Learning process for adults flowers across state of Kansas
For adults, going back to school 10 longer means traditional class'ooms, traditional courses and the other of grades and tests at least not with a "free university" nearby. By Scott Kraft
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IDANA, Kan. (AP) wooden pews were his classroom, a piano bench his lectern. The bare light bulbs flickered as a summer storm threatened.
But to the 13 inquisitive minds. assembled in the tiny church basement in north central Kansas, there was no setting anywhere more fertile for learning. Because beekeeping was the subject, and John Schweitzer, a wiry 73-year-old in green work clothes, the teacher.
And from the two young women in the front to the middle-aged men` in the back, his audience listened, questioned, shared and learned.
In church basements and living. rooms and even on backyard patios across the country, a few people are talking and a lot of others are learning without grades, homework or pressure.
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Nowhere is free education sprouting as in the Sunflower State, where the number of communities with some form of free university has jumped from 4 to 22 in less than four years.
That growth has its roots in people like Schweitzer, a service station operator by trade, and in places like Idana, where it's a half-minute walk from the center of town to acres and acres of Kansas wheat.
For his recent teaching debut, Schweitzer offered baby food jars of honey-"just enough for a flapjack," gave advice to a farmer with an ornery swarm of bees on his land and recommended that beekeepers keep their swarms away from the honeysuckle "it'll make your honey smell like dirty socks."
Then there was that down-home smile and an embarrassed gesture. "When a bee man gets to talking why, he sometimes says too many things."
Free universities have made a full turn. Known variously as open education exchanges, communiversities and experimental colleges, they have moved from the. activist and often underground university of the 1960s to the adult education wave of the 1970s.
In 1968, they offered an atmosphere in which students could spout their views on the Vietnam war, racial unrest and other topics sidestepped by traditional universities of the day. In 1978, they coordinate classes for all ages on sock-darning, biofeedback, Frisbee-throwing and homosexual life-styles.
And it hasn't stopped there.
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There's a class on fantasy, "Dungeons and Dragons," for those with active imaginations. "How-to" classes on canoeing, climbing, skiing and bicycling as well as house wiring, stereo installing, refinishing and auto repair are offered in many cities. Or you can learn to make beef jerky, build sundials or play war games.
In the self-help field, there is a course to help a divorcee cope with the problems of being single again.
About 300,000 persons attended
classes last year at 175 free universities in the United States. Class length ranged from one meeting to weekly meetings for a year or longer.
These free universities are coordinated nationally by the Free University Network, which has adopted the acronym, FUN. It is based near Kansas State University in Manhattan in a former scholarship house run by the local free university, University for Man.
Bill Draves, 29, who is on the paid staff of University for Man, coordinates the national organization in his spare time.. A part-time secretary handles the paperwork.
Actually, FUN is little more than a telephone number, a mailing address and an annual convention none of which bothers Draves.
"We don't want to be a big national organization that lobbies on the Hill and sells life insurance," Draves says. "We're an information clearing house and we'll always be promoting things at the local level.”
Since 1974, FUN has published brochures for communities wanting to set up free universities: The educational concept born in Berkeley, Calif., during a free speech movement in 1964 has spread from college towns to other communities.
In Kansas, a program run by University for Man and supported by federal funds shows towns how to recruit teachers and set up classes.
The beekeeping class in Idana, for example, was arranged through the Clay County Education Program, which was started by VISTA.volunteers three years ago. The class was advertised in the county newspaper and a newsletter. Prospective participants were asked to sign up, but registration wasn't required. There was no fee, and there would be no grade or homework.
Clay County and most of the small communities of Kansas were once believed too tiny to support free universities. Draves remembers the doomsaying of one of his advisers, who said: "If you can get a Free U going in Clay County it'll be a miracle."
But today, population centers much smaller than Clay County's 10,000 support free universities.
"We used to think we'd have to hustle and promote these universities," Draves says. "But it's starting to snowball and I don't see any problems starting one anywhere in the country.
The idea for a free university is usually born in the community.. Draves and his colleagues are called in to provide some pointers at an organizational meeting, and the rest is left up to town residents.
The structure of a new free university varies, but almost always is simple: a volunteer director is ap-: pointed and a plea is issued for teachers. Later, a list of classes is posted on town bulletin boards and students begin to sign up.
A free university may merely create a card file of classes and teachers. Those versions of the free! universities, known as "learning networks," allow the student to arrange his own class with the teacher. If fees are to be charged, they are negotiated by the student and teacher,
The largest of those learning exchanges is in Evanston, IL, where more than 3,000 different subjects, including 49 different languagës, are on the
The country's smallest free uni-
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versity is at Olsburg, Kan., about 60 miles from Idana. A meeting there last fall lured more than 50 persons, a third of the town's population.
"And when we started writing down possible classes, we ran out of blackboard space," says Barb Nelson, a coordinator. "Two classes started right away."
Now, one of the group's most ardent supporters is Jerry Westling, a 51-year-old letter carrier and town skeptic. He admits to having doubts at the fall meeting.
"I figured that by spring everybody would know everything everbody else in town knew, and we'd run out of teachers and classes," he said. But that hasn't happened.
For one of the more popular courses, "Olsburg History," several lifelong residents gather to reminisce about the tiny town's lineage, in what once might have been called a free university rap session.
The spirit exemplified in Olsburg is helping create a "rural renaissance" in Kansas, Draves says.
"People who are already in small towns want to stay there," he says. "But they want something to do at night."
Some money for free universities comes from state funds, registration fees, fund-raisers and community gifts. Budgets range from less than $100 to well over $200,000.
That governments and businessmen are willing to spend money on free universities represents an entirely different attitude than was generally held in the late 1960s.
"There are some who will always remember some of our more risque or radical offerings," Draves says.
Sue Maes, one of the founders of Manhattan's free university in 1968, is a nationally recognized leader in this method of learning. When an article on her anti-war views appeared in the New Yorker 10 years ago, Miss Maes' father was fired from his job at an American Legion post.
Those anti-war views, held by many other off-campus universities, "didn't put our programs in a particularly favorable light," she acknowledges now. "And it's taken us more than seven years to gain their trust."
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The intent of those early free universities to teach people what they weren't learning elsewhere hasn't changed. "We're still the creative edge of knowledge," Draves says. "And if colleges really watched us closely they would know what they should be developing for the future."