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You
are here: I am a poet (and not an experienced teacher) who would like to propose a skill-based educational program that could acquaint kids with the full spectrum of human life paths from the beginning of schooling.
The existing educational system does not give kids a chance to become familiar with the variety of learning paths open to them. They are trained to sit in desks doing analytical exercises for most of the day, emphasizing only a few specialized skills while other equally valuable skills are minimized or ignored. At the same time, kids are overwhelmed by the exploding number of highly specialized career options,while they are provided no general categories for simplifying their understanding of the learning spectrum.
Most significant learning still happens today as it always has - through apprenticeship. The initiative to learn is most often activated in people who deeply want to become more like someone they admire. No beloved role models usually means little real learning. So the main job of schools should be to facilitate more direct contact with potential real-life role models of every kind. Every community is composed of people who have mastered some aspect of each of the 16 basic skill-types or styles of experience that I have identified. If only a small percentage of these people could volunteer some of their time each year, the schools could begin to facilitate real apprenticeship learning.
But first we need a method for parcelling up school time more equitably between all the significant types of learning. The following set of categories is a first stab at developing such a method. It involves a comprehensive typology of human social behavior that can be thought of as The Guilds. These 16 categories could provide the design for a new kind of education geared toward giving kids an in-depth experience of every type of career path before they reach university age. This system could also foster more apprenticeship learning, more community involvement in education and more personal confidence and decisiveness.
The alternative outlined here is a radical departure from existing methods of education. Though it is closest in spirit to programs that emphasize hands-on learning in a diversity of skills, it differs from these by being based on a new theory of social roles and mental faculties which organizes the existing styles of human activity and education as follows:
Role Guild The Adventurer Guild of Survival Arts The Athlete Guild of Athletic Arts The Performer Guild of Musical and Performing Arts The Storyteller Guild of Language Arts The Friend Guild of Partnership Arts The Counselor Guild of Counseling Arts & Law The Leader Guild of Political Arts The Protector Guild of Protective Arts The Cook Guild of Culinary Arts & Agriculture The Builder Guild of Constructive Arts & Engineering The Teacher Guild of Cultural Traditions The Doctor Guild of Healing Arts and Sciences The Trader Guild of Business Arts The Investigator Guild of Investigative Arts & Sciences The Genius Guild of Imaginative Arts The Mystic Guild of Mystical & Theoretical Arts & Sciences These 16 categories of skilled behavior form the general curriculum each child would be familiarized with from kindergarten through high school. Each Guild is further divided into 4 Schools, as follows:
1)Survival Arts:
I.)Plant Lore & Wilderness Skills, II.)Fishing & Maritime Skills, III.)Hunting, Trapping & Animal Products, IV.)Travel & Recreation2)Athletics:
I.)Individual Sports, II.)Team Sports, III.)Fitness & Yoga, IV.)Extreme Sports3)Music & Performing Arts:
I.)Music, II.)Dance, III.)Theater, IV.)Film4)Language Arts:
I.)Comedy & Storytelling, II.)Reading & Literature, III.)Foreign Languages & Linguistics (incl. Computer Programming), IV.)Creative Writing5)Partnership Arts:
I.)Games(Charades, Chess, Bridge, etc.), II.)Emotional Intelligence, III.)Bodywork, IV.)Partnership & Sexuality6)Protective Arts:
I.)Self-defense, II.)Emergency Services & Armed Services, III.)Childcare & Parenting, IV.)Parks & Conservation7)Political Arts:
I.)Speech & Debate, II.)Politics & Organizing, III.)Legislation, IV.)Diplomacy & Warfare8)Counseling Arts:
I.)Counseling, II.)Psychic Arts, III.)Law, IV.)Psychology & Sociology9)Culinary Arts & Agriculture:
I.)Cooking, II.)Gardening & Farming, III.)Herding & Animal Care, IV.)Kitchen Chemistry10)Constructive Arts & Sciences:
I.)General Labor & Services, II.)Building Arts, III.) Useful Crafts, IV.) Mining, Engineering & Electronics11)Cultural Traditions:
I.)Local Culture, II.)Religion, III.)Education, IV.)History & Archives12)Healing Arts & Sciences:
I.)General Medicine & Nursing, II.)Alternative Medicine, III.)Surgery, IV.)Biochemical Research & Pharmacology13)Business Arts:
I.)Geography & Cartography, II.)Financial & Business Skills, III.)Business Management, IV.)Economics, Banking & Trading14)Investigative Arts & Sciences:
I.)Investigative Arts(Journalism, Sleuthing), II.)Field Sciences, III.)Lab Sciences, IV.)Sea & Space Exploration15)Imaginative Arts:
I.)Graphic & Plastic Arts, II.)Fabrics & Fashion, III.)Architecture & Geomancy, IV.)Innovative Design16)Mystical & Theoretical Arts & Sciences:
I.)Mystical Arts, II.)Mathematics, III.)Philosophy, IV.)Theoretical SciencesEach of these 64 Schools can be further divided, when necessary, into even more specific fields. (Hair Styling, for example, can go in the School of Fabrics & Fashion, Truck Driving in General Labor.) Each of the 64 Schools would be given equal emphasis and equal time, so that students are exposed to hands-on experience of the full spectrum of legal skilled activities (including recreational activities).
