a network of places and processes fostering state-wide collaborative learning
THE COMMUNIVERSITIES OF VERMONT
A COMMUNIVERSITY is a local learning community creating a new social architecture for the planning and enhancement of human fulfillment in Vermont.
A COMMUNIVERSITIES of Vermont are a network of places and processes fostering state-wide collaborative learning in every community and urban neighborhood intended to help Vermont become a leader in the age of global knowledge-based economics and participatory citizen democracy.
A COMMUNIVERSITY will act as a “knowledge broker” for inventive ideas to help towns, private and public agencies, and individual citizens plan more successful person and professional enterprises.
A COMMUNIVERSITY recognizes that:
…all Vermonters have valuable contributions to make to the common good, and would gladly do so if given an appropriate opportunity.
…great deal of practical knowledge and spiritual wisdom is hidden in the resources of disparate groups and individuals around the state waiting to be let free to become united.
…all Vermonters are members of an evolving global society, and are in ever more ways, the voices with visions of humanity’s future.
…Vermont, which has remained small and unspoiled, can help provide leadership as the rest of the world attempts to find a path into the future which successfully meets the simultaneous challenges of ecological design, ethical business, small government, and personal freedom.
…in the words of Albert Einstein, the level of thinking that leads to a problem, can not also be used to solve it. A COMMUNIVERSITY recognizes that a new level of thinking must be in place to enhance life and prosperity in a “post-industrial” society.
…education is now a life-long process which must expand beyond “school” boundaries and integrate entire communities, both locally, and around the globe.
…in order for Vermont citizens to achieve full and productive lives, they must have access to a complete range of intellectual resources and must be given the freedom and opportunity to explore their own inventiveness.
…in Vermont, most schools and potential learning communities are cut off from the outside global network of resources, known in part as the Internet, by exorbitant phone charges and lack of adequate access points.
…in order for Vermont to become a “learning state”, all citizens must be able to access modern information resources at affordable rates.
The COMMUNIVERSITIES are much more than a large network or a plan to provide network access to all citizens. COMMUNIVERSITIES are an ongoing endeavor, employing all kinds of information, technologies and resources, to help incite new degrees of collaborative learning. “Yankee” inventiveness, and participatory democracy, appropriate for a free and evolving society as it moves forward in the 21st century.
August “Gus” Jaccaci
11/11/09
