New Learning teaches diligence in democracy. We are fortunate to live as free as any people on earth, and despite its imperfections, to be the citizens of a democracy. Through our democratic structures, organized communities are able to engage in dialectic process, determine their needs and advocate for the change necessary to allow them to meet those needs. Along with freedom and power for a population, democracy also entails responsibility: to exercise the right to vote, to hold governments accountable, to respect freedom of expression, to obey and defend the rights of all citizens, and to effect change.

The New Learning Project proposes that citizens must exercise these responsibilities in order to effect change in the public system of education to accommodate the variety of forms and structures that are needed to meet the diverse educational needs of students and communities.

New Learning helps communities realize empowerment. According to social commentators like Wendell Berry, our education systems are responding to the forces of economic globalization by generating graduates to fill the employment niches of "the global village." One result is that a small percentage of brilliant students rise to the top and are skimmed off to acquire positions of power and privilege. Sixty years ago, Moses Coady responded to similar forces by attacking the "brain drain" of the '30s and by appealing for economic democracy, good pedagogy and the recognition of communities as "nurseries of civilization."¹⁹ Wendell Berry builds on Coady's perspective and asserts that local communities, not globalization, represent the reality of today and the hope for tomorrow.²⁰

Concurring in this perspective, the New Learning Project strives to empower communities through an approach to education that is locally developed and directed. We believe that community-based education with locally- governed schools is the best way to build the sustainability and the capacity of communities necessary to meet the learning needs of present and future generations.