The Future of Education: Online Discussion

Tonight I'll be a panelist discussing Seth Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams manifesto on www.futureofeducation.com, 7PM EST. My fellow panelists will be:

Nikhil Goyal, a student at Syosset High School in New York. He is currently writing a book on education reform: Time to Think Different: Why America Needs a Learning Revolution.

Lisa Nalbone - Parent to Dale Stephens who is leading the Uncollege Movement.

Lisa Cooley has been agitating for changes in public education for eight years. She blogs at

Lisa Nielsen writes for and speaks to audiences across the globe about learning innovatively. The Innovative Educator.

I was surprised to learn today that Godin wrote this piece to learn how ideas spread as part of his Domino Project with Amazon.com; it makes me feel a bit confused about where he truly stands when it comes to education reform. Is this all, in the end, just an elaborate marketing study?

College and Learning Are Not Identical

Why push more people to complete four years of college when there are other less expensive ways to help them find work worth doing and lives worth living?

I am developing a much more detailed response to this question that I’ll post in the coming weeks, though I feel I’ve been responding to it in various forms for all of my 30-plus years in homeschooling, but I feel compelled to provide a quick reply today based on some contacts I’ve had related to this issue.

First, Dr. Robert Kay, a retired school psychiatrist who is a long-standing, unabashed supporter of alternatives to conventional school, recently wrote this letter to his local newspaper and shared it with me. Though not all the articles he cites are current they are nonetheless still true and relevant and useful to anyone who wants to understand the issues involved. Further, some unschoolers will undoubtedly take exception to Bob’s claim that electronic gadgets should be rigidly controlled for the young, but Bob has his reasons for this. In fact, he rigidly controls his own computer use for these reasons, so if you want to engage him on this issue you’ll have to contact him via post or phone. Send me a private message and I’ll send you his contact information.

To the Editor:

While "Obama Calls for Restraining Rise in College Tuition" (News, Jan. 28) we might check out the Wall Street Journal of 8/13/08 -- "For Most People, College is a Waste of Time", a 10/06 op-ed in The Evening Bulletin -- "A Solution to the Fraud that is Higher Education", The New York Times of 4/27/09 -- "End the University as We Know It", and the Baltimore Sun -- "Is America's Love Affair with College on the Rocks?"

Not to mention the fact that in 2006 just 31% of college seniors were proficient in reading -- down from 40% in 1996 -- while, from K through most of graduate school, virtually all subject matter is happily forgotten come summertime.

So perhaps we should consult with wealthy Switzerland where 77% leave school at age 14 and then, as in the home/unschooling movements, HELP kids keep on learning with the joy, rapidity, and effectiveness of the average toddler especially if we rigidly control all electronic gadgets while exposing them to books, magazines, newspapers, libraries, museums, work, concerts, theater, movies, i.e., the wide, wide world. Meanwhile, we could check out the Inquirer article of 12/12/91 -- "Don't Try Another Choice Plan: Change the Very Nature of Schooling," plus three definitive works -- How Children Fail (Classics in Child Development) by John Holt, School is Dead (out of print) by Everett Reimer and Deschooling Society (Open Forum) by Ivan Illich.

Yours,

Robert E. Kay, MD

Related to this is an email I received from Helen Rubin, a GWS subscriber whose grown son, Dan, is doing well because of, not in spite of, unschooling. Helen shared Dan’s recent blog post about his educational background; he is a professional photographer and designer, but it is unclear if he even graduated college from the post. However, he is clear about who his most important teachers and experiences were and how they inspire him to want to make the world a better place.

So was there an “aha” moment where you really knew what you wanted to do?

I don’t know if there was a single point. If there was, it doesn’t come to mind. There was no epiphany but that kind of ties into the way I was raised. The most valuable thing my parents instilled in my brother and me is that if we’re passionate about something, or even interested in it, we should just do it and let it run its course and if it’s something we learn more about and decide we’re not interested in, that’s fine, but we didn’t decide that prematurely. Instead of one big moment, there were a series of moments, and those continue. That’s an ongoing thing with me. I probably chase those moments, to be honest.

You talked about some of your mentors and people who have supported you. Who has encouraged you the most on your creative path?

Um, it has to come down to my folks, ultimately. I don’t think I’ve had people in my life who aren’t encouraging, but the groundwork for all I do and who I am was established when I was young. They were enabling in the most positive ways, fostering and encouraging creativity. My family (Mum, Dad, Alex, and me), we’re the kind of people who recognize when someone is passionate about something and we will do whatever we have to do in order to encourage that person. I feel really lucky that I haven’t had any barriers, and because of that, I try to help others if I see someone who needs encouragement.

That’s cool. So then, do you feel a responsibility to contribute to something bigger than yourself and what do you hope to contribute?

I want to fix the world. I feel a constant pressure, not to do any one thing worthwhile, but that everything I do should make a difference. The only shame of it is that the drive to contribute to something doesn’t always result in me being able to do something. It isn’t always a clear path from, “I want to help, I want to make products that don’t suck, I want to fix every interface I see that’s difficult to use.” I think that’s my favorite thing about design as a broad term. To me, design is the medium through which I can improve the world.

