I don’t have a problem at all with structure, as such, any more than I have a problem deferring to the craft knowledge of a plumber or electrician whose services I engage. In fact, I often browse through college course catalogs online and use course syllabi as a guide to studying subjects.

First I forgot to add the 2 last paragraphs of Kevin’s previous remark. This will be followed by additional contributions.

Kevin Carson:

I can’t count the number of instances when I was confronted with
something before I was ready to assimilate it, and then turned around years later and eagerly absorbed it when it became relevant to my interests.

The problem is that coerced learning based on someone else’s agenda can be pretty efficient at instilling a hatred of “learning,” as much so as if that was the actual goal. But then I’ve almost always been the sort of person who instinctively hates anything assigned to me by some authority figure sitting behind a desk (genuine work is to jobs as genuine learning is to schools).

Marc Fawzi:

Just sharing a story along the same lines:

I refused to believe that the formal concept/definition of the ‘limit’ in calculus was making any sense as far as why someone would have even thought of it. So I went and researched the history of calculus and found out that Newton had come to it through an intuitive feat not through formal construction but his peers couldn’t assimilate it into the rational story that is mathematics so he went on to explain it (after the fact) as a formal concept, i.e. invented the rational story for it after he had used it intuitively.

In the same effort to understand the history of rational story constructed mathematics, with all its bits and pieces, I found out about a completely different version of calculus called ‘non-standard analysis” where the concept of the limit is defined differently. At that point I realized that even at a top engineering school, even in a mathematics class, the teacher is more harm than benefit. So I went on teaching myself everything I wanted to learn (something that started when I was 10) and dropping out of my classes (to work on some hardware/software idea) and did not finish my degree until I was 28… and that caused a lot of havoc upfront that freed me from the false safety of the traditional path and caused me to be really angry about the educational system (and the stupid system we have built around it) … an anger which I wouldn’t trade for anything except the complete dissolution (or constructive evolution) of the system…

Sam Rose:

Kevin, there is much merit in your insights here, I think.

John Taylor Gatto explains the history of forced schooling, and the attitudes that extend into Universities, in The Underground History of American Education [1] where he argues that education in the US is largely meant to create a caste system, and has largely succeeded in doing this.

2 page sumarry from Digital Youth Research by Mizuko Ito et al [2] also outlines the problems with coercive education, based on research about how kids actually go about learning.

Some of this education is already shifting to smaller networks of mutual mentors, open research and development enthusiasts, and others. I am directly involved in forming mutual mentoring for people interested in creating commons-based and networked business systems. We are also engaging youth by creating a mentoring network where youth realize their possibilities beyond “jobs and careers”, and realize how to employ open knowledge networks, open license design, and open source software to create new form of youth self-employment, rapid decision making, collaborative intelligence and civic engagement. Adults mentor, but projects and energies are directed by youth.

While traveling around and taking to students and teachers in schools, we discovered that youths often have little awareness of their possibilities. And, we discovered that teachers and administrators are focused on antiquted problems, like “declining enrollment”, and the assumed need to close schools, cut back on “costs” etc. Our proposal to schools is to do exactly the opposite of what they are currently doing:

* Instead of closing and demolishing unused schools, use the spaces for indoor hydronic and aquaculture food production, and flexible fabrication. Students can use the spaces to found businesses.

* Switch focus from training students for careers with corporations, and compliance, to giving students liberty to learn from each other, and from innovators in their community.

*
Destroy the misconception that the only way to make money is to charge people for abundant goods that can instead be released under an open license, and exponentially innovated upon. Instead, help students to learn how to innovate, to find and serve ever-emerging niches within their local systems (whatever local means to them).

Notes from Sam Rose:

1. John taylor Gatto, “The Underground History of American Education – John Taylor Gatto,” http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm.

2. “digitalyouth-TwoPageSummary.pdf,” http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/report/digitalyouth-TwoPageSummary.pdf.

Less personal: public school, despite all its flaws, was instrumental of social advance and equality of opportunity, and it worked rather well in this until the advent of neoliberalism started to starve public education of funds. What’s wrong in my opinion, is not ‘places’ of learning, but rather their centralized management, which discourages and demoralizes local school establishments.

I think the debate echoes the old left/right divide, the left assumes that people are naturally ‘good’, full of potential; the right that people are naturally enclined to evil, unless strong institutions guide them. Why not accept both truths, but above all create a system with broad freedom of school, so that unschoolers can unschool, alternative education methods can thrive, and those that prefer a disciplined method also have choices, with the partner state authorities imposing only a minimal skillset requirement, to insure equality of opportunity for all.

Like Edward, I would not trust that every human being would want to naturally do the effort of learning, and also that especially those living in less privileged social situations, would get larger doses of assistance.

Michel

Robert Pirsig’s comments (as “Phaedrus”) on the “Church of Reason” might be relevant here: http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/02/phaedrus-on-church-of-reason.html

I can relate, from personal experience, to the scenario “Phaedrus”
describes. When I was in high school, I was signed up for
Pre-Calculus Algebra against my wishes, with my complaints brushed off dismissively: “Well, you need math to get any kind of a good job these days.” At the time I was interested in history and political philosophy, and read extensively in those subjects on my own time.

When my own reading interests competed with the hated Pre-Cal for my time, I wound up dropping out of Pre-Cal with a failing grade, and hated math for years afterward.

Then a few years ago I wrote a book defending the classical political economists’ labor theory of value against marginalism. My review of marginalist literature focused mainly on the Austrians because of their relative freedom from higher math apparatus, and largely neglected neoclassical econ after Marshall. I sorely felt the lack in the first edition of the book, and decided it needed to incorporate the neoclassical version of marginal analysis. So now, after more than twenty years, I’m reteaching myself algebra and trig so I can
pick up enough calculus to read 20th century econ. It didn’t become interesting to me until I perceived its relevants to my own, self-determined needs.

Another anecdote: A couple years ago, I saw a sign at a local
bookstore announcing it carried Watership Down and the rest of the
public schools’ summer reading list. Thank God, I said to myself,
that we didn’t have mandatory summer reading lists when I was in
school. I first read the book when I was about 40 or so, and loved it. But if I’d been forced to read it against my will, via an act that I regarded as school bureaucrats stealing summer time that was rightfully my own, I’d have hated the book and cursed it to my dying day.

Yet, I would venture to guess that a sizable percent of people are naturally “keeners” and would be intimidated by unschooling. Furthermore, before we had state-sponsored schools, we had a multitude of private religious schools which would indoctrinate, segregate, and subjugate people to an even greater extent. It is possible to regulate private schools, but that isn’t much different than state-sponsoring.

Thus, for gifted students, we should certainly provide schools where they can thrive, but for those who cannot thrive there, I think the current school system isn’t that horrible… or at least I haven’t got any better ideas.