What does Peritia mean?

Peritia is a Latin word that means experience, or skill/expertise.

What is the purpose of Peritia school?

• To increase knowledge about living sustainably and the use of systems that make sustainable living more efficient and viable, in order to prevent biodiversity loss and environmental catastrophies in the future.
• To contribute to culture and make a sustainable lifestyle appealing and enriching by learning about and contributing to the arts.
• To provide an accessible and affordable form of education available to everybody, we are a non profit association and provide an alternative to courses run by private institutions.
• To empower people. There is now an abundance of information available to everbody online and through books written by those with many years of experience, acedemic and scientific research in their fields. We think we can take this information, share it and use it to enrich our lives. A workshop leader's job isn't to necessarily be an expert, but just to be a hunter of information, and take the information they find and translate it and present it to workshop participants. Many subjects can also be learnt slowly by doing, with the help of an instruction manual, such as building a goedhesic dome.
• To work as an early model of a resource based economy, and serve as an introductory stage of the RBE10K project

Where will courses be located?

Weekend day workshops will be held on a rural property in Ocean View QLD, which is a 1-1.5 hrs drive from Brisbane city centre.

Why not just pay for courses?

There are other quality insititutions offering courses you can pay for, such as Milkwood Permaculture or university degrees or TAFE courses. Our project is a community-building non profit association. We're hoping to provide a model of how people can be motivated to do things without money, and move away from capitalism and the drive for profit which is destroying the environment and causing social inequality. We don't have a issue with any instsitutions that provide courses for profit, as they have to exist within the current system, but we just want to experiment with alternative social structures and build something different.

Is it completely free?

There is no charge for tuition. There will be some costs of materials depending on the course, and a modest fee for participants' food. These costs would be very minimal compared to other schools which charge tuition fees. All the admin, publicity, software development and design is done by volunteers and we are a non profit association.

What if I don't want to/don't have time to lead a workshop but still want to take a course?

It might be ok for people to occasionally take courses without contributing, as we could assume that sometimes people would lead a course without doing the equivalent number of workshops as a participant. We will use some software that monitors people's participation and helps maintain a balance. It may not be be possible to pay for a course in lieu of leading one, beacuse of insurance and liability reasons and maintaining the ethos of Peritia School, but it is possible to do some admin or publicity tasks instead.

How is the quality of courses ensured?

Quality is maintained by the members, in consultation with the school. If members want to participate in quality courses, they will be motivated to provide them too. It is also very much in members' interests to design engaging courses as the whole design and teaching process is a great learning experience. We do have guidelines. For example, we suggest an interactive teaching style rather than traditional lecture style, and while members are participating in courses we ask them to be mindful of the other participants and the leader's needs. Guidelines cover safety and quality standards, and the association's philosophy and ethics. Courses will be monitored to ensure they meet these standards.

How can you attract knowledgeable teachers with good teaching skills if they are not being paid?

It's true that "experts" have to pay for their many years of training, rent, and bills so they may be unlikely to lead a workshop for free if they are busy trying to pay back student loans, pay a mortgage or raise a family, although on the other hand it is rewarding to be part of a community organisation as a hobby. We can still draw on these experts' knowledge to make content for our courses. Just as university lecturers and writers draw on journal articles written and published by other people, so can we. Many leaders in their fields share their expertise in the form of books or websites aimed at laypeople.