Fresh on the heels of a gathering I co-hosted here on Bowen Island this week, I have begun a year long research project to look at how hosting, facilitating and convening conversations can help shift people, organizations and communities to new levels of awareness, work and changemaking in their worlds.
Posts here that relate to this research project are tagged with “CoHo” which is one of things some of us are calling this initiative. It is a contraction of “Council of Hosts” which is how we gathered and constituted ourselves last week. As a Council – a term that refers more to the method of deliberation among ourselves and not to a formal structure – we identified a key need that caused us to be joined in our work. All of us present at the gathering work with people who are stuck, affected by large scale systemic forces that conspire to constrain them. Not knowing how to work within these constraints is an incredibly disempowering feeling, as is working at one level, on say resource conservation, when you are fully aware of the large scale processes unfolding around you, like climate change, over which we have no control.
In a Council we decided that as a group our purpose was jointly to look at how we can be forces of conscious evolution through hosting. For me, conscious evolution is as simple as having the experience of becoming “bigger” in terms of consciousness of forces and systems and the impact we can have on those forces and systems.
What is interesting is that despite the fact that we are small players working in a big system, and we KNOW that our effect in the world is usually small and local, there is something almost inherent in human nature that convinces us that we can have more impact than it appears. To be sure, this sentiment sometimes becomes arrogance, especially here in North America, but everywhere I have been in this world, among many different people living in wildly different circumstances, I find this pattern of optimism. Whether or not that optimism is productive, or stands a chance at worldchanging is an interesting question, but even more interesting for me is this question: if we are truly products of the global earth system, and we know that we are simply small pieces of a huge and complex living system, where does this impulse, calling or optimism come from?
There seems to be something about being human that allows us to respond to a call that is bigger that the space we occupy in the system of life on earth. I am curious about what this call means and what happens when we respond to it, and also how we come in alignment with the various fields that seem to accelerate change. In short, why does one person think he or she can make a difference, and why does that sometimes actually happen? What needs to come into alignment to make change flow?
Ultimately I am looking for patterns. For me, my inquiry for the work is to look at a number of questions:
- What are the patterns that hold us and what can we learn about those patterns about how things evolve, how changes can flow through systems?
- How do we as hosts help to create the conditions for conscious evolution within systems?
- What are the patterns for doing this work?
In terms of the work of CoHo, this inquiry underpins my existing work, and is definitely my learning edge in terms of my work as a facilitator of process with groups that seek change. I invite you, and we invite you, to join us. I’ll post more information on how to in the coming weeks.
Yesterday we celebrated my son’s sixth birthday with a small gathering of five of his friends based on Star Wars. We did nothing but open a space in the middle of our small house and let them bang away at each other for two hours with light sabers. For a six year old boy, this constitutes a great gift (as it does I am sure for the parents of the other boys who came!).
Of course, being the Jedi master, I was obliged to fight them all at some point, and sometimes even two at a time. It was all going so well until I turned and got stabbed right in the eye by a boy less than half my size. My vision went blurry and my eye started to weep. I was fine in the end, but I had to retire, knowing the humlity of what it must feel like to be slain by Yoda.
[tags]yoda, star wars[/tags]
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]
Kevin Harris, at Neighbourhoods has a nice rant about capacity building today:
As far as I can recall, capacity building the community sector has not been the problem anywhere I’ve worked. The problem is relationships. Too many people in positions of power are behaving in disempowering ways towards residents and towards those who experience exclusion, and then using the notion of capacity-building as a smokescreen. If there’s any capacity building to be done, it’s in terms of getting these people to behave in a civilised and grown-up manner towards those they are supposed to be supporting, or just get out of the way. If we get these people out of the way, IMHO, the capacity of the community sector will always reassert itself.
I tend to agree with him. In the world of First Nations community development, “capacity building” became a buzzword in the early nineties, around the time of the Royal Commission. I think it started out innocently enough as a term meaning to build up the ability of communities to self-govern and self-manage. It was always talked about without context however, and I have met few people working in indigenous communities here who understand capacity building in terms of asset-based community development, appreciative inquiry or other similar bodies of thought and practice.
The problem now with the term is that is has become completely degraded. When people talk about “capacity building” now I have to ask them what they mean. In its worst connotations, government uses the term to mean “Aboriginal communities taking more responsibility for their own futures” which is often code for “we want out of this.” Likewise on the community side, I hear the word “capacity” used in place of “funding” so that capacity building becomes about getting more funding to do new things. (Of course there are many examples that are counter to what I am saying, but this is a general trend).
I think we would do well to forget the term “capacity building” as Kevin suggests and just focus on what the real need is. By engaging in collaborative work around these well articulated needs, we create the relationships necessary to sustain the work over time. That creates a learning community, and only through self-organization, self-education and self-empowerment, can a community understand, harness and realize its own capacities.
[tags]capacity building[/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]