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Labor Forum: Discussion

Ben Altman | Family, DS06 | 4/9/09

OK, I'll comment, from my observations as a parent and as a visitor who spent a few days helping out one three-four break. Both of those experiences lead me to regard the labor program as valuable and effective. Comments refer to the short version. It captures a lot about the program, but I think misses or under-emphasizes some aspects. 1. The labor program fosters responsibility - the cows need to be milked, so the dairyman, for example, can't oversleep, and if he is unable to do it, must make arrangements for a competent replacement. 2. The labor program grounds students through physical work and teaches the satisfaction to be gained from it. 3. As well as complementing academics and self-governance, the labor program contrasts with them. This is a large part of its power and importance and should be clearly articulated. 4. The program teaches both teamwork and management skills. Management is, I think, slightly different from leadership, and complementary to it. Thus some suggested edits to the mission statement: "As one of the three pillars of a Deep Springs education, the labor program IS a distinct pedagogical environment that complements AND CONTRASTS WITH the other two pillars, academics and self-governance. The daily demands of the labor program help develop in each student the character, skill, maturity, accountability, INTERDEPENDENCE, and leadership that ARE essential to the school's mission of educating effective servants to humanity." The remaining points could be incorporated into the goals. Finally, I suspect that many students nowadays must arrive at Deep Springs having had little previous need to use even basic hand-tools. Learning as they go has merits, but perhaps a certain amount of training in simple technique during term one would make that process more fruitful and less stressful. Thanks for the opportunity to participate in the discussion!

Oliver Morrison | DS00 | 4/12/09

I am really impressed with the documents the labor committee came up with. They are thorough and thoughtful. It seems like a great little synopsis of the many "purposes" of the labor program that I remember hearing from SB meetings. Although I wrote a couple of pages on the topic in preparation for submitting the survey, I never did finish it and submit it! So anyway hopefully I can be a little more helpful this time. Here are a couple of my thoughts, going forward. 1) How do we use this information to judge whether something is promoting the values of the labor program or interfering with them, whether it be a single act of laboring, a whole facet of the program,? Because the list is so exhaustive of all the possible benefits of the labor program, it seems likely that the values will be in conflict. For instance, if we take the value of "self reliance" to the extreme, then any amount of failure and personal suffering and harm to the community could be justified--e.g. we are helping this student out by letting him figure it out on his own and make him recognize when he needs help, ask for it, etc. Working in the education field after Deep Springs has made me come to question when it is reasonable to stick someone in a situation in which they have little or none of the requisite skills or experience needed and tell them to figure it out, vs providing scaffolding to different ability levels and helping get them to the point where they are capable of being left alone to figure it out and make independent judgments in, etc. It also has made me want to go back and make sure every student labor leaders knew some of the basic terminology and ideas of pedagogy: e.g. what the difference is between instruction, guided practice and independent practice and how to identify when there is failure whether they have not received instruction, or when they have not been given any guiding practice, etc. I think there would be a benefit to this because the labor program puts students into the position of teachers so often, without giving them a basic foundation of skills and knowledge by which they can be successful "labor teachers". In addition, I agree with the previous post that the labor program offers the possibility of practical experience with "management" as distinct form leadership, but again I think there would be a lot more learning and growth here if management skills and theory were specifically taught and not just assumed/hoped to be acquired in the process of being put in a position of responsibility--management is another potentially dangerous position that some people don't "figure it out" on their own and may not have grown from the experience. 2) The other thing I was hoping would be a little bit more clearly specified would be what specifically we get from the DEEP SPRINGS labor program, not just from laboring at another college? It seems like the only values that I saw that are perhaps specific to Deep Springs were the ones on "stewardship" and "community", since we perhaps have a claim to a more authentic stewardship and a more intentional community than you might find by taking on a work-study job at another school. I think this is important because it justifies that relatively high cost of that component of the school and provides a future basis for decisions, say, if something dramatic happened and the program had to be drastically rethought, or in thinking about the kind of labor program to build at a second Deep Springs. The other aspect of the labor program that seems unique to Deep Springs is the very fact that its significance is up for discussion, and that it isn't really possible to just take a job and collect your pay-check without thinking about it quite a bit. I'm not sure this justifies the specific kind of work we do at Deep Springs, but I think it justifies it being a justifiable part of the educational program.

Would you like to participate? Email David Welle with your posting and we'll put it up as soon as we can.