We continue with the third in our SafeEARTH series from the Archives. See: 1) Beyond Crime and Punishment 2) What Hitler didn’t Know.

Synergic Containment

Protecting Children

Children are strapping high explosives to their bodies and detonating them in public places in desperate acts of suicide-homicide. In April of 2002, President George W. Bush said, “When an 18 year old Palestinian girl is induced to blow herself up, and in the process kills a 17 year old Israeli girl, the future, itself, is dying.”

And then of course there are the armed conflicts, Peter Wallensteen of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports :

Monday, I explained that the cause of all mistakes is ignorance. Therefore, the only proper response to mistakes is: 1) analysis to determine what wasn’t known and who didn’t know it,  2) education of those making the mistake, and if others were injured, 3) restitution by those causing the injury. 

Sometimes I am asked, but what about really evil people? If ignorance is the cause of all mistakes, what was it that Hitler didn’t know?

What Hitler didn’t Know

Timothy Wilken, MD

The moto of this website is: “Always tell only the truth, and all the truth, and do so promptly – right now.” This statement by Buckminster Fuller cannot be emphasized too much. The following article from the SynEARTH Archives was the first in a series on synergic disarmament. Synergic disarmament, a powerful mechanism for containing adversary behavior, will be developed as the series is presented. We start off by making the case for a paradigm shift that can move us Beyond Crime and Punishment. Only then will we find the mechanims to end the insanity of war.

Beyond Crime and Punishment

In our present world, it is widely believed that mistakes are the result of badness. So when mistakes occur, we investigate, blame and punish. This belief has resulted in a world where violence, hate and judgment are common.

Synergic science reveals that mistakes are in fact the result of ignorance. If we understand this, then when a mistake occurs, we would analyze, determine responsibility, and educate. This could soon lead to a world where public safety, love and compassion are common.

The Uncertainty of Human Knowing

Timothy Wilken, MD

We can never know all there is to know about anything — this is a fundamental ‘law’ of Nature. This is in fact is the only cause of mistakes.

Ignorance is the word that best describes the human condition. Alfred Korzybski explained this condition scientifically as the  Principle of Non-Allness. By this he meant that we humans make all of our decisions with incomplete and imperfect knowing. We make every choice without all the information. All humans live and act in state of ignorance. Korzybski felt that developing an awareness of this ‘law’ of Nature was so fundamentally important to all humans, that he developed a lesson especially for children. Korzybski would explain:

“Children, today we want to learn all about the apple.”

He would place an apple in view of the children, “Do you children know about the apple?”

“I do!”, “I do!”, “Yes, I know about apples!”

“Good” Korzybski moved to the blackboard. , “Come, tell me about the apple?”

“The Apple is a fruit.”, “The apple is red.”, “The apple grows on a tree.”

Korzybski would begin to list the characteristics described by the children on the blackboard.

The children continued, “An apple a day keeps the Doctor away.”

Korzybski continued listing the children’s answers until they run out of ideas, then he would ask, “Is that all we can say about the apple?

When the children answered in the affirmative, Korzybski would remove his pocket-knife and cut the apple in half, passing the parts among the children.

“Now, children can we say more about the apple?

“The apple smells good.” “The juices are sweet.” “The apple has seeds.” “Its pulp is white.” “Mother makes apple pie.

Finally when the children had again run out of answers, Korzybski would ask, “Now, is that all-we can say about the apple?” When the children agreed that it was all that could be said, he would again go into his pocket only this time he removed a ten power magnifying lens and passed it to the children. The children would examine the apple, and again respond:

“The apple pulp has a pattern and a structure.” “The skin of the apple has pores.” “The leaves have fuzz on them.” “The seeds have coats.”

Thus Korzybski would teach the children the lesson of Non-ALLness.

Now we could continue to examine the apple—with a light microscope, x-ray crystallography, and eventually the electron microscope. We would continue to discover more to say about the apple. However, we can never know ALL there is to know about anything in Nature. We humans have the power to know about Nature, but not to know ALL.

Knowing is without limit, but knowing is not total. Universe is our human model of Nature. Our ‘knowing’ can grow evermore complete. It can grow closer and closer to the ‘Truth’, but it cannot equal the ‘Truth’. It must always be incomplete. We are not ‘GOD’. We cannot see and know ALL.

Jacob Bronowski speaking in 1976 his famous public television series the Ascent of Man said:

“One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the Twentieth Century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable. There is no absolute knowledge and those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility. This is the human condition; and that is what Quantum Physics says. I mean that literally.

“Let us examine an object with the best tool we have today, the electron microscope, where the rays are so concentrated that we no longer know whether to call them waves or particles. Electrons are fired at an object, and they trace its outline like a knife-thrower at a fair. The smallest object that has ever been seen is a single atom of thorium. It is spectacular.

And yet the soft image confirms that, like the knives that graze the girl at the fair, even the hardest electrons do not give a hard outline. The perfect image is still as remote as the distant stars.

“We are here face to face with the crucial paradox of knowledge. Year by year we devise more precise instruments with which to observe nature with more fineness and when we look at the observations, we are discomfited to see that they are still fuzzy, and we feel that we are as uncertain as ever. 

