Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
East Bay Free Skool
The Barrington Collective is starting a free school, which will include peer to peer skillsharing aswell as address the current crisis in the OUSD by holding neighborhood meetings, offering free a afterschool/summerschool program for the children and youth of Oakland, and provide adult education classes in things like ESL
Free Skool
or Freedom School
The BARRINGTON COLLECTIVE is starting a free skool. What started as an informal network of sharing skills and hobbies now has ambition to become much more. The current crisis in the Oakland Unified School District as well as the isolated and ineffectual approaches of much of the “radical community” has led us to the broader community of the East Bay; the very neighborhoods we live in.
We see the current crisis in the OUSD as an opportunity for full COMMUNITY CONTROL of our schools; the charter school model coupled with the No Child Left Behind Act makes it possible for public education funds to be diverted directly into the hands of the community they serve. Parents, teachers and students could organize on the neighborhood level, demand charter status and form their own schools. Public schools are administered by those in power and their interests are to educate folks the minimum amount necessary to prevent rebellion. The public schools are inefficient, test crazed and prisonlike; the possibility of something else should be celebrated. Centralized institutions are alienating and destructive of community and culture, wherever possible we support the creation of decentralized, autonomous organizations networked horizontally rather than hierarchically.
The Barrington Collective is a loose knit, volunteer collective which functions with no budget and limited resources.
WHAT WE ARE DOING
*organizing a peer to peer skillsharing free skool for Summer 2005
*organizing free adult school classes such as ESL
*organizing free after school/ summer school program for youth and kids in Oakland Unified
*holding neighborhood meetings to find out what the community wants; what adults want to learn, what parents want their kids to learn and what the kids/youth themselves want to learn
*advocating community control of the schools, in the form of small, parent/teacher/student run neighborhood schools.
WHAT WE WANT
*volunteers to teach or organize
*other groups to network with
*community input, wants and hopes
*resources, spaces and supplies to use
CONTACT
Website:
http://barringtoncollective.org/freeskool
E-mail:
freeskool [at] barringtoncollective.org
"Rulers have always taken care to control the education of the people, they know better than anyone else that their power is based almost entirely on the school, and they therefore insist on retaining their monopoly on it."
Francisco Ferrer
for other free education projects see;
http://www.albanyfreeschool.com/ - Albany Free School
http://brooklynfreeschool.org/ - Brooklyn Free School
http://www.santacruz.freeskool.org/ - Free Skool Santa Cruz
or Freedom School
The BARRINGTON COLLECTIVE is starting a free skool. What started as an informal network of sharing skills and hobbies now has ambition to become much more. The current crisis in the Oakland Unified School District as well as the isolated and ineffectual approaches of much of the “radical community” has led us to the broader community of the East Bay; the very neighborhoods we live in.
We see the current crisis in the OUSD as an opportunity for full COMMUNITY CONTROL of our schools; the charter school model coupled with the No Child Left Behind Act makes it possible for public education funds to be diverted directly into the hands of the community they serve. Parents, teachers and students could organize on the neighborhood level, demand charter status and form their own schools. Public schools are administered by those in power and their interests are to educate folks the minimum amount necessary to prevent rebellion. The public schools are inefficient, test crazed and prisonlike; the possibility of something else should be celebrated. Centralized institutions are alienating and destructive of community and culture, wherever possible we support the creation of decentralized, autonomous organizations networked horizontally rather than hierarchically.
The Barrington Collective is a loose knit, volunteer collective which functions with no budget and limited resources.
WHAT WE ARE DOING
*organizing a peer to peer skillsharing free skool for Summer 2005
*organizing free adult school classes such as ESL
*organizing free after school/ summer school program for youth and kids in Oakland Unified
*holding neighborhood meetings to find out what the community wants; what adults want to learn, what parents want their kids to learn and what the kids/youth themselves want to learn
*advocating community control of the schools, in the form of small, parent/teacher/student run neighborhood schools.
WHAT WE WANT
*volunteers to teach or organize
*other groups to network with
*community input, wants and hopes
*resources, spaces and supplies to use
CONTACT
Website:
http://barringtoncollective.org/freeskool
E-mail:
freeskool [at] barringtoncollective.org
"Rulers have always taken care to control the education of the people, they know better than anyone else that their power is based almost entirely on the school, and they therefore insist on retaining their monopoly on it."
