In the early '70s, 1973 to be exact, when my mother was 13 years old, she enrolled at the Carcross Community School, an alternative boarding school up north in the Yukon Territory. Despite its location and near-total isolation, the community was part of a progressive education movement sweeping North America. Like hundreds of other free schools across the continent, Carcross emphasized unmediated experience above instruction and authority. Governed by a democracy that put students and teachers on equal footing (some even dated), the school's goal was to inspire students to participate in the running of their own lives. Academic subjects were taught rather informally. The math teacher was said to have settled the distasteful issue of grades by throwing darts at a board marked with appropriate letters.

The school had its limitations and hypocrisies, yet these and other tales were always recounted with great fondness. And Carcross' educational ethos left a tremendous mark on my mother, in her glimpse of the theories and practice of radical pedagogy-a current seemingly forgotten in North America by the time my siblings and I reached school age in the 1980s.

The beautiful fall colors surrounding Black Mountain SOLE set the tone for a magical event in a magical place. Inspired by Sugata Mitra, Black Mountain SOLE is the first "self-organized learning environment" for higher education. Mitra was one of the attendees for the first ever Rethinking Higher Education Unconference held this past week from October 25-27th. 

Upon arriving, I was greeted excitedly by the BM SOLE staff and given a nice folder, room, and table for AERO to set up some alternative education media. I had a lot of great interactions at the table and various events, but the most exciting interactions I had were informal conversations with the current gap year "sole mates" about how they ended up at BM SOLE.  

That evening we saw a great documentary on "Black Mountain College" which was a very radical college that ran from the '30s through the '50s. BM SOLE was not aware that they were going to be in the very same buildings used by Black Mountain College before they signed their agreement with the blue ridge assembly. After the film, we built a bonfire and I shared some songs. Prior to singing, everyone was having separate conversations, but after the songs we were all on the communicating together. This is one of the many powers of music. 

The next morning, everyone was encouraged to say what they wanted to talk about that day on the theme of rethinking higher education. Steve Cooperman, the MC, even made a joke that I would suggest ping pong as a way of breaking the ice (we are all avid table tennis players here at AERO and have a table in the office). So of course that's what I said I was going to talk about and everyone laughed. A few of the 50 or so attendees came up to me afterwards and asked if I was really going to talk about it, and I said no, we were just going to play. Blake Boles, a couple others, and myself went searching for the table unsuccessfully. Shortly after, I had to leave for a wedding. The conference was already a success though! The event was full of creativity, spontaneity, and dozens of interesting people. I was sad to leave early, but hope Black Mountain SOLE chooses to repeat it next year.

November 3, 2013 

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