Vancouver Learning City

2011-03-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

The View From the Rest of the World – Part Two

Along with seven other international cities, Vancouver is participating in a Pascal International Exchange (PIE), the aim of which is to broker and support exchange between agencies and organizations in different parts of the world who, like us, are seeking to build innovative learning communities and promote lifelong learning to advance people’s wellbeing and quality of life. Participating cities include Bari, Italy; Cork, Ireland; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Glasgow, Scotland; Hume, Australia; Kaunas, Lithuania; and Hong Kong.

Upon reflection, and at the risk of lending credence to the “misery loves company” notion, I have to admit it was reassuring to learn that many of the most daunting challenges faced by the Vancouver Learning City are ones being grappled with elsewhere. True, there were no “silver bullets” fired in our exchange, but I think we all emerged somewhat better armed for battle. And therein lies the crux: Why does it feel like such a fight to create sustainable learning communities? Why should promoting lifelong learning to advance people’s wellbeing and quality of life be such an uphill grind?

Peter Kearns of the Hume Global Learning Village – one of the most impressive and well developed learning communities anywhere -- aptly observed that it is a seeming paradox that the case for lifelong learning has never been greater in the environment confronting cities but the high tide of learning city development appears to have receded. Our blogs suggest the worst features of this recession include scarce, readily-dismantled funding; half-baked government support and policy integration; and a kind of clock-ticking pressure to beat our “best before date” by delivering impossibly tangible outcomes in an impossibly curtailed timeframe.

One of the greatest assets of lifelong learning is its integral role in virtually everything that advances our communities. Unfortunately, this centrality is complex and this complexity may well be our greatest liability. As Norman Longworth, Honorary Professor of Longlearn, points out, the complex interaction and holism between economic and social, human, intellectual, community and cultural capital tends to be forgotten or ignored. He suggests it is too difficult to fathom out and tap into. Reluctantly, I have to agree with him. Many of us were encouraged by the work of the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) and its Composite Learning Index (CLI) and by how the CLI performance indicators of a “learning culture” might support actionable, informed policy. Then we watched as government cut funding, reducing the effort to a “back-burner” sputter. The reality is that most people and organizations simply “glaze over” at the complexity of the relationships between lifelong learning and other economic, social, cultural, and political issues.

Although we use slightly different, locally-appropriate strategies for doing it, all of these international learning communities attempt to meaningfully position “learning” in relation to other issues shaping our society. I’ve long thought the economic development “case” for lifelong learning, for example – global competitiveness, labour market management, meaningful employment – might prove compelling for those with the resources to intervene, but this, too, seems to have yielded modest results. The same, in Canada anyway, can be said of the social and cultural thrusts of our work. We have yet to capture the imagination, unleash the influence of policy makers and funders/investors around learning as a permanent fulcrum for socio-economic and cultural development. We are still largely operating “cap in hand” – vulnerable to dismissal as a flavour of the month, a “cause” jockeying for attention among others.

What accounts for this absence of full capture? We in the Vancouver Learning City, along with our colleagues in learning communities around the world, share an energetic passion for lifelong learning – a deeply intuitive and empirically-informed conviction around its ability to advance virtually every aspect of our individual, social, cultural, and economic well being. Yet, in Canada and perhaps elsewhere, we’ve aroused a bland, conditional, tenuous interest and commitment among those in a position of influence. What are we missing?

Bruce Wilson of Australia makes a good point that maybe it’s what we’re saying and how we’re saying it. He suggests that maybe it’s the language of learning that gets in the way, that maybe we need to focus more on how we connect with ordinary people on the ground. I agree with him. Perhaps, ultimately, that’s the chorus we’ve not yet organized: the voices of the public, the hum of the electorate.

Change requires a critical mass, a groundswell of urging. On a global scale, public outcry over environmental issues has begun to change the lens through which governments and industry make decisions about resources and technology. Nationally and internationally, one can find evidence that lenses are similarly beginning to change around issues of poverty, addiction, homelessness, hunger, healthcare – albeit at a glacial pace. Here in Vancouver, whilst we’ve been engaging in this exchange, a local movement – whipped up to a large extent through the strategic use of online social networking and marketing media – has mobilized itself to quite possibly halt municipal approval of a casino expansion development generally considered until recently to be a foregone conclusion. Onlookers are gobsmacked by the effects of this elegant, scrappy campaign. I am wondering what we can learn from it.

