If your concept of a shed revolves around the idea
of a tumble down edifice at the bottom of the garden, inhabited by spiders and a
lonely man in retreat from domesticity, then you may soon have to
reconsider. During the course of my exchange visit
to the Federation University of Australia, I had the good fortune to meet, and
attend a presentation by, Dr Barry Golding, a leading researcher in the field
of men’s sheds (pun unintentional, but seems to be an occupational hazard for
writers on this particular topic). Now,
I had heard of this movement, for that is what it is, when Dr Annette Foley
visited the University of Chester last June, but I had not given it very much
thought. It was, I surmised, an
interesting little development in its field (arrgh!), but of no great
educational relevance. How wrong I was.
However, before I go any further, I had better
explain for those of you who are as ignorant as I was, just what a men’s shed is in this context, or,
at least, what I understand it to be; for
a definitive explanation it is probably best to consult Barry’s very much better
informed writings on the subject. A
men’s shed is a meeting place for men; it is a place where men of all ages can
go to talk, interact, learn and further their general well-being in any number
of ways. Those men who are no longer in paid employment due to age, redundancy
or economic conditions can find a place and a purpose beyond the workplace, the
home or the pub; a convivial place ( and we shall come back to that word later) where
learning may take place, but where there are no rules or expectations except
their own. There are no managers, no professionals, no experts, no teachers
except themselves, and they have to meet nobody’s objectives or fit in with
anybody’s plans except their own.
Furthermore, these sheds are mushrooming across the world; an amazing organic
growth, driven by the perceived need of those involved, rather than by policy,
whether institutional or governmental. Akin to guerrilla gardening in its bottom up
spontaneity and absence of institutional control, it could almost be seen as a
form of guerrilla education; perhaps, a revolutionary new approach to learning.
Well, yes, but there are striking parallels in this new
model with the remedies for the ills of our current education system proposed by Ivan
Illich in Deschooling Society (1971), a work,
which, although much neglected in recent
decades, appears no less radical today than it did over forty years ago. What Illich proposed, was a total
deinstitutionalisation of an education system which was designed to reproduce
the status quo and shore up an inherently inequitable society.
"School is the advertising
agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is."
(Illich, 1971,p. 113)
And the solution was to allow people to decide upon their
own goals and their own curriculum within a setting of mutual help and concern, and with access to the resources they would need.
“Most learning is not the result
of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a
meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being "with it," yet
school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate
planning and manipulation.” ( Illich, 1971, p38)
Essential to this process,
and the suggested replacement for institutional control, was the development of “learning
webs” and “conviviality”. Of course, the learning webs envisioned in
1971 were not our present world wide web, although Illich did forsee the impact
technology might have in freeing education from those who would wish to control it. He was as
much concerned with access to human webs for educational support, as with technological assistance.
"A good educational system should
have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to
available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share
what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally,
furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to
make their challenge known." ( Illich, 1971,p75)
This suggestion was expanded upon in 1973 with the publication
of Tools
for Conviviality, in which conviviality is redefined as a dynamic replacement for the control of human activity by institutions, professionals and managers.
“I intend it to mean autonomous
and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with
their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of
persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment.
I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal
interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value.” ( Illich, 1973,p11)
Men’s sheds seem to me to be just such convivial,
post-institutional, alternatives to formal learning and, perhaps, a
signpost to at least one form that the
future of education might take.
Interestingly, development of men’s sheds has
proceeded with great ease in many countries, on a spontaneous self-help basis. However, in the UK, initially at
least, there was some attempt by a charitable institution to control
development, which almost entirely succeeded in missing the point. Fortunately, that problem
seems to have been overcome and we may have some confidence
that men’s sheds will now be able to develop, even in the UK, without the
threat of takeover by an institution or a government department, or, horror of horrors, regulation by
OFSHED (sorry, I couldn't resist it).
Could such de-institutionalisation spread beyond adult education, possibly even into the
state school sector? Well, if Room 13 is a portent, then perhaps
that process has already begun.
