As I mentioned in an earlier post, some of my college reading acquainted me with utopian anarchists. It’s funny to think about the popular image of an anarchist (and of course, at this point, some people who claim the moniker do so because they like this caricature) —the crazy, shifty-eyed guy in black hauling a live bomb around to toss at random—because it’s so far from the picture I ended up with after my reading. This caricature was designed for political purposes, like many are, and was conjured by the movement’s enemies.

 

As one would expect, the anarchist movement has historically embraced such a hodgepodge of unconventional thinkers that it would be difficult to characterize it with any generalities. But I can say that it includes gentle, earnest, well-intentioned utopians. I imagine that some of these individuals probably suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and utopia-envisioning represented a constructive activity in which to funnel this syndrome (art is another one, as is bookkeeping). They would plan their ideal communities down to the furniture in each room of each house, each little detail representing their desire for harmony in people’s individual lives and their communities.

 

It is one of life’s great ironies that utopians, who, generally speaking, have mankind’s best good at heart, both individually and in the collective sense, can end up being dictators, and that utopias, which start out with such high, idealistic hopes, can devolve into oppressive environments, ruled by social mandates that, although unwritten, can nevertheless be enforced without mercy or creative thought.

 

It’s the dratted ego, in my opinion, that gets in the way. The ego appropriates ideals and turns them into fiats, finds the absence of structure frightening and therefore seeks to impose a different type of control, and institutes a new hierarchy based on different criteria than the old one but which serves the same counterproductive purpose. Until we manage to get our egos in balance with our true selves, I am afraid that no system will compensate for that lack, and the best-laid plans will warp and twist along the way.

 

But I don’t think that’s any reason not to imagine the world we’d like to live in—without any constraints or concerns about practicality in terms of getting there from here. I believe that if we let our imaginations run free along these lines, and we savor these ideas, they’ll find a way to manifest themselves; and if we take small steps in realizing our ideals, little by little, they will come to be. And at the same time, I think it’s very, very important—in fact, essential—that every time we feel an impulse, we ask ourselves, is that my ego talking or my true self? At this stage in human development, the ego, as I mentioned in an earlier post, possesses the maturity level of a two-year-old with the power to start a nuclear war. Needless to say, this is not the entity we want to make the decisions.

 

Education represents a treasure trove of utopian thinking and design, as it’s clear that influencing early thought and behavior in humans can help to shape the adults they become. It’s a place where many utopians like to start. I’ve often thought that I would love to be the person in charge of coming up with elementary and secondary school curricula (the benevolent dictator! See how this starts?! ;) and on my blog, I can! The following is what I would love to see taught in our schools, both public and private (not presented in any particular order of importance). It’s drawn both from what I longed for as a child and what I wish I had been taught, in retrospect, now that I’m grown up. I’ve read that the current model for public schools in the U.S. was based on acclimating children to work in factories; I’m guessing now it’s more skewed toward producing white collar workers and consumers. Not a terrific basis for reaching our greatest potential.  No offense to all the well-meaning educators who came up with the school experience I had, but I have to say that a large amount of what I spent time on in both elementary and high school has not come in very handy in my adult life, either professionally or personally.

 

Maybe this list will get you to thinking what you would like to see in schools.

 

1.  Social skills. I’ve always thought it would be great to receive some instruction in ways to grease our everyday social skids and to have some agreed-upon ways of treating each other in various contexts that would make our interactions with both strangers and loved ones alike run more smoothly and be as pleasant as possible. This might sound tut-tutty, but we all know how encountering a rude person makes us feel. Not only that, our societal emphasis on competition encourages bullying and social isolation; by putting more effort into teaching cooperation and kindness, we might be able to reverse this trend.

 

2.  Emotional skills. This would include the development of empathy and compassion, as well as training to recognize behavior linked to social and emotional predators, such as sociopaths and malignant narcissists. Much of the time, predators are able to get away with what they do and gain power because of other people’s ignorance of their patterns and MO.

 

3.  Art, art, and more art! Studies have shown that students perform better in traditional academic studies if they participate in the arts, yet bizarrely, in this country, where we insist we care about academic achievement, the arts are the first thing to go during budget cuts. If we placed a greater emphasis on art in our schools, not only would children learn better, and feel better and happier (what a terrific outlet the various arts were for me in school!), there would no doubt end up being more opportunities for artists to earn a living as adults. The school I would like to design would offer all the arts and crafts—music, visual arts, dramatic arts, film, dance, literature, all the crafts, etc.—with students electing to study the ones that appealed to them. Different schools could specialize in different disciplines.

 

4.  Working knowledge of the trades. I would have loved, my whole life, to know the basics of plumbing, carpentry, electrical work, stone work, etc. When I finally did learn carpentry, I fell in love with it. Whether a person chooses to do any of those things themselves or not, it would still be super handy to know these things, especially for little jobs that most professionals don’t want to be bothered with anyway. And exposure to them would help people know which ones they liked and might want to pursue further.

 

5.  Traditional academic subjects, including science and technology, mathematics, reading, and writing. Just less of them, except for those who enjoy them.

 

6.  How to research and find resources; how to network. Computers and the Internet.

 

7.  Problem-solving skills. Learning how to solve problems in a wide variety of circumstances, both academic and real-world, in a focused way, would be invaluable! Those annoying math problem sets don’t count.

 

8.  Gardening. Another feel-good activity that has clear benefits for everyone. I can’t even count the number of hours and days I would sit at my stupid little desk as a kid, looking longingly out the window while I did dozens and dozens of multiplication and division problems—when I was dying to be outside doing something physically active. And evidently, if my school system had waited until later to teach me arithmetic, when my brain was ready for it, I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time on it.

