Winona (a Native American word meaning "first-born girl-child") is situated on a stable part of the Mississippi River flood plain where the river flows in a broad channel between impressive craggy bluffs that separate the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin. On a sunny day, it is a glorious place, and the drive from the Lacrosse, Wisconsin, airport along the river is renowned as one of the most beautiful in the Midwest; bald eagles constantly ride the strong air currents, and powerful tugs nudge long lines of barges. This is real Huckleberry Finn territory.

"We first heard of the Initiative several years ago," said Randy Schenkat, Director of the Winona Council for Quality, "when I read the Education 2000 book, Learning Makes Sense. Since then many of us in the city have seen the thesis which this sets out - reversing an upside down and inside out system - as being the organising principle we need to adopt if we're to make life in Winona, which is already a fine place to live, an even better preparation for young people facing the uncertainties of the twenty-first century. We have to go beyond good schools to create a community that uses all its resources to challenge the imagination and creativity of young people. "

Like scores of other places, Winona has been working out how to start this process. At an early stage a small delegation, led by the City Manager, visited the offices of the Initiative in Reston, Virginia to discuss plans for a possible visit by John Abbott, the President of the Initiative, to Winona. More than 20 city organisations - including state and private schools, the chamber of commerce and the university - formed a sponsoring body, and a media program was devised. Many preparatory meetings were held.

A month before the public presentation to some 680 citizens in the Winona State University theatre, the local paper, the Winona Daily News, ran a full-page interview with John Abbott. In response to a question about what, fundamentally, the 21st Century Learning Initiative is trying to do, John explained, "The absolute bottom line is learning - and learning being something very, very broad. It's a belief that you know how to observe something well enough that you can draw lessons from it.... It's what you and I are doing all the time, but we're not actually aware that we're doing it.

We're constantly trying to access what is going on around us and using that to improve ourselves. And that's really what people like myself are arguing that children are going to need for the 21st century, because the one thing that's pretty certain is that the world won't be the same in 50 years... The bottom line is how do you get young people to feel more and more confident they know how to do the learning part themselves?"

When asked how a community can accomplish that goal, John answered, "It actually means living with your children...only parents can do this sort of thing. The child who comes to school excited about what's going on in the world around them, the child who feels that life is exciting, is the child who makes a lot of sense out of school. "

The editor asked about John's experience with other communities like Winona. John discussed his years as a school principal in the UK, the development of Education 2000 and the experience of the city of Leeds, which was one of the original participants in the Education 2000 approach to community involvement in learning. Referring to another participant city, John said, "we had a marvellous experience of what Winona is now trying to do - the whole town coming together and saying nobody else is going to sort this out unless we do it ourselves, and let's get behind all the schools, not just one or two, and work it with a program in which the teachers would see themselves not as teachers of a particular school, but teachers of a whole young community. "

Just before the presentation the newspaper ran a further full page article entitled, "Winona Gets Together to Talk Education." The paper published the graph (available on the Initiative website) illustrating the clash of present educational arrangements with the progression of normal human intellectual development. They added their own explanation of the significance of this, which is interesting. It reads: "The 21st Century Learning Initiative's primary argument for fundamental educational reform rests on the idea that young children (A) require the most support from the educational system. If given appropriate attention at a young age, they can and should become learners who require fewer, not more resources as they get older (B). However, current practice puts the fewest resources at the disposal of the students who need the most. The line labelled "C" represents the present trend of spending as children grow older, while the line labelled "D" represents the trend of class size, which presently decreases as students should need less, not more, individual attention. "

The article went on to ask just what is the problem in the context of Winona? The author explained it like this. "The industrial model of education, the model for primary and secondary education the western world has used for the past century, doesn't work in a world that left the industrial age decades ago, critics argue. An ever-increasing pace of change has made the ability to learn far more important than any particular skill set. "

Butch Walz, a local businessman and lifelong resident, is quoted as being "immensely impressed with the expertise and commitment of Winona's teachers. But he is concerned that the organisation in which they work is so cumbersome that they don't have the autonomy to create the best learning atmosphere possible. It's the processes that get in the way and not the people, Walz says. " (emphasis added)

"Schenkat agrees that the key to keeping pace in education is not centralised planning from the state - or any organisation - but more autonomy and decision-making at the classroom level. 'We're not going to change things for kids much until we make schools more learning organisations for teachers,' Schenkat said. "

The article continued: "In an interview last month, Abbott offered a disclaimer: He isn't coming to Winona to hand the community a blueprint for learning. He's coming to Winona to participate in a long-term effort to reinvent learning - to create systems that value and encourage learning, that honour both teachers and learners and that help the community become better able to participate in and drive change rather than reacting to change with systems that don't work as well as they once did.

