# HIGHLANDER FOLK SCHOOL
See Miles Horton
Second: Miles Horton and his Highlander Folk School is the place from which both the unionization of the Southeastern US and the civil rights movements originated. There are documentaries and books that share the remarkable story. I highly recommend that you look in to the history and the effect that Highlander has had. It was a designed place, an enzyme-like place, where specific people were invited, placed in proximity, slowed down, held together, until something binding happened between them. From each other, these people learned how to learn. Then they went back to their places and continued learning how to learn by talking and taking action together, again and again.
Highlander Folk School has been renamed, Highlander Research and Education Center. It is twenty-three miles, a thirty minute drive, east of Knoxville, TN, near the town of New Market, TN.
As successful as Miles Horton was, his approach never reached his highest hope. He was seeking something more universal, even more effective. My conclusion is, while Horton rejected the overt confrontational approach used by his friend, Saul Alinsky, Horton none-the-less still relied on opposition and antagonism, for fuel, for Motivation. His approach could never become a universal approach because, **lacking an enemy whom you are willing to confront, there was no motive and no method**.
# I think that what is needed is an emotionally compelling (exciting) and unifying positive, rather than just negative, source of Community Power.
# Russ Ackoff gave us that possibility—Idealized Design.