“We seem to be running after a goal which lurches away from us to infinity every time we come within sight of it. 

   

“The paradox of knowledge is not confined to the small, atomic scale; on the contrary, it is as cogent on the scale of man, and even of the stars.

“Let me put it in the context of an astronomical observatory. Karl Freidrich Gauss’ observatory at Gˆttingen was built about 1807. Throughout his life and ever since (the best part of 200 years) astronomical instruments have been improved.

“We look at the position of a star as it was determined then and now, and it seems to us that we are closer and closer to finding it precisely. But when we actually compare our individual observations today, we are astonished and chagrined to find them as scattered within themselves as ever.

“We had hoped that the human errors would disappear, and that we would ourselves have God’s view. But it turns out that the errors cannot be taken out of the observations. And that is true of stars, or atoms, or just looking at somebody’s picture, or hearing the report of somebody’s speech.”

Incomplete and imperfect knowing means that every human belief is an assumption. We can never know for sure. We can never know ALL.

As you sit in your chair reading these words, you assumed the chair would hold you. You did not check under the chair to see if it had broken since its last use. When you ate lunch at your favorite restaurant last week, you assumed the waitress had washed her hands. You assumed the cook did not have hepatitis. If you had assumed otherwise, you would not have walked into that restaurant. You would not have eaten your lunch. We humans assume. Herein lies our uncertainty — that’s all we humans can do. There is nothing wrong in our assuming, we are simply obeying a fundamental ‘law’ of Nature.

We humans have always believed that mistakes are bad. We have always believed that those who make mistakes are bad. They are stupid or careless — lazy or incompetent — just no damn good. If they were good, they wouldn’t make mistakes. Everyone knows that. Decent people don’t make mistakes. This is nearly a universal belief.
 

Mistakes = Badness

Korzybski coined the word space-binding to describe the world of the animal. In the world of the animal, cause and effect can not be distinguished from each other. They are the same — they equal each other — they are identical. If the effect of a mistake is bad, then the cause of a mistake is also bad. Human intelligence is build on animal intelligence. All humans have a space-mind. It is a powerful and often dominant part of our human intelligence. As children the space-mind is primary. The uniquely human mind creates what Korzybski called the world of Time-binding. The time-mind doesn’t even begin to become operational in children until they reach the age of four.

So our human belief that mistakes are ‘bad’ is legitimate. Most of us learn about mistakes as small children. If I stumble while running, I get hurt and that is bad. If an animal is running for its life and stumbles, it dies and that is bad. For space-binders, mistakes are a part of bad space.

In the world of space-binding, a mistake can cost not only the life of the individual space-binder, but also the lives of others in the group — pack, pride, herd, or troop. Therefore the result of a mistake was often bad, and not just for the individual, but for others in the group as well. Since 99.9% of all human history has been adversary — 99.9% of our history dominated by space-binding, it is no wonder that we humans have believed for countless centuries that mistakes are bad.

The belief in the badness of mistakes was further reinforced and given Divine sanction by our human religions. God is good. God is omniscience — ALL knowing. God makes no mistakes. He is perfect. We humans are admonished to be as God-like as possible. If making no mistakes is ‘good’, then obviously making mistakes is ‘bad’. Our religions institutionalized the adversary processing of mistakes — Sin, Hellfire, and Damnation.

Science has also added credence to the ‘badness’ of mistakes. The world view created by the ‘objective science’ of Galileo, Kepler, Hooke, and Newton was a ‘perfect’ Universe. Newton’s System of the Worlds described a precision clockwork perfection that controlled all in Universe. If the Universe is perfect, then humans too must evolve towards perfection.

Dealing with badness

Since mistakes are bad, when one occurs, we investigate to determine who is at fault. Who made the mistake? Once that is determined, we blame those responsible. Following blame, we are ready to punish. More pain and suffering has been inflicted on humankind for making mistakes than for any other cause. This should not surprise us.

Punishment is the proper way to deal with ‘badness’. And,if we are anything, we are fair. So when we are the one who made the mistake, we self-punish. Self-punishment is called “guilt”. Humans are the only class of living systems that feels guilty. The only class of living systems that teaches their pets to feel guilty. 

MISTAKES = Badness
INVESTIGATE
BLAME
PUNISH —> self punish
                         “Guilt”
 

Korzybski’s Error of Identity

When humans rely only on their spacial intelligence, they see cause as being identical to effect. They are in essence time-blind, and so they confuse cause with effect.

Korzybski explained that when humans see things as being identical that are not identical, they are making an identification that is false to facts. Korzybski called this the Error of Identity.

When we confuse cause with effect, we are making the error of identity. Today most humans make this error. We assume without analysis that cause and effect are the same — that they are equal — that they are identical. If the effect of a mistake is bad then the cause of that mistake must also be bad.

We don’t analyze the event for sequence. We don’t use our time-binding power to understand. And so,we act without hesitation, without doubt on our belief. We act in certainty. And, certainty as explained earlier by Korzybski, Heisenberg, Eddington and Bronowski is not possible, because knowing is uncertain.

