tina (tls@ziplink.net)
Sat, 05 Feb 2000 16:25:38 -0500
At 07:38 AM 2/5/00 -0500, you wrote:
>When I say throw it out I don't mean stop the mainstream system overnight, I
>mean you throw it out and start a new system and let it take root and grow.
>That's what we have done.
>
>What we cannot do is change the existing system. That's been tried ad
>nauseum, and the failure of that approach is what gave birth to this model.
>
>In any case, throwing out the old system is exactly what we have done, and
>in my opinion continuing that process would eventually free our students.
>
Which is my point exactly. You do it a piece at a time. You have to. It's
a step-by-step process, the only question is what the best steps are.
The writer of the email that Danny was responding to suggested a different
series of steps. My problem came in when Danny (to my mind anyway) seemed
to ridicule the notion of a piece-at-a-time reformation. If he was actually
just opposed to that particular method, he didn't make that clear. I think
his analogy was a very bad one; he makes fun of the concept of releasing
slaves by age, but apparently (from his actual actions) would agree that
it's okay to release them one plantation at a time.
The age argument - or similar changes to the system as a whole - lacks in
depth what a Sudbury model school does, but it does reach a much broader
audience. I really think it's going to take a combination of both
approaches to solve the problem.
There's a real tendency in this group to view any attempt to advocate change
from within the current system as somehow "tainted" and those who try this
method are really unwitting pawns who are deluded to boot. This is going to
be tough enough, and it's important enough, that *any* step in the right
direction should be encouraged.
T.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Tue Sep 26 2000 - 14:58:26 EDT