The problem with praising kids for their innate intelligence — the “smart” compliment — is that it misrepresents the psychological reality of education. It encourages kids to avoid the most useful kind of learning activities, which is when we learn from our mistakes. Because unless we experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong... the mind will never revise its models. We’ll keep on making the same mistakes, forsaking self-improvement for the sake of self-confidence. Samuel Beckett had the right attitude: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
JONAH LEHRER, “Why Do Some People Learn Faster?” Wired (magazine), 4? October 2011

Leonard Frank

++++++++++

Re: Sports, Teamwork, and Activism

Well thought out and nicely written piece on baseball and teamwork.
Michael O. Doughty

++++++++++

Re: A Social Transformation Network (Draft Proposal)

Thanks for this, Wade.  This is a good-looking project with a good-looking web page – and I’m feeling drawn to very similar things.  I appreciate your vision and leadership.

If I can help with the design process, I will be glad to do that.

If you have a minute – you might glance at the framework that is emerging for me and see if it suggests anything.

It’s  based on the concept of “circle” – and trying to pull many issues into one circle – in a holistic way, just as you suggest – and including a lot of spiritual/community/interfaith elements.

http://circle2012.net

http://circle2012.net/vision.cfm

http://circle2012.net/onlinecongress.cfm

I am solidly into these principles you outline below – so my guess is, we are working along the same lines, guiding by very similar instincts.  I will do my best to include your ideas in my design work, and thanks for getting all of this so clearly expressed.  It’s very helpful.

- Bruce Schuman

++++++++++

Re: Patience 

I loved your writing on patience – both the basic point of view and all the wonderful quotes and lyrics you brought in to illuminte that. Thanks so much.
If it’s okay with you, I’d like to share some of it with my group next week. Let me know if you are open to a bit of it being xeroxed and handed out. If not, I could simply read some of it at appropriate times.

...Hoping you are well. Thank you for continuing your work and writing.
Xoox
Chris Price

+++++

Re: My Bottom Line

This is a GREAT bottom line!

Dan Brook

++

This is Sharon Johnson and I share the value of your dream.

Ellen Shaffer along with a few others have been discussing similar dreams as your own and recognize the need of intergenerational/culture involvement with an integrity of which you address.  We are planning a dinner discussion on
 June 14 at Ellen's home, if you are interested.  FYI: Our conversation for further thinking comes from the healthcare issues we continually face.
Your articulation speaks directly to my thoughts.
.
All my best,
In peace,
Sharon Johnson

++

Great comments and food for thought, Wade.  Always, I struggle with the challenge of adding new projects to an already full plate -- and honestly, at the moment, I am getting invitations to new and meaningful engagement every single day!  But what you are describing here is so foundational and potentially transformative that it bears reflecting on how to clear space and commit to making such meetings happen.  Thanks again for the inspiration.

May you be well,
--
Rhonda V. Magee
Professor of Law, Co-Director, Center for Teaching Excellence
University of San Francisco
School of Law
2130 Fulton Street
San Francisco, CA 94117-1080
ssrn author page: http://ssrn.com/author=624519

++++++++++

Re: Transform the System 


Great analysis of "the system" as it exists today. Looking forward to future pieces on how we work to transform it

John Testa

Media Consortium Cab Ride

The other day I gave Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, Media Consortium Executive
Director, a ride from San Francisco International Airport to her home in San Francisco. She had just returned from the East Coast where she had met face-to-face with some members of her alliance of progressive, independent media outlets that is dedicated to “amplify independent media’s voice, increase our collective clout, leverage our current audience and reach new ones.”

Peppering her with questions about her work as I often do with my passengers, I soon learned that a recent example of the kind of project she’d like to do again was the collaboration with 32 partners she organized to report on Occupy actions throughout the country on May 1. Calling themselves “Media for the 99 Percent,” these diverse outlets offered live TV and streaming broadcast, an interactive map, breaking news reporting, and coordinated social media coverage across their sites, reaching a combined audience of more than 50 million Americans.

