"If you're under the impulse to find greater support for what you're doing, you listen more closely and you question more vigorously."
"If you want to take it to a more mystical, spiritual level they're dreaming another world awake. That's the way some of them see it."I love this idea, because having experienced "education" in public school systems and state universities here in America, I recognize the need for a more informal venue, a "learning community" that adjusts to the needs and demands of students in a way that simply cannot happen within the structure of the traditional system.
Additionally, while I owe a large part of my current success in the world to my "formal" education and the credentials it brings with it, the truth of the matter is that the knowledge I bring to the table most often is the knowledge of lived experience, and none of that came from a formal classroom, to be sure.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this "school" is the potential for a cross pollination and transference of seemingly unrelated topics; the pygmy hunter-gatherers discussion is a prime example.This concept brings to mind the meetings we have at The Contributor around vendor issues and potential writing topics. The move from "meeting" to knowledge transference seems pretty straightforward with just a couple of easy tweaks to a format like this.
Here's hoping that even if Occupy London's current "classrooms" are evacuated due to circumstances beyond their control, they regroup quickly and find new digs. The idea is such a good one that I'd love to see similar "colleges" spring up in every city in America.
Tent City University – one of the most remarkable aspects of Occupy London
The facilities are basic, but the guest lecturers are impressive and the students are engaged and ferociously well informed
The Bank of Ideas – the Occupy London educational establishment in a disused office block in the City of London. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
When, as now seems likely, the Occupy London protesters are forced to pack up their tents outside St Paul's Cathedral the capital will be losing more than one of its newer and less likely tourist attractions.
Also facing eviction, following this week's high court decision, is the camp's innovative and vigorous educational arm which, according to academics who have spoken there, can often be a more intellectually stimulating environment than the universities that provide their day jobs.
Within a few days of the main camp setting up by St Paul's Cathedral in October, the grandly named Tent City University – in reality a draughty marquee a few metres from a busy road with few amenities beyond a ramshackle sound system and a sprinkling of elderly sofas – set up for business, offering lectures not just to activists but to anyone who happened to be passing by.
Since then a host of leading university academics have offered talks on subjects as varied as international banking, philosophy, theology, the Arab spring and central Africa's (very egalitarian) pygmy hunter-gatherers.
The activists later expanded their educational operation, taking over another site, a disused office block near Liverpool Street station in the City of London financial district. This was transformed into the even more grandly titled Bank of Ideas, which faces separate eviction proceedings from UBS bank, which owns the site.
All camp members can book speakers at either venue by adding them to a communal web-based calendar, said James Sevitt from Occupy.
"The Tent City University, by virtue of its location, gets a lot of people coming past – tourists are there, and people from the City," he said. "For some people it's almost become a part of their daily routine."
Giving a lecture at the Tent City University was an eye-opener for Richard Werner, who has a day job at Southampton University.
The professor of international banking said: "It's different in the sense that the questions were much more informed than those I get from my students. That was a bit of a surprise. Clearly, these are people who have read into things and already have some recognition of some of the problems, and they have thought about potential solutions. So there were much more details questions, more engaged questions."
Those attending talks are "not without self-interest", said Ted Honderich, emeritus professor of mind and logic at University College London (UCL).
"But that is the condition of the human race. It makes them much more interested than certain university lecture audiences. If you're under the impulse to find greater support for what you're doing, you listen more closely and you question more vigorously.
"There's a lot of places you can lecture but there are few that are more comfortable than that tent, in the sense that it's comfortable to be lecturing to people who have a proper sense of moral dignity. You can't say that of a general introduction to philosophy lecture at 10am in University College."
The marquee is a far from ideal lecture theatre, said Tim Gorringe, professor of theology at Exeter University. "It's noisy. I spoke on a windy day – the tent flapped like hell," he said. "The noise of traffic is unremitting. St Paul's bells sound in your ear.
"I had a microphone but the battery packed up a third of the way through and it took another third to replace it. Obviously there's no classroom discipline. People drift in and out. You're not clear who you're talking to.
"But people are asking fundamental questions which they may not be asking at the universities.
"At my session there was a good range of questioners, people from both southern and eastern Europe as well as Brits, and a wider class range than one encounters in universities."
One of the more apparently unusual lecturers was Jerome Lewis, a social anthropologist at UCL, whose expertise is pygmy hunter-gatherers.
According to Lewis, the connection, is that these societies are perhaps the most egalitarian on Earth, with no gender or age hierarchies and a central tenet called "demand sharing" in which it is assumed people will not keep resources for themselves, something mirrored at the camp.
"They've developed their own version of demand sharing, in effect," he said. "If you want to take it to a more mystical, spiritual level they're dreaming another world awake. That's the way some of them see it.
"Physically it's quite challenging to speak there. It's cold, noisy, you've got to keep a good volume going for 45 minutes. But what is nice is the range of different people in the audience, which made for some interesting questions."
The fascination went both ways, Lewis added, for someone of his discipline.
"They're trying to live very differently. There's one man there who has deliberately limited himself to owning just 32 possessions – and that includes his underpants."
In the University of Ideas, a talk had begun inside one of its classrooms, a vast, chilly office space made as comfortable as possible despite a stained blue carpet and a shopping trolley full of placards in a corner. A newly arrived group of Occupy supporters from Finland, identifiable by their suspiciously pressed-looking clothes, were listening to a man from the New Democracy Foundation thinktank expound on modern protest.
The audience members – arranged in a circle rather than facing him in rows – made their own points.
