> written on the 17. Sept 08:
In about 2 weeks I'll be gone away from here.
I'll be leaving my life here in Germany.
I'll be travelling and experimenting with something new...
I'll be travelling round in a group,
learning from my travelling mates and from others,
exchanging skills and knowledge,
trying to network and promote ideas, visions, dreams... 
trying to make people be heard,
trying to bring new and old ideas together
and let them melt together into something ... well, better :-) ...
bring the positive news back to the media
and some hope to the people out there in this planet...
I'LL BE TRAVELLING...
But right now I am still here,
sitting in the underground train in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, Europe...
WELL, PLANET EARTH IN THE END...
It is the first day after summer vacations finished
and all around me there is young students coming back from their first day of hell
after a long paradise season
-that's what it seems at least when I hear them talking.
"How was your first day" I hear one boy saying with an ironical smile.
"Great" the other one replies with sarcasm
and makes a face like he has been punished damn strongly.
I am sitting next to a group of girls around fourteen,
each one of them is wearing earphones listening to I don't really wanna know what kind of music.
Every once in a while they talk something about clothes and about
what-I-wanna-buy-next-in-which-shop...
Actually it's more shouting than talking
- or at least it's much louder than it would have to be
if they just took their earphones out for a second!
I think back...
Back in the time I went to school (which is only like 3 years ago)
I felt so ... caged...
into something strange I couldn't really understand...
and couldn't say why I was put in that cage,
couldn't even find words for it
- as it seemed so ... normal... to me to be caged.
When I look back on that time now, I gotta say: YES, I WAS IN A CAGE!...
and even though nobody r
eally ment to steal my freedom for bad reasons or doin me wrong
(-no, they ment to do me good!-) it was still a prison with no way out.
Everyday standing up in depression, 
all day hanging round with
people not interested in what they were supposed to learn
but all of them feeling caged in a prison like me...
and not finding words for it.. and fleeing into glitter-glimmer-media-worlds...
making fun of everybody telling them (in one way or another) that this virtual world is no way out...
People kept telling me (-and they still keep
on doing that-) that I can be happy,
that I had the chance to visit a school,
that I had the chance to learn something...
And, yes, in a way, it's true.
Maybe I did learn a lot and I can be happy...
But the same people - and that made me wonder -
were telling me also that this time in school was
supposed to be the freeest time of my life and later, when I'd be older I'd think back upon this time
and know what it was worth...
SO YOU KNOW WHAT? I AM STILL HAPPY THAT IT IS OVER!
No, it was NOT the freeest time of my life.
And if there is people saying that and really meaning it,
really being even more imprisoned all the rest of their life,
I am feeling really sad and sorry for them.
Maybe I am just not grateful enouph...
maybe I should think back and say,
"how happy I am that I could go to school and learn so many things...
poor kids in Afrika do
n't learn anything at all"
But -oh what a question to ask- maybe I could have learned so much more, if I wouldn't have spent so much time in this place called school... wouldn't have spent so much time with people, that I didn't really like and that didn't like me and that couldn't teach me about life but only about theories... And wouldn't have been forced to talk so much about so many things that I didn't want to talk about and that I forgot again already, or at least 73,48 % of it?
Yes, sorry for asking these kinds of questions and not just being satisfied and happy but I'm young and it's my duty to criticize you, .... you, that you set up this system before I was born:
IS THIS KIND OF KNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE NOW REALLY WORTH THE PAIN I FELT
FOR YEARS? COULDN'T I HAVE HAD THAT KNOWLEDGE ANY OTHER WAY?
Yes, I am overreacting, Daddy...
No, I was not beaten up in school like you, Daddy, thanks for stopping that at least...
But didn't the struggle in the 70s only change
some aspects of school on the surface
and didn't it leave the concept of forcing young
people to learn things they don't wanna learn
"cause they don't know what is good for them"
untouched?
STILL, WHAT ABOUT CHILDRENS RIGHT OF FREE CHOICE that grown-ups claim to have?
What about years and years that they don't have any other choice than hangin out in that strange places which are supposed to make you understand life better and help you find your way - and fail so much in that for so many people?
Why are children put under this pressure and for what? Just for functioning in this
THROW-AWAY SINGLE-CHILD ONE-NIGHT-STAND PUSH-UP SCROLL-DOWN
CLICK-AND-BUY SOCIETY ?!?
Just for knowing how to send applies to
an entreprise,
but not knowing how to plant a car
ot or interacting in community?
Just for being so much alieniated from their feelings,
from their roots, from earth and sky, fire and water
and healthy families and communities?
Ok, you are right when you now you ask: ISN'T SHE A LITTLE BIT TOO MUCH COMPLAINING?
