[[index.html|File:Freotopia people garyburke img banner.jpg]]
Gary Burke
Burke, Gary 1990, Long Live the Jojoba Bean: the Story of the Community School (Fremantle), Production Function.
The Community School was established by an independent group of people to provide an alternative approach to education. Our aims were practical and we set out to show that individuals can take responsiblity for the education of the young and make the system (and whoever is in control of it,) responsive to the multifarious needs and values existing in the community, not merely to the needs of administration. The aim was to nurture and align the educative process with individual and community aspirations.
It was our belief that many social (and environmental) problems in Australia would only be resolved with a radical but gentle restructuring of the dominance administration has over all of our activities, particularly education. Administrative decisions in school systems directly affect the balance of consciousness in individual students. Administration prefers homogeneous groups to work with. We saw education as about cultivating individuality and creativity.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally hosted at freotopia.org/people/garyburke/csf.html, and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.