Notes from a presentation by and discussion with Stuart Hill, the Foundation Chair of Social Ecology, University of Western Sydney and recently appointed Provocateur by the Victorian Government.

“At Currambena you are on the cutting edge of change in the world, the frontier of where we are going as a society. The future of this school is dependent on adapting these ideas to your local conditions and making them contagious.” Professor Stuart Hill

In Fran's introduction to Stuart she commented on the thought-provoking impact he had when he presented to the Australasian Association for Progressive and Alternative Education (AAPAE) Annual Conference held at Preshil School, Kew, Melbourne, in July 2005. Notes on the conference are at the AAPAE website. Fran told the story of a recent Currambena class meeting where the whole class was voting on an issue that only affected 4 of the children. One child in particular was incensed that kids who were not impacted by the decision had a vote on the issue. This is a situation that the Currambena teachers have been discussing - how to enable kids in the decision making process, and broaden the deceptive simplicity of the democratic process.

Stuart suggested that the challenge of enabling learning for life is the next stage in the process of our ongoing psychosocial co-evolution. We have moved beyond our historical roots of killing children to the socialising stage in which one generation largely determines the learning agenda of the next, aiming to socialise them, and this has had predictable (conforming or rebellious) responses. The next emerging stage in this process is the enabling stage in which we recognise that children are already a social learning organism. In this stage educational efforts are focused on enabling learners to actualise their social and learning potentials. This allows children to set their own agenda, and be supported in achieving them, rather than simply follow those of the teachers. With regards to Currambena, Stuart commented "Democratic schools are so exciting because they are on the cusp of what's evolving".

How do we affect change? Stuart suggested that if you want something to change you have to change yourself. He told the story of a woman who came to Mahatma Ghandi asking for advice on getting her son to stop eating sugar. Ghandi thought for a moment and told the woman that she should come back the following week for an answer. When she did come the following week, Ghandi told her to come back in another week's time. When she came back at the end of the second week he advised her as to how she might support her son in giving up sugar. Puzzled, the woman asked him why he didn't say this the week before. He replied, "It took me two weeks to give up sugar myself." We want to enable root level, radical redesign; to design and create participatory co-operacy; to work from the empowered spontaneous aware loving, from the inside-out rather than the adapted, patterned, disempowered, unaware, fearful outside-in. Stuart talked of how as children we experience this debilitating "bashing in" of our real self, and so many of us learn to take what is dished out to us in order to get the love we crave. Rebellion and conformity are different sides of the same response. We need to look to where ‘progressive' change is taking place and learn from what is working.

In the book Co-operacy: A New Way of Being at Work (1997), by Hunter, D., A Bailey & B. Taylor, the authors suggest a concept they call co-operacy, which they see as the next stage after autocracy and democracy. The central principles within a co-operacy might include caring and sharing, transparency and access, inclusiveness and participation, comprehensiveness, responsibility and pro-activity. Stuart presented co-operacy as providing an improved way for making decisions. Co-operacy enables those most affected by and concerned about the decision to be most involved in the decision making process. Co-operacy doesn't mean that everyone has to agree.

Stuart suggested a relationship between the quality of decisions and the distance between decision makers and people affected by the decisions, in other words, when decisions are made a long way from those they affect you are more likely to get poor decisions. Instead of hard-and-fast laws all rules and guidelines should fit the following criteria:

• Provisional
• Evolving
• Owned by ... the community, the people affected by the decisions.

To illustrate the impact of ‘enabling' children instead of ‘socialising' them Stuart spoke of the Peckham Experiment. Rather than rely on my notes I have quoted here from an online article in New Renaissance Magazine by Alison Stallibrass, author of Being Me and Also Us: Lessons from the Peckham Experiment, Scottish Academic Press 1989.

"This observational research was the brain-child of two experienced doctors of medicine, George Scott Williamson and Innes Hope Pearse, who, after many years thought on the subject and three years running a pilot scheme in an ordinary house in Peckham - an inner-city suburb of London - opened a specially designed building in the same area, to house a scientific laboratory-cum-social club which they called "The Pioneer Health Centre." It became known world-wide as "The Peckham Experiment," after the 1943 publication of the book of that name by I.H. Pearse and L.H. Crocker. Williamson's and Pearse's basic method of promoting whole health was to ensure the freedom of the individual, within an environment in which everyone was equally free, to use their own initiative in discovering or creating leisure activities to their taste, or to do nothing but relax and chat or watch what was going on. The same opportunities, geared to the needs of toddlers and under-fives, were provided in the "nurseries" in which babies and young children could be left during the afternoons when their mothers were occupied elsewhere in the building.

After some months, "the Doctors" realised that it would be necessary to find means of giving the same freedom to the school age children of the member-families. When this was achieved, primarily by allowing those children who had proved they could swim (and most who could not, quickly learned) to use the large centrally situated swimming pool and the adjacent gymnasium as playgrounds during most of the afternoon and early evening. The children had shunned classes but, through playing in the water and in the air above it, and on the Swedish apparatus with which the gymnasium was furnished, they attained a high degree of skill. After this innovation, a marked change in the general behaviour of the children was observed; they became much more purposeful and serene, although equally energetic, and more responsible for themselves and their surroundings. Moreover their relationships with their elders became happy ones."

Stuart exhorted us: "At Currambena you are on the cutting edge of change in the world, the frontier of where we are going as a society. The future of this school is dependent on adapting these ideas to your local conditions and making them contagious." How do we make these ideas contagious? Very practically focusing on things such as signage - sharing small meaningful initiatives that you can guarantee to carry through to completion. Move away from actions that come from our ‘wounded' self: out of fear, not in the present, patterned behaviours. Move towards expressions of our essential selves where we embrace, fall in love, connect, transform (change) and conserve (keep), and be in the present. When working with others work with their agenda, not with yours, don't preach in missionary fashion, engage people, enable emergence, learn how to meet resistance and redirect it - learn from Aikido. Look for what is good, work from existing knowledge and competence. Because I didn't fully understand how Aikido works I found the following reference at the Mountain Coast Aikikai website:

"At the heart of Aikido training lies the concept, not of defeating an attacker, but rather of effectively meeting, redirecting and guiding an opponent's body movement to neutralize an attack or aggressive situation. This is why Aikido is often called "the art of non-resistance" or "the non-fighting martial art." In the words of the Founder - the aim of Aikido is:"to unify the mind and body and to promote peace, harmony and cooperation among all beings".

Stuart quoted Albert Einstein as having said "Clever people know how to solve problems, wise people avoid them." And what do most schools mostly teach? Cleverness!

By Clare Gallagher, parent from Fran's class