Teach-In

Teach-in History

The inspiration for the Teach-in came from our prior knowledge and later research into the origins of the Highlander Folk School founded by Myles Horton.  Horton had been a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York where Dietrich Bonhoeffer had come from Germany to study in the early 30's. The Highlander Folk School which is still in existence  was instrumental in the education of such civil rights leaders as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Andrew Young.

In the months prior to Professor Harvey Wheeler's death in 2004, the Save the Republic Project was preparing an educational video course entitled: "A Crash Course in the Transformation of American Democratic Institutions."   His death curtailed the project. However, the next year on July 10, 2005, the Institute presented a lecture at the Sunday Service of the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Jacksonville entitled: "Social Justice as Action Not Just a Moral Value: An Understanding from an Effective Systemic Mind-Set."   Encouraged by the attendance and response to the lecture, the Institute decided to focus our pedagogy not only on institutional but also individual  transformation.

In the June 30, 2008 issue of The Nation, an ad was run captioned: "Preventing Captain Obama's Fatal Political Iceberg Collision."   It announced that the Institute was hosting a teach-in on July 3rd from 9 to 5 at the new Jacksonville Public Library. When the attendees learned that the teach-in was going to involve an in-depth understanding of the oligarchy system, most had second thoughts and withdrew.  Obviously, the political environment has undergone much change since then.

The importance of understanding from a systemic perspective was pointed out by author Robert P. Moses in Radical Equations (2001) where he quoted the civil rights leader, Ella Baker:

"......to become a part of a society that is meaningful.....means that we are going to have to learn to think in radical terms. I use the term radical in its original meaning--getting down to and understanding the root cause."

Now that the systemic problems are being recognized more and more, the Institute has prepared the following course:

Understanding the Sociopolitical environment with an Effective Systemic Mind-Set
Location @ www.Teach-in.info