Teachable Moments: Crisis and what might be next at Schumacher College 

I’ve always thought of them as those little (or big) situations in time when useful lessons about ‘being in the world’ suddenly reveal themselves ‘in the world’. Life imitating art imitating life imitating on and on – our mental models, if sufficiently malleable, working themselves out in constant flow – always wrong, of course, but sometimes useful – as we attempt to interpret the phenomena before our eyes (all imaginative senses, really), including what makes its way into our conscious experience. Teachable moments.

Believe it or not, that kind of talk is more or less how we normally begin our graduate course in Regenerative Economics and is emblematic of an aspect of our inquiry here at Schumacher College. We describe our course as pluralistic and transdisciplinary. We begin with a deep dive into holistic science, deep observation and phenomenology, then move on to systems, complexity, ecology and deep ecology. We practice interrogating our presuppositions, reflections and observations.  A foundational element of our epistemology concerns making sense of our reality as human beings as it plays out in time and space, and in our case, paying special attention to the social, political, economic, cultural, ecological systems near and far, and from multiple perspectives. ‘There are many ways of knowing’, one would hear us say; ‘many paths to many mountaintops’, a favourite metaphor.

We try to put that into practice in our teaching through a ‘head, heart and hands’ approach, a shorthand way of describing the pedagogy that has made courses at Schumacher College transformative experiences for thousands of people over the years. It’s very challenging to pull that off, speaking from my own experience, of course, but so satisfying when it happens! A couple of examples from this academic year: 

• in our first module, Troy Vine led our students through the process of making 3-d Platonic shapes with bee’s wax and sticks, and then using that experience again to reveal deep insights about non-Euclidian geometry and Einstein’s general relativity, finally explaining through this collective experience how scientific paradigms can change;
• in our last module, Malé Lujan Escalante, opened a time capsule from the future, full of strange artifacts with which our students constructed archeologies of the future, expressed through collective ritual and storytelling, thus through praxis revealing insights into how new narratives about the future might be discovered.

There have been a multitude of such days here at Schumacher since its founding in the early 1990s, composed of countless teachable and learnable moments, profound, diverse, enduring. With and alongside these interventions this year, our inquiry into ‘the kind of economics we need now’ includes copious lectures and readings, including from over 40 guests – academics, thinkers, practitioners – another distinguishing feature of our programme. Our guests contribute heft and insight, sharing their hard-earned knowledge and wisdom, ensuring our course is relevant, rigorous, and always evolving. They invest incredible value into this course. Like most educators, they’re not paid enough – many forgo the modest fee we offer – but they teach because they believe in the intrinsic virtues of this kind of educational process, foundational for changing the world for the better. They’ve become part of the wider Schumacher community worldwide, which includes alumni embedded throughout the growing movement for systems change. We humbly offer them our abundant gratitude.

I mentioned above that our course is pluralist and transdisciplinary and, as an economics course, our areas of concern are appropriately broad and deep – perhaps broader and deeper than most economics graduate programmes. This is evident in the titles of our modules: Ecology and Economics, Beyond Growth, Regenerative Enterprise, Changing the Frame. We explore the problematics of the current dominant paradigm, and cover even more territory exploring what sorts of new models might provide life-affirming alternatives. More importantly, we investigate how to bring them into being. After all, this is what EF Schumacher was all about – critiquing the existing system for its exploitation and damage to people, planet and life, in general;  and developing and putting into practice better, life-affirming systems at all scales, especially human scale. 

From Doughnut to Degrowth, Social Ecology to enterprise and commons models, social accounting, governance structures, ethics, leadership, and so on. We seek to understand with clarity the issues and proposals, the models and algorithms, as well as how systems change might emerge in the context of complexity and through our own agency. We consider numerous cases and exemplars while interrogating their theoretical claims, the relevant literature and evidence. And by ‘we’ I mean that we approach our learning journey together as a learning commons, a community – yet another distinguishing aspect of this programme. 

