From the introduction to a three-part radio program that Ruth Lopez and I produced on KWMR in 2006.
Conversations about Learning and Community
Early on in my recent conversations with Ruth (Lopez) about building community learning, I drew up an image of a map of our local place, Point Reyes, Inverness, West Marin, Tomales Bay and placed at the top of that map the question: Where does learning take place?
The response I had, perhaps everyone has is: learning is taking place all over, in many ways.
Learning does not just occur in one place. I think if we took that observation seriously we would expand our own understanding of what it means to learn and also expand our ideas about what we think is important to learn.
Inevitably, discussions about learning lead to debates about what is important to learn. These are discussions, where differences are expressed because we are a collection of individuals with varying ideas. That is a good thing.
My primary interest in setting up these three radio programs, is in creating forums for discussions. I spent more than four years of my own education, in groups of twenty or so, discussing classic books and important ideas with people who were passionate, like I, about ideas and how to put them into action. That process is invaluable and I would like to share that process with others in my own community.
One big difference between then and now, is my community and the context in which I live.
For these purposes, in discussing community, I have adopted a definition of community, influenced by the writing of Wendell Barry, that says, “a community is a collection of disparate individuals, in a place, who are committed to that place.”
In some ways, education is a tricky thing to discuss because our education forms us, reflecting back on where we came from. It is hard to get behind ourselves. It is important, though because where we came from constructs the world we will live in, the world we are building.
The process of questioning: looking back, examining our assumptions and pursuing an honest dialogue about where we want to go, this process moves us forward toward implementing what we want in practice, but consciously, and with a fair critique.
We are interested in creating a forum for dialogue about learning and community. We want to look at who we are and what our lives are. This is in part a process of looking at the education we have been given and the culture in which we have grown up and which we have inherited. This is a process of understanding what we want in the society we are building.
My underlying belief is that as soon as we begin to engage in an honest discussion of where we came from and where we want to go next, we empower ourselves. We move toward self-learning and knowing, the beginnings of community based learning.
