[p2p-research] On unschooling

[Kevin Carson]

I tried to comment on Dave Pollar's recent excellent blog post on
unschooling, and got a 403 error message.
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2009/04/25.html

Here's the comment:

Andrew:  You're right that some people can't guide their own
education, but it could be that "guiding" them against their will
won't result in any real learning anyway.  On the other hand, if some
kind of learning is needed the experienced lack may be what eventually
drives people into self-directed learning.  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.

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).


-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html