After May 1, their website reported:

Some cities excelled at coordination among labor, immigration, and Occupy groups. In Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore, and Chicago, labor and Occupy groups worked together to lead mostly peaceful joint actions and sit-ins.
In other cities, protesters were less organized and elements of their groups engaged in property destruction. Local police in Seattle, Oakland, and Portland responded with crackdowns that included arrests, tear gas, and kettling. Some reports said officers were throwing people off their bikes and beating resisting protesters with police batons. But the isolated actions of a few individuals did not define the entire movement.
Leading a nationwide general strike is an ambitious goal, so it is no surprise that the number of May Day protesters was smaller than activists had hoped for. But May Day succeeded in its goal to be a nationwide protest that united activists in cities and towns across the country and signaled the return of the Occupy movement.

Her work on this project, it seems to me, provided her with a special overview of the Occupy movement. From her perspective, with the exception of the Bay Area where so many “professional activists” had already launched many organizations, in most parts of the country Occupy Wall Street inspired concerned citizens locally to fill a vacuum in a non-extremist manner to address the top two Occupy concerns: growing economic inequality and the corruption of our politics by big money.

Most Occupy activists nationwide, she said, have not been anti-capitalist or opposed to all government. Rather, they have wanted to fix the system with fundamental reforms so middle-class citizens like themselves will have more economic opportunity and a greater voice in governmental affairs. In the Bay Area, however, using the leverage afforded a small minority by the consensus-based decision-making process, as I reported last fall in Wade’s Weekly, hyper-individualist anarchists managed to define Occupy as a radical fringe group out of touch with the mainstream.

According to Kaiser, the May 1 actions demonstrated that Occupy still has legs in many areas of the country. Most of this activity, however, has a local focus, especially with actions focused on stopping foreclosures. Currently, there is no Occupy national thrust, no national presence. This lack is regrettable.

Now we need a model Gandhi-King campaign focused on the founding principles of the Occupy movement. Granted, the odds are long and the obstacles are many. But if we get our act together and do it right, who knows? We may be able to help spark a national Occupy renewal. Or perhaps the metamorphosis of Occupy into a new brand, “the social transformation movement,” or simply “the transformation movement.”

With no expectations, why not try? Why not act as if we can and give it our best shot? Given the urgency of our situation, if we are concerned about the future of humanity and life on Earth, aren’t we morally obligated to give it our best shot? All we can do is fail and be accused of utopian ambitions.

But that’s what most people thought about that small band of pragmatic idealists who occupied Wall Street last year. And even if we “fail,” it will be a learning experience. As Bob Dylan wrote, "There's no success like failure"

In “The Art of Failing Successfully,” Jonah Lehrer reported on how we can learn when we make mistakes. Initially, humans react to mistakes with a strong, involuntary response, followed quickly by a neurological signal that involves paying attention to the screw up. And those whose initial response is stronger and who focus more persistently on the error learn more from it.

Moreover, people with a “fixed mindset” who agree with statements like "You have a certain amount of intelligence and cannot do much to change it" learn less than those with a “growth mindset” who believe they can “get better at almost anything” if they work at it. The former tend to see failures as “purely negative” while the latter see mistakes as “an essential precursor to knowledge.”

When teachers praise students for "being smart," those students tend to fall into a fixed mindset and assume that mistakes are a sign of stupidity. But when students are instead praised for their effort, they’re more likely to adopt a growth mindset, be less afraid of making mistakes, and better able to repair their self-esteem and transform failure into success. Mindset matters.

As Lehrer concludes, “Dylan was right, but failure alone is not enough. We need to learn how to fail better.” So let us grow the self-confidence to set aside ego, endure failure, and do our best to help grow a potent, national grassroots movement to deal with this country’s obscene inequality and political corruption.