Certainty

We humans always act without all the information. We humans are always assuming. If we are unaware that we are assuming, then we are ignorant of our ignorance. Certainty means that we don’t know that we don’t know. We cannot seek knowing when we believe our ignorance is knowing. Ignorance of ignorance is leveraged ignorance — ignorance masquerading as knowledge. Ignorance of ignorance is certainty.

When we are certain, we are surprised and disheartened by our mistakes. This attitude toward human error is the most damaging of human ignorances. We humans make mistakes because, we make all our decisions without ALL the information. This is a major point that all humans must understand. The only cause of mistakes is ignorance.

We humans must become aware of our ignorance. When we humans have knowledge of our ignorance, we can learn from our mistakes and protect ourselves in the future. When an individual knows he doesn’t know, he is wise. Wisdom is the opposite of certainty. The knowledge of our ignorance is wisdom.

To error is the human condition

This truth, whether we call it the Principle of Non-Allness, the Principle of Uncertainty, the Principle of Indeterminacy, or the Principle of Tolerance, leads us to the conclusion that to error is human, and there is no need too ask forgiveness. All mistakes are innocent.

Universe is not certain — it is not structured as we humans have believed for countless centuries. Religion and the objective scientists were wrong. The physics of relativity and quantum mechanics describe a Universe in which things are not and cannot be perfect. A Universe in which, we humans are constrained to make all our choices without ALL the information. Mistakes are simply holes or gaps in our knowing — lapses in our understanding.

I am often asked, “But, what if I knew better?” If I knew better and then make a mistake. Isn’t that the result of stupidity. If I knew better, but still made an error, then surely that is my fault and not the result of ignorance.

What if I knew better?

I recall a young women I once treated. She had opened her hotel room door to a man claiming to be a maintenance worker, who then attacked and raped her. The attacker has stolen a hotel uniform from a laundry hamper and so seemed legitimate. However, something about his appearance disturbed her, but on second thought, she assumed she was just being silly and so unlocked her door. When I saw her several months later she was still struggling with guilt.

“Doctor, it was my own fault. I was so stupid. I shouldn’t have opened the door. I knew something was wrong. I was so stupid. I knew better, but I opened the door anyway.”

I responded, “You weren’t stupid. You were only ignorant.”

She replied, “No, Dr. Wilken, I knew better, I should never have opened the door, I was just so stupid.”

“NO!”, I told her, “You weren’t stupid, you were only ignorant and I can prove it with one simple question. She looked deep into my eyes desperate to know what I meant.

I asked: “If you had known that the man behind the door intended to rape you, would you have opened it?”

“No, of course not.”

No of course not. None of us would make a mistake if we knew we were about to make a mistake. Even when we humans repeat our mistakes, it is because we assume the mistake will not happen this time. We are ignorant of what will happen this time. As I have stated, the only cause of human error — the only cause of human mistakes is ignorance.

Scientists as well as non-scientists who seek to know must therefore embrace humility when we stand before the totality of Nature.

The Principle of Non-Allness is a fundamental law of Nature. And the first corollary to the Principle of Non-Allness is what I call the Principle of Innocence.

Principle of Innocence

All actions occur in ignorance. All human actions and all human choices are made without all the information. We are always acting and choosing without ALL the information. What we don’t know we must ignore and what we ignore may hurt us. Therefore all errors and and all mistakes are made in innocence.

Good news

I don’t mean that mistakes are good things or that getting hurt is a good thing. I mean that since the cause of mistakes is ignorance and the proper response to ignorance is education, then we can learn from our mistakes.

We can acknowledge the mistakes of history and those that are occurring in our present world and work to correct them. This is good news. It will make it infinitely easier to build a better world.

When we understand the truth of “to error is human”, we can then begin to process our mistakes in a synergic manner. The human who understands that mistakes are a natural part of life does not investigate the mistakes like a detective, he analyzes the mistake as a scientist. He does not blame when a mistake occurs, he seeks to learn from the mistake and to learn he must accept responsibility and seek responsibility in others for their mistakes. Once he knows who is responsible for the mistake he educates.

Education is the proper response to ignorance. Education and learning is the synergic alternative to adversary punishment and guilt. However there is something in guilt worth keeping. It is certainly not the badness, it is certainly not the blame, and of course it is not the punishment.

Guilt also contains regret and this is worth keeping. When a mistake happens there is always regret. In the adversary world where there is blame and punishment of course I might regret being blamed and punished. I also might regret being considered bad by those who are blaming and punishing me. But there is almost always another component of regret. When I make a mistake that hurts someone else, I regret that as well. This is the regret worth keeping.

And, this is often why we humans tend to hang onto our guilt feelings when we make a mistake. We regret injuring others. We can solve this dilemma by moving regret over into the synergic processing of mistakes, where it is called restitution. Restitution means to restore, to repair the damage caused by the ignorance of our behavior.

The synergist does not feel guilty when he makes a mistake, but he is sorry if his ignorance injured other. As a synergist, he will freely try to repair things. He will freely offer restitution.  

