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Podcast: New Books in Education
Episode: The Hippie High-Rise: Rochdale College, Toronto’s Communal Living High Rise Free Education Experiment
Description: From 1968 to 1975 one high-rise was the heart of Canada’s counterculture. Rochdale College in Toronto was jammed full with leftist organizers, hippies, draft dodgers, students, artists, and others just looking for a good time. Rochdale wasn’t really a “college”, it was something much bigger: a political, educational, communal, artistic, and psychedelic experiment. During its time, it was endlessly lambasted by conservatives and leftists alike… until it reached its inglorious end.Today, like much of the counterculture, it’s often remembered for its problems: its ideological contradictions, drug-addled hedonism, bourgeois individualism, sexism, suicide, and more. However, is that the who...