School of Everything vs. Anarchist University

Today I came across an interesting learning initiative out of the UK that reminded me of a similar phenomenon I came across in Toronto in 2003. The School of Everything (http://schoolofeverything.com/) is a peer learning network which re-launched its website and business with significant new funding on September 1, 2008. According to the site:

School of Everything connects people who want to learn with passionate teachers in their local area. The award-wining site is free to join for both people who want to learn and people who want to teach. Teachers register online and create a personal page giving information on their lessons, the qualifications offered and the format in which they teach - for example workshops or one-to-one sessions. Potential pupils find their perfect tutor simply searching by subject, learning category and location. They can then send them a message, arrange to meet and begin learning their new subject.

Some are referring to the School of Everything as the ‘ebay of learning’ which is apt given that the SoE creators expect to generate a profit by charging a commission on the teacher-pupil transactions facilitated through its site. Think of it as a global marketplace of ideas, with a catch – the exchange of ideas (i.e., learning) is envisioned to occur in face-to-face local interaction rather than virtually. It strikes me as an excellent idea – one that harnesses the power of peer-to-peer technology but ultimately brings teachers and pupils together in person where genuine teaching, guidance and mentoring actually takes place. And it has potentially broad appeal with expertise ranging from yoga to philosophy to cooking to driving instruction.

The model of self-organizing learning communities that the School of Everything embodies brought to mind Toronto’s Anarchist University which I first came across in 2003. At the time, I was a graduate student looking for any and every way to procrastinate while I should have been writing chapters of my dissertation. The teaching and learning opportunities promised by the AU offered just the sort of thing I was looking for, and might have even impressed the advisor who (on Mondays and Thursdays, anyway) is an analytical Marxist .

According the AU site (http://anarchistu.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Anarchistu/AnarchistU),

The Anarchist U is an open, volunteer-run, non-hierarchical collective that organizes community events, workshops and a variety of courses on arts and sciences….We offer an open, collaborative, radical way of learning built on democratic models of education, structure and process. We are working to build a vibrant and productive community free from the struggles for power, profit and prestige that are the consequences of existing social and economic structures.

Setting aside the all-too-easy jokes that can be made about anarchist models, structures, and processes, AU was, in some ways, ahead of its time. It brings teachers and pupils together voluntarily; it involves collaboration, negotiation and consensus-processes to develop mutually acceptable programs of study; and it offers learning for its own sake (i.e., there are no diplomas, degrees or credentials; only the experience of having taught and learned).

But unlike the SoE, the AU does not enlist the power of the market – indeed, market critiques are built into the school's founding ideology – which may serve to explain why it has struggled over the years to sustain its activities and community profile. Now don’t misunderstand me here: I sympathize with the anarchist eschewal of markets to the extent that they produce unequal and unjust distributions of resources and power. But where market mechanisms can be enlisted to serve democratic, peer-to-peer learning opportunities and support genuine community-building, even anarchists and their sympathizers should take notice.

With that in mind, the AU and its core faculty should think about creating an account on SoE to offer its educational services to others in the Toronto area. A quick search of offerings on the SoE site produces nothing in the area of anarchism, anarchists or anarchy which means that the AU can offer something new and would likely garner a few cheesy quips in future press coverage of the SoE. Moreover, given that AU courses are free, the market should reward them with significant enrollment (provided a high level of quality is maintained). Maybe some months or years from now we will be able to enroll in an AU course titled (with apologies to Dr. Strangelove fans), “How I learned to stop worrying and love the market.”