EDUCATION IS A COMMONS: �TENSIONS & SUSTENANCE IN �OUR EDUCATION SETTINGS

Mandi Leigh

University of Northern Colorado

College of Education and Behavioral Sciences

• “We can count on the permeance of crisis popping up, eroding away, and worsening. We are in times of guaranteed precarity” (Nxumalo, Nayak, & Tuck, 2022, p. 97).

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SOCIAL & ECOLOGICAL HEALING

• Gregory Cajete (2002, 2021) points out that the two dilemmas facing educators today are both relational. Distinct and inseparable reparation (Dorsey, 2022):

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1. How to get along and create healthy relationships in a multicultural society
2. How to attend to relationships with the more than human world

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INITIAL QUESTIONS

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN AND LOOK LIKE WHEN EDUCATION IS A COMMONS?

HOW DO WE SUSTAIN AN EDUCATIONAL COMMONS?

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• (Derek Gottlieb & Jack Schneider, 2022)

BACKGROUND & POSITIONALITY

• Snowmaker and Snowcat operator
• Ecologist and Wildlife Biologist in rare, endangered, and endemic species
• Public School Secondary Educator
• Place Based Education
• Project Based Learning
• Environmental Education
• Educational Doctoral Candidate (Oikophilia: Relationships among life, human life, and place in school communities and their expressions in curriculum)
• Cis-gender, woman, currently able bodied, white, currently in a heterosexual relationships, and currently monolingual.

PRESENTATION OUTLINE

• Evolution of the commons
• Why does the commons matter today?
• Practices that build an educational commons
• (Re)Produsage
• Peers & Self Organization
• Needs Satisfaction & Voluntariness
• Inclusion & Mediation
• Hostility in the Commons
• Learning with the Commons

THINK, PAIR, SHARE

What sustains our bodies, minds, hearts, and schools?

NOTES:

• Nutritious food
• Joy & Kids Joy
• Community
• Relationship with higher power (whatever that. Is)
• Connection with outdoor spaces
• Self-reflection
• Gratitude (thanks for what is)

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• Opportunities for learning
• Creativity
• Kids curiosity
• Music
• Passion
• Rest
• Routines/ Practices
• Variety

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

• English commons existed during feudal times. One lord and many commoners shared land who accessed the land for material and caloric sustenance. Often families had row(s) of crops and shared oxen, equipment, and maintaining the commons.
• Rising wool prices prompted landlords to enclose the commons by excluding people from their lands to sustain sheep for monetary gains (Foster et al., 2021).
• Commons exist(ed) all over the world in many cultures and during many time periods to manage human use of resources (Shiva, 2005/2015; Ostrom, 1990). Enclosure of the commons continues today and pairs violently with settler colonialism (Shiva, 2005/2015).

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“TRUE, PASTURE-FARMING YIELDS HIGHER PROFITS THAN TILLAGE. WASTEFUL HUSBANDRY FEEDS MANY HOUSEHOLDS WHERE YOUR ECONOMICAL METHODS WOULD FEED FEW.” ��(Tawney, 1912 as cited in Foster et al., 2021) �

WHY DOES THE COMMONS MATTER TODAY?

“Through their daily activities and struggles, individuals and social groups create the social world of the city and, in doing so, create something common as a framework within which we all can dwell.

While this culturally creative common cannot be destroyed through use, it can be degraded and banalized through excessive abuse. The real problem here, it seems to me, is not the commons per se. It is the failure of individualized private property rights to fulfill our common interests in the way they are supposed to do.”

(Harvey, 2011, p. 103-104)

EVOLUTION OF THE COMMONS

• Eleanor Ostrom received a Nobel prize in economics for her book: Governing in the Commons (1990). She proposed that a commons is not an either-or choice between private or public management and that people were already doing the work of the commons within both communities.
• C. A. Bowers advocated for Environmental Justice Education in two parts: deconstruction of taken for granted master narratives of modernity and the revitalization of the commons. For Bowers there exists a social and ecological commons (Bowers, 2006; Bowers, 1995).
• EcoJustice Education continues this work (Martusewicz et al., 2015) and addresses some of the critiques from Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities.

