Exploring education alternatives with The Alternatives Project

Current co-existing and inter-related global crises are pushing humanity and the living planet towards potential political, social, economic, and ecological collapse. These crises – as reflected in the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, structural inequalities, police brutality and racism, entrenched patriarchy, accelerating climate chaos, and the constant threat of wars – are driven globally by social, economic, political, and educational arrangements of power that shape and sustain profound inequities and will ultimately threaten life on the planet. This is an historical moment to reconceive and radically change public and nonformal education as entry points for deeper transformations that will help strengthen human solidarity and cooperation and bring an end to racism, patriarchy, and unregulated capitalism, pulling humanity and the biosphere back from the brink of disaster.

The Alternatives Project (TAP) brings together a diverse growing transnational collective of progressive academics, union members, civil society activists, and social movement participants who stand for alternative pedagogies and for just, regenerative education systems that will support the social transformations we need in order to create more balanced well-being in a more equitable and sustainable world.

Drawing on TAP collaborations under way, research they do and courses they teach in academia, TAP collective members Michael Gibbons (US), Sangeeta Kamat (India-U Mass) and Salim Vally (South Africa) will engage in a conversation and lively discussion about emerging examples of alternative forms of education playing out in relation to other progressive social movements. The conversation will be facilitated by Tom Lent.