Didn't she benefit a lot from this system? Isn't she -for instance- from Germany and doesn't she seem to speak English quite well for that...? Doesn't that help her a lot now?
Yeah, right, I learned most of my English in school. I am happy that I had some quite cool English teachers (compared to other subjects where I didn't learn anything at all for years because of opposite reasons)... And I know that in the end I am lucky and it could have been all much worse, for sure.
But you know what?
After I finished school I couldn't really speak,
and I learned to use English only while travellin' round and talkin' to people
- without that propably I wouldn't dare to post this text on this blog
still believing my English sucks to much
(like they were trying to make me believe in school)!
By the way, I learned to communicate in Spanish within a few months just by travellin in Spain and learning in a book by myself...
Travelling taught me so much in my life...
AND THE BEST SCHOOL I EVER VISITED WAS THE SCHOOL OF HITCHHIKING
When you get to talk to a lot of different people, that really makes you broaden your horizone and see what possibilities there are in live and that there's many ways to go...
Thinking about it over and over again
I came to the conclusion that the child in Afrika
that doesn't go to school
and me that I went to a school that I hated
both have the same problems in the end
- cause our problems have the same reasons....
and I decided that if I change the situation for me,
it might help this child, too...
When I met the people of the "travelling school of life" in Austria about 2 years ago I suddenly knew what I wanted to do in my life... (-well, maybe not all my life, but for a while):
Help building up an alternative learning and teaching system, that can first be only an addition to the regular school system, but once maybe even be much better than that...
WE ARE FAR AWAY FROM MY DREAM
- in which there woul
d be no depressed kids
in the Underground complaining
about their teachers,
but happy young people travelling and learning,
first in smaller circles (maybe learning from different people in their village or from travellers coming by that village from somewhere) and then in bigger and bigger circles around the globe spreading infos, skills and knowledge all around the world...
I don't know if that dream is realistic...
I don't care in the end.
What I know is that the only real motivation for me
to learn
is when I really want to know something.
Not the test next week and not the arguing teacher
but only my own mind.
And what I also know ist that especially nowadays it is easily possible to learn completely self-organised in an autodidactique way - if first you know how to do it and if second you have people that support you in that and not just tell you you are crazy.
Since three years I am learning in an autodidactic way... mostly studying "alternative economics" and "projectmanagement" -which means I deal with developments in the
organic / fairtrade /"lohas" and open source /solidarity economy - szene(s),
also watching developments in the web 2.0 (social networking for various reasons etc)...
I am also trying -with some likeminded friends-
to build up solidary economy infrastructures
that I can one day earn a living from...
and live and be free the same time
Moreover I am studying e.g. arts, politics, psychology
and some other subjects
(well most of them more on the surface but still deeper than the average German I suppose...)
I learned a lot in the last years in this autodidactic way and I think there is already many things that I could teach to people... and of course still I got a lot of things to learn.
SO WHY I GO ON THIS SKILLSURFERS TOUR IS I want to share ideas and visions with people,teach and learn, being a student and a teacher at the same time.
THE NAME "TRAVELLING SCHOOL OF LIFE"
was invented by some young people moving around
in Europe as a group,
visiting ecovillages and organic farms
to live and learn there together
as a self-organised learning group.
We kind of like this concept
(that is only one aspect of what "travelling school of life"
can be and mean!)
and so we thought we could do the same thing
on a much larger scale, which means we do not only want to
visit ecovillages and farms, but also political, cultural and social projects/NGOs,
as well as entreprises or collectives or other institutions e.g. alternative schools
and individuals who are having the same "curriculum" we have.
We want to talk to them, do workshops and share ideas and visions to then spread what we learned
in the other places that we visit.
We wanna motivate people to take back their education in their own hands again
- because we know that it is possible
(though of course you need some self discipline
and this can be harder than just consuming what teachers present to you in schools
and you have to learn how to learn first)
Of course we also want to talk about subjects that matter for our personal "curriculum",
like e.g. I want to learn about alternative economies
and build up solidarity economy connections and cooperations...
We also wanna learn about permaculture ,
about how to do electronical/ experimental music
and many other things...
WE'LL BE TRAVELLING
THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU CAN TEACH TO US! :-)
So that in few years,
maybe I won't be ashamed
sitting in the Underground
with some flyers of "travelling school of life" in my backpack
not daring to give them to depressed kiddies
or talk to them about their learning dreams...
BUT MAYBE ONE DAY I CAN TELL THEM..
"WELL, YOU ARE NOT SATISFIED? THEN GO TRY SOMETHING ELSE!"
...Read the rest here!
