[p2p-research] On unschooling

[paola.dimaio at gmail.com]

I understand now what you mean 'self direct', if this is what Pamela
intended

In which case I would agree

My mother really wanted me to become a tourist guide, cause she liked the
job that her brother did
The good thing is that one can learn everything from everything else, if the
hunger for knowledge is there
nothing will stop it, thanks to public libraries, and today, thanks to the
web
(from which I can no longer separate my identity)

PDM

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 2:14 AM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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-- 
Paola Di Maio,
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