A community to thrive
The transformational power of rising together with children.
Learning can be the gateway to a society where we can all live in accordance with nature. Community-embedded learning enables children and adults to reach their full potential and agency. It's a means to transform our societies fundamentally.
I The Magic
It's still a wonder how life unfolds. A flower starting to blossom, the first breath of a child, a bird picking his way through the shell of his egg—there's a magic in all of this that no scientific explanation can capture.
It's a magic. But not among us humans.
All the dynamics, activities, and patterns that bring life forth happen in an astonishing perfection, shaped and approved by nature for billions of years. But we humans need to control, define, and reshape every single step, forcing it into our technological structures, where one thing surely doesn't have its place: magic. We lose something fundamental by this, something we only become aware of through small hints, as we do not have something to compare with, a kind of natural state without human inventions. We can't recognize it. But the loss is there.
II Living from the Inside
If left alone, a child undergoes tremendous development in the first years of life, from commanding gravitation by evolving into an upright gait to developing astonishing communication skills and using one of the most complex social inventions: language. His learning covers all aspects of life, the private and personal as well as the social ones. And he does this all by himself, guided by an inward stimulus, like all living beings on earth.
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But as a society, we don't trust. Instead of supporting the inward drive, we think the baby should and ought to do better, to do it differently. That's why we invented institutions like kindergartens and schools.
But it's a loss for everyone: the child, the family, and the society at large. The child not only loses his intrinsic motivation, he loses access to himself, to the potential that wants to be realized in his life. The family loses power. A family based on self leadership and the agency of everyone is something totally different compared to a family where everyone gains motivation and self-worth from outside. Society loses creativity, willpower, agency: all those things we need to adapt to new realities.
III The four pillars of learning and growing.
The inward drive is only an essential part of growing. For it to fully realize, four different qualities must be present so that learning can happen at its best for a child as well as for an adult: play, technique, culture, and bonding.
Play
Although we adults often forget it, play is an essential part of our lives, a dimension of its own rights where we allow ourselves to be alive, present, and act and react joyfully to everything around us. It is crucial for inner development. It enables us to experiment and move freely. It offers the opportunity to embody and integrate various experiences and exists solely for the simple pleasure of being ourselves. By its very nature, play has no direction or goal; it is not a means to an end.
Technique
In contrast to play, technique is a place to learn structures, methods, and tools, a place to form a practice, whether it be a craft, a sport, or an instrument. It is as essential as play as it offers everything a person needs to maintain his life, stand on his own, and find meaning and self-worth. And it only works in close connection with play.
Culture
It is the social dimension of learning, from a group culture to society at large: the richness of reels and cultural expressions, the world of language, art, music, and everything we create among ourselves with the techniques we develop. We are social creatures, and how we conduct our lives together tremendously affects the quality of our lives.
Bonding
It seems like a paradox: A child realizes its autonomy and self-sufficiency only when it is properly bonded, when it experiences being held, loved, and cared about, and has a place to come back to, to relax, and to regenerate. If a person experiences this through his childhood, it will be able, as an adult, is able to bond with himself and later with the universe as the one infinite intelligence we are all embedded in.
All these aspects (play, technique, society, bonding) provide different relationships and supports and cover different aspects of life. They need different structures, especially different qualities of space: a workshop needs to be built differently than a place where we can all play together or where we can celebrate our belonging and our different cultures.
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IV The concept of community-embedded learning
Play, technique, culture, bonding: every kind of learning must provide these elements. To realize our full human potential and create a society where we can live in accordance with nature, we have to put those elements in a totally different relationship to each other and inside society than we currently do in our current systems. That's what the concept of community-embedded learning aims for.
Community-embedded learning gives everyone the space to follow their own path and simultaneously provides everything needed by fully utilizing a community's richness.
It is based on four central elements:
Self-directed learning from the beginning. Every individual follows their own learning path, defined by their inner self and not interfered with by others. This applies equally to children and adults.
Spaces that provide certain opportunities to learn, play, and experiment at a high quality (more about this in a few sentences).
A network of skilled adults who share their craft with everyone who wants to learn it.
A new role for adults, whether they are parents or not: Raising children is always a co-learning and co-growing experience. The inner freedom, stability, and agency a child can achieve are defined by the inner freedom and clarity of the adults surrounding that child.
V Building a new form of community
Community-embedded learning aims to establish a new form of community that is resilient, self-sufficient, and connected. It can blossom fully only when the ecological and economic perspectives are fully integrated.
Let us explore what community-embedded learning looks like. Different circles need to be in place for this:
The learning network consists of two different elements: a) places dedicated to playing and learning together and b) a network of skilled individuals who are willing and able to share their experiences with children and adolescents. These places include rooms for movement, creation, art, workshops, and studios for various crafts, as well as libraries and study rooms. The skilled individuals can be anyone from a mother who regularly cooks for the community at the communal center to architects, musicians, and woodworkers. They are there to share their experiences and crafts with those who want to delve deeper into a specific area technique.
The economic circle brings together different businesses and local enterprises into a local circle that supports each other and is linked to others outside the community to enrich and foster each other. This circle creates its own businesses to support and integrate not only children but also people who, in our current system, don't find a place to work and care for themselves.
The ecological circle has different dimensions: a) the regeneration of nature by rebuilding the city and neighborhood, b) a network of urban gardens, private gardens, and local farms so that the community can grow its own food and children have access to this dimension of life.
The housing circle that offers housing for everyone, including the so-called social housing.
The cultural circle offers places and times for all participants and community members to follow and celebrate their own culture, allowing the community to experience the richness of human life.
VI The ultimate goal: the agency of everyone.
Community-embedded learning creates a community within an existing society, neighborhood, and community. It is neither built on exclusion nor does it foster it by creating an exclusive community. It is rooted in a sense of belonging that invites the entire society, confronting the difficult aspects of our current reality and using them as a means to thrive and grow together. That is the true transformation of power that community-embedded learning offers: it enables everyone to gain their agency and power to transform society. It creates humans that stay on their own feet and are guided by themselves.
We need all our power and our ability to step back from the current system that we created to build a new one based on different paradigms, one that overcomes the millennia-old separation of man and nature.
Learning is the gateway to establishing this new society, helping us adapt to the unknown, preparing us for the upheavals we already face, and preparing us for the societal transitions we will have to endure.