Granted, making lifelong learning an urgent matter – a rallying cry around a solution to some imminent threat – is neither appropriate nor possible. I have no doubt, as evidenced in the PIE exchange, that we’re all more than capable of developing creative and collaborative interventions to advance lifelong learning in our communities; what we haven’t yet done is secure and compel enduring policy and investment commitments to sustain those interventions over time. I agree with Bruce Wilson that we need to ask ourselves Who is listening? Perhaps we also have to ask ourselves Who is making the noise?

2011-03-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

The View From the Rest of the World - Part One

Partly, the Vancouver Learning City is about optimism. It must be, because as a fledgling, loosely organized initiative whose modest resources are totally out of whack with the vision of what it seeks to achieve, the VLC refuses to go away or give up. As we struggle to advance the city we love as a place where curiosity is encouraged and learning new things is safe and fun and seen as a worthwhile way of life – we sometimes forget that we are part of a growing international network of learning communities.

We were reminded of this recently as we were invited, along with seven other international cities, to participate in the Pascal International Exchange (PIE). The aim of PIE is to broker and support dialogue between agencies and organizations in different parts of the world who, like us, are seeking to build innovative learning communities and promote lifelong learning to advance people’s wellbeing and quality of life.

The shape of learning communities varies as much as the cities who support them: Bari, Italy; Cork, Ireland; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Glasgow, Scotland; Hume, Australia; Kaunas, Lithuania; and Hong Kong. More detailed information is available on the Pascal Observatory’s PIE web site at http://pie.pascalobservatory.org/, but here are a few highlights:

One of the world's most established and sustainable learning communities is the Hume Global Learning Village, located in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Under the leadership of the Hume City Council, the Village was given an early high profile in the community through the building of an impressive Global Learning Centre incorporating a public library, community meeting rooms, training rooms, public access internet, and a coffee shop. The Village undertakes an impressive array of initiatives improving learning opportunities and engagement throughout the entire Hume community, including an Ideas Lab fostering innovation in applications of ICT in education and training; an annual Research Day to enable researchers to disseminate important information about learning in Hume; the Four Seasons of Learning programs wherein in structured learning activities are organized throughout the year, a Teachers Scholarship program; and Village Member Forums and presentations around contemporary learning issues.

On the Adriatic Sea in Italy, the Bari Learning Cities Association is a model of how learning-based strategies can be applied to address pressing social issues – in this case, organized crime. Funded by the City of Bari, the campaign links schools, magistrates, law enforcement, the university, and social service agencies and demonstrates how creative, integrated learning practices might not only help mitigate the consequences of crime but install prevention strategies that are more systematic in the long term. Projects include interventions to support the healthy growth of the children of convicted criminals; work placement programs to integrate ex-convicts into the community; sports, cultural, and recreational activities for juvenile offenders; a web-run radio station, Radiokreative, run by students of local, primary, and secondary schools; student-led roundtable discussions with the family and victims of criminals; and an annual World Day of Memory to remember the victims of crime that attracted 100,000 people.

In Glasgow, the civic museum movement lead by the 9-member Glasgow Museums Network has partnered with Glasgow Life – a charitable company contracted to manage cultural and sporting services on behalf of Glasgow City Council – to link learning with civic ideals and economic development. Under the partnership, all galleries and displays are potential “learning arenas” for self-led exploration and discovery. Every year, the project reaches over 200,000 people (children, families, schools, adults, and community groups) through its learning programmes.

The City of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania is launching a learning-based initiative to address that city’s staggering challenges around unemployment, poverty, economic disparity, housing, and transportation. With the help of the University of Dar es Salaam, it is currently building support among the central government, public and private institutions, and private “good citizens” to collaborate with the City in problem-solving and social action for the sake of self-sustaining development.

