Imagine some people were to get together to create a progressive project. What attributes should it have to be truly exemplary?
Well, it should certainly have an agenda – a product, so to speak – that is needed and beneficial. One could think of many, of course, but how about increased awareness and comprehension of current relations, plus increased knowledge of positive alternatives and ways to attain them? Surely that would qualify as needed and beneficial. Indeed, that is already presumably the central agenda of alternative media institutions all over the world.
But that isn’t the end of it. Also important would be that the project functions internally in a non alienated and even a largely or fully self managing way. Planting seeds of the future in the present!
Okay, to see what that might entail, let’s refine the agenda from just delivering valuable information, to delivering online courses – education – where the courses focus on social analysis, vision, and strategy and activist skills. Now the requirement that the project runs in a good way would mean, optimally, that its workers govern their own activities. In this case, its faculty would have to entirely govern their own course content and methods, without external intervention.
But there is still another matter. Projects have costs that must be met, and in generating funds to do that, they may be exemplary – or, more often, not so much. So suppose this online school with a faculty in command of its content raises funds by setting a low full price enrollment fee and an even lower low income fee for each course. So far so good, but what should become of the revenues from those fees? Well, obviously part would go to the faculty and part to the folks doing the work of the school for their work and for paying the bills for it, etc. Yet, there is another possibility, and this is where this particular project could try to move from really good to uniquely exemplary.
Suppose the project thought to itself – so to speak – wait a minute. We are setting up a school that aims to raise consciousness across the whole universe of people concerned to create a better world. Why should the determination of who gets to teach and then freely determine their own content, rest only with some staff? And why should the benefits beyond direct costs, which could become enormous, accrue only to the faculty and the staff – when the project is really trying to advance progressive and left activism far more widely?
So now suppose the project decides to broaden out and have partner organizations, each of which can sponsor sources with no oversight from others and each of which takes a share of revenues, as well, but all of which are only required to promote (as they see fit) the overall project and of course the particular courses that they sponsor.
Now we are getting somewhere. Make it international and this hypothetical online school becomes a cross border, cross constituency (due to the many partners), admirably organized, consciousness raising vehicle, a real manifestation of solidarity and mutual aid.
Now comes the really good news.
This project is not hypothetical. The World Institute for Social Change – WISC – already exists. Indeed, it has already had two eight-week sessions and will undertake a third starting January 1. Indeed, WISC’s calendar is two months of courses, one month for changeover/retooling, etc., and then two more months of courses, and so on – so it will generally have a total of four sessions of eight week courses each year.
The technology is in place. A set of people have demonstrated that courses can be constructed and taught very successfully even for very low pay, as has been true so far. A set of Partners from around the world have signed on: Bogazici Center for Arts (Turkey), Centre for Civil Society (South Africa), Center for Anthro & Soc Change (U.S.), Green Party (U.S.), MovetoAmend.org (U.S.), New Politics (U.S.), Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (Canada), PM Press (U.S.), Rabble (Canada), Real Media (UK), Real News Network (U.S.), ROAR (Netherlands), Sto Kokkino (Greece), Chicago Veterans for Peace (U.S.), World Beyond War (U.S.), Z Communications (U.S.) with every reason to think many more will do so as they learn of the possibility.
So, what are WISC’s prospects?
Well, let’s be what some might think is overly optimistic. Suppose a year from now, once WISC is really visible and people know the school works, etc., 200,000 people are in the WISC community. And suppose that in each session among the 200,000 people in the community they take 150,000 courses. First, is that insane or is it plausible?
Well, just the current partner organizations have mailing lists that include in sum two or perhaps three times that number of people. Now add another 50 plus partner organizations some of them modest in size, but others very large such as large ecology and peace and justice and anti racist and feminist and other organizations, progressive political parties, progressive unions, and so on. We would then have, let’s say, 75 partner organizations with constituencies that could easily exceed a million, or even a few million. Maybe the imagined 200,000 people joining into a cross border cross constituency online education community and taking excellent courses isn’t so far fetched at all, so let’s just see what that much would mean.
Let’s say the fee for a course is US$50 full price and US$25 low income for the eight weeks, where students of any course retain access to its contents forever!