My Evaluation of the Caucus

If the Occupy Be the Change Caucus is to continue, I ask that it affirm clear support for holistic nonviolence. I do not ask that every member commit to practice that method personally. But I do ask that every member at least provide moral support to those who want to do so.

Thus far, it seems to me, the Caucus has failed to provide that support. I don’t know what adequate support would look like, but I suspect I’ll know it when I see it and believe that it would at least include the Caucus adopting at its next meeting something like the following policy: “To help achieve our mission, a top-priority method will be to promote the holistic Gandhi-King three-fold path.”

At the Occupy San Francisco (OSF) camp in fall 2011 a large banner declared, “A Living Example of a Better System.” Participants often referred to the need to “be the change.” The fragile community that emerged outdoors at Justin Herman Plaza aimed to be HOLISTIC, in that it:

• Encouraged participants to be whole (open, honest, transparent, true to their deepest self). 
• Considered the individual not as a separate self but as one interwoven with the whole world. 
• Addressed the whole person: the personal (which for many includes the spiritual), the social (including the cultural), and the political (which deals with governmental policy).  

The affirmation of the need for personal development was common. The importance of learning how to deal with interpersonal conflict was widely understood. Providing community services to meet unmet needs was central. And the weekly political action, protest marches, were vibrant and engaged onlookers. Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have appreciated this effort to practice the holistic three-fold path.

However, as I discussed in Wade’s Weekly at the time, OSF made certain mistakes that made it difficult for us to sustain our community. Since 100% consensus was required to make decisions, a minority faction, many of whom were prone to violence, were able to block efforts to grow a solid, holistic community and instead established their hyper-individualist version of anarchism (which differs distinctly from social anarchism).

So, while remaining active in OSF and trying to help improve how we operated, I initiated the Occupy Be the Change Caucus, hoping that the Caucus could provide a useful alternative model in terms of a more viable governance structure and also help strengthen the commitment to nonviolence within OSF by fostering inner and outer nonviolence as a way of life rather than merely promoting outer nonviolence in terms of behavior.

Before going into limbo, the Caucus made some progress. We planted seeds in terms of certain ideals and principles. We attracted and involved about 15-20 deeply committed, talented, experienced activists. And some of us experimented with the three-fold path on which the Caucus was founded (though we were unfamiliar with the phrase at the time) in that we:

• Explored a format for a peer-support group to nurture self-development. 
• Conducted a peer-learning circle as an alternative-education structure. 
• Established an affinity group to participate in the January 20 action in the Financial District. 

During the time of those activities, I told an old friend, “I feel like I’m finally doing what I’ve been wanting to do my entire life.”

In 1967, I dedicated my life to help organize “communities of faith, love, and action” – that is, the three-fold path. As I wrote in “An Evaluation of the Residence College” for my student newspaper that year, I was concerned about society’s “cruel, dehumanizing impact” on “the welfare of the whole personhood of the individual” as imposed by all of our institutions that “are all interwoven” and “extremely well-designed into a coherent pattern of vicious manipulation – designed to graduate reliable cogs in the marvelous machine of unparalleled material progress.”

I argued:

America is spiritually decadent…. [Our institutions] do not merely neglect but rather devastate vast realms of inner experience. The development of one’s own innermost experiential potentialities is truncated. Creative expression of one’s true self, whether in art, thought, or personal relationships, is not nurtured. Individuals are not encouraged to develop, to create their own vibrant sense of meaning and direction. Inner strength is seen as a threat; so the ground for a stable sense of autonomy is undercut. 

Instead, the emphasis is upon behavior. Children must learn to express themselves “appropriately.” They must be well behaved. They must develop self-control and learn the values of politeness and responsible citizenship. Thus, they must become reliable hoop-jumpers. They become dependent upon external pressures and external rewards. What is deemed most important is output….