In Ireland, the Cork Lifelong Learning Festival is an initiative of the Cork City Development Board (one of 34 such boards established in the Republic of Ireland under its National Development Plan of 2000) comprising representatives of local community and voluntary groups, employers, unions, state agencies, and the Cork City Council. The only event of its kind in Europe, the Festival gives learners of all ages (from pre-school to post-retirement) and communities an opportunity to celebrate and showcase their learning experiences and encourage others to get involved in learning.

In Lithuania, the Kaunas Sustainable Learning City is an initiative spearheaded by the Kaunas University of Technology. A partnership between the university, government, and a network of community interests, the initiative is piloting a learning-based neighbourhood approach to fostering social, environmental, cultural, and educational sustainability.

The Hong Kong Centre for Lifelong Learning Research and Development promotes the quality, impact, and understanding of lifelong learning as it relates to various aspects of Hong Kong’s social development. Among the Centre’s specific streams of activity are initiatives to support elders, migrant workers and their children, and dislocated industrial workers.

Learning about the successes, plans, and variations of community engagement among these “sister” organizations has been stimulating and, on some levels, extremely encouraging. At the same time, these new insights reveal some of the daunting challenges confronting us all as we continue to breathe new life into learning around the world.

More on that to come

2011-02-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

Too Many Questions?

I ask a lot of questions and always have – not to be intrusive or tedious, but because I am genuinely curious. I remember being scolded as a kid for asking “too many” questions – as if curiousity might be a bad thing. I’ve never understood this. I mean, it seems plain enough: One admits through a question what one doesn’t understand and conveys through a question how one wants to understand. Ask enough of them and we actually do begin to understand. How can anything but good come from that?

We are baffled, after all. In a world of unfathomable choice, access to virtually everything, and instant connectivity, how could we feel otherwise? We are overwhelmed by the pace and enormity of the world around us. But it isn’t our questions that are weighing us down. On the contrary, our questions are what lift us up. How else can we gain a foothold on this complexity, get traction on what concerns us, advance to a better place – if not by asking questions?

Indira Ghandi said: The power to question is the basis of all human progress. I agree with her.

We enjoy a comparatively high quality of life here in Vancouver – as individuals and in our families, neighbourhoods, workplaces, and civic affairs. To a great extent, this is so because of our curiousity, our desire to better understand and engage in the world around us. We ask a lot of questions – not just in our blogs, but in the conversations we have, the classes we take, the hobbies we pursue, the outings we make, the interests we follow. I believe our questions do more to push and shape our “quality of life” than the answers they draw out.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others. – James Baldwin

Our curiousity isn’t entirely a solo thing, after all – something confined within our own minds. It is itself derived from other people’s questions. It is captured by them, even. How else might we be nudged into discovering all those experiences and interests, abilities and issues we’d only ever have considered in passing if other people didn’t raise them? I only happened upon my love of opera, for example, because I heard someone ask whether there was a person alive who couldn’t immediately identify with the anguish of Pagliacci...

We begin to see the connections between once seemingly unrelated issues by attending to other people’s questions and interests. What do rates of volunteerism or voter turnout have to do with feelings of community, for example? What contributes to our sense of belonging?   Issues may not always follow clear causal relationships, but they are often related. Is there something worthwhile in exploring those connections, some insights to be gained? However inconvenient to our 30-second sound-bite world with our 140-character insights, the answer is unquestionably yes. Complexity is our reality.

Whether we are struggling to play the clarinet, debating whether to sign our names to an anti-HST petition, or making sense of the wall that just went up around a loved one, much of our lives is a quest for deeper competence, resolve, connection. Perhaps we would advance more quickly by resisting our tendency to oversimplify, by listening more for understanding than advantage.

Lofty intentions aside, many of us simply find reassurance in others’ curiousity. The earnest purity of another’s inquiring mind, no matter what they’re asking about– it pleases us.    Their absorption in something outside of themselves – it comforts us. And the courage it took to put themselves “out there” by asking their question in the first place and for no other reason than that they can and must better understand – it inspires us.