So, with four sessions a year that would be 600,000 enrollments. Let’s say the average paid per enrollment is US$40. So that would be US$24 million. If we stuck with the initial payment scheme, US$12 million would go to faculty in proportion as their courses have students. Some US$6 million would go to WISC. And US$6 million would be divided among the partners in proportion as their courses have students.
Now the reality is, to have such a scale things would likely change somewhat – for example, courses would likely have a teacher and a co-teacher or two to handle their size, and I doubt WISC would need such a large amount, even with having to have some staff, massive outreach, etc. etc. But, let’s try and guess, in any case.
Suppose the school was offering 400 courses each session (and remember, the school would, at this scale, have many languages so that, for example, in some cases one course topic might be done by four different faculty in four different instances in four different languages. So the average number of students per course would be 375, some with many more, some with many less. So, to teach all that, let’s say WISC had 500 faculty and co-teachers.
With this picture we would have the teachers earning, on average, US$24,000 a year for teaching one course each of four sessions. Someone teaching four courses at a time would with this approach earn about US$100,000, on average. We might imagine WISC setting an upper limit well below that for any individual, and thus having additional funds for those earning less, or for partner organizations. The 75 organizational partners would, with no changes in the approach, on average receive US$80,000, some more, some less – where this would entail virtually no work or other outlay at all, and thus be pure financial gain. And beyond the material benefits for faculty and partners, 200,000 people would be meeting others world wide in sustained and serious ways, learning about topics of interest to them, developing and sharing vision and strategy, making connections and developing ties, and, one would hope, spinning off new projects as well, including face to face gatherings.
Okay, now assume WISC grows from there.
The short of this is we who have signed this article are already working on the exemplary project imagined above. Will it succeed? Well, we can make a pretty good guess about that.
The technology is no problem. The organization of the project is no problem. Finances are no problem. The existence and quality of faculty is no problem. The existence of potential partners is no problem. It will not fail for want of any of that. So – does that mean WISC a sure thing? No.
To start a project, reach stability, and keep growing does indeed depend very greatly on its internal features such as technology, organization, finances, and staffing. But there is another factor, as well. Two, actually.
First, once people hear about a project, understand its offerings, and believe it can deliver, will they want the project and its product enough to relate to it? Honestly, we do not know. But surely you would think that learning new ideas and sharing insights would be a priority for all people serious about changing the world for the better. So, we are going to say, yes, this exists, too.
Is that it? Is it a done deal? Regrettably, no. There is one more ingredient for success – one that can’t be finessed. Note the phrase above “once people hear about it’ and the second phrase and “believe it can deliver.” These are pivotal. For people to know about this project and to believe it can deliver, there will need to be visibility for WISC. Partners will have to promote its virtues. Students who experience it, and faculty who teach will have to promote its virtues as well. But perhaps most of all, at the outset, now, diverse media outlets even before they sign on as partners will need to address the endeavor.
And this is where we worry. In its first six months WISC has attracted virtually no alternative media attention. You would think a project with partner organizations from around the world that is structured to funnel finances into the left and that is aimed at consciousness raising would attract some attention, whether supportive or, perhaps, for some reason, critical. But no, there has been, by and large, virtually total silence.
It may be that this is mostly our fault. Perhaps we needed to bring our effort to more people’s attention. Perhaps we needed to push our project, more, so to speak, rather than thinking that just noting it exists would attract attention. But we aren’t very good at self promotion, and honestly, it isn’t real comfortable to do. You would think, we thought, that just an announcement that people were trying to do something like this – a cross border, cross constituency, materially and organizationally exemplary consciousness raising project, would garner some alternative media reporting, some attention. Sadly, so far, it hasn’t happened.
And so, we the current WISC faculty write this essay, hoping:
1) that people will visit WISC and look around and decide they would like to take a course or two, and
2) that diverse media operations, organizations, projects, movement groups, etc., will decide to comment on the endeavor and perhaps become partners in it.
We really can make this happen with multifold material and consciousness benefits across the whole world of progressive and left activism if we get a little help with visibility.
WISC Faculty is Michael Albert, Bridget Anderson, Patrick Bond, Paul Chappell, Avi Chomsky, Bill Fletcher, John Clarke, Rory Fanning, Eva Gollinger, Andrej Grubacic, Bruno Jantti, Anita Karasu, Kathy Kelly, Harpreet Paul, Justin Podur, Jack Rasmus, Jerome Roos, Paul Street, David Swanson and Tom Vouloumanos.
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