Wednesday, December 26

What Independent Learners Know

What Independent Learners* Know

1) If the cost of education gets too high people WILL opt out.
2) Those who do so are often extraordinarily committed to learning and willing to do crazy things to achieve it.
3) Institutions are not required for the pursuit of friends, mentors, teachers.
4) If they are able, parents are willing to spend money on direct to consumer learning.
5) Facilitated learning is often more effective than traditional teaching.
6) Individualized education is effective but really difficult to achieve in big groups.
7) Home-schooling is an unfortunate misnomer for many 21st century learners who have opted out of institutionalized education.
8) Love of learning is possible and preferred.
9) Learning often happens more effectively and joyfully in a free-range, self/family directed environment.
10) Standards are really not necessary.

My passion and motivation for writing this down isn't to convince people to remove their kids from school.  I think that's largely already an option many are aware of in spite of it still being largely misunderstood. My real
goal is to encourage educational reformers to recognize the homeschooling/custom-learning/independently educated population as a case-study in the disintermediation and de-institutionalization of education.  Freeing learning is important inside and outside of institutions.

*aka "Homeschoolers" but I'm becoming increasingly dissatisfied with that term

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