COMMONS DEFINED

• Euler (2018) defines a commons broadly and with two vital parts:

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• “TANGIBLE AND OR INTANGIBLE MATTER (RESOURCE/PRODUCT)”

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• “SOME SORT OF SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE, SOME SPECIFIC INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENT. THIS COULD BE SAID TO BE PART OF THE SOCIAL FORM OF THAT MATTER.” (p. 11)

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Open-ended, incomplete, and evolving PROCESSES.

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TURN & TALK

What do you notice?

What questions arise?

How does the commons relate to EE?

NOTES:

• Complex – world is complex but we also want simple answers
• EE access to all nature
• Commons spaces, feels like not ours. Sharing the space is not sharing the experience
• In capitalistic society, the landlords have. To change. Some do provide access. Water, land, farms, are being. Prioritized.
• More openness to the way that multiple people use land – judge not.
• Public schools, city of Aspen – incredible access, teacher considers impact. Part of their fiber to be in the Aspen space. Where is EE better served – affluent community? Or else where.
• Commons, increasingly difficult. Pressures on. Land, mining, cattle, water, birders, bitcoin, and nature itself – lots of competition
• If EE is commons, everyone should have access?
• Grounded in trust. In EE needs to build trust – beyond the automatically leaning that direction.
• Resources within. Schools. not money issues, sometimes buses.
• Accessibility as related to the. kids is bound by their parents’ access.

THE COMMONS & EDUCATION

• Schools are one of the remaining places we come together to interact in a public manner, the same holds in EE.

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• “THIS REVELATORY QUALITY OF SPEECH AND ACTION COMES TO THE FOR WHERE PEOPLE ARE WITH OTHERS AND NEITHER FOR OR AGAINST THEM - THAT IS, IN SHEER HUMAN TOGETHERNESS.” (Arendt, 1958).

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COMMONING PRACTICES

• Euler (2018) described four practices that realize a commons. We will go over each, I’ll share. Examples from my own experiences, and y’all will add to the list.

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• (Re)produsage – What are we making?
• Peers & Self Organization – How do we relate to each other & make decisions together?
• Needs Satisfaction & Voluntariness – What do we need to live & learn?
• Inclusion & Mediation – How do we create belonging & resolve conflicts?

(RE)PRODUSAGE

• Integrates consumers, producers, and maintainers of the commons in the vital human work – production.
• “THEIR MOTIVATIONS, KNOWLEDGE, AND SKILLS BECOME PART OF THE PRODUCTION PRAXIS, LEADING TO NEW WAYS OF INTERACTING AND COORDINATING SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC LIFE” (EULER, 2018)
• Production is a vital element and sustained care of children is of particular importance. If schools cultivate healthy environments, than produsage is, “the mode and space in which this quest takes place” (Euler, 2018)

PRODUSAGE

• What are we making?
• How are we making?

PRODUSAGE EXAMPLES

• Collaborative teaching teams developing interdisciplinary projects. Student participation in those projects with feedback, ideas, and creating their own projects.
• Reciprocal sharing and students as the primary teachers.
• Community engagement as guest speakers and collaborators.
• Parent Teacher Organizations with decolonial practice and decentering of whiteness (Murray, 2019; Snyder & Joffe-Walt, 2020).
• Deliberative bodies: All groups are involved in developing and maintaining the community: hiring, defining goals, and resources (Schneider & Gottlieb, 2021; Ifeji, 2022)
• Aims talk (McConnell, Conrad, & Urhmacher, 2020).

REFLECT & SHARE

What are we making in EE?

What does it sustain?

NOTES:

• Conscious children and aware of their environment- become little change makers.
• Sense of power
• Connections with kids and kids and the environment
• Progress. - not following, but deciding for ourselves what needs improvement.
• Positive outdoor experience, need to protect or care about what they experienced.
• Enough knowledge. To be curious.
• Many. Right answers!

