EXCO Offers Free/Open Classes to Change The World

The Experimental College of the Twin Cities or EXCO is holding its fourth session of free and open classes beginning this February 2008. Started by Macalester students in Fall 2006 in response to the inequities of higher education, EXCO “strives to offer Twin Cities’ communities an opportunity to teach or learn in an inclusive space open to all types of skills and knowledge, including and beyond academic knowledge” (from www.EXCOtc.org).

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With 25+ classes with a huge range of topics from fun to the political this isn’t your traditional community education, its free, open, has a commitment to social justice and is well…cool. “At least that’s what we want you to believe,” laughs KS, an EXCO organizer and art major at Macalester College.

Not only is it cool, classes cover an impressive and unusual range of topics including: Community Journalism, the Social Responsibility of African American Music, Gentrification, Unix and C, Knitting, Climate and Energy, a Brief History of Co-ops, Capoeira, Community Journalism, Peacemaking and Anarchism: An Intergenerational Dialogue, and many more. (Want a full list of classes? See www.EXCOtc.org)

So maybe there is something cool going on, and it certainly applies when it comes to values and vision. EXCO’s basic principal is that anyone can teach or take a class and all classes are free.

Why? According to AB, EXCO organizer and women’s and gender studies student at the University of Minnesota, there is something pretty special about this project: “you might say EXCO is a way for anyone to come together with other people to share their talents, speak their truths…We are building both a space for critiquing the way things are and a model for how education should be”.

And it is important that that space is an inclusive one. According to ML, an EXCO co-founder and American studies senior at Macalester, “our efforts are predicated on the idea that education is a powerful tool for social change, We believe it can build equality and justice in our communities when we value the knowledge of each and every person, particularly those whose voices have been historically marginalized”. A tall order, and a challenge to be sure, given EXCO’s genesis on Macalester’s impressive but rather exclusive campus.

But maybe there’s hope after all…since its beginnings roughly 50% of participants have been non-students, and according to DB an EXCO organizer and after-school teacher in Minneapolis: “EXCO has grown tremendously in the past two years and is only showing more signs of growth”. Since starting with 6 ten-week classes in 2006, EXCO is running over 25 classes this semester and has recently started up a new organizing chapter in Minneapolis at the U of M campus.

Where will it go from here? “If we keep increasing at this rate in the next few years or so we’ll have tons of classes all over the Twin Cities, with chapters at colleges, universities, neighborhood associations, district councils, you name it. And while creating spaces to think and learn about what we want and how to get it isn’t going to make all the changes we want to see, it would sure be a good start” says D.
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Ready to register? See a full list of classes and register online at www.EXCOtc.org. You can also register in person at an EXCO Infosession, where you can also meet teachers, and talk to them about their classes.

The first infosession is taking place in Minneapolis on Saturday January 26th from 12-2pm in Rm #303 of Kaufman Union on the U of M’s campus, which is located at 300 Washington Ave. S.E. The second is taking place in St. Paul on Saturday February 2nd, from 3-5pm on the 2nd Floor Atrium of the Macalester Campus Center, which is located at 1600 Grand Ave, the corner of Grand and Snelling avenues.

Have questions, want publicity materials, or interested in getting involved with EXCO as a volunteer, chapter started or future teacher? Contact the EXCO Organizing Team at excotc@gmail.com or call 651-696-8010.