Francisco Ferrer
for other free education projects see;
http://www.albanyfreeschool.com/ - Albany Free School
http://brooklynfreeschool.org/ - Brooklyn Free School
http://www.santacruz.freeskool.org/ - Free Skool Santa Cruz
For more information:
http://barringtoncollective.org/FreeSkool
Add Your Comments
Comments
(Hide Comments)
The California ruling class loves dummies who will step in and work for free after they implement their austerity measures. If you guys actually had the ability to be successful in your plans it would be a form of scabbing and union busting against Oakland teachers. Its disgusting that you guys are supporting "No child left behind" and the charter schools.
Yes it may be a form of scabbing, but where do you draw the line? Children don't have a convenient 'pause development' button to push while this gets sorted out. I feel badly for the union, but for every teacher there are about 30-40 students. I think this is an opportunity to give the kids a taste of something new. Maybe give them the quality education of homeschooling while avoiding the social downfalls? Hell, if I still lived in the bay area, I would love to volunteer some time to tutor/direct study in math or science.
Congratulations to the Barrington Collective for taking a much-needed step in the right direction. In these times the fog is beginning to lift and more and more people are beginning to see that we need to take back control of our lives and, to whatever extent possible, our futures and those of our children.
To the teacher who fears losing his job if this movement gains momentum (and I believe it will): Like it or not, you are on the cusp of evolutionary social change. As more and more people (the parents of some of your students, perhaps) lose their jobs and fall into destitution, they will not find their reality reflected in your curriculum. Even if you are aware of them yourself, you have very little room to deal with the larger issues that are confronting young people today, particularly when these include exploitation, diminished employment opportunities, corporate dominance, corruption in government, and so on. Your job is to produce obedient, skilled, uncritical consumers and workers. Your primary allegiance is not to your students, nor is it to the community in which they live; it is to your union, just as your primary concern is for the content of your collective agreement. (You know it’s true.) There are people in the community who know just as much as you do; who have a direct and intimate concern for the development of their children’s minds and value systems; who won’t be experimenting on their students with every new teaching modality or administering every new test that comes down from on high; who will more likely be attuned to the social contexts in which their students live and will validate their realities; and who are more likely to be engaged in the production of what the community considers to be useful knowledge – not what higher authorities find useful for their own purposes. I hope you don’t lose your job. I don’t wish that on anybody. But the fact is that job loss is a reality for an ever-increasing number of people. Looking on the bright side, unemployment could be a blessing in disguise, as it would free up some of your time to become involved in community education, both as a teacher and as a learner.
To the Burlington Collective: Using the Charter School program to reclaim control over the way your education tax money is spent is brilliant.
To the teacher who fears losing his job if this movement gains momentum (and I believe it will): Like it or not, you are on the cusp of evolutionary social change. As more and more people (the parents of some of your students, perhaps) lose their jobs and fall into destitution, they will not find their reality reflected in your curriculum. Even if you are aware of them yourself, you have very little room to deal with the larger issues that are confronting young people today, particularly when these include exploitation, diminished employment opportunities, corporate dominance, corruption in government, and so on. Your job is to produce obedient, skilled, uncritical consumers and workers. Your primary allegiance is not to your students, nor is it to the community in which they live; it is to your union, just as your primary concern is for the content of your collective agreement. (You know it’s true.) There are people in the community who know just as much as you do; who have a direct and intimate concern for the development of their children’s minds and value systems; who won’t be experimenting on their students with every new teaching modality or administering every new test that comes down from on high; who will more likely be attuned to the social contexts in which their students live and will validate their realities; and who are more likely to be engaged in the production of what the community considers to be useful knowledge – not what higher authorities find useful for their own purposes. I hope you don’t lose your job. I don’t wish that on anybody. But the fact is that job loss is a reality for an ever-increasing number of people. Looking on the bright side, unemployment could be a blessing in disguise, as it would free up some of your time to become involved in community education, both as a teacher and as a learner.
To the Burlington Collective: Using the Charter School program to reclaim control over the way your education tax money is spent is brilliant.