PEERS & SELF ORGANIZATION

• Engaging as peers is paramount to co-managing and co-producing; all folks are equally involved in decision making.

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• “INDIVIDUALS AFFECTED BY THE OPERATIONAL RULES CAN PARTICIPATE IN MODIFYING THE OPERATIONAL RULES” (Ostrom, 1990).

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• Euler (2018) adds that rejection of domination or harm to the commons is essential or political consent. First a short, but important tangent…

SEXUAL CONSENT

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• “REAL CONSENT REQUIRES US TO BE GENUINELY VULNERABLE. WE HAVE TO BE WILLING TO THE REJECTED AT ANY TIME. WE HAVE TO BE MORE INVESTED IN OUR PARTNER’S WELL-BEING THAN WE ARE IN AVOIDING HEARING SOMETHING THAT MIGHT BRUISE OUR FEELINGS” (Friedman, 2018).

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• “co-equal collaborators, equally human and important, equally harmable, equally free and equally sovereign.” (Friedman, 2018).

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POLITICAL CONSENT

• “THIS IS NOT A PARTICULAR MORAL DEMAND, BUT THE CONDITION OF DEMOCRATIC MORALITY; IT IS [A] DIMENSION OF REPRESENTATIVENESS OF DEMOCRACY [THAT] IS NOT DELEGATABLE.” (Cavell, 1990).

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• For the commons we are all firmly within the boundaries of reproach (Gottlieb, 2020). Enclosure is to remove oneself from reproach. Commoning is commitment to raw togetherness and “merciless exposure” (Arendt, 1958).

PEERS & SELF ORGANIZATION

• How do we relation to each other?
• How do we make decisions together?

PEERS & SELF ORGANIZATION EXAMPLES

• Examples are difficult to find. We are very committed to hierarchical decision-making. Why?
• Student Voice and Community Partners.
• Workers Unions in diverse professions.
• Worker owned cooperatives.
• Maine Environmental Changemakers (Ifeji, 2022)
• CLEAR Feminist and anticolonial science lab.
• Deliberative bodies: All groups are involved in developing and maintaining the community: hiring, defining goals, and resources (Schneider & Gottlieb, 2021; Ifeji, 2022)

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REFLECT & SHARE

How do we relate to each other in EE?

How do we (& our students) engage in decision making within EE?

What do these arrangements sustain?

NOTES:

• Elders more than youth. Multigenerational. (Sacred Instructions)
• Be heard, listening, change what we do in response. - multilingual
• Students feedback - even if coming up once.
• Grandmothers govern the world

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NEEDS SATISFACTION & VOLUNTARINESS

“GOVERNMENT MUST PROVIDE FOR BASIC GOODS AND SERVICES, NOT NECESSARILY THAT GOVERNMENT MUST PRODUCE THOSE GOODS AND SERVICE.” (Teodoro, Zuhlkem & Switzer, 2022).

Agreeing with Ostrom (1990), commoning is considering what ecology is sustained not the public/private label.

NEEDS SATISFACTION & VOLUNTARINESS

“GOVERNMENT MUST PROVIDE FOR BASIC GOODS AND SERVICES, NOT NECESSARILY THAT GOVERNMENT MUST PRODUCE THOSE GOODS AND SERVICE.” (Teodoro, Zuhlkem & Switzer, 2022).

Agreeing with Ostrom (1990), commoning is considering what ecology is sustained not the public/private label.

“THE PRODUCERS BECOME ACTIVE VOLUNTARILY AND NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE FORCED (E.G., BY  COMMAND STRUCTURES OR INDIRECTLY VIA THE COMPULSIONS OF WAGE-LABOR) TO DO SO.” (Euler, 2018).

Bowers (2006) and Euler (2018) privilege unpaid labor, I disagree with this stance.

NEEDS SATISFACTION & VOLUNTARINESS

• What do we need to live?�What do we need to learn?