Adversary	Synergic
MISTAKES = Badness	MISTAKES = Ignorance
INVESTIGATE	ANALYZE
ACCUSE & BLAME	DETERMINE RESPONSIBILITY
PUNISH —> self-punish	EDUCATE —> self-educate
“Guilt”	“Learn”
regret->	RESTITUTION

We humans have a choice as to how to deal with mistakes. If we process our mistakes adversarily we get pain and no learning. If we process our mistakes synergically, we get learning and no pain.
In fact, you cannot learn when you adversarily process mistakes. We humans cannot tolerate the pain of blame, punishment, and guilt. We will deny that we make a mistake. We will project the blame for the mistake onto others. “I didn’t do it.” — “It wasn’t my fault.” — “And, if it isn’t my fault, why should I have to learn anything.”

In fact, if I am to learn from a mistake, I must first admit it was my fault. This is the real force behind what I call the “anti-learning barrier”. If I am to learn from my mistake I am trapped into accepting responsibility for my error. If I am adversarily processing the mistake, I cannot accept responsibility without feeling guilty. To avoid guilt I must deny responsibility. And if I wasn’t responsible then I have nothing to learn.

The “anti-learning barrier”

This barrier became evident to me by another one of my patients. I once had the occasion to treat a young woman in the early stages of her fifth pregnancy. She informed me she had had four abortions previously and was pregnant and planning to abort this pregnancy as well. I thought to myself, why can’t she learn to use birth control?

If we examine her situation in light of our new understanding, we see that for her to use birth control, she would have to admit that it is her responsibility to prevent unwanted pregnancies. That admission would lead her to the further conclusion that she was then also responsible for her previous unwanted pregnancies and their abortions.

This young woman was a Catholic and to admit responsibility for unwanted pregnancies and abortions were far too painful for her. She opted to deny any responsibility. “My boy friend got me drunk, and made me pregnant. It wasn’t my fault, so I don’t need to take birth control. Besides using birth control is a sin, I would never do that.”

The human brain is the most powerfully precise computer in the Universe. If we program it to believe mistakes are bad, it will function to prove it does not make mistakes. The human brain rebels at the idea that mistakes are bad. It will defend itself in any way possible, it will defend itself by lying. When I am accused of badness, I must lie to protect myself — to protect myself from blame and punishment — to protect myself from guilt. Confronted with an adversary reality that we live with today, it is rational to lie. Lying leads to distrust — “I assume you are my enemy”. Thus, the processing of mistakes as bad always leads to conflict and adversary behavior.

If on the other hand, I process my mistakes in a more scientific manner — as simply ignorant — choices made without all the information, then I must tell the truth to protect myself — to protect myself from repeating the mistake — to protect myself and others from further injury — to protect myself from paying unnecessary restitution.

Telling the truth leads to trust — “I assume you are my friend”. Processing mistakes as ignorance leads to co-Operation and synergic behavior.

Adversary	Synergic
MISTAKES = Badness	MISTAKES = Ignorance
INVESTIGATE	ANALYZE
ACCUSE & BLAME	DETERMINE RESPONSIBILITY
PUNISH —> self-punish	EDUCATE —> self-educate
“Guilt”	“Learn”
regret->	RESTITUTION
I must lie to protect myself.	I must tell the truth to protect myself.
I assume you are my enemy.	I assume you are my friend.
Distrust	Trust
Conflict	Co-Operation

Scientists and all humans who seek to know must embrace humility when they stand before the totality of Nature. The principle of Non-Allness is a fundamental law of nature.

The fact that all actions occur in ignorance is a fundamental ‘knowing’ derived from the Principle of Non-Allness.

And the first corollary of that principle — the Principle of Innocence is an even more important extension of our human ‘knowing’. If we understand that all errors are committed in innocence, then how we treat those who err will change forever.

What about Bin Laden ?

How could the attack on the World Trade Towers have resulted from ignorance. How could those behind the murder of 3000+ thousand innocents themselves be innocent?

What don’t they know?

They don’t know that “As you sow, so shall you reap”. They don’t know that:

Adversary action usually provokes adversary reaction ending in an adversary resultant or loss.

They don’t know how powerful the United States really is. They have forgotten the lessons learned by Japan and Germany by the end of World War II. They to have wakened the sleeping Giant. Their acts will not make the world better and safer for themselves or for those they claim to represent. They don’t know that the end never justifies the means. In fact, the means always end up becoming the ends.

They don’t know that there is no heaven for murderers. They don’t know that an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, ends up with no winners only losers in a modern world with high technology and knowledge.

They don’t know that:

Progress + Warfare = Human Extinction 

We humans are Time-binders, we have the power to create knowledge without limit. When knowledge is incorporated into matter-energy, it becomes a tool. As Andrew J. Galambos explained:

“Humans develop evermore powerful knowledge and therefore evermore powerful tools. When tools are used to harm other humans they are called weapons. Since human knowledge can grow without limit then tools themselves can be made without limit. And limitless tools can will produce limitless weapons.”

And, limitless weapons (progress) combined with leveraged adversity (warfare) must by all definitions and understanding of science produce human extinction.