Whether or not the student’s behavior is authentic is largely ignored…. In short, our educators demonstrate little concern with the souls of their students, even though they are in the very process of inflicting enormous damage upon those souls….

The student must develop a false, external self to cope with the demands of others…. 

Such a stability must be a precarious one. It must be a defensive identity which is unable to honestly expose itself to novel ideas or to open itself to new experiences….
So much is made of usefulness that man himself is reduced to a mere instrument…. 

What is needed is encouragement of integrity, rather than dishonesty; concern with behavior being congruent with experience, rather than with proper, high-level performance at any cost; …appreciation of the remarkable breadth of human creativity, rather than merely the powers of the intellect; illumination of the value of freedom, rather than the expediency of submission; nurturance of flexible autonomy, rather than brittle automatons;… recognition of the needs for ecstasy, as well as rational self-understanding; education, rather than manipulation; love, rather than mistrust….

The both/and perspective reflected in that litany and my commitment to holistic organizing has motivated me ever since. But a few years ago, I decided that I wanted to be more explicit and intentional with my efforts and look for others who clearly share the holistic perspective and want to openly, consciously pursue it.

So, given Occupy’s embryonic holistic culture and inspired by Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited (which was a self-help manual that Dr. King carried with him when he traveled), I circulated at OSF early drafts of the Occupy Be the Change Pledge, which was based on the holistic pledge that Dr. King required marchers to sign in Birmingham in 1963, which was based on similar pledges used by Gandhi.

Those drafts received a positive response. So, after incorporating input for suggested changes, a diverse group of twelve individuals signed the pledge and a few of us gathered signatures at the OSF camp and invited signatories to a meeting.

But the Caucus, including me, fell victim to the same over-emphasis on behavior that I critiqued in “An Evaluation of the Residence College,” as seen in the activist mania that afflicted OSF and pervades modern society. We too quickly jumped into action at our first meeting.  Consequently, like OSF, we did not establish: 1) a clear, shared positive vision; 2) written guiding policies; 3) membership requirements that clarified commitments and expectations, and 4) a viable structure and process for delegating authority and holding accountable those to whom authority is delegated.

On reflection, at that first meeting, we should have had more discussion about the proposed mission statement and pledge, including small breakout groups to surface concerns. Then, once we clarified our core principles, we should have established priority collective goals. Instead, in a rather individualistic manner, we quickly asked individuals to suggest and sign up for whatever working groups anyone wanted to propose (and ended up with too many working groups).

But feeling pressed by the urgent need for action, I assumed that the intent was made clear by our name, “be the change,” our mission statement – “to help transform ourselves and our society into truly nonviolent and compassionate individuals within a community dedicated to the common good of all humanity” – and the pledge, which includes: “to the best of my ability…, I avoid both selfishness and power trips [and] strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health.”

And I assumed that those who came to meetings did so because they backed the effort to grow a holistic community with members who support one another in our personal development (which for many people includes spiritual growth), provide community service, and engage in political action.

But as it turned out, those words did not mean the same thing to the same people. Not everyone got it. And some who got it weren’t into it.

The first sign of lack of unity had emerged at the planning meeting that preceded the first membership meeting. After having gone through an extensive process of writing and re-writing the pledge (which integrates the various forms of nonviolence: philosophical, strategic, living, respect for all life), at that planning meeting some of those who had been involved in rewriting the pledge and had signed it nevertheless persistently argued that we revisit that decision and adopt strategic nonviolence instead. This discussion persisted for an hour or so, which left us little time to plan properly for the first membership meeting. Instead, we hurriedly decided to just ask participants to form whatever working groups they wanted.

The main argument for a focus on strategic nonviolence is that it can attract more people because it only asks for a commitment to nonviolent behavior at a particular action, rather than a commitment to inner/outer nonviolence as a way of life. Some of us argued that our choice is not either/or but both/and. As did Gandhi and King, we can build a strong, core community rooted in holistic nonviolence, and then join in coalitions for actions based on strategic nonviolence.