 

9.  Cooking. Not only would this give parents a break, it’s fun, and students could fix healthy foods and the foods they like without having to wait until they’re adults.

 

10.  Sewing. Even just the basics would be nice to know.

 

11.  The basics on how to build a house or do a remodel. Even if you decide not to the do the work yourself, it’s good to have an idea of how it’s done so you can make informed choices about your housing.

 

12.  Languages. It would be fantastic if everyone spoke two or three languages. Not only would it foster greater communication between different cultures and encourage travel, I’ve always found that studying other languages increases my understanding and appreciation of my own.

 

13.  World geography, history, current events, and cultural heritages. The planet is getting smaller all the time; we really need to learn how to get along with and appreciate each other. Everyone deserves to have a good quality of life. If our global community is more aware of everyone in it, we will find more ways to help the less fortunate and share knowledge and resources. And it’s a thrill to know how things are done differently by humans in different parts of the world; we can all learn from each other.

 

14.  Life sciences and ecology. I believe that if we had more intimate knowledge and more exposure to various forms of life on this planet that we wouldn’t be so cavalier in their treatment of them. I also feel that it’s becoming more imperative all the time that we understand how interconnected all habitats and creatures are, so that we can make wise decisions to ensure a healthy future.

 

15.  Athletic activities. I would love to see a much wider range of the types of sports offered in most public schools. Not everyone is cut out for group sports but would still like to get some exercise or hone a physical ability. Again, studies have shown that children do better in academic subjects if they get plenty of exercise; but recess periods have been whittled and whittled away in many school districts, contributing to rising obesity rates.

 

16.  Health. If we know early about healthy lifestyles and diets, we can grow up healthier and learn some ways to take care of ourselves for minor health concerns. Small problems might be nipped in the bud before they become big problems.

 

17.  Hunting, trapping, fishing, and butchering. Vegetarians wouldn’t have to learn these skills, but it would be nice for interested omnivores. There are so many more sources of meat than we can buy in the grocery store—I used to go to my aunt and uncle’s house and eat the squirrel, rabbit, quail, and pheasant that my uncle hunted. Friends who hunt often generously gift us with elk and deer products. We used to buy goat, lamb, and pork from a small farmer in a nearby town, but she stopped her production and now we are looking for other sources; the bottleneck in meat packing, however, makes it difficult for small farmers to sell their meat. Factory farms and corporate ranches may make for cheap meat, but it can be a devastating system for the animals, the environment, and individuals who want to make a modest but reasonable living.

 

17.  How to budget, manage your money, and live on little money. Some of us may never have to use the last skill, but if we do, it sure would be nice information to have earlier as opposed to later.

 

18.  Governing. This fits into another idea of mine, which is that all positions of governmental or economic power would be selected for by lottery, that everyone would have to serve at some point or other in their lives, and hence, there would be no career politicians to get cozy with powerful vested interests, serving them instead of the people they’re elected to serve. Yeah, I’m sure there are all kinds of problems with this concept. But it would still be a good idea for citizens of any country to have a better idea of how their government works, no matter what system is in place.

 

Did I miss anything you think should be on the curriculum?

 

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Update 6/3/10:  Following are some comments from  a discussion on Facebook in response to this blog post. Participants are my friends Michael Allison, a high school teacher and musician, Erin Friedman, a home-school mom and singer/songwriter, and my nephew Will James, who will soon be graduating from Middlebury College with a degree in Geography.

 

Erin:  I always recommend a Curriculum of Joy - find the things that excite you and your child and run with them. So many things that I find important don't necessarily get covered in public school - kindness, compassion, self-reliance, nurturing family ties …

 

Michael:  Right on. I'm getting back into teaching at a public high school. And I see it as going behind enemy lines to try to pull a few wounded souls back to the hospital, to revive them. I think they're getting the best of both worlds, an experienced teacher who has taken a break for a while, to do some living.

 

And Erin, that "curriculum of joy" idea is absolutely right. Think of a public school with all of its resources devoted to providing support to the notions of children. All musical instruments, paints and canvases, computers, video cameras and editors, music recording equipment, top-notch working laboratories, logistics for the teaching of math, etc. House building as math. Teachers would be brought in as guides, or coaches, to student self-directed learning, community service, creation of small businesses, forming non-profit organizations, or working with already established ones, traveling, writing, playing music, visiting historical sites. Can you imagine? And it could be done, for every child in California, for the same amount of money we spend now. And would employ MORE teachers than are now employed by the state - every one an expert in their area, and totally stoked about going to work every day. That’s my utopian dream.

 

Celeste:  I love your vision, Michael! You're so right, teaching math via practical experience - the first time I really "got" geometry was when I was designing and building a hexagon. And I had a terrific physics teacher in grad school who took us through all of Piaget's learning stages in order for us to really grok physics! And I've always thought that we wasted the energy and innovation of our teens - that they could be shadowing or interning at places of work they were interested in - learning firsthand and contributing at the same time.

 

Will:  Love your discussion of “Anarchists” I drew similar conclusions this semester after reading several works by Elisée Reclus, Peter Kropotkin, and Michel Foucault. I also totally agree with your education syllabus and would add to the athletics section sports like, skiing, running for fun (i.e., jogging), and biking, which are non-competitive lifetime sports should be emphasized. Football and baseball are fun but after you graduate high school you will never play them again, so what’s the point.