All of today’s law enforcement agencies use adversary processing in an attempt to protect the public safety. Unfortunately, adversary processing results only in pain and no learning. The war on crime has been lost and always will be lost. Adversary behavior cannot be stopped with adversary behavior. The means always become the ends. The abolition of crime will require the abolition of punishment.

Only then can we move towards a world where, love, wisdom and compassion will replace hate, ignorance and judgment. Only then can we move beyond crime and punishment.

---

Read Timothy Wilken’s A Limit to Knowing.

Read Timothy Wilken’s Protecting Humanity.

The Life-Long Self-Learning Movement

Bill Ellis

In the past three decades, there has been a growing movement to reinvent the way citizens learn and how young people are introduced into society. Homeschooling, charter schools, cyberschools, unschooling, life-long learning, Waldorf schools, and Sudbury schools are just a few of the elements of this movement. The movement has been growing exponentially each decade since 1980. It has become a challenge to the traditional school/teach/educate system. Life-long learning has been promoted by management guru Peter Drucker in “Post Capitalist Society” on one end of the spectrum and, on the other end, by Elise Boulding in “Building Global Civic Culture,” and by many scholars in between. The bottom line in this movement is to provide the freedom, opportunity and resources for self-learners of all ages, with their families and in community, to choose to learn what they want, when they want and how they want — to self-learn.

RECOGNITION

In spite of the rapid growth of this movement, it has drawn little positive attention from governments. Professional educators and their unions have shown concern that the proliferation of homeschooling will draw funds away from the public school system. A few public school systems have accepted the challenge and established special programs to provide would-be homeschoolers and other self-learners more autonomy within the public school system. Some have established parent-teacher programs that depend on parental involvement and give parents greater autonomy in the learning process. But, as parents are increasingly recognizing that personal liberty and private protection from control by majority rule applies to their children’s learning, none of the existing systems have completely incorporated that concept. Nor do they fully meet the needs of our information society which requires a life-long learning system to provide for each individual’s continual learning processes, as detailed in the work of writers and thinkers from John Holt and Alfie Kohn to Daniel Pink and Howard Gardner, among so many others. Foundations, likewise, have been slow to rise to the challenge and opportunity that is unfolding. The millions of dollars for public schools, coming from all levels of government, is followed by millions more coming from private foundations. But little, if any, of this private funding is available for the many non-public school experiments being undertaken. A search of the philanthropy databases with words like “democratic shools,” “homeschooling,” or “deschooling” comes up with no program in any foundation. Whereas a search under “schools” or “education” comes up with many thousands. Individual appeals to hundreds of foundations by “homeschool support groups,” “learning co-ops” and other forms of nonschool learning communities are regularly returned with the words “this proposal does not fit into our current program of support.”

MOTIVATION

Motivations for moving toward self-learning and abandonment of traditional public schooling are many. Perhaps the most prevalent is parental concern about the loss of control of the learning of young children. Many families want to take direct responsibility for their curriculum, approach to learning, and the principles and values upon which these are based. Some parents believe that the public school system instills values which run contrary to those of their family. Some are explicitly guided by their religious beliefs to direct the education of their children. Others have had disturbing experiences with schoolyard bullies, unfeeling teachers, or misdirected bureaucracies. A few hold that government support is inherently controlling, and that their tax dollars are binding families to a failing system. Self-learners are also influenced by education critics, philosophers and religious leaders. Some, like Ivan Illich, believe our current life, including school, is based on the principle of work now for future rewards. They urge that schooling, and life, be convivial and vernacular. That is, that learning and work should be carried out in joyful collaboration with family, friends and neighbors. And that it should be embedded in the local culture, ecology, and friendships. With Paulo Friere, some see schools as perpetuating the socioeconomic rich/poor status quo and preventing the natural social evolution that would occur if future citizens were given more freedom to self-learn in their own families, communities, and nature. Following John Holt and others, many believe that every brain, that is every student, is unique and no two are prepared to learn the same thing at the same time in the same way. They believe that schooling is not an efficient way to learn, nor for future citizens to be introduced into society. Most great philosophical traditions, including those embodied in Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo and Krishnamurti, recognize a spiritual component to learning, teaching that knowledge is more than a way to get a job or score well on a standardized test; that it is the purpose for living, it is being human. Rabindrnath Tagore started his learning community, Santiniketan, to transform the human mindset from self-interest, competition and materialism to mutual aid, cooperation, and the love of learning. Growing out of a variety of personal, philosophical, educational, or religious motivations, the life-long self-learning movement continues to expand.

