A manifesto-poem for peer-to-peer learning communities
Developing Enrol Yourself over the last year has involved bringing together a pilot group of peer-to-peer learners — and from September 2016 to March this year we piloted a ‘Learning Marathon’; six months of learning co-operation with participants pursuing their goals from within the collective.
With a second Learning Marathon about to kick off — with a new group — it has been a good moment to bring together everything the first group learnt about working together through peer-to-peer co-operation, without hierarchy, and without a designated curriculum. Here are twelve principles which will guide us — and can hopefully guide other learning communities with shared values.
The manifesto became a poem for two reasons. Firstly, it was far more fun to write this way. Secondly, as a poem much more space is left for your personal interpretation. The poem has subsumed and modified contributions from others including Roger Keyes, Roxana Bacian, Voltaire and Gandalf, so thank you to them. Enjoy!
- We practice quiet activism
We decide what to do with the time that is given
We make a choice, we make a statement, we help others decide
Where to invest their precious energy.
You can define a life of learning by what it cannot also be,
A life of pessimism, racism, egotism, chauvinism,
dogmatism, ostracism, narcissism, fascism
A lifelong of learning, is one of quiet activism
2. We want a rebrand for learning
We want a comprehensive brand refresh for learning
Educators, academia, workforce, PhD,
Let’s show learning to be bigger than a ticket to degree
Let’s show learning to be deeper than a funnel into work
Somewhere in a factory a growing robot army waits
Bred to do our jobs for us until our livelihoods rot
But let’s learn for better reasons than for fear of the bot
3. We sustainably source our sense of success
We want free range personal growth
Because finite things are finite. No, they really are finite.
More money more problems, but more to the point
More money for the 1%, more yachts for the 1%
So what is in — fi — nite if economic growth is not?
I know it’s not my patience. No, nor my sense of humour,
But I can spend my mind and heart like a contemporary consumer
4. We consume knowledge with caution
Nah. Pass me that packet of bite size online content
Grill those tasty fact nuggets and serve them to me on a plate
Wisdom takes too long to stew, I really can’t be late
Waiter, waiter there’s a hair in my in-sta-learn
I can promise you, you will not be seeing me return
We’ll go somewhere where they’re faster and their portion sizes bigger
You cannot stop me, I’m a knowledge gold digger
5. We organise like a Coop would
We want to structure ‘positive interdependence’
Remove the T — V, what will you point the furniture at?
Remove the Tea — cher, what will you point the students at?
You’re a learner, you’re a teacher, you’re a janitor, you’re the boss
What you thought below you is within you, within everyone of us
Point your sofa at the bookshelf, your arm chair at the door
Push all that furniture off to the side to make a dance floor
6. We learn quickly by sharing, slowly by giving
Take your guards down, let your clothes off
We are not interested in what you failed to achieve
Nor your excuses, nor your cover ups
Who do they serve? It can’t be you. It isn’t us.
Even a big backward step can be part of your strut
Walking down the street naked is scary, but
Time takes conviction from the head to the gut
7. We learn with our bodies too
A bod is more than just a pod for the mind
Our heads are easily distracted and over-inflated,
Quickly conned, duped and irreversibly bloated
Your body is your firm grip on reality
Jump, and you’ll soon feel the gravity
Think through your breath, speak through movement
To unlock a new passage for self-improvement
8. We create through connecting with different
We connect a dot to a square, a square to a star
Multi — disci — plinary, multi colour, multiverse,
Multidimensional, multilingual, multipack
Multibillionaire of the mind and heart,
Head hands heart, hands, hug kiss hug
We hope machines will never learn to play with seren — dipity
Artificial intelligence trumped by cre — a — tivity
9. We say relationships are everything
Scientific research says so too
Learn through them, work with them, live for them, invest in them,
Plait their hair.
Can you count the times you’ve had truly unconditional support?
When you’ve had zero fear for the ways you might fall short?
We’re not interested in how you’re different, but in how you are the same,
As all the other people being people
10. We judge a person by their questions
Not their answers.
11. We are a whole world — and we are nothing
You can flip the coin but the other side will still be there
What if you held our planet in the palm of your hand?
Do you treat your being as you would that little sphere?
Who are you to change the habits of the world,
If you are not yet puppet master of your own?
There is no tomorrow if today does not exist
So always keep today top of your checklist
12. We let life lead us by the hand
We let life live through us
Contentment is life living through us
Belly laughing is full-fat life living through us
Pondering life living through us — is almost certainly life living through us!
Fear is not life living through us.
Every one of us must find a way to live with fear
In the company of others we share the burden peer-to-peer