Schenkat told the paper that "he hopes Abbott's visit can help broaden the community's definition of learning. 'I also hope he tickles adults to be thinking that learning is happening all the time in their workplace. It (learning) is happening all the time, and we need to recognise that it's happening in our adult lives. '"

"Creating a community for learning is an imperative for Winona's future, according to Gary Evans, President and CEO of Hiawatha Broadband Communications Inc. : 'Extending the reach of teaching and learning across our community ultimately involving all its residents as a family of teachers/learners, is not just an idea that would be nice to achieve. It is essential to positioning the Winona area to be strong and vibrant in the new millennium. "

Just before Abbott's visit, Winona City Manager Eric Sorensen wrote in a guest column for the Winona Daily News, "...John Abbott...will help us to envision the unlimited potential of Winona's young people...To reach the potential that he sees for us will take everyone. The skills and knowledge that every member of Winona has to offer will be honoured in that vision. That will make for a real learning community and one that young people can find a future in...We know that Washington, or St. Paul for that matter, does not have all the answers. We know that community involvement is the only real way to positively change our community. The dramatic drop in crime in the past three years...happened because real citizens became involved in their own neighbourhoods. They learned about the community and their neighbours in that process. And that is what John Abbott suggests to occur in a real learning community. It also demonstrates that Abbott's ideas are more than theoretical. "

On the evening of April 22, hundreds of people crowded into the university's Somsen Auditorium. The following morning the newspaper reported that "a world renowned learning expert told a large group of Winona educators that society must radically rethink the way it educates its youth if it is to avoid future tragedies like the one that occurred Tuesday in Littleton, Colo. ...John Abbott told [the] group...that...bored adolescence is one of the most depressing signs that society and communities are failing their children. " He also said that "schools are in danger of being sidelined and becoming irrelevant as a result of the new information science is gleaning about the brain. " He noted that "schools are structured and funded in such a way that this understanding of the brain is almost completely turned on its head" and referred to the graph showing the discrepancy between funding and class size and the brain's changing need for support.

There was much lively discussion afterwards, and over both the breakfast and lunch meetings the following day. "What all this does for us," said one of the businessmen, "is to give us the context for how we should be joining all the different parts of our life together. Don't let's kill ourselves - what happened in Denver could happen anywhere unless we start to understand the implications of all these things. For years we've been dumbing youngsters down; we have spoiled them rather than love them, and now we wonder why they are confused. This town has to get its act together - for our own sakes as well as the children's. After all the implications of what has been said are frightening if we do nothing. "

Two days later the editorial in the local paper began, "A visionary came to Winona last week..." and concluded, "The Winona Daily News is ready to be part of the revolution. Are you?"

A few days after the presentation, the Initiative received an e-mail from a young father who had been in the audience. While he very much appreciates the Initiative's innovative proposals for education, his primary concern is for the first 3-5 years of a child's life. "I know when my wife and I talked about having children we spoke of wanting to have a parent home for the first few years. My wife was interested in being the one to stay home at that point. My wife spent the first year at home and then things became a bit complicated as she was offered a job we felt she needed to take. I then found myself leaving a job I enjoyed to stay home with my daughter. Certainly, I miss my job, but every single day I see my daughter smile and learn something new. It is difficult to put into words how much this experience has meant to me, and to our family. It is a wonderful thing, an opportunity I truly wish every parent could experience. We have had to cut things out of the family budget; one income can be a bit of a challenge to live on after having two for so long, but let me assure you it can be done. My wife and I have made this choice and we would make it again in a minute. "

The message continued, "Staying at home is more work than any job I have ever had.... What I do not understand is why the government does not help parents stay at home. A stay-at-home parent has one of the toughest and most important jobs that anyone can have. It would seem to me that everyone, especially the children of this country, would benefit if they had a parent at home to take care of them. "

The father went on, "Mr. Abbott was correct when he talked about our consumer market. We really have become a 'we need this and we need that' society. Trust me, after living on one income for the past year. That becomes obvious. We don't need half the stuff we seem to think we do. What we do need, instead of material things, is to provide our children with what they need most - their parents. It also seems to me that if we can provide a positive and safe environment for learning for our children the first few years of their lives, they would be better off in the long run and able to thrive even in our current school system. "

Winona has already proven itself to be an innovative community. Nine Winona schools, covering grades K to 12, are connected to a Virtual School computer network, which began in 1994 with a grant from the Hiawatha Education Foundation. The goal of the project is to "enhance learning and communication between schools and families.... " The Director of the project says that, "an increase in online communication...has strengthened traditional student-teacher and parent-teacher relationships." In addition to communications with teachers, the system allows students to join in study chat rooms, take practice tests and link to site resources recommended by their teachers. Not only does Winona's Virtual School promote expanded learning opportunities in the community, but it is also preparing the students to be comfortable with the transition to college and the world of work. In 1998, the Virtual School of Winona received the Computerworld Smithsonian Award as one of the top educational innovators in the use of information technology. The Virtual School was also inducted into the Museum of American History as the very first operational virtual school community in the world.

A group to follow up on the ideas introduced in Abbott's presentation has been meeting to develop the next steps to help Winona becoming a learning community. They have set up a local internet Forum for community members to share ideas and comments. Initially this group plans to review the existing structures and processes that support ongoing community efforts and to develop a plan to share the Initiative's ideas throughout Winona.

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21st Century Learning Initiative

http://www.21learn.org

mail@21learn.org