Education and Training design brief - at the Northern School

A good education system has:-

Three main characteristics:

• all those who want to learn are provided with access to available resources, at any time in their lives
• all those who want to share what they know are empowered to find those that want to learn from them
• all those who want to present an issue to the public are furnished with the opportunity to make their challenge known.

Four key elements:

• things (places, objects, books, videos)
• models (skills, concepts, patterns)
• peers (collaborators in learning)
• elders (teachers and learning guides).

Services that help learners to learn:

• a reference service for educational objects - that facilitates access to things, places or processes used for learning
• a skills exchange that matches people wanting to learn with those willing to help them
• peer matching - a communication network for people wishing to find others with similar learning objectives
• a reference service to educators-at-large.

Three types of educational competence - the ability to:

• create and operate exchanges and networks
• guide students in the use of learning networks and resources
• act as guides in difficult, or complex, intellectual journeys.

A good education system will also use convivial tools.

Based on De-Schooling Society, Ivan Illich, Learning Webs, Chapter 6
Edited version of a document from the archives of the Permaculture Association (Britain) and the Permaxulture Academy (UK) circa 2000