"It's very interesting, this idea that there's not just one way – a single conduit for information and then you maybe get to ask a few questions," said one of the Finns, Erkki Perälä. "You could call it a more multi-dimensional way of learning, and I think you get a lot more from it."
• The fashion designer Vivienne Westwood on the links between ecological and economic crisis.
• Understanding the Arab uprisings from above and below, by an academic from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.
• Revolution and creativity in the artist William Blake, by author and the poet Jeremy Reed.
• The case against usury (accompanied by ukelele), by Tom Hodgkinson, editor of the Idler.
• How to find social meaning in your dreams, by experts from the Tavistock Institute, a leading centre for psychoanalysis.
• How to start your own credit union.
• Lessons from a football tour of Egypt, Palestine and Jordan.
• Workshops on knitting and clowning.
Also facing eviction, following this week's high court decision, is the camp's innovative and vigorous educational arm which, according to academics who have spoken there, can often be a more intellectually stimulating environment than the universities that provide their day jobs.
Within a few days of the main camp setting up by St Paul's Cathedral in October, the grandly named Tent City University – in reality a draughty marquee a few metres from a busy road with few amenities beyond a ramshackle sound system and a sprinkling of elderly sofas – set up for business, offering lectures not just to activists but to anyone who happened to be passing by.
Since then a host of leading university academics have offered talks on subjects as varied as international banking, philosophy, theology, the Arab spring and central Africa's (very egalitarian) pygmy hunter-gatherers.
The activists later expanded their educational operation, taking over another site, a disused office block near Liverpool Street station in the City of London financial district. This was transformed into the even more grandly titled Bank of Ideas, which faces separate eviction proceedings from UBS bank, which owns the site.
All camp members can book speakers at either venue by adding them to a communal web-based calendar, said James Sevitt from Occupy.
"The Tent City University, by virtue of its location, gets a lot of people coming past – tourists are there, and people from the City," he said. "For some people it's almost become a part of their daily routine."
Giving a lecture at the Tent City University was an eye-opener for Richard Werner, who has a day job at Southampton University.
The professor of international banking said: "It's different in the sense that the questions were much more informed than those I get from my students. That was a bit of a surprise. Clearly, these are people who have read into things and already have some recognition of some of the problems, and they have thought about potential solutions. So there were much more details questions, more engaged questions."
Those attending talks are "not without self-interest", said Ted Honderich, emeritus professor of mind and logic at University College London (UCL).
"But that is the condition of the human race. It makes them much more interested than certain university lecture audiences. If you're under the impulse to find greater support for what you're doing, you listen more closely and you question more vigorously.
"There's a lot of places you can lecture but there are few that are more comfortable than that tent, in the sense that it's comfortable to be lecturing to people who have a proper sense of moral dignity. You can't say that of a general introduction to philosophy lecture at 10am in University College."
The marquee is a far from ideal lecture theatre, said Tim Gorringe, professor of theology at Exeter University. "It's noisy. I spoke on a windy day – the tent flapped like hell," he said. "The noise of traffic is unremitting. St Paul's bells sound in your ear.
"I had a microphone but the battery packed up a third of the way through and it took another third to replace it. Obviously there's no classroom discipline. People drift in and out. You're not clear who you're talking to.
"But people are asking fundamental questions which they may not be asking at the universities.
"At my session there was a good range of questioners, people from both southern and eastern Europe as well as Brits, and a wider class range than one encounters in universities."
One of the more apparently unusual lecturers was Jerome Lewis, a social anthropologist at UCL, whose expertise is pygmy hunter-gatherers.
According to Lewis, the connection, is that these societies are perhaps the most egalitarian on Earth, with no gender or age hierarchies and a central tenet called "demand sharing" in which it is assumed people will not keep resources for themselves, something mirrored at the camp.
"They've developed their own version of demand sharing, in effect," he said. "If you want to take it to a more mystical, spiritual level they're dreaming another world awake. That's the way some of them see it.
"Physically it's quite challenging to speak there. It's cold, noisy, you've got to keep a good volume going for 45 minutes. But what is nice is the range of different people in the audience, which made for some interesting questions."
The fascination went both ways, Lewis added, for someone of his discipline.
"They're trying to live very differently. There's one man there who has deliberately limited himself to owning just 32 possessions – and that includes his underpants."
In the University of Ideas, a talk had begun inside one of its classrooms, a vast, chilly office space made as comfortable as possible despite a stained blue carpet and a shopping trolley full of placards in a corner. A newly arrived group of Occupy supporters from Finland, identifiable by their suspiciously pressed-looking clothes, were listening to a man from the New Democracy Foundation thinktank expound on modern protest.
The audience members – arranged in a circle rather than facing him in rows – made their own points.
"It's very interesting, this idea that there's not just one way – a single conduit for information and then you maybe get to ask a few questions," said one of the Finns, Erkki Perälä. "You could call it a more multi-dimensional way of learning, and I think you get a lot more from it."
What's on the syllabus
With a motto of "Anyone can teach, everyone can learn", the Tent City University has a broad curriculum, if understandably biased towards the concerns of protesters against the global finance system. Recent lectures have included:• The fashion designer Vivienne Westwood on the links between ecological and economic crisis.
• Understanding the Arab uprisings from above and below, by an academic from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.
• Revolution and creativity in the artist William Blake, by author and the poet Jeremy Reed.
• The case against usury (accompanied by ukelele), by Tom Hodgkinson, editor of the Idler.
• How to find social meaning in your dreams, by experts from the Tavistock Institute, a leading centre for psychoanalysis.
• How to start your own credit union.
• Lessons from a football tour of Egypt, Palestine and Jordan.
• Workshops on knitting and clowning.
