What is schooling? Let me begin with some sentiments from Johann Gottlieb Fichte, philosopher, “spiritual father of neo-naziism,” and key influence on the development of the modern school system:
“The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way, that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will…Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished….”
In other words, he intended to mold children into productive cogs in the machinery of society. It was not the children’s interests that he had in mind.
In "Why Homeschoolers May Want to Avoid Schooling," I suggested that schooling can happen at home as well as in school buildings.
Schooling is Job Training
Fichte's schooling method has been turning out generation after generation of young people waiting to be told what to do, too worn down and insecure to think creatively for their own purposes, just trying to please their superiors well enough to earn the promised incentives.
Where are our new innovative geniuses? Who wants to make the world a better place? Where’s the passion? Where’s the sense of purpose and meaning in our life’s work?
Education is Life
Robert Hutchins, educational philosopher, said: “The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.”
John Dewey, educational reformer said: "Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”
William Butler Yeats, poet, said: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
Tammy Takahashi, author of Deschooling Gently, said: “Everything we need to succeed in the world already exists in us. The word ‘education’ came from the Latin educare, which means, ‘to draw out.’ Education isn’t for putting things into our children’s heads. It’s for drawing them out to discover their own truth for themselves.”
Where are our innovative geniuses? According to wildly successful entrepreneur Penelope Trunk, our innovative geniuses are unschooling and leaving their schooled peers in the dust. In an interview with Next Generation Consulting, she said, more-or-less, that we have two emerging classes of young people: the self-directed learners and the school drones.
Schooling doesn't provide an education. It provides job training. An education is about living and taking responsibility for one's own present and future experience.
You might also enjoy: The Unschooling Collection
Sources:
McGrath, Sara. Unschooling Wins the Race. UnschoolingLifestyle.com. Retrieved on 6 June 2011.
Takahashi, Tammy. Deschooling Gently. Hunt Press, 2008.
Sara McGrath - Sara is a veteran homeschool mom of three, Usborne consultant, and the author of Unschooling: A Lifestyle of Learning.
Join the Conversation