Please visit the Baltimore Free School’s website (freeschool.redemmas.org) before voting or commenting, which the following excerpt is from:
“The Baltimore Free School is a grassroots, volunteer-run and community-funded project. Building upon a long tradition of horizontal organizing, collaborative learning and participatory education, we believe that the empowerment of people of all ages and backgrounds to share and learn is vital to the health of any community. To that end, we work toward creating a space where the exchange of ideas can occur without the exchange of money; a space where we can learn to relate to each other in new and meaningful ways. By building this infrastructure, we hope to form a microcosm of the world in which we want to live.”
The Baltimore Free School allows access to free classes and workshops on any topic (seriously, check out some of the course listings) and anyone can volunteer to teach a course on whatever they wish. Why not have something like this in Bristol? Something like this could easily make Bristol a culturally vibrant city and give future generations of Bristolites even greater opportunities than ever before.
It should be added that most Free Schools center around daytime education for young people as a great alternative to public education. If anyone wants more information of Free Schools, “Making It Up As We Go Along” is a fantastic book by Chris Mercogliano about the Albany Free School. I’m not sure Bristol is ready yet for the Free School concept, but I totally support the idea and would gladly pay for my daughter to attend IF and only if it is well run by sensible people.
The Albany Free School seems to be a different idea than what I have described or what is offered at the Baltimore Free School where I got the idea from – and it isn’t listed under the similar free schools heading on the Albany School’s website.
The Baltimore Free School, which I am framing this idea around, does not intend to replace the current educational system in the US (although in theory it could.) Instead it offers the opportunity for anyone to create and teach a class or offer a workshop on pretty much any topic (the Baltimore School’s class archive has listings as diverse as a Board Game Design Workshop to a course on Modern Middle Eastern History to an intro to music theory.) And it offers its services for no cost, but runs entirely on donations.
I may have to request that the name of and description for this idea be changed in order to reduce confusion. If you still like what the Albany School does and wouldn’t mind seeing it in Bristol, why not add it.
I do agree that it should also be run by sensible people and as ideologically neutral as possible. Both the Baltimore Free School and the Albany Free School seem quite liberal, and the last thing I would want to see happening if either of these ideas leads to ideological indoctrination; I like the idea of alternate forms of education and freedom in education, but if I were to run such a thing, I would demand that the content itself be as neutral as possible.
I think this is a great idea! A place to connect with people in person and share thoughts and knowledge!
Do you really mean sensible or do you mean you want people to only to teach whatever the majority appears to accept as fact, even if it isn’t.
Wow, did I mess that up. I meant to say;
Do you really mean sensible or do you mean you want people who will only teach whatever the majority appears to accept as fact, even if it isn’t?
I really mean sensible. I’m not in the business of dumbing things down to please people. I want people to be able to think for themselves and be willing to explore ideas that they may very well disagree with in a scholarly manner. I’ve had classes in college where I disagreed with my professor’s opinions but still enjoyed the class.
Ideas are a very big part of a place’s culture/identity – if a city was the home of a famous philosopher, scientist or writer, you’d bet the city takes pride in it. So I also want to foster a culture of ideas in Bristol as well,
The only major concern I have is if some extremists from some ideological fringe using the school as a front to push destructive beliefs on people and advocate acting on those beliefs. I would not permit people who do that to “teach” there.