Three quick items:

1) TODAY - Virtual Holistic Education Discussion Group

2) TIME CHANGED - Making Change Stick

3) Take the Back-to-Basics 2.0 Survey

4) Conference and Event Schedule

Holistic Education Discussions

This gathering welcomes Don Berg who will lead our discussion on "Historical Precedents for Changing the Global System of Schooling." Education is a field notoriously resistant to reform. According to historian Larry Cuban’s books How Teacher’s Taught and Confessions of a School Reformer the mainstream American school system has not substantively changed since 1890. As he put it in 2021, “…the age-graded school and the grammar of schooling remain secure.” This seeming imperviousness to change can breed cynicism, but examining the historical record for changes to other large-scale systems can give us both hope and clues to the formulation of better strategies. Don Berg will briefly share a developmental model derived from the history of changes from miasma theory to germ theory in medicine and from frontier economics to deep ecology in natural resource management. Applying the model to education will illuminate where we are and what we should be doing to address the current state of the field.

Don is the author of the award winning book Schooling for Holistic Equity and his most recent book is called The Agentic Schools Manfesto. He recently presented at the Asia-Pacific Holistic Education Network International Conference in Kyoto, Japan. He co-founded and for 8 years was the treasurer and primary administrator for Portland Clean Air, an environmental non-profit that fights air pollution in Portland, Oregon. He also homeschooled other people’s kids in a consensus run small group for about five years. His thesis research examined patterns of motivation in two holistic schools and was published in the journal Other Education. He lives at the Joyful Llama Ranch in West Linn, Oregon.

Holistic Education bi-weekly Discussion Group

Making Change Stick Discussion

The group is part of the Rights Centric Education movement that is informed by the UN Convention in Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

Session 3, May 13th, 7pm UTC: The Agentic Schools Manifesto – Introduction and discussion by author Don Berg.

Session 4, May 20th, 7pm UTC: The Agentic Schools Manifesto – Turning talk into action.

Session 5, May 27th, 7pm UTC: World Systems Solutions – Moving towards a global learning ecosystem.

RCE Making Change Stick Discussion Group

Back-to-Basics 2.0 Survey

I want to refine the statements that make up Back-to-Basics 2.0 by getting feedback from smart folks like you. I have created a survey for each core principle to assess how much of a consensus exists on these principles and refine them as needed. Each survey ends with a link to the next.

Back-to-Basics 2.0 Consensus Survey Thank you for your support!

If you’d like to preview the statements you can check out this 4-page PDF (~10Mb): Back-to-Basics 2.0 Handout The surveys have 18, 7, 4, and 14 statements for review.

Travel & Event Schedule

We are almost guaranteed to attend if we can make a presentation or have a table.

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International Democratic Education Conference IDEC@EUDEC

August 1 to 7, De Kluis, Sint-Joris-Weert, Belgium

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NEXT YEAR

Student Power Summit

March, Los Angeles, California, USA

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SDT Conference 2026 9th International Self-Determination Theory Conference

July 1-4, 2026, Geneva, Switzerland

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Thanks for you time and attention.

Don Berg