PROOFS OF EFFECTIVENESS

It is impossible to measure the success of self-learning with tests, grades, and scores. Perhaps the most interesting successes are found among those learners who do not flourish in a traditional setting with standard measurements of success. These individuals are free to blossom in their own ways and do — anecdotal evidence abounds about happy and successful learners who have traveled a nontraditional path to their own personal success. Self-learners are equally honored among our greatest leaders. Thomas Edison, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, the Wright Brothers, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and Margaret Mead are only a few of those who have learned without school. The newspapers are filled with stories of less well-known successes. Ryan Abradi, of Maine, showed an interest in numbers at an early age, so his parents let him stay home and self-learn; by age 10 he was working his way through second-year college calculus. Caitlin Stern of Haines, Alaska, stayed out of school and became a recognized expert by studying bald eagles in the wild. Jedediah Purdy, a self-learner from West Virginia, graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University; in 1996 he was selected as a Truman Scholar and as West Virginia’s nominee for the Rhodes Scholarship. He then went on to Yale Law School and, in the meantime, wrote a best selling book. The growth rate of self-learning is a partial measure of its success. From a few scattered homeschoolers in 1980, perhaps 20,000, the number has grown, according to Newsweek Magazine, to over 200,000 in 1990, and into a broad integrated network of an estimated 2,000,000 today. Considerable research has shown that students learn much more easily when they self-learn. As long ago as 1930, the “8 Year Study” of 30 special schools demonstrated that: “The most effective schools used a different approach to learning. Instead of organizing learning by subjects, they organized it around themes of significance to their students.” There seemed to be an inverse relationship between success in college and formalized education as opposed to student selected learning. A recent Cornell University study confirmed this and showed that schooled children become “peer dependent” while those who learned with their parents have more self-confidence, optimism, and courage to explore. A Moore Foundation study of children of parents who had been arrested for truancy found that their homeschooled children ranked 30 percent higher on standard tests than the average classroom child. Providing possible insight into the reasons behind these successes, a UCLA project showed that the average schooled student receives 7 minutes of personal attention a day but the self-learner receives from 100 to 300 minutes of attention daily. Following this, a Smithsonian Report on genius concluded that high achievement was a result of time with responsive parents, little time with peers, and considerable time for free exploration. Standardized tests reflect self-learner success as well. Time Magazine reported that “the average home schooler’s SAT score is 1100, 80 points higher than the average score for the general population.” Dr. Lawrence M. Rudner, conducted a study in 1998 that included 20,760 students in 11,930 families. He found that in every subject and at every grade level (K-12), homeschool students scored significantly higher than their public and private school counterparts. Some 25 percent of all homeschool students at that time were enrolled at a grade level or more beyond that indicated by their age. According to the study, the average eighth-grade homeschooler was performing four grade levels above the national average. The average ACT score was 21 out of a possible 36 for public schooled children. It averaged 23 for self-learners. This qualifies the average college-bound self-learner for the most prestigious universities.

VISION

This movement is not only addressing the why, how, when and what all citizens learn, but is also rebuilding the foundation for the society in which we all live. How we learn determines the kind of society we build. Authoritarian, hierarchal, undemocratic schools prepare future citizens for an authoritarian, hierarchal, undemocratic society. A life-long learning system based in family, community, society and nature could be the foundation for new democracies of freedom, equity and justice. The movement continues to promote the concepts of life-long self-learning, in all its complexities, to a wider audience, to address critics on the issues of accountability and credibility, and to promote support to help those working to bring their ideals to fruition.

Resources and Further Reading at: Learning Communities Yahoo Group and the Creating Learning Communities website.

Comments, or suggestions to:  Bill Ellis or Nance Confer

Reposted from The New Farm.

Fertile Minds

Dan Sullivan

Welcome to MSU’s Student Organic Farm

Posted August 2, 2004: “Out here on the farm, the physical changes you can see being made—for me, that was something that I needed,” says Michigan State University environmental studies major Michael Rodriguez as he takes a break from turning compost at the Student Organic Farm in East Lansing.

Teacher and student, plant and soil science professor John Biembaum brings his research and his expertise to the MSU student farm.

Rodriguez was initially enrolled in the school of packaging engineering but switched majors to environmental studies after “some of the things I was learning outside of school were conflicting with what I was learning [inside]Ömostly revolving around consumerism,” he says. “I got involved in environmental activism on campus.”

While the campus environmental group “got things done,” Rodriguez says, “I discovered, after a year, that I was getting burnt out and I started to focus more on my individual actions.”

Rodriguez took a summer job at the 10-acre Student Organic Farm, helping to install the first of four high tunnels. That’s where he met John Biernbaum, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences and faculty advisor to the farm.

“This is also a type of activism, only it’s more tangible,” says Rodriguez. “You are producing something and showing people that things can be done. This is where I spend most of my time outside of school.”

Experiential learning

Part of the support for the Student Organic Farm comes from Biernbaum’s research into low-input high-tunnel season extension. Constructed at a cost of about $2,500 to $3,000 each, three 20′ x 96′ and one 30′ x 96′ unheated high tunnels–a combination of single-layer poly and double-layer inflated walls–stand side by side, opening up not only a research funding source but a whole new world of possibilities for these student organic farmers. More high tunnels are planned, depending on support for Biernbaum’s research.

Scott Smith, Fisheries and Wildlife undergrad, checks early season progress in one of the farm’s four high tunnels. The greenhouses allow for 48 weeks of growing even in Michigan’s cold climate. Photo by: Lynn Rhodes

The high tunnels–along with two heated greenhouses at the nearby MSU horticulture farm–help make possible a 48-week CSA, which creates a revenue stream and offers students the chance to pick up marketing as well as new agriculture skills.

