PHILOSOPHICAL STATEMENT
INNISFREE - MAY 1970
During the past few years it has become increasingly evident that the American culture, for all its worth, is rapidly alientating human beings from itself and from other human beings. The problem of alienation has for generations been a dominent theme in literature, but the time for consideration of this problem on purely aesthetic and intellectual levels is dwawing to a close. Although one can discover a desperate lack of meaning in all spheres of our society from a large corporation to the streets of Newark, nowhere is this lack so blatantly noticeable as it is in the public schools. Everywhere students are asking, "What is it all about?" And everywhere students are understanding that unless our culture begins to conscientiously come to grips with its spiritual emptiness, we may indeed be heading for disaster.
The primary purpose of the summer experience at Innisfree is to begin to deal with this emptiness. It is our belief that the most basic skill necessary for human development at this point in history is not the skill to name presidents of the U.S. nor the skill to swim a hundred yards in record time. Rather, we are concerned with developing in young people and in ourselves the skill to understand ourselves and to extend ourselves in a real spirit of community to others. The ideas of self-awareness and community awareness are then the two most important concepts in our program. In order to translate these ideas into behavior we have conceived of a living experience for young people and adults which involves everyone on as many levels of the process of living as possible. In our community there will need to be rules to insure the physical well-being of each member of the community; there will need to be policies to maximize the value of every experience which the community offers; there will need to be attitudes developed so that each member of the community has a maximum opportunity to grow both as an individual and as a member of the community; and all of these rules, policies, and attitudes will be developed as a total group through the experience of living together.
It should be apparent then that form one point of view our community is an experiment in democracy. By this, we mean that it is essential in order for a human being to be most fully human to learn how to govern himself and how to share in the government of others. In order to learn self-government, one must learn as much as possible about oneself. Such learning cannot come about through the imposition of values and experiencess -- and imposition is the characteristic process of the public school -- but rather it must come about byu exercising free choices for oneself and by examining these choices to discover their meaning. On a relatively simple level the members of Innisfree will have to make choices daily regarding the use of their time. Although a wide range of recreational, artistic, and educational opportunities will be available because of the physical and human composition of the community, the actualization of these resources will be made from moment and day to day by each member of the community.
Innisfree is to be an alternative to what we see as largely a dehumanizing and mechanizing society. Unlike mamny other utopian projects, however, we are very much concerned with the relationship between our community and the society as a whole. Rather than being an experiment in escapism, we conceive of our program as developing in people the inner strength that comes through awareness to deal with the world at large.
One may argue that we are a bunch of dreamy-eyed idealists. We do not think so. On the contrary, we feel that the "American Dream" of life, liberty, and the pusuit of happiness has become a grotesque nightmare which may very soon destroy us. As a result, we firmly believe that our projected community is not a pipe-dream but a practical and realistic necessity.
