Rolling Earth, movement education

Are you planning a workshop or other education activity and looking for advice or feedback? Want to use activities from this site, but not sure how to adapt them to fit your circumstances? Send me an email and we can set up a time to skype or conference. I'm happy to share experiences and provide feedback or a sounding board for your planning process. Of course it all depends on how busy I am at the time, but it's a good way to use me, so give it a try!

I apologize for website glitches (like the fact that the popular education handbook is not showing up!) I recently upgraded the software and databases and have some work to do. I'll try to get it fixed asap!

My friend and collaborator Charley MacMartin tells me that friends of his may visit this site looking for the problem treeⁱ. Welcome! Please do register and also let me know if you have questions, comments, suggestions, links etc.

Over time, the standard chants and slogans used on picket lines and in demonstrations, protests, and marches, become stale and cliche. The content gets lost and the music becomes sing-song. The chants have no impact. The whole experience becomes disempowering. This activity takes one chant -- What do we want? When do we want it? -- and "reverse engineers" it to open up a discussion of the goals and expectations of individuals and groups. After all, these are the big questions: What do we want? When do we want it? How can we have an impact?

So, what's this handbook about?

This handbook is:

• a toolkit for educators and activists
• a case-study of grass-roots worker education in the US workers movement
• [an argument for popular education for union democracy, and
• [an argument for union democracy for worker education
• [a call for allies
• [a starter

A Toolkit
[box]What kinds of activities can I use to help workers learn their rights and develop their ability to organize for democracy and power?[image: we're all here, now what do I do?]

I have made some progress: you can now find one activity from each chapter in the handbook: Popular Education for Union Democracy, along with an introductory piece that lists all the activities from that chapter and puts them in context.

Click on the link at left for a full table of contents.

Please let others know about the site and feel free to register and comment.

"Popular Education for Movement Building" or マットの英語でデモクラシー（仮）

I will be teaching a course at PARC's Freedom School in Tokyo, Japan, this May. The course is six sessions, from May to July, 2008. The cost (which may change) is 15,000 yen. The maximum number of participants is 15 people. Contact PARC to register.

It is an English course, but the subject of the class is unique. Here is the course description from PARC, followed by my description of the course in English:
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The Spiral Modelⁱ: The Spiral Model as it appears in Educating for a Change.

The spiral model illustrates several important principles of popular education:

• that it begins with the experiences and interests of the participants,
• that the content of the educational process flows from their experience,
• that new information is needed,
• that through a collective process of dialogue participants explore their experiences and identify problems they wish to address,
  

I have been concentrating on The Workers' Inspiration: Popular Education for Union Democracy. My plan is to get the intro section for each chapter and one activity into good enough shape to be viewed by the public.

I had initially planned to make them available only to registered users until they were in more finished form, but that would mean that a new visitor wouldn't really see much, and might not decide to register.

So, though they are not entirely finished, I am making them public in the hopes that they will make the site more useful to people.