Right now, I’m preparing for our next class session, re-reading JK Gibson-Graham’s brilliant, ‘Rethinking the Economy with Thick Description and Weak Theory’, which has shown up right on cue, so to speak, apropos of everything and aligned so well with points I’m making here. And so, I’m very tempted to elaborate this point and then go on to tell a very big and detailed story about just how incredible this course is, diving into all the topics we’ve considered in over 100 class sessions this year, the brilliant papers, lectures, discussions, revisiting all the insights, grappling with all the puzzles and contradictions, unlearning our old presumptions about how the world works, acquiring new powers of observation and understanding, forging new confidence and capabilities, and weaving the convivial relationships through which we experience how we can be the change we want to see in the world. I’m tempted because this is how I’d like to remember this course and this College, especially because this is possibly the last time this course will run. 

***

In September, we became a very alive teachable moment – a very long moment, in fact, still very much present and resonating. We became a relevant and salient case study for our own course – we’re a regenerative economics course, we can’t ignore what’s happening here because it’s uncomfortable. Because Schumacher College, as a particular exemplar institution in higher education, and its thousands of alumni play important and visible roles in movements for change, to be open and transparent about what’s going on here, now, seems congruent with our own values and teaching. We should be diving deep into our own case to learn the relevant lessons, both for our own sake and for the common good. Afterall, we are now in a time of having to reimagine and reinvent what we do and how we do it, in our society and in our College. This is what I think needs to happen and what follows is my own unofficial account. 

For years, the relationship between Schumacher College and Dartington Hall Trust has been problematic. In the late 80s and early 90s, progressive education icon Michael Young and Maurice Ash, son-in-law of the Elmhirsts, were both Dartington trustees who worked with Satish Kumar to locate and develop Schumacher College on the estate. Dartington would, in effect, become its endowment and the Old Postern would be its home. But during the last several years, it has been evident to students that there’s a mismatch of values and culture between the two organisations. In fact, a former Dartington CEO once told a Schumacher student he was tired of hearing about Schumacher College and that it should just go away! Naturally, in almost every academic year before this one, our students have raised the issue and investigated these problematics, sometimes turning their work into group projects, often concluding that independence for Schumacher would play an essential part of a healthy remedy. Addressing the governance issue would be another. Based on publicly available reports, the Dartington Hall Trust board of trustees have seemed to have done their job poorly over the years, providing insufficient oversight and investing too much power in the Chair. There’s been a lack of transparency and a lack of local community of involvement, too. Students easily notice and comment on these things, and more.

But in September, 2023, something new occurred which has put the future of the College in question. That spring, the outgoing Dartington Hall Trust leadership team, including the CEO and Chair of Trustees, left the incoming Chair with a financial crisis. There have been a few Dartington financial crises over the last 20 years, usually resulting in asset sales to cover deficits. This time, a turnaround specialist consultancy was brought in. We were told that while this was a real financial crisis, an expected deal would soon offer a bridge. We were assured that Schumacher’s September-start courses were not in jeopardy. Our accredited MA courses, Regenerative Economics, Ecological Design Thinking, and Poetics of Imagination, were due to start on Monday, September 18th, with two BSc cohorts beginning their academic year the following week. Welcome week began as normal on the 11th and students started arriving, moving into their accommodation, getting acquainted and getting excited for the life-changing experience they had envisioned which was about to start. Many came from very far away. But then on Wednesday the 13th, the Chair sent an email to the Head of the College ordering that all courses were to be postponed indefinitely. 

Imagine the scene:  Thursday at 1pm, the staff and faculty met to hear the news. At 2pm, the 80 or so students and volunteers bounded into the room for what was supposed to be a pre-scheduled session with course leaders, excited to take the next welcoming step toward their first class meeting. After our Head of College welcomed them, he delivered the incredible news. Shock, then anger. Why? The Chair had given no clear reason. Where is he? The Chair was on the estate but chose not to deliver this news in person nor offer an explanation. Students demanded to meet him. Emails were sent entreating him to come and meet with them face to face – staff and faculty, too, for that matter – and explain this decision. No reply. Immediately, one is presented with questions about leadership and governance, judgement and decision making, ethics and integrity. How is this possible in an organisation that professes progressive values? These kinds of questions were raised but the only person who could have answered was the Chair, who was only a couple of hundred metres away. But he failed to make an appearance or otherwise account for his decision.

What happened next was an astounding burst of positive action. Students lept from their seats and meditation pillows, and began organising their response. They formed groups – attorneys over here reviewing contracts and Office for Students policies – communications experts over there putting together the story, phoning the BBC and ITV – another group organising a protest for the next morning demanding a meeting with the Chair and Trustees – another group organising care and support for each other. It was beautiful, reflecting the character of those who choose to study here. Staff and faculty, also full of character and grit, organised themselves, too, focused first and foremost on our duty of care. ‘This is what anarchy can look like in its best moments,’ we would point out weeks later during our session on Social Ecology. 