“It helps students learn about farming,” Biernbaum says. “They’re not here in the summertime—September 3 is the first week of classes.” That’s also when planting occurs, he says. “Plants are harvested right before they go home for Thanksgiving, so they get to bring salad greens home to mom and dad.”

Just 6 square feet of hoop house space produces a pound of the cut-and-come-again mixed greens every two to four weeks, Biernbaum says, which fetch anywhere from $4 to $8 depending on the season. Three or four crops annually of organic tomatoes are also grown under the structure, producing about 1 to 2 pounds per square foot each harvest.

Other crops produced inside the high tunnels and out in the field include kohlrabi, chard, tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes, onions, squash, carrots, beets, and a variety of herbs and flowers.

Parsley is just one of the fresh herbs that comes standard with every CSA membership.

“You can actually have students sow during the school year; that’s one of the steps they need to make that connection to farming.

Season-extension guru Eliot Coleman is an enthusiastic supporter and has visited MSU’s Student Organic Farm.

“Eliot didn’t know what to think when he got here and there were 15 or 16 students waiting to meet him—it was 20 degrees outside,” Biernbaum (“John” to his students) says. “I think it was really good for him to see what he’s been working on being widely appreciated by the students and applied here.”

Biernbaum has also traveled to Pennsylvania to learn from low-input greenhouse guru Steve Moore and has implemented some of the master’s techniques, such as internal row covers. “I don’t know of any university where more pertinent and farmer-useful information on high tunnels is being done,” Moore says of Biernbaum’s research.

Besides year-round food production, the farm’s curriculum includes soil health; compost management; insect, disease and weed management; and sound whole-farm management techniques such as cover cropping, crop rotation, and transplant and seed-media production. Plans are under way to bring hogs on board in order to close the nutrient cycle and to further demonstrate a successful, healthy and humane integrated system.

Embracing community

Biernbaum says one of the farm’s goals is to educate visitors so that they go away not asking the question “Why is organic food so expensive?” but rather begin wondering “Why is conventional food so cheap?”

The farm started in 2000 when agriculture student Seth Murray, who was doing independent study with Biernbaum, approached his professor with the question: “Other schools have organic farms; why can’t we?” Biernbaum encouraged Murray to voice his request to top administrators.

“It’s much more effective for a student to say ‘You know what? I’m not getting what I want at this land-grant university’” than for a faculty member to make such a plea, says environmental studies professor Laurie Thorp, Ph.D., who heads up MSU’s Residential Initiative on the Study of the Environment (RISE) program and has several students under her tutelage plugged into the Student Organic Farm. (Murray is now pursuing a Ph.D. at Cornell University.)

“A lot of people would come and go, and that was a real problem for us,” says Lynn Rhodes, who helped Murray draft the original letter to administrators and who entered the horticulture department as a freshman when he was a senior.

In on the ground floor of the student farm, Rhodes, who graduated in May, has seen the project through many growing pains. A real breakthrough, she says, was the acquisition of a dedicated workforce when the farm figured out a way to pay student workers. Volunteers are just hard to come by consistently, she says. The paid positions also help carry the farm through the summer months.

MSU agricultural communications major Katie Olender gets ready for CSA customer pickup day at the Student Organic Farm in East Lansing.

Three 16 week CSA cycles “match up perfectly with our semesters,” Rhodes says. Each 16-week share costs $350, and the farm just boosted its membership from 25 to 50 subscribers—designed for a family of four—per cycle (there’s a longer waiting list, but the consensus was to grow cautiously in order to maintain high standards).

“The first week of distribution is the first semester of the year,” Rhodes says. “With us having the hoophouses and John doing his research and experimenting with winter greens, we get to use that with our CSA.”

While the ideal has always been to have a lot of undergraduate subscribers, lack of adequate cooking facilities in dormitories has dictated that most of the farm’s CSA customers are grad students, professors, and other university staff. (A planned community dormitory for students in the RISE program may help change that.)

	One of the farm’s goals is to educate visitors so that they go away not asking the question “Why is organic food so expensive?” but rather begin wondering “Why is conventional food so cheap?”

Easy going Rhodes is typical of these young farmers, much more eager to lead by example than to point out any shortcomings in the agriculture department. “I like to be more subtle in my approach, show folks what works and what’s the right thing to do. If you can subtly creep into someone’s life and get them to see what’s going onÖIt’s just a better approach.”

She does offer that the whole system model of the Student Organic Farm makes possible a more meaningful learning experience. “How can you really get to know a plant by just cutting off a twig and setting it on the table? It’s too disconnected and fragmented. [The Student Organic Farm] is a chance to put into practice things that you’re hearing about, learning about, reading about, and writing about. Horticulture is a tough subject if you’re not connecting it to something real and tangible.”

And, as Rhodes—who earned 3 independent study credits for walking the farm through organic certification—has learned firsthand, farming can be tough, too.

“It’s been really exciting for me to have started this. If I was going to start my own farm, I now know what questions you have to ask. What decisions do you have to make? What are you going to grow, and who are you going to sell to? How long is the growing season? Just the kind of questions you are going to have to ask if you are going to start a farm…And if I go work on a farm that wants to get certified, I’ve been through that process.”