NEEDS SATISFACTION & VOLUNTARINESS EXAMPLES

• Large overlap among living conditions, working conditions, and culture for all education stakeholders. Housing, nutrition, rest, play, and health care.
• Material resources like books, computers, time investment, lab equipment along with the immaterial resources care, love, creativity which are infinitely renewable (Means, Ford, Slater, 2017).
• Employee compensation/benefits and sustained investment in people/place shape programs.

REFLECT & SHARE

What do we need to live & learn (sustenance)?

What do EE’s working & learning condition sustains?

NOTES:

• Relationship, connection – normalize
• Sometime basic needs not being met prevent the un-enclosable
• Gear. Shoes
• Food.
• Hierarchy of needs, not being bullied
• Adult they trust
• Care.
• Desire to want to. learn. – encouragement
• Physical and emotional.
• Multiple opportunities of expression.
• Freedom to be self fully. – non judgmental

INCLUSION & MEDIATION

• Building from Peers & Self Organization, this holds both decision making power and +/-/o consequences in common. A direct democracy where those affected are involved in decision making and distribution of resources (Euler, 2018; Ostrom, 1990). Disagreements are inevitable, conflict is likely.
• Proactively cultivating trust among peers, “CITIZENS FORM THEIR OVERALL SATISFACTION JUDGMENTS BY COMPARING THEIR PERCEPTIONS OF PERFORMANCE TO THEIR PRIOR EXPECTATIONS.” (Teodoro et al., 2022).
• Reactively attending to voices of discontent. Connecting back to political consent, using voice is a position of vulnerability and uncertainty. Invest in trust by addressing discontent, erode trust by not (Teodoro et al., 2022).

INCLUSION & MEDIATION

• How do we create belonging?
• How do we resolve conflicts?

INCLUSION & MEDIATION EXAMPLES

• “Group participation, then, is the preferable mechanism for dissatisfied citizen consumers since it holds out the promise of improved service for all.” (Teodoro et al., 2022).
• Project roll-outs included a phenomenon and a guiding question. Students developed lists of questions they needed answered to complete the project. Their questions were then transformed into the curriculum.
• Ongoing feedback cycles with children and all stakeholders.
• Deliberative bodies: All groups are involved in developing and maintaining the community: hiring, defining goals, and resources (Schneider & Gottlieb, 2021; Ifeji, 2022)

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REFLECT & SHARE

How do EE stakeholders proactively create a culture of belonging?

How do we reactively address disagreements?

NOTES:

• Listen,
• Daily check-in personal/professional – connection beyond work environment
• Multiple modes of teaching.
• +/change/- Addressing that stuff.
• Visiting members of the community – understanding the story before they get there as much as we can.
• Localized phenomena, culturally as well – what matters
• Not blank slates.

PRESENTATION OUTLINE

• Evolution of the commons
• Why does the commons matter today?
• Practices that build an educational commons
• (Re)Produsage – What are we making?
• Peers & Self Organization – How do we relate to each other & make decisions together?
• Needs Satisfaction & Voluntariness – What do we need to live & learn?
• Inclusion & Mediation – How do we create belonging & resolve conflicts?

LEARNING AS A COMMONS

• As nature nerds, what ecological process is analogous or resembles the commons?

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• Spend 10 minutes outside, move, be still, whatever speaks to you. Return to this room ready to discuss together.

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NOTES:

• Earth's systems (bio/geo/hydro/) cycles and interaction
• Agro-agriculture – coffee farms – trees breeding grounds for insects that kept pests in balance
• Prairie dogs – communities, survive in a community, band together to face hostility,
• Trees talk through roots, mycelium
• Water systems – cycle, soil intense diversity of soil, micro/macro life under our feet,
• Bogs – sit and stay, fewer outputs, settles, sphagnum moss springs back.
• Life cycle of an organism birth -> death,
• Giving. Itself toother life, giving self for others to live
• Order, disorder, re-order
• estuary