The next day students protested and the news media showed up. No meeting with Chair or Trustees ensued. In fact, there was no sign of the Chair – nor has there been to this day. The Head of College resigned. Faculty met with their students, most of whom had booked their two week residencies – some coming from very far away had booked for several months. All were stressed and anxious. Staff and faculty made sure the weekend experience for students was nurturing and safe. Perhaps we’ll teach anyway, we’ll adapt, we’ll find a way to make these two weeks, at least, a positive learning experience – we were all committed to making this crisis a productive one.

On Monday, the day courses would have started, faculty met. ‘What the ___ is going on?,’ we asked ourselves. No news. We met with students to begin organising for a democratic, peer-led, anarchist learning journey. If there can be no teaching, let there be abundant learning! We also let our guest lecturers know that, we’re very sorry, but our planned sessions were not happening. The next couple of weeks would be challenging but maybe a little innovative and exhilarating, too, some of us began saying, as if anticipating that we may be swept up in a fascinating learning journey ourselves. But then another swerve, which signalled the beginning of a new phase. At the end of the day, the CEO sent an email ‘unpausing’ the courses, saying that whatever had been the mysterious cause of the postponement had now been resolved. We scrambled to re-organise our class schedules, reconfirm guests and/or improvise. But this was far from a return to normalcy. 

This next phase was all about trying to make sense of what was happening while receiving virtually no meaningful communication from the DHT ‘change team’. This included staff and faculty organising to resist the imposition of ‘flexible hours’ contracts and to self-manage our now headless organisation. All this while teaching our courses. Students made their sense of what was happening, too. They pointed out that what was happening with Dartington Hall Trust was a fractal of what was happening in the wider world, that ‘business as usual’ logic was playing itself out with ruthlessness and little care for people, that this unfolding situation was riven with negative examples of leadership, management, governance. Isn’t communication an essential ‘best practice’ of good leadership, management and governance? What could we do but make lists of questions, email them to the ‘change team’ and hope for answers? My colleagues and I began to joke that this absurd situation has been, in some ways, a unique pedagogical blessing. We all had to acknowledge what was happening because it seemed to go right to the core of what the College and its global community stood for.

After a couple of weeks, Satish Kumar, signed a letter that has become known as our declaration of independence, asking the Chair and remaining trustees (by now, some had resigned) for an amicable parting of the ways, a divorce between adults who have grown apart, acknowledging the many good times over the years, but who now see the diverging paths ahead. 

It could have been an amazing story. After this letter was first ignored, then acknowledged, a face to face meeting with the CEO ensued on October 10th. A promise was made that a fast path to independence was agreed in principle and within a week it would be put down in words in a ‘memorandum of understanding’. The MOU never came. Instead came news that our accreditation partner, Plymouth University, had found Dartington Hall Trust in breach of contract, or close enough. What roles did governance, financial position, and the postponement play? Accreditation was pulled – ‘suspended’, we learned later, meaning that this would likely be the last year our MA courses would run. Our other accredited courses would not run, either. 

The weeks skittered by. We learned that faculty contracts would not be changed – a small victory – and would be moved into the Schumacher College Foundation, a subsidiary charity under Dartington Hall Trust. It had quietly existed for years and was essentially a container for some grant money. It might have served as a vehicle for independence, but probably not now given that the DHT Chair, CEO and their education consultant, installed themselves onto the board of this entity. This seemed, at least, a complication. Then they made themselves a committee of three, the ‘education committee’ who would now, it appeared, chart the future of the College. The irony has not been lost on students or anyone else. It’s clear that Schumacher College must become independent but it remains uncertain how this will happen. Because of ‘teach out’ – DHT has lost our accreditation but remains contractually obliged to complete the courses for students already enrolled – the College will remain under DHT for at least another two years or so. 