If I hadn't just left high school and gotten my GED (CHSPE), you guys'd be on my radar. The public education system should have provided something like this a long time ago. Glad to see you all are fixing it. It's much needed.
I did Independent Study for a while, but it was isolating and, to be honest, I didn't have the kind of drive necessary to succeed by myself (I was only 14). I think the kind of education homeschoolers receive actually prepares them for "the real world" much more effectively than the crap any of the public schools give us. And I hear Harvard loves homeschoolers ;)
I did Independent Study for a while, but it was isolating and, to be honest, I didn't have the kind of drive necessary to succeed by myself (I was only 14). I think the kind of education homeschoolers receive actually prepares them for "the real world" much more effectively than the crap any of the public schools give us. And I hear Harvard loves homeschoolers ;)
To clarify, we do not support the charter school model or No Child Left Behind Act, nor do we support teacher firings or "scabs," or working for free. We support a critical engagement of the current situation, outside of partisan politics. The charter schools exist, and are growing, the No Child Left Behind act exists (and like or not under our system our representative legislate, not us), it is up to the community to respond to it in a way that is empowering, begging to Ward or Sacramento or DC is not empowering, starting your own neighborhood school is.
Our efforts are small, insignificant compared to the thousands of affected students and teachers in the OUSD, and we do not advocate anyone to follow us; we exist more as an example of possibility. Take a look at the Albany Free School for more inspiration.
our schools are far too similar to prisons for me to feel comfortable defending them outright, another world is possible!
-one bc free skooler
Our efforts are small, insignificant compared to the thousands of affected students and teachers in the OUSD, and we do not advocate anyone to follow us; we exist more as an example of possibility. Take a look at the Albany Free School for more inspiration.
our schools are far too similar to prisons for me to feel comfortable defending them outright, another world is possible!
-one bc free skooler
I'm guessing that the comment from "A teacher " above is actually justa right-winger trying to stir up trouble. I doubt any real teacher at a public school woudl see free classes by a small collective as a threat.
That said, it does bring up an interesting point for those Anarchist who do believe that lifestylism is a form of dual power. The belief that alternative instututions are a way of building a new socieity withing the ruins of the old is going out of style, but those who still cling to it ignore that aternative structures often just resemble clubs and social groups within the existing society (although these are now becomming rare social clubs were pretty popular it at the high point of the conservative 1950s). Public libraries are a good example of something that is free and available to everyone yet somehow never seen as a threat to the status quo even though the idea is pretty antiCapitalist at heart. There benefits of a free school by radicals is almost always within the community and as such its a good thing, but it is more akin to the training of a vanguard than it is the creation of an alternative power structure.
That said, it does bring up an interesting point for those Anarchist who do believe that lifestylism is a form of dual power. The belief that alternative instututions are a way of building a new socieity withing the ruins of the old is going out of style, but those who still cling to it ignore that aternative structures often just resemble clubs and social groups within the existing society (although these are now becomming rare social clubs were pretty popular it at the high point of the conservative 1950s). Public libraries are a good example of something that is free and available to everyone yet somehow never seen as a threat to the status quo even though the idea is pretty antiCapitalist at heart. There benefits of a free school by radicals is almost always within the community and as such its a good thing, but it is more akin to the training of a vanguard than it is the creation of an alternative power structure.
Mad props for organizing an Oakland Free Skool!
More and madder props forthcoming if you can get (at least significant factions of) Education not Incarceration, Youth Together, Critical Resistance, The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the Oakland Education Association (and its Substitute Caucus), All of Us or None, Centro Legal de la Raza, and not to mention Oakland students, parents, educators and community members at large to endorse and actively participate.
In struggle and solidarity,
one West Oakland resident and community-based organizer currently getting accredited to teach special ed in the OUSD.
More and madder props forthcoming if you can get (at least significant factions of) Education not Incarceration, Youth Together, Critical Resistance, The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the Oakland Education Association (and its Substitute Caucus), All of Us or None, Centro Legal de la Raza, and not to mention Oakland students, parents, educators and community members at large to endorse and actively participate.
In struggle and solidarity,
one West Oakland resident and community-based organizer currently getting accredited to teach special ed in the OUSD.
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$120.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network