Alger Learning Center - Teacher Letters

After two years of working with you and your staff, I feel it is time to make a few comments in writing about your educational program. In twenty-five years of teaching, from inner city barrio to four-year college, I always felt "the system" somehow subverted the process of individual growth for my students. Sometimes it was a minor problem; I found ways to accomplish mutual goals in spite of "the rules." More often, the entire construct seemed troublesome to the extent of actually detracting from the learning experience.

Your Alger Learning Center/Independence High School model exemplifies the best in progressive, alternative education. It utilizes the best of the old ways of imparting knowledge (pooling resources, mentoring, tracking) with constructive, advanced methodologies (multiple intelligence, portfolios, credit analysis, autodidactism).

In addition to a remarkably useful concept, you are also immeasurably blessed with administrative savvy, a very sharp support staff and a friendly assist from the latest technology which gives you the documentation credibility needed for state approval, which you've earned for many years.

What does all this mean to the individual student, parent, teacher? A great deal: it means we can all succeed. The goal of "getting an education" can be met, instead of the too-often-realized goal of merely "getting a diploma." That big difference is the idea you work with every day--it's an attitude, really--and you personally and collectively impart it through the dynamic model you have created. Years ago you had a vision, borne of tough teaching experience. You did something about it, and I, among hundreds of others, express gratitude and encouragement to continue your great growth and capabilities for serving more and more life-long learners.

"I have enclosed some articles which I hope [will inspire you] to write on your experiences and Alger Learning Center / Independence High School. A case study of your work and the special character of the Alger Learning Center is very compelling. I am especially interested in the ways that alternative learning contexts imply very different ideas about who children and adolescents are in relationship to adults, to learning, to life, to their own future and to the future of this society.

We have built up a very narrow and rigid perspective over the last 100 years as we have created "schools". What would happen if we unleashed education and the "unschool," as you have done?

I think you are the new 'Summerhill', a model for the years beyond 2000---a model which can help clarify what we are doing and why. Max Weber clled the formalization and rationalization of modern life and its institutions an "iron cage," inescapable, but he left hope for old wisdom and new prophets. It leaves an interesting dilemma if we don't want to go down the road to increasing the differentiation of time, space, people and resources encased in a kind of narcissism associated with the upper middle classes. Is it possible to get around or beyond both ideology and utopia?"


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