Alpha_Alternative_School_1972–2012-Yumpu
ALPHA Alternative School—A Lot of Parents Hoping for an Alternative—one of the oldest alternative schools in Canada, celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2012. It seemed like a good time to take a look at the lives of some of its earliest students in order to get a sense of the long-term effects of this radical experiment in education. Our idea was to place black and white childhood portraits taken by F. Robert Openshaw in 1978 alongside present-day portraits of the same people taken at ALPHA during the 40th anniversary reunion by Michael Barker, and to contextualize the photographs with portraits in words contributed by the subjects and shaped by Ariel Fielding. The result is a sort of ethnographic art project or a personal history. It was not commissioned by ALPHA, nor was it conceived with any particular agenda in mind, except to present portraits of some interesting people with a common educational background.
ALPHA Alternative School—A Lot of Parents Hoping for an Alternative—one of the oldest alternative schools in Canada, celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2012. It seemed like a good time to take a look at the lives of some of its earliest students in order to get a sense of the long-term effects of this radical experiment in education. Our idea was to place black and white childhood portraits taken by F. Robert Openshaw in 1978 alongside present-day portraits of the same people taken at ALPHA during the 40th anniversary reunion by Michael Barker, and to contextualize the photographs with portraits in words contributed by the subjects and shaped by Ariel Fielding. The result is a sort of ethnographic art project or a personal history. It was not commissioned by ALPHA, nor was it conceived with any particular agenda in mind, except to present portraits of some interesting people with a common educational background.
- TAGS
- education
- alternative
- toronto
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I keep a hand in with writ ing for the Cana dian Motor cy cle Guide
(CMGonline.com). My main vehi cle is a Russ ian side car motor cy cle that
was orig i nally designed in the 1930s.
ALPHA has influ enced my life greatly to this day. At least that’s the only
expla na tion I can think of for the odd sit u a tions I keep find ing myself
in. I’ve dri ven a moped 800 km while dressed in a silly cos tume, been
mis taken for a WWI re-enactor when I wasn’t re-enacting any thing at all,
dri ven across the coun try in a side car bike to hon our a man who rode large
wheeled bicy cles, and had din ner in a baron’s château while lis ten ing to a
group of men describe how they blew up var i ous church steeples. Somehow
I don’t think life would be quite as much of an unpre dictable adventure
if I hadn’t had ALPHA to teach me to be open to new things. Why often
I even order the soup of the day with out ask ing what it is. That’s the kind
of non con formist rebel that ALPHA made of me. That and often wear ing
mis matched socks.
I would say going to ALPHA defi nitely made you more aware of authority
fig ures as human beings. You didn’t end up with that cer tain awe of
teach ers as semi-mythical fig ures, hand ing down deci sions and com mandments.
While they weren’t pre cisely peers, you did have a rela tion ship
that made them much more approach able than the reg u lar student/
teacher dynamic, to the ben e fit of both. You were more involved in your
own edu ca tion, which often led in direc tions that were sur pris ing for both
teacher and pupil.
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