Unschooling

A little over a week ago, I was ready to drop out of school immediately. As in, that day, withdrawing, checking out, no looking back. I felt a certain amount of urgency because the last day to receive a partial refund for tuition was quickly approaching. That day has now passed, and I am still enrolled. I will be finishing the semester, but I have partially already mentally dropped out. This means that I am still going to classes and participating and doing the work (for the most part), but it is not the priority at all in my mind anymore. The majority of my energy is now being spent on pursuing my own interests independent from school (this is nothing new; it is just more purposeful now (i.e. no longer dismissed as simply procrastination)). I am also only taking 12 hours (the minimum number to still be a full time student) instead of 15, since I withdrew from a writing class I was in that I found particularly annoying. At this point, I am exploring these interests outside of school mainly through reading, both books and on the internet, and through talking to people (friends, family, teachers, strangers) but also through some direct experience (e.g. food not bombs). I am making definite plans to visit Dancing Rabbit this summer. It is still up in the air at this point whether I will be returning to school next fall. Honestly, if I end up returning, it will only be because of the friends I have here. A possible alternative would be to transfer to a college that might better suit my interests, such as Northland. But more likely, I would drop out completely so as to most fully have the autonomy to explore the formation of another way of living.

School, and especially SLU, is no place to do that. School has a very specific purpose that is hidden under layers of apparent choice and topical learning. But John Taylor Gatto, a veteran teacher, makes very clear what is actually being taught in the educational system by outlining six lessons. These lessons are:

1. Stay in the class where you belong
2. turn on and off like a light switch
3. surrender your will to a predestined chain of command
4. only the teacher determines what curriculum you will study
5. your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth
6. you are being watched

While I will admit that these lessons are less stringently enforced in college (such as 1, 4 (for some people), and 6), they are all present here to a large degree and therefore greatly inhibit actual learning from taking place.

Daniel Quinn also has a speech online on the topic of schooling. In that, he purports that the main function of schools are to delay a segment of the population that is able to work from actually entering the work force so as to benefit the national economy, both in reducing unemployment rates and in creating a whole new industry from which to profit. Nothing of value is actually taught during those years and years of compulsory education. It is filler to waste time until they can't keep you from working any more. If anything, as Gatto would agree, what schools are teaching are dependence to authority figures, the kind of dependence that makes for good wage slaves, unable to survive without a mind-numbing 9 to 5 job for 40 years because they never actually learned any real skills that could benefit the person supposedly learning in school, skills for autonomy and self-reliance. I am of course not suggesting that we should not be interdependent with each other. That is very much necessary. But that is not the same thing as mindless dependence on abstract entities like corporations and governments.

The alternative is unschooling, where I would need to spend some time and energy to unlearn those six fundamental lessons of school that I have been socialized under for at least 14 years. Through unschooling, I would learn what I am curious to learn, when I want to learn it, at the pace I want to learn it, and through the means that I, and any teachers I may seek out, deem necessary. It would definitely be a lot of work- very engaging and intensive. But it would be a hell of a lot cheaper. And by directing energy towards things that I actually have a personal interest in, it will be a lot more fulfilling and a lot easier to muster inner motivation than what I am experiencing through my current situation.

I am ready to stop following the crowd and start finding my own path (with the help of some friendly scouts that have begun to venture into this forgotten territory).

Edit [3/2/06]: Another good essay on this topic can be found over at The Journal of a Rebel.