co-operative education putting the principle into practice mervyn wilson the co-operative college
TRANSCRIPT
Co-operative educationPutting the principle into practice
Mervyn WilsonThe Co-operative College
5TH PRINCIPLE: EDUCATION, TRAINING AND INFORMATION
• Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives. They inform the general public - particularly young people and opinion leaders - about the nature and benefits of co-operation.
“Society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increasing a hundred fold." – Robert Owen 1816
Robert Owen and education
“I have long thought that the minds and feelings of young children are seldom duly considered or attended to, and that if adults would patiently encourage them to express candidly what they thought and felt, much suffering would be saved to the children and much useful knowledge of human nature would be gained by the adults.”
The Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society
• Not the first co-operative society• Learned from earlier experience• Learning from thinkers like – Robert Owen – William King– George Jacob Holyoake
• Developing a workable model• Law First – vision and practice
The Co-operative College beginnings 1919
The co-operative idea is that where you find a man you find a brother, and that when you find a human being you find a person to whom you have some responsibility. We do not think of the co-operative commonwealth as a commonwealth within a commonwealth; we think of it as a commonwealth of the world; and if we wish to carry that idea into effect every function of the nation, or of the State, should become the function of the co-operative movement. Education in citizenship, patriotism and the relations of men should be the great idea behind a co-operative college and our whole educational scheme.
A starting point • A rapidly changing landscape in the UK - especially for
education • New spaces and opportunities for co-operative
development • These changes driving an (overdue) process of research
and reflection from within the movement (continuing absence of substantive academic research/interest)
• Meeting the challenges of the co-operative revival • Co-operation in the Age of Google – Robin Murray
Co-operative education -objectives• Understand the dynamics of co-op organisations of different types and
as they go through different stages• Help people (volunteers and employees) be more effective• Envision and respond to possibilities (internal and external, old and new)• Reflect on the nature of co-operative enterprise and co-operative
thought (Co-operative Studies) using the movement’s basic assumptions as the starting point
• Build a systematic, cumulative, extensive and accessible body of knowledge
• Collaborate in an open and mutually-respectful way with like-minded people and organisations
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A Vision of Co-operative Education
One of the things co-operative education does is to make sense of the world in which we live, and show the place of co-operation in today’s world.
Brett Fairbairn
The challenges• A ‘crisis of opportunity’ – meeting the educational needs of new
and emerging sectors• Meeting the needs of a existing but still changing consumer and
financial sectors - learning to support governance• Inspiring a new generation of co-operators through learning from
the past• Developing partnerships• Relationships between the providers – making a distributed system
work as well as it did in the past • Research – building evidence base• Values and principles – Co-operative Identity – at the core
Possibilities
• Growing student interest• Interest in community-based research• Define the field of Co-operative Studies better • Think about nature of relationships among universities and with other
players• Creation of specific target based agendas• Creation of a knowledge base• Development of graduate programmes• More and concentrated publications (the problems of breadth vs
concentration and disciplinary expectations)• Better use of technology (webinairs, online courses)• More reciprocity and, even more importantly, mutuality• Co-ordination, co-ordination, co-ordination
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A Vision of Co-operative Education
So this would be my own prescription for further enhancing the work of co-operative education: to focus on education that carries direction and values, education with a purpose and in a context, education that carries and reproduces a co-operative culture.
Brett Fairbairn
Co-operative education
‘needs to be an agency for holding the co-operative and its members together and on course’.
Brett Fairburn
“In a co-operative all of us are responsible for
everything”
Don Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, Reflections
MISSION:To put education at the heart of
co-operation and co-operation
at the heart of education
Mervyn WilsonChief Executive & Principal