At our first membership meeting, after the option of pursuing either holistic or strategic nonviolence was discussed and the pledge was adopted as an affirmation of the holistic option, and we amended the proposed mission statement to clarify that we wanted to nurture personal development, I assumed that we were in alignment. But such was not the case.

The lack of unity gradually became clear. When we invited members to a support group to explore how to support each other in our personal development, one member replied, “That just sounds like another meeting to me.” No more than four members ever came to a support group meeting. One member was disheartened by that lack of interest and what she perceived as a general lack of transparency with regard to honestly sharing feelings. When I posted a query about members’ perceptions of “activist shortcomings,” one member replied that activists are not weak but strong and effective, and quit. On a number of occasions, individuals indicated that they were drawn to the Caucus in order to promote strategic nonviolence within Occupy in a top-down, one-way process of “education” (which has been described as “moral gentrification”), rather than growing a holistic community rooted in problem-solving, peer education. When I facilitated a brainstorming session to surface potential goals in each aspect of the three-fold path and then tried to facilitate a process of evaluating and selecting from the options that surfaced, the agenda was set aside to “check in” about the recent January 20 action. Then the team that developed the proposed agenda ignored all that work on possible goals and instead proposed that the next meeting ask everyone what they would really like the Caucus to be. When I shared my vision, the primary response was “Is that all?”, laughter, and “Yea, like we could do that in a week.” At the next meeting, the last meeting so far, when we discussed organizing a public forum, some members wanted the focus to be holistic, or deep, nonviolence, but others wanted the focus to be strategic nonviolence, with us talking about holistic nonviolence “much farther down the road.” Also, no more than three members ever came to one of our learning circles, only one other working group ever actually met, and folks not following through on their commitments and doing what they said they would do became a chronic problem. For example, most members of the January 20 affinity group did not show up at the agreed on time and place and some unilaterally decided to alter their involvement after the group had decided on a plan.

So, after we decided to ask Chris Moore-Backman to lead a workshop on the three-fold path, I temporarily stopped trying to make things happen and the Caucus went into limbo. My hope was that Chris’ workshop would inspire more people to pursue holistic nonviolence. But when at the end of the workshop one member suggested that we meet again to consider whether and how to act on what we had learned, we decided to wait a whole month before gathering again and when we did, there was no mention of the workshop or the three-fold path for almost three hours and when I finally brought up the issue, the focus quickly shifted back to strategic nonviolence.

So it seems that we attracted mostly individuals who are willing to go to meetings but weren’t really into promoting holistic nonviolence. My sense of having found what I was looking for was an illusion, like a mirage on the desert.

I feel that the most serious roadblock is making an intentional commitment to personal development. As one member in the post-workshop gathering stated, it is “a bit scary” to engage in critical self-examination and to honestly share with close associates one’s observations about one’s own mistakes, all of which helps to foster self-improvement (if it’s not essential). The reasons for this apprehension are understandable and I certainly don’t have any magic solution. But I would like to pursue with other like-minded individuals how to make progress in this regard.

Fortunately, through it all, I feel that I may have found a few like-minded souls with whom I can collaborate on this project. And I feel good about the latest draft of a proposal for a “social transformation network” that I’ve begun to discuss with non-Caucus members.

Whether I continue this effort under the umbrella of the Occupy Be the Change Caucus remains to be seen. If at least four or five pledge signatories want to practice the three-fold path together in the name of the Caucus, I am available. Perhaps we can start over and do it better next time.

Other Caucus members who aren’t prepared to practice the three-fold path might take on other projects and/or meet only every 6-8 weeks to oversee and guide the Caucus, more like a governing board than a working group. Or maybe we should initiate a new project. I don’t know.

But I still seek a holistic community that would differ from the sense of community that I have found with fellow activists in the past. After having done so for 45 years, I’ll probably continue this effort in the future, in one way or another.