On Saturday, March 2, several public school teachers, ex-homeschoolers, high school students, ex-prisoners, and University students discussed current issues in education reform in America. Dan Fischer ’12 organized the roundtable, “Liberating Education and Deschooling Anti-Austerity,” which aimed to foster discussion about how to support and yet radically transform education.

“In Middletown last spring, I noticed I was learning more from student forums, the Skill Share Collective, reading groups and organizing than I ever learned from being enrolled in classes,” Fischer wrote in an email to The Argus. “Talking with friends, I realized that my experience was fairly common.”

Fischer said he took inspiration from conversations with individuals who were homeschooled, as well as from the Sudbury school model, which focuses on democratic education.

“For example, if kids have a right to vote on what their school’s rules and what their school’s classes are, and then this shapes an environment actually conducive for learning,” Fischer wrote. “Expanding freedom, for little kids or for students of any age, doesn’t necessarily mean chaos.”

The speakers included Jason Poppa and Dan Kwet, teachers from Bridgeport, Conn., as well as Assistant Professor of Sociology Daniel Long, who gave opening remarks. Long has worked with the Connecticut Education Association; spoken to the state legislature in opposition to SB 24, a bill covering educational competition; and contributed to a coalition at Central Connecticut State University focused on education reform.

“The large part of this talk was talking about the importance of thinking about education in a broader context, and that the current education reforms suffer from a crisis of individualism,” Long said.

Following Long’s introduction, the event was organized into several sections. Discussion topics included deschooling and homeschooling, technology and surveillance, and the phenomenon called the school-to-prison pipeline.

“It was great,” said Ross Levin ’15, who attended the event. “There were a lot of people who don’t go to Wesleyan, which is not typical for these events, and it was a really great coming together of a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life.”

Levin also noted that an unplanned discussion about Teach for America arose among the attendees at the event.

“There [were] a lot of former participants of Teach For America and at the same time a lot of criticism of Teach For America,” Levin said. “One of the great things about it is that it was an open venue for criticism of what’s called ‘education reform’…but I find that there [are] very few places where there is a coherent criticism against that and an alternative push forward at the same time, and that was there on Saturday.”

Middletown resident Jon Schroth, who attended the event on Saturday, noted that the discussions provided both criticisms of the current status of education and suggestions for improving current education reforms.

“There were knowledgeable perspectives presented from all over the gamut, which led to vibrant group discussion and resounding agreement that the system is broken along with plenty of diverse sparks of inspiration on ways to transform it,” Schroth wrote in an email to The Argus.

Fisher remarked that he believed these talks might inspire a push for collaboration among activists on campus.

“I think the event highlighted how issues like need-blind, charter schools and the prison-industrial complex are incredibly connected, and student groups campaigning on these issues don’t need to feel isolated and talking only to other students all the time,” Fisher wrote. “When students are thinking seriously about unschooling and how it’s a vision they may aspire toward, then that’s a very exciting prospect.”

Fischer is hoping that the event will foster more conversation about education reform.

“I hope the discussion will continue and that there will be more roundtables like this to continue talking about visions and strategies for creating liberatory ways of learning, teaching and producing knowledge,” he wrote.

Long noted that his reason for participating in this event was based on his broader views on educational policy and his support for the 2012 Chicago teachers’ union strike.

“[I participated] because I’m sympathetic with critiques of market models of education,” Long explained.

Levin said that he thought the event was a positive experience and that he hopes the dialogue about education reform will continue and expand.

“No one knew exactly what was going to happen going into this and at the end everyone was like, ‘Wow, this is great,’” Levin stated. “‘We don’t agree on everything, but a lot of us are asking the same kind of radical questions about education, so hopefully we’ll be continuing this conversation.’ And not just about education, but about education as one part of a broader society that’s highly dysfunctional and needs radical change.”

Additional reporting by News Editor Lily Baggott.