It is in learning with and through others that we determine who we are and what it means “to be” us. The mere phrasing of another’s question can change the way we see our place in the world. Someone asks if we want our society to be one that is tolerant and compassionate and fair? We throw our voice into the chorus of yes and then ask ourselves: Am I tolerant, compassionate, fair?

Ultimately, our questions shape our actions. Born of curiousity, questions give birth to discovery. The most gripping discoveries compel us to action. And on some level, in the deepest place of our humanity, we ask ourselves and each other those words from the Talmud:   If not you, who? If not now, when?

So, I ask you: Too many questions?

2011-01-31T13:10:00.000-08:00

The Most Important Thing...

Years ago I encountered a small item in the Personals section of the Georgia Straight: “What’s the most important thing you ever learned? David wants to know.” The question intrigued me, as did the person who posed it. It was like someone had thrown me a lifeline I hadn’t known I needed. I wasn’t the only one. I wasn’t the only one who just had to know, who just had to find her way to the point of all of it.Of course, I’ve never supposed there’s a single answer to this question. There are just too many truths, too many contexts, too many shades-of-grey. And (an important discovery in its own right), just because a question is phrased to elicit a singular reply doesn’t mean there is one.

Still, David’s question resides in me. It occupies a room with a window in the back of my brain and seems only to demand being fed when the rest of me is hungry. Restless and slightly malnourished, it subsists on an erratic diet of table scraps.

But then, c’mon. The most important thing? Talk about pressure. I’ve answered it a thousand ways and fallen short of a gold star every single time.

I began by considering the popular wisdom-of-ages stuff. Consider the usual clichés, for example: He who hesitates is lost ... every cloud has a silver lining ... all’s fair in love and war. I’m not at all convinced these are even true, let alone important. Actions speak louder than words ... every dog has its day ... it’s not over till it’s over... Surely, the most important thing we’ve ever learned must exceed these banalities and give us something more precise, universal, failsafe. Even the wisdom of “to thine own self be true” turns rickety when one is of two minds – having to choose, say, between telling the absolute truth or withholding information to protect a loyal ally. You can win and fail either way you call it. How sturdy is that?

Okay, so brushing aside the blur of age-old wisdom for the moment, I considered instead the crisper utility of specific skills. My ability to read, write, and speak English (or my version of it) is surely one of the most important things I ever learned – but the most? I’m not so sure. It doesn’t have as much clout in the troubleshooting corridors of cyberspace as, say, HTML. And my modest skill with numbers, my competence with a pool cue, my knack for colour and design – they aren’t so important when I’m scrambling up the slope of a misunderstanding. No matter how imperative to one set of circumstances, every skill can be equally impotent in another.

To make matters worse (or better, depending on your point of view), the mastery of one set of skills doesn’t deliver you to the apex you imagined but merely to the base-camp for yet another ascent. I recently (haltingly) acquired the skills, for example, to build Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger identities online. But rather than bask in the meadow of that arrival, I was hurled onto the rocky crevasse of making them conversant with one another. One virtual plane of utter non-comprehension apparently leads, once traversed, to another...

Okay, okay. So abandoning the dream of some ultimate wisdom-nugget or the paramount utility of any one skill, I began to wonder if the answer might lie amidst those flashes of brilliance we sometimes have (or think we have) that bathe us in the blinding light of our own intelligence. Maybe that inner radiance would yield the most important thing.

Now, if you’re at all like me, there’s a mirror-panelled room just down the hall in your brain from David’s where you house an inventory of these once-brilliant flashes of insight. A few of these burn brightly all the days of your life and serve as beacons to guide you through certain territory. Others are devolving through declining states of luminescence. Still others are piled high, in resentment and neglect, on a dull mound of opaque rubble in the corner.

It is while rummaging about in this room that I discovered what might indeed be my version of an answer to David — were I ever pressed beyond further equivocation to name it, that is. The most important thing I ever learned? Perhaps this is it: Perhaps the most important thing I ever learned is that sometimes there can be more power and magic in asking a question than there is even in answering it.