What is a Free School?

A Free School is a community-created series of informal classes, teach-ins, and events where people share knowledge, skills, conversations, and fun without the exchange of money. The schools are "free" in the sense of no-cost, as well as non-institutional and non-hierarchical.

Free Schools are grassroots, volunteer-run projects building on a long American tradition of horizontal, do-it-ourselves organizing, collaborative learning, and participatory education. Free Schools are rooted in the idea that decent, democratic communities depend on people of all ages and backgrounds being free and able to learn, share, and exchange ideas in the spirit of the Golden Rule. One of our main goals is to enact grassroots democracy and create a community of people who are doing things for ourselves, thinking and acting off the grid of corporate-orchestrated consumer culture.