DECOMPOSING �HOSTILITY IN THE COMMONS

• Most simply, removing oneself or groups from the commoning process through material or immaterial means.
• A culture of domination in all its forms created by dualisms and invented superiorities embodied in policies and practices are hostile to the commons:

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Individualism, Mechanism, Progress, Rationalism/Scientism, Commodification/Consumerism, Anthropocentrism, Androcentrism, Ethnocentrism (Martusewicz et al., 2015; Bowers, 2006)

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DECOMPOSITION

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Art by: Melanie G. S. Walby

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DECOMPOSITION

In small groups visit the website and become the experts in one part of White Supremacy Culture. Be prepared to share with the group:

• + White saviorism

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• Brief definition
• How is the characteristic expressed in EE?

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Art by: Melanie G. S. Walby

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• We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world (Roy, 2020).

EVOLUTION

How do we want to close our time together?

REFERENCES

• Abowitz, K. K. & Mamlok, D. (2020). #Neveragainmsd student activism: Lessons for agonistic political education in an age of democratic crisis. Educational Theory, 70(6).
• Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. University of Chicago Press.
• Bowers, C. A. (2006). Revitalizing. The commons: Cultural and educational sites of resistance and affirmation. Lexington Books.
• Bowers, C. A. (1995). Educating for an ecologically sustainable culture: Rethinking. Moral education, creativity, intelligence, and other modern orthodoxies. State University of New York Press.
• Cavell, S. (1990). Conditions handsome and unhandsome. University of Chicago Press.
• Cleeves, J. (2022 September 7). Reclaiming connectedness: How to. overcome burnout, demoralization, and exploitation [Presentation]. Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education Advancing EE Annual Conference, virtual.
• De Lissovoy, N. (2017). Reframing the common: Race, coloniality, and pedagogy. In A. J. Means, D. R. Ford, & G. B. Slater (Eds.) Educational commons in theory and practice (pp. 39-54). Palgrave Macmillan.
• Dorsey, A. (2022 September 8). Restoration ecology and restorative justice [Presentation]. Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education Advancing EE Annual Conference, virtual.
• Euler, J. (2018). Conceptualizing the commons: Moving beyond the goods-based definition by introducing the social practices of communing as vital determinant. Ecological Economics, 143.
• Friedman, J. (2018 September 6). Sex & consent: It’s time to go beyond the rules. Speaking of Consent. Refinery 29. https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/sex-consent-laws-yes-means-yes-jaclyn-friedman
• Foster, J. B., Clark, B, & Holleman, H. (2021). Marx and the commons. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 88(1).

REFERENCES

• Gottlieb, D. (2020). A democratic theory of educational accountability: From test-based assessment to interpersonal responsibility. Taylor & Francis.
• Harvey, D. (2011). The future of the commons. Radical History Review, 109. DOI 10.1215/01636545-2010-017
• Ifeji, A. (2022 September 7). Equitable engagement of youth in environmental education [Presentation]. Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education Advancing EE Annual Conference, virtual.
• Martusewicz, R. A., Edmundson, J., & Lupinacci, J. (2015). EcoJustice education: Toward diverse, democratic, and sustainable communities. Routledge.
• Means, A. J., Ford, D. R., & Slater, G. B. (Eds.) (2017). Educational commons in theory and practice. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Murray, B. C. (2019). PTAs, parent involvement, and the challenges of relying on private money to subsidize public education. The Phi Delta Kappan, 100(8).
• Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing in the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press.
• Roy, A. (2020). “Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca
• Schneider, J. & Gottlieb, D. (2021). In praise of ordinary measures: The present limits and future possibilities of educational accountability. Educational Theory, 71(4).
• Shiva, V. (2005/2015). Earth demoracy: Justicec, sustainability, and peace. North Atlantic Books.
• Teodoro, M. (2022). Profits of distrust: Citizen-consumers, drinking water, and the. crisis of confidence in American government. Cambridge University Press.
• Zerilli, L. M. (2016). A democratic theory of judgement. University of Chicago Press.

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