Bücher von Joachim Broecher

Young people who say goodbye to school education because they do not feel addressed by the learning forms and structures there. Many no longer even learn the absolute basics. Learning groups in daycare centers and schools overloaded with social problems. Shortage of skilled workers in educational institutions and in the care of the elderly. Alienation of many adults in functionalist professional life. Fragmentation of society. Social isolation of individuals. Compensatory life in digital parallel worlds. If we had an unconditional basic income for everyone, including the middle class that generates the tax revenue, in the sense of an incentive to act entrepreneurially and to assume social responsibility, if we converted compulsory schooling into compulsory self-designed education, and if Germany were to come to terms with a sensible migration policy, then people could get together and buy the vacant real estate in eastern Germany and turn it into vibrant craft, technical or agricultural projects, including in other parts of the country and in the cities. Young people would be able to move from project to project, wandering around, learning on their own. Children would grow up with several caregivers, a broader range of male and female role models, and professional profiles, which would benefit their development. People would then do a lot of things themselves again and help each other in the communities, from caring for small children, to pedagogical work with older children, parallel to the schools and day care centers that continue to exist but have become fewer in number, to the integration and care of the elderly. Vocational schools and universities could make entrance exams for those who learn in their own projects. A lot of driving would be eliminated, which would also be good for the climate. Deceleration would occur, people would have more time for each other and would be healthier. What we need is a different social structure and a philosophy from which identity-promoting and socially cohesive narratives can emerge anew. This second documentary volume shows what the status is, in the further development of a three-sided farm from 1884, located in Anhalt, into a think tank and in the creation of the first cultural and educational references.

Observations in Berlin since the 1920s and especially since the 1980s can be interpreted as a sort of hothouse for future social developments. How will the people of the future live, work and learn? Inspired by Benjamin's work "The Arcades Project", Joachim Broecher has, since 2015, undertaken fieldwork into the diverse urban spaces and cultural scenes in the metropolis of Berlin. For documentation and analytic pervasiveness, he uses a rather free method, situated between cultural mapping, a field diary and poetry. This volume brings together a selection of two dozen texts and places them in a transdisciplinary theoretical context that aims to break down and overcome the confines of current academic disciplines, paradigms, and institutional constructs. The selected texts themselves, however, are very practical, vivid and sometimes radical. The introduction poses the question: How can we explore new territory if we do not attempt something new? There can of course be no direct 1:1 application in pedagogy, society and culture of concepts at times painted here in soft watercolor, at times defined in stark pen strokes. Things are too complex, too subtle, too stubborn for this. But ultimately, herein also lies their allure.

In the next few years, politics and society would do well to throw open two hitherto closed gateways: on the one hand, by introducing an unconditional basic income for all intended to furnish the wherewithal and motivation for active, entrepreneurial and socially responsible behavior; and, on the other, transform compulsory school attendance into mandatory but self-directed education. The combination would allow people to team up to buy vacant farms in the countryside or to launch urban projects for developing into centers of learning, working and living differently: across generations, sustainably, holistically, ecologically, inclusively, and innovatively.Institutionalized childhoods would become a thing of the past. Parents could step off the treadmill of the 9 to 5 job, work part-time or freelance, leaving them time to look alternately after their children and themselves within a framework of transformative community projects, including in an educational sense. The years of adolescence could be self-determined as years of apprenticeship and wandering, to be spent in diverse projects. The still existing schools would then be relieved of adolescents who have difficulty coping with the competency-based curricular learning offered in them or who do not want to be there for other reasons. Children and young people would grow up healthier, both emotionally and socially. Vocational schools and universities could hold entrance exams for which young people prepare themselves independently. In the next few years, tens of thousands of such projects could sprout in Germany, with a variety of perspectives, certainly also under state supervision, so that democratic conditions are givens in the projects. The current society of control (Deleuze, 1992) would thus become a civil society of entrepreneurs.The present volume documents the first small steps toward realizing such a dream on a farmstead in Anhalt, eastern Germany. It does so with more than 400 photographs and brief descriptions. At first, the focus is on mundane, practical tasks ¿ on cleaning up, renovating, planning ¿ to be followed soon by making the first educational, social and cultural connections, but always with an appreciative eye for the high value of hands-on craftsmanship ¿ and on Tomasz, the shepherd boy from the Beskid Mountains.