(Compiled and edited by Frithjof Bergmann. Not to be cited without explicit permission from the author.) 

1. Diversify formats of learning, allow all to be used over the course of a day allowing  students to specialize in the ones they are most attuned to:  lectures, discussion, projects, apprenticing, simulations, mentoring and being mentored, computer assisted instruction.

2.  Allow students sufficient time to seriously pursue intellectually or practically exciting projects on their own (stay out of their way when they are energized).  Relate the more classical learning to  conditions for doing these projects well. (Think of this as “just in time” learning).  Thus teach basics of Math, English, Science, Social Science, and the Humanities when they become relevant to projects that the students want to complete.  Do not dismiss or disregard knowledge of the basics; but teach them in a more effective manner.

3. Computer Assisted Learning requires real expert programs, not just rote work, but programs that challenge students to really master sub-areas of important disciplines, provide feedback and summaries on problem areas (available to student, teacher, and mentor).  Therefore, provide special sub-program tutoring for those problem areas.  Students would typically be more active in these programs than simply choosing from multiple answers.  Developing these kinds of programs is a hard task, especially making them good and effective, but they are what allows classroom teachers to spend significant periods of time with individuals one on one to improve the mastery of specific problem areas. 

4. Introduce “concert lectures” that not only transmit  exciting ideas in a way that is compelling and irresistible, but that also strive to make students aware of the methods involved in successful creative thinking.  Such lectures can be given as often as one/week by a specially selected National Corps of  Lecturers, proven at their home universities or other institutions.  These lecturers can “tour”  perhaps for 6 months and can then be supported to do their own research for another 1.5 years.  These experts are  not only  top thinkers in their fields, but they in addition are excellent at presenting the best cutting edge ideas of their field in compelling ways, i.e. they also need to have a flair for dramatic presentation.  These lectures are to be discussed campus wide, or in the entire school in small groups to facilitate serious intercourse with the ideas and to develop better learning communities across campus or in the school.  Additional critical perspectives on the topic should be cultivated, and  further applications and ramifications of the basic points can be developed.  (Someone in-house in the field would oversee this.)

5. Internships in business, arts, organizing, and professions sould be consistently available to students beginning at least in high school and perhaps sooner.  This would provide practical knowledge, assist in the personal development of the student, and  provide  a supply of useful, energetic labor to businesses. It would also improve the  social skills of the students.  Many examples of this at this point in numerous countries. 

6. Peer teaching and facilitation.  Sometimes the most effective teachers are other students, in part because they deepen their mastery by explaining what they’ve learned to others and also because it is fun for them to do so.  The receiving student catches the energy and inspiration of the peer teacher. 

7.  Many activities ongoing in a much larger space than the ordinary classroom has impressive advantages.  Each corner and alcove can  be busy with activity on various student-defined projects.  When a student is finished with something, there remain many additional activities to learn from and contribute to; no one should ever feel bored! That  should be one of the most basic rules.  All manner of activities and innovations should be introduced to assure that BOREDOM is eradicated from the school.

8. One major set of projects for students should be starting up business ventures with emphasis on Manufacturing Enterprises that make use of the most cutting edge manufacturing technologies.  (Technologies that advance the “Directly Producing Economy.) This will provide real world experience with business plans,  bank loans, as well as the designing and engineering (all the way to completion) of products that might be useful to the community and would facilitate their economic development towards self-reliance.  It produces a person who is handy around tools, design, and computer guided production.  This is “project learning” that is serious, not just “science-fair” showoff.

9. Much learning takes place via Internet download of  the immense wealth that is now available and easily found. From entire courses, to individual lectures to  all the best films, performances, etc.  All of this can be utilized – and as a by-product can also be used to teach  editing and composition techniques. 

10.Students create their own artistic groups:  e.g., music groups, newspapers (not just “school” newspapers but community ones), have their radio and TV station, make their own films (documentary and narrative); they can print or post their own stories, poems, plays; they make their own posters and graphic arts (for printing and newspaper).

11. Students have access to distance-learning (sometimes University-based ) courses and are able to audit (when prepared) neighboring community college courses.  Their internet based courses are the best available and are taken exactly when the knowledge is needed for a practical project they are pursuing.  They also have satellite TV that provides access to many foreign countries (and may provide practice in foreign language speaking and comprehension).  In effect these students for the first time in the history of humanity have access to “complete information”.

12. Students regularly practice “Product-Critiques” in small groups to assess existing goods and services throughout the economic sector; they do the necessary research and produce reports comparing a variety of products.  This teaches they the desirable elements of a new product and invites them to consider how to improve existing products.  They do this also with social institutions, various therapies, and healing practices.  They test these out to determine how helpful they really are and what can be learned from them to inform ongoing present projects (and future planning).  The goal here is to practice systematically thing about how everything in the economic and social world could be improved.

13. Although much information is confronted, it is not allowed to “overload” the student, as teachers and mentors and peers assist with assimilation and integration.  They continuously ask and urge students to ask further questions about what they have learned and to answer those questions themselves. 

