Real Life ALC

Agile Learning Centers Self-Directed: Humans are natural learners. When children get to follow their passions, they engage deeply, learning more quickly and thoroughly – covering y...

I walked out the Thrive Hive door one day and stumbled onto this scene. It struck me that this photo captures so much of the childhood I want for my children, and for all children. These two little people were delighting in a conversation and sharing a snack. Unhurried, unburdened, simply enjoying life and each other. I don't know how long they were sitting there, but the connection was enchanting to me. I want all young people to have the opportunity to connect deeply with life and each other, with the natural world, and with soul-level nourishment. Seeing so many deep and beautiful friendships emerge at Thrive Hive has been one of the most satisfying elements of my experience here.

And guess what? It's not just the kids. We have an incredible community of adults supporting each other, expressing their gifts, learning and growing together, and just enjoying life and each other. What a blessing.

What communities nourish you and your family? What do you receive from your most treasured relationships?

One of the things that strongly stood out for me when visionary, teacher and author Marshall Rosenberg spoke was that he planted most of what he said within a larger socio-cultural context. Even when he engaged in role plays focusing on personal relationship challenges volunteered by audience members, one could recognize a broader landscape informing his responses. His concern was not solely with the interpersonal breakthroughs that people might experience by learning the NVC process but equally, and perhaps even more so, he was concerned with the questionable merit of the systemic structures shaping and directing people’s lives. It was never left out. He would regularly make statements during his workshops like:

- We’ve been educated by the culture to enjoy violence.

- We have been educated to play the game who’s right.

- When people live inside domination systems, they learn domination thinking.

- We are educated to forget our natural way of being.

- We've been educated to think in a way that turns people into enemies.

- The most dangerous of all behaviors may consist of doing things because we're supposed to.

- As author Neil Postman said, everyone needs a good crap detector.

- Can you imagine a more diabolical concept than punishment as a way to educate people?

- Don’t be a nice dead person.

- I received a doctorate in professional jackal/alienation (referring to his Ph.D in clinical psychology).

- Read John Taylor Gatto “The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling”.

- The only purpose I see in grades is to maintain a caste system in our society and hide it as a meritocracy or a democracy.

- I choose not to participate in any evaluation scheme that differentiates on the basis of race or colour.

- Research shows that the more grades are given, the more students lose perspective on the worth of what they’re learning. So then they learn not for the value of what they’re learning but for the extrinsic rewards.

- The purpose of a “jackal” (aka life alienating) culture is to get people used to working for extrinsic rewards like salary so they’ll be able to pollute the environment or do anything else as long as their boss tells them to do it and get their reward .. so that’s what you want to train them for in the schools.

- I compare most schools to doing "soft time" in prison.

- People do not make good slaves when they're connected to life. That's why in the public schools the primary objective is obedience to authority.

- When I was in school, my teachers told me that I would one day be glad that I had gone to school. Well I’m now close to 70 and I’m still waiting.

- Read the work of anthropologist Ruth Benedict whose research shows that not all cultures are domination cultures.

- Read the work of theologian Walter Wink. In “The Powers That Be”, Wink states that violence has been the social norm for several thousands of years during which time humans have been oppressed and been trained to serve and maintain domination systems.

- Consumerism makes people think that their needs will be met by owning a certain item.

- We’ve been playing the game Punitive God for several centuries.

- Read “Punished by Rewards” by Alfie Kohn to see how we train children to become complicit in domination systems.

- Read Riane Eisler’s “The Chalice and the Blade” to learn about what history teaches us about people living in harmony with each other and the earth.

- Gene Sharp wrote a wonderful article called “198 Applications of Nonviolent Force.” He shows how, throughout history, nonviolence has been used to prevent violence and to protect, not to punish.

- Rather than educating people to be conscious of their needs, we teach them to become addicted to ineffective strategies for meeting them.

- Never pay money for anything and never charge money for anything. Transform the concept of worth .. get it out of your head that anything is worth a certain amount of money.

- Read what Genevieve Vaughan writes about gift economy.

These statements (some from memory and others from transcripts and videos) represent but a small sampling of the many references Rosenberg made both to education and to culture. They reveal the thinking of a visionary and social critic encouraging his listeners to consider the dehumanizing influences that dominant culture values have had and continue to have on human beings, on human culture and on life itself. He suggests quite emphatically that it leads people to act in ways that are tragically alienating and undermining to human nature.

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