User:Eroberer/FFL

The Foundation for Feedback Learning(FFL) is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) "educational" corporation founded by Mildred Gordon in 1974. Gordon is also a co-founder of the Ganas community and calls Ganas  "the Foundation's residential communication training program". The Ganas community, popularly known as a commune, went by the name FFL until changing their name in the early 1990's; they define themselves as "an urban experiment in open dialogue based on full disclosure and commitment to exploring applications of Feedback Learning".

What is Feedback Learning?
Feedback Learning is "an intense brand of communication" that is the "soul and the cement" of Ganas. Gordon describes Feedback Learning as an "indispensable day-to-day guiding experience" in which members of the community provide feedback - helpful criticism - to each other. Through daily discussions of every community member's behaviour members can learn about themselves and their motivations, gain from hearing unpleasant truths, and "accept negative information with the excitement of discovery." The Ganas website states that communication is their central value ;journalist Jonah Owen Lamb says "In action, “communication” looks like group therapy. It looks uncomfortable and invasive. And, for many years, it was expected of new members. Those new to Ganas would share their life story with the group, who would respond by picking apart their issues and deciding how those issues should be dealt with. By “killing their buddhas,” it was felt, Ganas members could begin to take control of how they reacted to the world. For most of the commune’s history, until she left Ganas in 2001, the creator of this theory, Mildred, directed the buddha-killing sessions. Now she returns once a week to conduct “feedback learning” at the commune."