EXCO- the Twin Cities Experimental College
Posted on Apr. 29, 2008 | Tagged as: Clerk's Blog, Conversations
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As Clerk of Meeting, I received a communication from Miriam Larson, a Macalester student who works with the Experimental Colleges in the Twin Cities.
I have long thought there was great potential in an expanded relationship between our Meeting and the Macalester student body, probably because my own first regular contact with Quakers came as a college student in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
I encourage Friends to learn about the Experimental College (EXCO). It started at Macalester a couple of years ago and has modest organizational and financial support from the College.
ECXO is a collective that shares common visions for a better world and offers free and open classes to the public. EXCO strives to offer Twin Cities’ communities the opportunity to teach or learn in a space open to alternative education and all kinds of knowledge, particularly those that have been historically marginalized. At EXCO, everyone can teach or take a class, and all classes are free.
– from the EXCO website.
My long-term dream is that we would offer a couple of regular courses in the EXCO format, most semesters. Perhaps one on Quakers and one on Nonviolence in the fall, maybe a Spiritual Nurture class in the spring. Last fall, Betsy Raasch-Gilman co-taught a class which was an inter-generational dialog between anti-authoritarians and more traditional peace and justice activists.
In the short term, I urge interested Friends to check out the website, consider taking a summer class, and please talk to me about what you think we might be able to do in the future.
A sample of EXCO courses from the term just ending:
Building A Movement for Economic Human Rights
Introduction to Programming (in Java)
Beginners Intro To Knitting and Crochet
Climate, Development, and Energy: Renewing Our Future
The Social Responsibility of African American Music
Meet the MN 8! Peace Criminal or War Criminal? How do you envision your life in the age of the War on Terror?
Basic Bike Maintenance
Peace, Struggle & Giggle,
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