Here are a few ideas about how such an educational process could unfold. (These are just suggestions and other ideas are welcomed.) Each of the Schools could be intensively studied for two 3-week "blocks" during the first 8 years of schooling. First grade, for example, could begin with three weeks of the first School of Survival Arts: Plant Lore and Wilderness Skills. The next three weeks could focus on Individual Sports, the next on Music and so on through all the first Schools of the 16 Guilds. (This program would proceed at a rate of 16 blocks per year.) After completing the full cycle in fourth grade, there could be a different sequencing for the second four years: focusing first on the four Schools of The Survival Arts, each for 3 weeks at a time, then on the four Schools of The Athletic Arts and so on.
When reading and math are not the main focus, they would still be studied in various contexts throughout the program. Teachers and/or computer programs could coordinate with volunteer mentors in these varied fields (many of whom might be skilled retirees). Field trips to different types of real work areas would be essential.
When students reach the "high school" level of study they could be asked to pick only one of the 4 Schools in each of the 16 Guilds to focus on for even longer periods of time (possibly 6 weeks per block for the first two years and 3 months per block for the final two years). I also have a proposal for how to stagger this process so that there are kids studying every Guild at any one time.
This approach would tend to make students well-grounded in at least one aspect of each of the Guilds. It would also give them a chance to exercise significant choice in developing preferred skills to a high level of competence. Far from promoting a "do-anything-you-like" brand of education, this program combines freedom of choice with well-defined parameters as in many adult work situations. With this approach some individuals could go straight from high school to a working apprenticeship in a chosen field.
For those who need more education or time to pick a career, college would be about even greater diversity and opportunities for specialized studies. The conventional rationale for college - to give kids a well-rounded education - would no longer apply. They would have already had that. Those with a real calling to become generalists could still focus on various aspects of history, philosophy, arts, sciences, etc. But such individuals are not common. For most students college should be even more of an apprenticeship experience, as medical schools, business schools and technical schools already are. It's not that the idea of a liberal education is a bad one. It's just that for most people such well-roundedness should come at the beginning rather than at the end of the educational experience.
This program could be tested at first by homeschoolers using the Web or by anyone interested in creating an experimental model school. Web-based Guild associations could be developed that would help with apprenticeship-learning and volunteer mentoring. These 16 categories could also be used to reorganize information on the Internet and encourage global communication and cooperation. Imagine that you access the Internet and up pop 16 familiar Guild icons that categorize all information and interactional opportunities on the Web. (A 17th Web category would surely arise to contain anomalous and censored data.)
If you wanted to find out something about music or other performing arts, you would click on, perhaps, a Songbird icon. Then you could narrow your search from there. This approach could transform the Internet from a maze of individual diversity into a functional global forum. It could become an important tool for helping young apprentices connect up with potential mentors. And it could facilitate the Guilds becoming significant forces for democratic communication and organization in adult affairs, as well.
The Guilds could gradually become a new kind of global community not dependent on local economic, political, racial or religious motivations. Such alliances might help counter the modern tendency toward increasingly splintered factionalism, evolving innovative channels of communicational power. The Guilds would have no formal social powers except for:
1)the responsibility to help provide volunteer mentors for the schools,
2)the responsibility to set educational guidelines in those fields that do not already have such guidelines,
3)the responsibility to guarantee the correctness of information in its Internet zone and possibly to develop other media and publishing channels, and
4)the responsibility to put on a worldwide festival in celebration of that particular style of experience once a year.Imagine a cycle of 16 Guild-oriented holidays recurring throughout each year. This would give each Guild a chance to be in the spotlight, to celebrate its accomplishments and to air its plans and aspirations. These holidays could have local, national and global levels of participation and staging. Such events would not need to assimilate already existing events like the Olympics or the Oscars. Their purpose would be more to encourage participation than spectatorship, a chance to entertain the world with that style of value fulfillment. If the whole world could agree to celebrate together in such a focused way, this could foster a sense of world citizenship and global awareness more quickly than anything else we have on the table at the moment.
Our transformative civilization is hungering for an equally transformative program for realizing the opportunities of democracy. This requires learning to work with the pluralistic spectrum of values, just as biological organisms and ecosystems do. Without some means of recognizing and enhancing human variety our democracies cannot resist the centralizing and homogenizing tendencies of reason and commerce. The Guild approach to education is clearly not an idea that can be fully developed and implemented by a few people. So I'm asking for feedback from anyone who is interested, especially regarding skills I may have overlooked, other critical comments and how to develop this as a Web-project or a model school. I'm also looking for professional educators and/or publishers who might be interested in looking at the manuscript I have written in which I more fully develop the theory of the faculties, describe the 64 Schools, respond to some of the arguments against this proposal and consider other potentials of the communicative approach to social ecology.
Now 44, George Gorman has been writing poems, songs, philosophy and occasional fiction since the age of 12. Always working independantly, he is still looking for a publisher or other business-wise ally. His last manuscript, Nature's Mind, about the psychological side of biological evolution, may be online again soon at
naturesmind.org. You may contact George Gorman at littlespots@yahoo.com.
© December 2002 New Horizons for Learning
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