One last word from higher education before it’s time for Summer Disobedience camp and other fun activities. Throughout the course of 2012 so far, I’ve been engaged in a variety of endeavors to promote horizontal learning. Always in my mind as I participate in these projects is Augosto Boal’s concept of “thinking as action.” How’s it going?

In January, I posted about the way in which a group of us had set about trying to render a “class” into a workgroup. We set three forms of activity: actions, close readings of selected writings, and thematic weeks. We later added a guest visitor to that agenda. Of the three, clearly actions are most distinct from standard higher education practice, except perhaps in performance practice or tactical media classes, which are hardly standard fields. Perhaps as a result, the weeks where we went on the March 1 education march or May Day events felt most compelling.

The sense of liberation that we had during actions highlighted the constraints of our modern seminar room, a windowless chunk of carpeted square footage dominated by an imposing computer console containing a thoroughly mediocre machine. It wasn’t until we had a meeting outside during the freakishly warm March in New York that we realized that this alienating effect was exaggerated by the way the room made us form a very wide circle: close circles work much better. Sometimes it’s the little things that make the difference.

One of the most effective choices we made was to have students work in small writing groups. Although the groups were chosen randomly, they came to have very different sensibilities. Each group determined how they would approach the action days, how they would work on a final project (collaboratively or not) and also formed discussion groups within the formal meetings. Increasingly, these groups became the engine room of the project as a whole. That is, after all, what people pay for at the Ivies (that and the one percent networking).

Meeting time was allocated according to a consensed agenda, based on a proposal drawn up by two facilitators. Every group member did this at least once, most twice. Everyone reported some reluctance to do it and then a strong sense of empowerment having carried it out. While the agendas varied notably week by week, as the Spring wore on, it was clear that there was more and more desire to spend time in the smaller groups, so much so that it was hard to get people to stop work and report back to the collective.

So lots of positives. Let’s note also that trying to functional horizontally in a vertical institution is complicated. Some participants felt that they benefited from what I, as the instructor of record, had to say and wished for more of that. I responded that I in turn felt my comments were far more effective once I had a strong sense of where people were with the material and so the usefulness of my interventions was in fact a consequence of the way we were working. We did agree during that discussion, however, to be sure to begin meetings with a conversation about the terms we were going to use that day.

As time wore on and the other non-horizontal classes were gearing up for term papers, the anxiety level notably increased and people stopped referring to their projects and started talking about finals. It took a lot of one-on-one and group interventions to stop the panic. Normally what this means is that people then like my class but write their thesis/dissertation on a topic from a seminar where a long research paper was required. In this instance, I don’t think that will happen (although it’s not an issue for me) because of the wider context in which Occupy and the political are so central.

More pointedly, can there be horizontality when one person is being paid to attend/teach and the others are (mostly) paying to attend/for credits? To pose the question is to answer it: not perfectly, no. In prefiguring a different approach, you can perhaps take steps in the right direction. It helped I think that we had discussed and agreed on the syllabus, so that we didn’t seem to have a week where the topics and materials weren’t of interest. It helped more, again, that many of the group were also active participants in the movement so felt that they had equal standing. There were one or two who felt unsure about this but did feel able to say so.

Now the school year is over. The group has reconstituted itself as an affinity group and we meet in Washington Square Park weekly for discussion, reading, walks and actions. I’m particularly pleased that it’s not just the usual suspects: the most skeptical person in the group is still active. Where does this go? I have no idea. I’m not worried about it either.