***

That part of this story is a mire.  The part of this story we control – our intentions, analyses, dreams, and practical actions – is full of possibility. The opportunity we have before us is to reimagine ‘higher’ education and us as an institution of ‘higher’ learning. Can we innovate a model (or models) that addresses what is needed now in these times of ‘polycrisis’ and transformation, is accessible to more young people in more places, and is financially sustainable in the long run? Can we become an organisation that is a positive exemplar from top to bottom, being and acting in alignment with our values, ‘walking our talk’? Answering these and related questions with humility and in service is the work we must do.

One interesting line of thinking concerns having a good death. Every organism, every organisation, every enterprise has a life cycle. Should businesses exist forever? Can an enterprise truly be regenerative unless it is willing to ‘compost itself’ at the appropriate moment for the greater good? If Schumacher College were to end up winding up, how could it do so in the most productive way possible, making the stock of nutrients accumulated through its decades of endeavour available to flow to the next iteration(s)?

The notion of ‘hospicing modernity’ comes into our course inquiry, thanks to Vanessa Machado de Oliveira and her book of the same name. The last few hundred years of our modern era sowed the seeds of our polycrises, many would argue and with good evidence. For modern institutions and their extant exemplars – for example, corporations like Exxon – the same question must be asked – should they continue to exist? Should they be ‘hospiced’? What is the process to a just transition? 

These questions have also come into the world of big philanthropy, where the provenance of foundation wealth includes culpable histories. In a well covered case, Lankelly-Chase recently decided to give away all its wealth once and for all, saying in a statement on its website, ‘…we view the traditional philanthropy model as so entangled with Colonial Capitalism that it inevitably continues the harms of the past into the present.’ Should great stocks of wealth, especially modern historical wealth, be conserved and concentrated in any entity that exists forever? These questions and many more are developed in depth by Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy in their book, ‘Post Capitalist Philanthropy’. (Thanks for lending me a copy, Felipe!)

These questions are relevant for us here, right now. A hundred years ago, the founders of Dartington Hall, an American billionaire heiress (in today’s money) and her English husband, Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, bought and renovated the medieval estate along with thousands of acres of surrounding lands. Dartington Hall became an innovator in local economics, education and the arts. The Elmhirsts have been dead for fifty years. Maybe it’s time for Dartington Hall Trust to hospice itself, just as Lankelly Chase is doing? Instead of becoming just another landlord, it could divest assets to the surrounding communities. This part of South Devon is one of the most innovative clusters of regenerative and social enterprises in the country. There would be an abundance of creative energy that could put these assets to work for the common good – just what’s needed in these times of polycrisis and transformation, we would argue. What if it were community owned?, as Rob Hopkins asked a few years ago in response to earlier episodes of community distrust. More to the point, what would Dorothy do? Perhaps she might say the right thing to do is to simply grant Schumacher College its independence along with the small patch of land and buildings it occupies.

That scenario is unlikely. And whether Schumacher College continues or not – most of us think it probably will – the energy grows for new models, successor organisations and other innovative progeny. We’d like to stay where we are in this place, occupying the Old Postern where so many memories have been made. Perhaps leaving on our own terms could free us to address more interesting questions. What kind of education is called for in these times? What curricula? What pedagogy? Accessible to whom? Why? Our community, believe me, is astoundingly capable, creative, innovative. They’re animated and mobilised by these questions. They’re already on the way to what’s next.

Schumacher College lies at the heart of this worldwide community, at least as ‘the source’. EF Schumacher was a progenitor of what is a growing movement for economic change, especially to those movements and models that bear an easily recognisable family resemblance. His words are often repeated within the walls of the Old Postern – ‘an ounce of practice is generally worth about a ton of theory.’ The work of this century is about that – putting into practice ‘regenerative economic/social/culture change’, from the bottom up, top down, side to side. Pragmatic, critical, willing to question our ideological biases and presumptions, pluralistic, transdisciplinary – in our best moments, what goes on at Schumacher College is unique in the world and powerful. 

This is how I have treated this in class, as an immersive case seen and experienced from the inside out. Yep, I could be biased by my own desires, of course. But imagine the possibilities, now:  a worldwide community of educators and entrepreneurs aligned around this kind of education for change, for the ‘great transformation’ called for in this century; an emerging network of cooperative and community-owned Schumacher College-like platforms delivering courses accessible now to thousands, multilingual online sessions complemented by local residentials in many places; a campus nestled in abundant convivial relationships stretching across borders and boundaries of all kinds.

These kinds of conversations are happening now. Let’s see what comes next.