No One Is Coming to Save (the) US

For the TL;DRs among us… Announcement! I am relaunching the new and improved Open-Source Learning community, where some of you have contributed in the past and I hope will share again. You’re all invited, and it won’t cost you a penny to join. Bonus: I’ll be hosting a live event each week starting in March, so please let me know if there is a time (I’m in California so think Pacific Standard Time or GMT minus 8 hours) during the week that works especially well for you to join a conversation about learning in 2025. If you can’t make the live call, no worries — you’re welcome to send along questions or ideas to discuss, and I’ll post recordings in the community. Here is a link to join or catch up if you’re already a member. If you encounter any hiccups please email me directly and I’ll help.

Last week’s experiences at the EdPlus Innovate conference in St. Louis brought me back to my roots.

I started thinking differently about American education in the aftermath of the attacks on 9/11. Back then I was still teaching at UCLA and leading a management consulting practice that worked mostly with high-performing companies, professional firms, and nonprofit organizations. My graduate students and clients were some of the best and the brightest people around.

But all of them – every single one – told me a version of the same story, about how they had to recover from their formal schooling just to live well, much less excel in their chosen endeavors. I couldn’t get over it; these were some of the most successful people in our society! If they had to actively heal from school and seek out better information to get it together, what did that mean for everyone else?

When you look at the world as a product of our thinking, and you see what the majority of schooling does to the majority of students, you begin to understand events that otherwise seem bizarre.

For example, I once believed that crises bring about positive change. Wrong. Gun sales go up after mass shootings. The crisis that brought me into teaching increased intolerance, surveillance, and a mentality of “do as you’re told or the terrorists win.” When the coronavirus pandemic closed campuses, many people thought school would finally evolve with the times. Instead, surveillance increased and we all went back to worse-than-normal. And now we are gutting our own institutional capacity to deal with the usual flu, much less the bird flu.

If you’re reading this newsletter you already have some great ideas and questions about learning. We need a place to exchange those ideas and questions, to help each other through a difficult time that promises to get worse before it gets better.

We are the ones who have to do this work, because no one is coming to save us.

Why reflect on all this now? Because we are living in a time of great change, and the powers that be are ensuring that our institutions cannot respond effectively. 9/11 and the pandemic are just two events in an intensifying series of extreme weather events, mass shootings, elections, and destructive policy decisions. Social media, financial scarcity, and “culture wars” have made it more difficult for teachers to openly innovate and advocate – or for parents to let their kids walk a mile home from school (much less ignore the state curriculum), or for employers to prioritize humanity over the bottom line.

We have to find a way forward. We need each other, and we need to find the inspiration, strength, and motivation to lead.

I created Open-Source Learning as a term, a philosophy, and a theoretical framework for every lead learner to claim their practice, in the same way that 20th century educators invoked Waldorf, Montessori, or Reggio Emilia when parents, administrators, or school board members asked questions or needed a new perspective.

A couple years ago, I started a community HERE to engage with educators and people from all walks of life who are interested in adding value and strengthening their communities through learning.

In the coming weeks I’ll post decks from my conference presentations, along with OSL badges, strategies for improving our learning capacities, and courses/events focused on Open-Source Learning. As I get a sense of what community members want and need, I’ll add spaces and resources accordingly. Most importantly, we’ll get to hear from each other, and experts/ others we bring to the party.

Maybe we will start an education movement. Maybe you’ll get a great idea, or write an article, or find support in your own daily exploration. Or maybe this will all go over like a fart in a phone booth (remember those?) and I’ll keep myself company online for a few months. Either way, to paraphrase George Patton, there is one thing you will be able to say when this chapter of American history is over. Thirty years from now when you're sitting by your fireside with your grandchildren on your knees and they ask, 'What did you do during the Post-Pandemic Purge?' You won't have to cough and say, 'Well, I scrolled through shit on my phone.' No, you can look them straight in the eyes and say 'I joined the great Open-Source Learning community!'

What is your favorite online learning space? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription.

Here is a taste of what I’m reading, watching, and thinking about.

RIP Skype –

When I started teaching high school courses and connecting students with outside experts, I used Skype for the purpose. When I read that Skype Is Dead, I actually got a little nostalgic. From the article: “It’s truly the end of an era. Launched in 2003, Skype quickly became synonymous with video calls online, with “skype-ing” entering the lexicon as its own verb. It has supported countless long distance relationships, podcasts recording sessions, and remote D&D games, but after being supplanted by apps like Zoom during the pandemic, it seems Microsoft has decided it’s finally time to go.”

What I’m Reading –

“This Poem” by Shirley Bradley Price LeFlore that I saw on a wall in the Grand Center Arts District of St. Louis:

This is a spirit poem

Beating my breast like a drum

Hot like juju

A sweatin/soulin poem

Dragging swansongs and silence like night

Dragging rusted chains w/no grace

Pulling the weepin and wailin

Thru the middle passage

A sweaten/soulin poem

With screaming in the eye…

This is a today poem/ a callin poem

To break the yoke of lies

And be blessed

A woman calling poem to walk in grace

Thru her storm, suck up the light drink fresh water take her place in the sun

And be healed

A man calling poem to rise up make his bed Gather his loins/ his courage/

His babies/ his women

And be healed…

A children calling poem to smother the anger of their now-ness

Soak-up the sunshine of their newness

Feel the power…

This is not a revelation poem

But a revolution poem

Because revolutions are born

Out of the evolution of every Generation

This poem may never be heard

But it will keep on hearing

This poem may never be seen

But it will keep on seeing

SO DON’T TRY TO KILL THIS POEM

JUST KEEP WRITING

THIS POEM…

What I’m Listening To –

Have you been enjoying Severance? Do you find it appealing that someone created a successful show because he hated a job so much that he wished he could switch his mind off every day when he went to work? Then here is the soundtrack for you: eight whole hours of music to refine by. Even better: at the end of Season 2 Episode 6, I heard a version of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” that somehow captured the essence of the song better than the original. No wonder: it was recorded by none other than Ella Fitzgerald. Watch The First Lady of Song perform it live.

Quote I’m pondering —

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
– Galileo Galilei
True terror is to wake up one morning to discover that your high school class is running the country.
– Kurt Vonnegut

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Best,