October 8th, 2010


The Honorable Mr. Desmond Bannister,
Minister of Education
Ministry of Education,
Teachers and Salaries Credit Union Bldg,
East Street South,
New Providence,
The Bahamas


Dear Mr. Bannister,

It is my understanding that, together with the Department of Education at The College of The Bahamas, your ministry has designs to create a laboratory school at the T.G. Glover School once renovations are complete. I further understand that this school will feature experience-based learning and that this will function as a test of alternative education in the movement toward broad scale educational reform in The Bahamas.

I am, myself, a specialist in Progressive Education and have been studying the various methodologies over the past several years. In addition to my in depth studies, I have also attended two conferences on leading edge educational methods in North America.

I am creating a new learning environment that will be quite unlike anything we have yet had in The Bahamas. This school will offer students the opportunity to learn in ways that optimize their capacity for critical thinking, self-motivation, self-awareness, strong ethics, community-mindedness and the passionate pursuit of learning; characteristics which I am certain you will agree will be beneficial to our society.

As I have said in my appearance on the television show, “Dialogue”, on JCN, “education is the foundation of our society”. Consideration of the whole person engaging a whole life learning process is imperative if we are to create a healthy, happy, sustainable community.

I realize that the model I will be using is outside our familiar territory and I believe that this is precisely the kind of innovative approach necessary for us to begin the process of addressing the educational system.

Below are some of the values of the school I am starting:

. Recognition that young children need a significant amount of free play time to foster intellectual growth and understanding of the world around them
. All forms of intelligence, including often unrecognized kinesthetic, musical, artistic, linguistic, spatial and mathematical intelligence
. Intentional cultivation of our core values of social justice, cooperative living and environmental sustainability
. Time for self-directed learning to allow learners to pursue what matters to them, thereby facilitating deeper knowledge and richer personal growth
. Mentors who are passionate participants in their field of work and in the community, helping to build strong inter-personal connections
. Hands-on projects that are collaborative and relevant to the learners' experience.
. Full familial involvement and connection

These aspects, among others, will equip the people who graduate from this learning context with more than literacy, numeracy, and facts; they will also help each person to know how they fit into the society and how they can continue to make our country and our world a better place.

We the supporters of the school, like you, believe that an excellent education must be made available to all children. In effort to make this kind of learning accessible to all the people who may want to experience it, we will offer a considerable number of our spaces at significantly reduced or full scholarship tuition; a demonstration of our core value of social justice. Of course, we will rely heavily on fundraising and grants in order to facilitate this.

Bearing in mind our hope to make progressive education widely available, I would also like to discuss the possibility of introducing this method of education to the public school system as a lab school.

Please allow me to personally share my vision and invite your support for this venture. When you participate in making this pioneer school a reality, you will be creating invaluable opportunities for Bahamian children.

I look forward in earnest to meeting with you to further discuss this amazing school!

Kindest Regards,

cian t. sawyer,
Founder and Director
The Village School

Dear Cian T Sawyer:

Thank you for your letter. We appreciate your interest in starting a new school, and look forward to the development of your plans as you fulfil your goals.
Thank you for keeping me apprised of developments. Please ensure that you fulfill registratation requirements with the Ministry.

Best wishes.

Desmond Bannister

Dear Mr. Bannister,

Thank you for your speedy response! While I fully intend to register the school through the proper channels, I am aware that I may face some challenges due to the non-traditional methods we will be using.

It is my sincere hope to present this to you in person to garner your ministry's support.

I look forward to meeting with you in the near future.

Again, many thanks for your consideration on this matter.

Best,
cian t. sawyer

That aside, it was a pretty good first interview. Even though I was feeling like I did a terrible job after the taping in the afternoon, when I watched it last night (crticizing myself all over the place, though I was) I felt good about what I was able to say (mistakes, blunders and disjointed comments notwithstanding). All in all, it was not a bad way to start the conversation.

We were able to show the IDEA clip as the intro, which was a perfect frame to the conversation. Then she asked me what Democratic Education was. She asked me how old it is (90 years at least!) and I told her about A.S. Neill and The Summerhill School. I mentioned that people are not given grades at the school and then we talked about how the children are assessed without letter grades and/or tests. I explained the process of portfolio evaluation and peer accountability. I mentioned that learning is not a sport (a quote I picked up in one of the thousands of pieces of literature I’ve read pursuing more knowledge and inspiration about progressive education) and that the focus is on allowing a person to be measured up to her own self. I was happy about saying that because I think it’s a very new idea for many people. Later on she asked if we would have desks and I said no because we are aiming to create and environment that fosters Co-operative learning rather than competitive learning.

