winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in literature

. . . and there is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But it is in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders (who of course would not be warders and governors if they could write readable books), and beaten or otherwise tormented if you cannot remember their utterly unmemorable contents. In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to the turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and are therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains; and they protect you against violence and outrage from your fellow-prisoners. In a school you have none of these advantages. With the world's bookshelves loaded with fascinating and inspired books, the very manna sent down from Heaven to feed your souls, you are forced to read a hideous imposture called a school book, written by a man who cannot write: A book from which no human can learn anything: a book which, though you may decipher it, you cannot in any fruitful sense read, though the enforced attempt will make you loathe the sight of a book all the rest of your life.
"A Treatise on Parents and Children," preface to Misalliance (1909), reprinted in Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with Their Prefaces, volume IV (1972), page 35.


One of the activities in the Heritage program is to create our own covenant.

The following is just a model (adapted from the Patience program Covenant) to help our Heritage community create our own covenant, we will use it in this program while we create our own.

This covenant* comprises the learning guidelines and tenants of the program: Heritage. 

·    The paramount objective of the program is to create a community of learners.  To that end:
·    Heritage is a program based on equal commitment and responsibility by both the faculty and the students.   
·    As Heritage exists within the larger community of The Evergreen State College, all members of the community are subservient to the guidelines  set forth in the TESC Social contract. 
·    The goals of this community are to provide an environment rich in learning opportunities, facilitation of learning, a sounding board for self-paced learning objectives, and hopefully to sparkle a personal liberation process in each participant.
·    Community members are expected to pursue a tract of learning objectives for their own personal improvement. 
·    As community is one main objective, a cumulative presentation is the fundamental requirement for successful completion of the program and cooperation in the community.  A presentation or publication shared with the learning community of the class ensures not only commitment to the community but also commitment to the fostering of knowledge. 
·    It is understood that the activities of one individual sometimes override the needs of the community.  As such attendance is encouraged but not mandatory.
.   Conflict and grievances should be dealt with between the parties themselves and solved within the community.
.    Participants will emphasize a complete shift towards a learner-centered approach to their own education.
·    Each faculty will emphasize a Freirian liberatory education approach** by:
       -  Being a collaborator and ally of the learners, not  supervisors.
       -  Encouraging that the subject Heritage must be the lives of the learners, reflected back to the learner as a problem or source of contradiction.
       -  Facilitating a goal which must be not just to change the student but to work with the student/learner to change their world.
       -  Practicing a process that must be rational and cognitive, rather than affective, involving critical thinking, natural learning process, problem-posing, looking for contradictions, and using metacognition.

(**) Adapted from Embracing Contraries.