Homeschooling's Past Informs the Present

Peter Bergson founded and operates one of the oldest learning centers for homeschoolers/unschoolers in the US, Open Connections in Newtown Square, PA. Peter also worked as a management and creativity consultant for many years, as well as being the author of books about children, learning, and parenting, so he brings a unique perspective to discussions of how education can change. He was interviewed recently about how and why he and his wife unschooled their kids (who are now adults), the history and context of how Open Connections started, and the influence of John Holt on his work.

Peter Bergson talks about homeschooling on VoiceAmerica.

Peter also wrote about the US education establishment’s current fascination with Finland’s education system and I thought his ideas are worth sharing.

I well remember when, in the early ‘70s, I joined the boatloads of Americans who flocked to the midlands of England to observe firsthand the Leicestershire method in action. The “integrated day school” model featured a basically hands-on pedagogy (learning by doing, including lots of “play”), multiple-aged classrooms (at least three years’ difference in ages), a high student to teacher ratio (often 40 to one) made possible by the high level of engagement of the young people (and thus little need for supervision). A number of American school reformers touted it as the solution to the boredom and lack of initiative in America’s schools, while the British were warning us that it was not directly transferable to the US because our society did not reflect the same level of respect for teachers. The result of our adopting such “open classrooms,” they warned, would be chaos and then backlash—and they were absolutely right.

Then we fell in love with the Japanese model (although we never adopted it).

Then, for some, Reggio Emilia.

Now, the Finnish.

Yawn.

Some other thoughts: International test score comparisons, such as PISA, reflect the selectivity of the test-takers more than anything else. On a similar note, I have read that, if you eliminate the bottom 10% (as I recall) of the US’s test scores, which are almost all from the “disadvantaged” school population, America’s average test scores put us near the top in the world! In other words, the reason that we are around 23 or 24 out of 26 is because, unlike every other country in the pool, we include our “worst” students. Other countries don’t include the bottom of their heaps because that part of their population isn’t even in school, let alone taking the same test.

Now, all of this is merely to debunk the implications drawn from the reported test scores that suggest that America’s schools are getting worse each year.  At the same time, I really couldn’t care less about our test scores, or anyone else’s for that matter. I am much more concerned with the degree of self-direction in the Finnish system, for the teachers as well as students. I don’t see that much value in any system that is dedicated to producing people who are merely better at regurgitation, which is generally what standardized tests measure. As has been said many times by many others, we need to support the growth of logical and creative thinking, the kind that comes so naturally to toddlers. As John Holt wrote, "The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do but how we behave when we don’t know what to do."

What I like about the attention being paid to the Finnish model is that there is no real way to ignore the bigger picture component, which is a belief in (financial) equity, or at least a truer sense of equality of opportunity than what we have in the US. They make the same point as the Occupiers of Wall Street—that the school system reinforces the philosophy of the culture at large with regard to economic justice. The US system reinforces the status quo (or worse, is widening the gap), whereas the Finnish seem to be trying to reduce the variation between rich and poor—not by lowering the bar but by giving more people the resources needed to get up and over it. Only when we Americans truly recognize how our system, with or without standardized testing, keeps the poor in their place will we ever be willing to give any type of genuine reform a real chance at succeeding—whether it’s democratic education, integrated day, or anything else.

The Willed Curriculum

Dr. Carlo Ricci, founder of the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning, has written a thoughtful book about the deeper issues of learning entitled, The Willed Curriculum, Unschooling, and Self-Direction: What Do Love, Trust, Respect, Care, and Compassion Have To Do With Learning. Rather than focus on the technocratic decisions about learning that obsess school people today, Carlo focuses on the emotional, human decisions involved in learning and how they affect real individuals, not generic students. Carlo writes,

The willed curriculum is not a call for something new but a call to be more mindful and make more use of something we are already using. We know that interest and internal motivation are critical for deep learning. Loving what we are learning, interest, and internal motivation are at the very core of the willed curriculum.

The Willed Curriculum is available in print and in Kindle.

Educación Sin Escuela and Other News

UN MUNDO POR APRENDER: Educación sin Escuela (ESE), Autoaprendizaje Colaborativo (AC) y Educación en Familia (EF). Edited by Erwin Fabián García López.

For those who understand Spanish and want to know more about homeschooling, this new book is for you. The National University of Colombia, in Bogota, has held three conferences about learning without schools, autodidactic and collaborative learning models, education in family settings, and flexi-schooling models. The articles are based on presentations given at the first two conferences, including my keynote speech for the first conference in 2009, The Challenges Homeschooling Presents to Social Science Research (revised for the new book; I’ll add the updated version to my website soon).

_____________________

The Alternative Education Resource Organization has given its website a facelift, adding many new articles, especially from homeschooling sources.

______________________

Libertarians have supported homeschooling part of their platform for individual freedom for a long time and this new article, In Praise of Homeschools, from the Ludwig von Mises Institute is another solid example.

______________________

Michelle Barone is a professional counselor whose work I’ve enjoyed at several homeschooling and unschooling conferences. She is presenting a free workshop via teleconference, Finding Your Way: Unlimited Possibilities in Your Unschooling Life, that may interest you.