She countered saying that people who aren’t graded in school will be shocked when they get into the real world where employees are constantly being ‘graded’ and evaluated. I responded, saying that people who experience self-directed learning recognize that what they put in is what they get out. And that, because there is a lot of learning that is project and or group oriented there is a great deal of accountability (read: evaluation) by their peers.

She then pointed out that that set up sounded more like “real life” than the other.

We talked, too, about Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. I said that we only value academics and in so doing marginalize the other kinds such as musical, artistic, and kinesthetic. She commented that some of the most highly paid professionals are musicians, actors and athletes and that maybe that was pay back (no pun intended) for them being undervalued in school. Then I said that “jocks” are highly valued in high school (then Nathan said he couldn’t believe I said that!).

I touched on the fact that people who are not academically inclined tend to be discriminated against in the traditional system; giving the example of three children in a give class - one with strong artistic ability (I, unfortunately used the words “good drawer” - eeek!), one with good reading skills and another with a knack for numeracy and the teacher comparing the artist to the reader implying that he was not good enough because he couldn’t read as well as Hypothetical Susie. I went on to say that the beauty of democratic education is that in this case, the learners would all bring their individual strengths together toward a common goal rather than be pitted against each other and/or made to feel inferior because they are not all excelling at everything. This is a mirror of our adult society where we are currently competing to get more, have more, be more.  In my vision, we would, instead use our individual strengths in a cooperative manner to create a better version of the world we have now.

We soon segued into a conversation about The Village School. She asked me about the process of starting a school. She asked me what we had to offer The Bahamian people. I feel I floundered a bit here as I was completely unprepared for those questions. I basically said that if we can help a few people to know themselves and their passions we can begin to move towards a more whole society. Then she asked me to describe three random days in the life of the learners at the school. (!!!!)  This was the ultimate curve ball as I have mentioned

But then I had to ask, What is the point of this “Alternative Education” that I am espousing?  What is it for?  What purpose will it serve?

Answer: Humanity.

You see, even though I am very much about creating a school that respects its learners and creates an atmosphere of equality for all, the larger vision is really restoration of Humanity.  

Under or behind all the labels - words we use to keep our distance from each other - are real live actual human beings; daughters, sons, cousins, sisters, mothers, fathers, best friends, lovers - People.  At the risk of sounding like I’ve gone overboard I’d say the labels we use for other living things, like trees, rats, caterpillars, whales, spiders, oranges, flowers - the create a distance as well.  

Anthony DeMello said in his book Awareness, (and I’m paraphrasing here) that once you name something such as a palm tree, you never see another palm tree again.  You just see the word and the one you first named.  

I am reading a book called Above All, Be Kind by Zoe Weil and her language has helped me give identity to the previously unformed, floating idea that I had about the ultimate goal of this kind of education.  She talks a lot about fostering Reverence, Respect and Responsibility in children.  I find that Reverence is what tends to be missing - if I could oversimplify it for a bit - from the way we are raising our children today.  In parenting and education alike we have literally stopped talking time to smell the actual roses.  

We are so busy spitting out empty praise (“Great walking, son!”) and trying to keep up with the bills that we barely have time to truly Be Present and give Reverence to the moment, to ourselves, to our friends, to our spouses and most of all, to our children.  

(Digression warning!)  In my own genuine awe for living beings, I often find that I (feel like I) seem childish around the people who do not experience the world that way.  This is not a statement of arrogance or judgment - I literally become self conscious sometimes when I see a bird and gasp in awe and people seem a bit perplexed (“It’s just a bird”, their quickly averted eyes tell me).  

All this to say that what Zoe Weil said is what I meant to say: It is about our humanity.  The real world, she says, is dirt and trees and fall and fish and deer and rivers and sunshine and butterflies (again, paraphrasing); not stocks and bonds or corporate ladders or bank accounts etc.  Well put, Zoe!  

What is the point of peaceful, learner centered, respectful mindful education built on a framework of social justice and environmental sustainability?  

Humanity.  Being People.  People Being.

What I see on the Horizon truly is a state of liberation.  The kind of freedom from bondage that people like Jesus and Bob Marley talked about; where we will nurture our souls and be emancipated from mental slavery.  

Mireless!