I have always been fascinated by the idea of the “alternative”. It gestures toward something better than what already exists. What draws me to it most is its orientation toward the future, as it is never fully here in the present; it belongs, instead, to what has not yet arrived. It is suspended in possibility, shaped by uncertainty, and illuminated by optimism. It is precisely the unknown, with all its promise, that gives the alternative its enduring allure.

Alternatives are also deeply connected to the ideas of liberation and freedom. These themes emerge clearly in Adamson and Spreen’s episode, where they discuss the Alternatives Project, the shared visions that animate diverse educational alternatives around the world, and the efforts made to turn those visions into reality. To be alternative, in many cases, is to be bottom-up and grassroots. This is especially evident in the FreshEd episode on alternative higher education in post-coup Myanmar where small-scale, community-based programs emerge in the absence of formal higher education systems. In such contexts, alternative initiatives are not simply educational experiments but acts of resistance against political power and strategies for navigating around top-down restrictions.

This bottom-up impulse also appears in an early FreshEd episode, featuring Simon Springer, where he reflects on un-schooling, an approach shaped by the anarchist tradition and closely aligned with the better-known de-schooling tradition associated with Ivan Illich. In the episode, Springer discusses the philosophical foundations of this approach and shows how it takes shape in everyday life, particularly through his own family and his practices of parenting.
These episodes engage the term “alternative” explicitly, but many other FreshEd episodes inhabit its ethos without ever naming it. They are animated by the spirit of the alternative through what is bottom-up, grassroots, and marginalized, yet also aspirational, ambitious, and sometimes propelled by radical imagination and the labor of future-making. Beyond FreshEd, these same energies have blossomed across both academic and non-academic discourse.

This spirit of the alternative is also embedded in my own work on minjian (民间), a Chinese concept that literally means “among the people”. I describe minjian as a space “beyond officialdom”. Its qualities can be understood through the analogy of water: it is fluid, yet capable of resistance; it exists everywhere and nowhere at once; and it takes the shape of different “containers” as it responds to the presence of the state.

What most closely aligns with the narrative of the alternative is what I call “shadowy minjian”, a space distanced from the state and its official narratives, and therefore cast into the margins. It is overshadowed, often unseen, and composed of countless small spaces that exist authentically and vibrantly, yet remain largely unknown. I argue that although minjianwas developed within China’s sociopolitical order, its analytic force may travel far beyond China itself, especially wherever the state casts a long shadow over non-state life. Seen in this light, all alternative education cases discussed in the FreshEd episodes can be understood as expressions of shadowy minjian.

Alternative higher education in post-coup Myanmar belongs to shadowy minjian, because it is quietly resistant to state power. The Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil, as discussed by Adamson and Spreen, offers another vivid illustration, rooted in an explicit struggle against the neoliberal regime. Springer’s account of unschooling likewise carries the spirit of shadowy minjian, though on a much smaller scale, unfolding within the intimate space of the home. It is like a droplet – fluid, flexible, and easy to overlook – yet always holding the potential to join with others and gather into a stream strong enough to reshape the mainstream educational landscape.

Education alternatives are important because they mark the possibility of audacious inquiry into the unknown and the better. Education shapes society, and education alternatives help shape alternative futures. I believe what we need to do now is a little bit of conceptual work – what do we mean by “alternative”?

In my opinion, “alternative” has been more symbolic than concrete. It is symbolic in the sense that it represents a horizon of longing, a name for the unfettered pursuit of a better world that may come into being in the future. Yet the contours of that future remain unspecified and instead shift across contexts.

We need a shared and more concrete vocabulary, one that reflects different cultural and intellectual traditions, while also speaking to the shared human impulse to change the world for the better. It is possible that such a vocabulary does not yet exist in the research literature, but rather lives “among the people”, as struggles, resistance and wild imagination unfold in everyday life.

Perhaps all we need to do, for now, is to search and listen.

May 1, 2026