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Your correspondence has been subject of some discussion on our ba-unrev-talk forum and I'll take the liberty of forwarding a copy of your response to this forum.
Clearly, to better understand your views it is important that people, given the opportunity, need to go to your site www.CreatingLearningCommunities.org
Henry
Bill Ellis wrote:
on 10/27/02 11:58 AM, Henry K van Eyken at vaneyken@sympatico.ca wrote:
> BE:> * Everyone has the right to decide what s/he wants to learn and have the> chance to learn it.
BE:
You challenge this tenet of 'A Coalition for Self-Learning' with good arguments.
The statement is a shorthand presentation of a much longer argument that is expanded in some of the chapter of the Coalition's book "Creating Learning Communities." Without going in to the whole argument I'll add a couple of thoughts.1) Learning, like speach, is not doing.
To claim the right of everyone to read, study, consider, discuss and learn anything they want is an important right recognized and established by America's Founding Fathers and upheld by American courts. It is the rock on which democracy is built. It is, however, denied by the schools that set a government controled curriculum for every student to be taught when the school decides, and how the school decides.2) The rights of children is no less than the rights of adults. Certainly children need guidance, (and so do adults). But guidance need not be forced or coercive. It can be learning from example and discussion. In my view good parenting is not by "laying down the law" and "because I said so." But opening minds to all possible options and examining them with children (as well as with adults). How can we raise knowledgale citizens if they face authoritarian regimes at home and in schools.
This Coalition's goal is a convivial society, one in which people of all ages learn for the love of learning in joyful cooperation with one another. And live all life in the same convivial way.
We would love to have your discussion on:
<LearningCommunities-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>
I think you will find your own concept of it being " important that children be raised with an awareness of and concern for people everywhere as well as of the limits to our globe's capability to sustain us all" fits well with our concept or respect for Gaia (the Earth and all life on earth, including other humans.) Read my chapter, for example, in the book on the web page below.
Bill Ellis
<www.CreatingLearningCommunities.org>PEOPLE ARE NOT THE PROBLEMS, THEY ARE THE SOLUTIONS
IF THE PEOPLE LEAD, THE LEADERS WILL FOLLOW.
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