In that spirit of the whole, these farmers—students and teachers alike—make an extra effort to include the entire campus population. “It’s open to all majors,” says Rhodes. Indeed, the departments of food science, resource development, entomology, horticulture, and environmental studies have all benefited from what the Student Organic Farm has to offer, but the opportunities go beyond academics. “Everyone eats,” Rhodes observes, “and in my opinion everyone should have the opportunity to be involved in eating locally.”

“One of the things I really like out here is that there are so many disciplines interested in taking sustainable agriculture in a lot of different directions,” says Ashley Sprouse, an alternative education major whose been instrumental in outreach to low-income students both at the on-campus children’s garden and at their Lansing-area elementary school.

Deep ecology

The Student Organic Farm welcomes a group of visiting environmental journalists with a delicious organic meal.

The Student Organic Farm runs around the core values of “diversity, trust, love, curiosity, awareness, and oneness” with the mission “to cultivate a sustainable, community supported farm.”

Heather VanWormer is an anthropologist who recently obtained her Ph.D. at MSU. Over the course of her studies, Van Wormer helped faculty advisor Laura Delind, Ph.D., with her pioneering work with CSAs in a four-state area including Michigan. New Farm caught up with Van Wormer on CSA pickup day at the Student Organic Farm. What does she make of the success of this student-run farm and the burgeoning CSA movement in general?

“It’s a criticism of our food system and people not eating locally—local species, local season and local communityÖIt’s a way to get reconnected to the local food system instead of getting bananas from ChileÖAnd it tastes better.”

For these young students considering farming as a vocation, Van Wormer says, the CSA model offers a way for them to see that there’s a community willing to back them up. “For farmers, it’s a way for somebody to share the risk. If it hails, nobody gets any spinach. If there’s a squash boom, everyone benefits.”

The challenge for any CSA, Van Wormer says, is to make that community connection.

“I think this CSA is already connected through public education, the horticulture department, the children’s garden—that outreach is already hereÖIt’s a great learning environment; they don’t have to build it from scratch.”

While it’s true that the Student Organic Farm is not fully self-funded, neither is any other academic department on campus. “It’s okay to make mistakes here and not have my livelihood on the line,” observes Rhodes. “I can gain the experience and have the guidanceÖ.I can have ideas, go through the process and say ‘What do you think about this?’ and not be ruined or lose my land because of a bad choice.”

	“It’s been really exciting for me to have started this. If I was going to start my own farm, I now know what questions you have to ask. What decisions do you have to make? What are you going to grow, and who are you going to sell to? How long is the growing season? Just the kind of questions you are going to have to ask if you are going to start a farm…”

But Biernbaum’s ultimate goal is financial solvency, not because it is required by administrators (it’s not) but simply to show these young farmers, and the rest of the world, that this is a workable model.

“Sustainability can be profitable,” he says. “Our hope is demonstrating that it’s trueÖWe’ve got to have the data.”

The idea is not to go back in time, Biernbaum says, but to go forward with those ideas of value that have been left behind. “Sustainability is about being responsible to those who come forward. But the [The Iroquois Confederacy] concept of ‘seven generations’ is not just seven generations forward, but seven generations back. And it doesn’t mean you have to do what they did, but consider what choices they made and what it means. We have to understand their stories.”

“And there’s a word for that,” adds Thorp. “It’s called ‘Wisdom.’”

“Here in this academic system, we have minds out of control,” offers Biernbaum. “They are overactiveÖThe mind, when it works alone, is a dangerous thing. It’s like the adolescent who becomes fixated on one thing and that’s all they can seeÖ”

“How else could we allow things like war to happen? How else could we allow things like GMOs? We are kind of in the adolescent stage and kind of coming out of it. Hopefully we can put the mind in its placeÖ”

“We’re coming into this mature stage of putting things back together ÖFarming connects to health by turning off the mind. Why do we need gardens in schools? We need to turn off the mind. You get people out connected with nature and the rest takes care of itself.”

Biernbaum concedes that of a dozen students, perhaps only three or four will make successful farmers. He also understands that there are myriad other lessons to be learned here, such as an appreciating for the real value of food and the meaning of community.

Teacher as Student

MSU’s student farm pays student workers and is in the process of developing an internship program. Students come from a variety of disciplines. Pictured, fisheries and wildlife student Scott “Scooter” Smith applies compost.

Relatively alone in an agriculture school that largely embraces former secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz’s pronouncement of “get big or get out” (with all its implications of high inputs and subsidies), Biernbaum has learned over time to be sensitive to the fact that, when he talks about his own vision of low inputs and local economies of scale, he may inadvertently be offending someone.

“I’ve watched students get madder and madder and madder,” he says, finally realizing that “by questioning [conventional agriculture], I was basically saying that their parents and their grandparents were stupid.”

But, like any good mentor, Biernbaum realizes that learning is a lifelong process.

“If we just come out here and do what we think is rightÖwe don’t have to be evangelists.

“The students help out a lot with that.”

©2004 The Rodale Institute^Æ