March 08, 2005

The Free Agent Education

This might be my first rerun ever. I originally linked to this article in Oct 2001. However, it remains one of my favorite published homeschool articles. In it, business author Daniel Pink looks at the rise of the self-employed free agent in the business world and concludes that the rise of the education free agent (homeschooler) is inevitable. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Schools had bells; factories had whistles. Schools had report card grades; offices had pay grades. Pleasing your teacher prepared you for pleasing your boss. And in either place, if you achieved a minimal level of performance, you were promoted. Taylorism -- the management philosophy, named for efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor, that there was One Best Way of doing things that could and should be applied in all circumstances -- didn't spend all its time on the job. It also went to class. In the school, as in the workplace, the reigning theory was One Best Way. Kids learned the same things at the same time in the same manner in the same place. Marshall McLuhan once described schools as "the homogenizing hopper into which we toss our integral tots for processing." And schools made factory-style processing practically a religion -- through standardized testing, standardized curricula, and standardized clusters of children. (Question: When was the last time you spent all day in a room filled exclusively with people almost exactly your own age?)
Perhaps most important, home schooling is almost perfectly consonant with the four animating values of free agency: having freedom, being authentic, putting yourself on the line, and defining your own success. Take freedom. In the typical school, children often aren't permitted to move unless a bell rings or an adult grants them permission. And except for a limited menu of offerings in high school, they generally can't choose what to study or when to study it. Home-schoolers have far greater freedom. They learn more like, well, children. We don't teach little kids how to talk or walk or understand the world. We simply put them in nurturing situations and let them learn on their own. Sure, we impose certain restrictions. ("Don't walk in the middle of the street.") But we don't go crazy. ("Please practice talking for 45 minutes until a bell rings.") It's the same for home-schoolers. Kids can become agents of their own education rather than merely recipients of someone else's noble intentions.

I got no comments the first time. Let's do better this time, eh?

Permalink

Comments

Comment, comment, comment.

;-)

Sorry, the cold I have ate my brain. The intelligent part of me (currently hiding in some dark cave) thinks this sounds like a good 2 paragraphs, but refuses to tell me why.

Posted by: Poppins at March 9, 2005 11:14 AM

Exellent article. This coincides with something I read recently on www.thisisrich.blogspot.com about the "amateur revolution", how people are doing more and more things for themselves instead of relying on "experts". Blogging is one example (amateur reporting, writing, and publishing, basically), and homeschooling is another. The word "amateur" is derived from the Latin word for "love". Cleary, we do a lot of these things for the love of it, not any financial gain.

BTW, I like your blog! (Enjoyed your comment on mine about Ferris and crashing parties, too...!!!) I think I'll link to you on this post.

Posted by: M. E. at March 10, 2005 09:06 AM

If the comment entry box is gone it's because comments are closed for this entry. Please feel free to use the "contact" link above to get in touch.