14. The self-strengthening “gym”.  Here the goal is to compensate for students’ (and everyones’) pitifully inadequate self-knowledge.  The first task is create a sense of self-definition by trying on various options for virtually everything and by asking whether and why one likes/loves every possible reality—from colors, shapes, textures, to various kinds of “looks” and clothes and styles and gestures (and this includes carefully examining and thinking through the entire history of culture and fashion).  The question is always “what do I really think of this?” –for everything imaginable (values, ideas, persons, leaders, movements, etc.).  This initial survey could be done along, in small groups, via computer, or in any other fashion.  But this “mirroring” is only the first stage (it is comparable to look at oneself on a computer with every known hairdo to determine which one “fits” one best).  The second stage is to facilitate the maturation and serious critique and elaboration of these dimensions of self by discussing them in depth with small groups of other students, adults, etc.  This discussion is concrete and personal, but immensely informative because people are sharing (on the smallest specific details) what really matters to them and why.  This produces a refinement of opinion and self because a serious consideration of alternative perspectives occurs (the very best results of serious dialogue because everyone is staked on the issues).  (Here we begin to get a clearer picture of what “creative interaction” might be and how it might contribute to the resolution of differences.)

15. Students are encouraged to engage in all kinds of self-experiments, alternative forms of life, values, beliefs, attitudes, action programs.  The ultimate goal of these efforts is to determine in practice:  what does it really feel like to work hard on this task (or do this activity) in this way for a month?  This is a good way to discover hidden self-enactments and to determine the strength of existing ones. 

16. Students—with peers, mentors, and computer programs—begin to draw conclusions about the real outline of their “selves” and project possible futures.  Like Amazon makes suggestions for new books or DVDs given current purchases, these others would do the same, providing an endless supply of possible serious alternatives to consider, but offered with an eye to genuinely improving self-enactment (not simply to sell more goods). 

17. On the school grounds is a student-and-community run  food growing and processing facility that allows students to learn what nutrition really involves, how to grow their own food and can or freeze it, how to prepare the food in different culinary styles.  Bergmann takes a page from Ecotopia here.  Ecotopians might add that students should be encouraged to work cooperatively in groups that allow each person’s special strengths to shine and be utilized.  Everyone seriously contributes to the final product and the whole is more than the sum of the parts.  (This is a very different social orientation to learning.)

18. In the Highland Part Initiative (the “Academy”), the following elements are included that make the educational institution operate very much like a New Work Center:

1. Four core subject areas taught:  English, math, science, social studies.  Teaching in the core areas strive always to develop critical thinking skills.  Also they are mastered in the course of working on projects, just in time.  If there are specific courses required, the course should be exciting and inspiring, and its value should be inherent, not just a means to something else. 

2. Each student also earns a trade certificate (like my Cass Tech training):  auto repair, cooking, medical aids of all kinds; pharmacy aids, computer repair and programming, media production, hair and nails, graphic arts, building construction.   Local businesses provide internships and training in all of these (and many more) and job shadowing (these could be temporary replacements for more permanent workers to take furloughs or return to school!). 

3. Interface with local Community College for career guidance and advising

4. HTSP training (in more skills than just food production as above); this effort reaches out to the entire community and draws both on its specific resources and its specific desires.  It also facilitates the whole community becoming more self-reliant and more capable of providing for itself. 

5. Business ventures (Cash Crop ideas) are pursued, again only when students have a real desire for this and see a real community need.  Always listen first to what is most needed and desired by the specific community you work in.  Some products are created specifically to fulfill needs in other NW communities. 

6. Callings are determined and insistently pursued (via some methods above). 

7. Another component is an Entrepreneurial Development Academy—learning business skills to prepare students to become entrepreneurs, also evaluation of plans.

19. Just a reminder, some of the main rejected views of educational freedom:  anticipate all desires before even expressed; remove all authority (anarchism); refusal to intervene for fear of “influencing”; produce rational autonomy by destroying all subcultural values; seek uniqueness; also Neill’s overconfidence in children’s goodness and “democracy”. 

20. Teachers and mentors should systematically reinforce what is best in each student:  refuse moralism; refuse to humiliate, provide enough reassurance to make honest self-expression possible, don’t freight kids with overly grandiose expectations (even as you seek to stimulate self-transcendence).  This is about the style of treating students and the educational ambience of the whole school. 

21. Teach to where the student actually is, insure you do not weaken or worsen his understanding of the world; draw out the students’ strengths and enhance those before trying to supplement and then do so carefully, judiciously.  Observe the student carefully; help him/her take the next step to advance understanding and skill.  Both teachers and mentors must be devoted to this. 

22. Allow people of all ages to attend the school and draw on skills of wider diversity of people than just certified teachers (though drawing on their skills is critical as well).  Teachers need supplementary help from community and perhaps from students having some seniority and mastery. 

23. Teaching creative thought must remember some its crucial conditions:  it is hard to predict, rarely respects disciplinary boundaries, must weather many false starts and errors, and it requires confrontation with substance—real facts, real problems—not just “supportiveness” and “warmth”. 

24. Students may need evaluation, feedback, a sense of when they need improvement.  But they do not need to be ranked against other students or forced onto some competitive grid.  Often the best evaluation is feedback from the task, which suggests that something still is not right.  Here is where the teacher/mentor’s remarks can be most useful. 

New Work for a New Generation, a 6 unit High School Curriculum funded in part by the WW Kellogg Foundation, CW Mott Foundation, and produced by Detroit Educational Television full course guide may be downloaded here.  An overview may be found by clicking the Education for a New Generation here or the navigational link to the right.

• Do you know of innovative, useful, intriguing, or exciting New Work ideas or projects?  We invite you to post comments or ideas here, join or start a discussion in the forum or contribute to the wiki.