Vision and Mission of The Bellows Institute

The Bellows Institute was formed in September of 2007 to address the degeneration of American education at the high school and college level.

An outline of The Bellows Institute perspective and plan of action are described below:

Statement of the Problem: American education, particularly at the high school and college levels, is not meeting the needs of our next generation or the needs of our society. Critique upon critique by informed sources describe the problems: Ed. Richard Hersh and John Merrow, Declining By Degrees, 2005 (book and PBS presentation); Harvey Shapiro, A Larger Sense Of Purpose, 2005; Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges, 2006; Harry Lewis, Excellence Without A Soul, 2006; Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of A Nation, 2006; Gates Foundation, The Silent Epidemic, Perspectives of High School Dropouts, 2006; and Rudolph Crew, Only Connect: The Way To Save Our Schools, 2007.

The problems include: (i) an epidemic-level dropout rate that compromises the futures of many of our next generation; (ii) an inability to prepare students for the 21st century workforce; (iii) an inability to prepare students to defend our democratic principles through civic engagement; (iv) an inability to create new learning environments that are more closely aligned with our next generation’s evolved thinking processes; and (v) an inability to prepare students for creative, productive and responsible participation in, and shaping of, our emerging global society.

The Bellows Vision: To achieve a natural evolutionary advance in American education–particularly at the high school and college levels–by focusing on its most fundamental task, namely, to provide our next generation with the necessary tools and experiences to: (i) articulate a well-examined and self-constructed worldview and (ii) construct an inner compass, which will serve to illuminate their origins; articulate their ideals; provide a common vision for a sustainable future; preserve sound norms of conduct and intercultural maturity; and help them to internalize a cohesive sense of global social intelligence. There is an urgency for change, now. Many of our emerging, most pressing problems–whether socio-political strife or habitat loss and climate change–are truly global problems that must be solved by new methods of conflict resolution and international collaboration in the interest of a “global commons.” This requires that our next and future generations articulate a new understanding of the proper placement and responsibilities of the individual self within the wider context of a global society. In effect, they must cultivate a global awareness–understanding diversity of values, attitudes and behavior–and also develop the critical reasoning and social skills for international discourse and collaborative action.

The Bellows Mission: To build practicum learning environments that will create and connect research-guided, integrative, practicum-based learning to traditional classroom learning environments; and provide learning opportunities in the form of student immersions in off-campus real-world settings for semester, summer and winter intersession terms. This connection to classroom academic instruction is crucial to students whose education has traditionally consisted of presentations of separate and distinct academic disciplines with generally little attention to: (i) integration across disciplines, (ii) the skills and tools required for synthesis, (iii) achieving a coherent body of knowledge, and (iv) connection with real-world applications. An important part of the mission is to bring educational research–which has had little impact on reform of American education–inside the practicum learning environments to play an integral role in achieving the student learning outcomes that lead to a global perspective. Accordingly, Bellows will: (i) engage in its own research concerning our next generation’s evolved thinking processes; (ii) transform those research findings into curricula and instructor training; (iii) design and operate practicum learning environments for high school and college students; and (iv) conduct routine evaluations to modify and improve these learning environments in a manner to stimulate high schools, colleges and universities to build integrative, practicum-based learning environments as an integral part of their curricula.

The Practicum Learning Environments: The research-guided, integrative, practicum-based learning process will occur within four practicum learning environments, each comprised of a set of real-life experiences and challenges, followed by deep personal and group reflection on the meaning of the experiences. Students will be immersed in real-world settings and real-world organizations as participants, not onlookers. They will engage in complex, integrative case histories of actual events related to these experiences to deepen critical thinking and problem-solving, as well as to broaden their perspectives. These experiential settings will be carefully selected and designed to facilitate this critical educational process by confronting students with the kinds of real social and environmental challenges that promote realistic self-assessment, and understanding and valuing of self in connection to others in small groups–as part of a larger culture and society–and, finally, in the full modern context of global relations. One semester term under development consists of employing four Bellows Learning Centers to provide a phased immersions to help prepare students for creative, productive and responsible participation in, and shaping of, our emerging global society, as follows:

(i) “Self-Assessment and Group Dynamics.” The setting for this experience will be the Inner Passage area of Petersburg, Alaska. The surrounding wilderness setting–of mountains and glaciers, whale migrations, an extraordinary quantity and diversity of wildlife, the harsh elements, and indigenous cultures–will serve to remove students from the immediate influences of parents and popular culture and bring them together as small groups whose members must quickly engage in creative, cooperative problem-solving and critical thinking, including leadership skills and appreciation of basic democratic principles;

(ii) “The Basic Dynamics of Society and Environment.” The setting will be Boulder, Utah, in the Colorado Plateau/Four Corners area of the American Southwest, which contains the ruins of the largest Anasazi settlement west of the Colorado River. Student immersion in the problems faced by Anasazi society in connection with their dramatically-changing natural environment will help focus student attention on the self in society, the basics of human social organization, the principles of social and environmental sustainability, intercultural social and political relationships, unsustainable environmental practices, and other factors responsible for societal failure or collapse;(iii) “Modern Multi-Cultural and International Relations.” The setting will be the town of Patagonia, Arizona, near the US border with Mexico. This setting will facilitate experience and reflection on modern multi-cultural and inter-cultural relations as they are played out in the daily lives of the residents of this borderland region. Students will confront the complexity of ethnic values and attitudes in the wider context of national politics, international law, and critical ecological issues that transcend national boundaries;(iv) “The Global Society.” The setting will be Rwanda, Africa, a nation that has experienced genocide, and faces overpopulation and serious environmental management issues. The setting will facilitate an awareness that seemingly distant and unrelated people and nations are nevertheless connected to the rest of the world through the effects of their “local” decisions. Moreover, it will bring students into contact with dramatically different worldviews and value systems, inspiring them to understand them and discover a common ground for discourse and shared values (“a global ethic”). Students will also learn to value “diversity of minds” and the power of creative, collaborative action toward a common end.

Justification: In our view, American society and our next generation are adrift, disoriented and vulnerable to the disquieting realities of the 21st century that we have yet to fully comprehend. In our view, the only American institution that can reverse this seemingly inevitable degeneration is redefined American education that positions itself in a distinctly separate sphere and that reinforces the values of the commons and the development of a global social intelligence. While in full support of America’s free enterprise system as the source of our economic freedom and quality of life, redefined American education must make it clear that the irresponsible global market economy mind-set of today is a severe distortion of our traditional balance between the private and public domains and cannot be permitted to overwhelm the values of the commons and to threaten our safety and our sustainable future.  One only need look at the sub-prime mortgage catastrophe precipitated by irresponsible members of the U.S. financial markets and allowed to run out of control by negligent regulatory agencies of the U.S. Government to understand this extraordinary danger to the American public and the stability of a responsible capitalist system here and abroad.

In the meantime, we will begin by introducing research-guided, integrative, practicum-based learning that can connect with, and complement, traditional classroom learning environments–the first step to reversing the student disaffection and epidemic-level dropout rates in American high schools, colleges and universities.