I was introduced to the educational path known as “Critical Pedagogy” by my fellow Alternative Education Resource Organization member John Harris Loflin, an activist for educational alternatives, particularly for urban, at-risk minority communities. John argues persuasively that a mostly white, privileged, middle-class alternative education movement would be benefited by finding common ground and allying with efforts in urban minority communities to challenge the conventional approach to schooling in those communities. The focus of that challenge is a curriculum, plus methods for teaching and learning known as “Critical Pedagogy”, that is designed to deconstruct the inferior position of the minority community relative to the dominant culture and identify ways to take action to change that power differential.

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The Summerhill school in England was one of the world’s first, and along with the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts, one of the world’s most successful and enduring “democratic-free” schools. “Free” in that the students are completely in charge of what, when, where, how and from whom they learn. “Democratic” in that the students and the staff jointly participate in school governance through use of the democratic process, with youth and adults having an equal voice and vote in most matters.

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I keep grinding my ax in my blog pieces on the efficacy of “unschooling” and informal learning versus what a person learns in more formal educational settings. Though I acknowledge the primacy of formal education and training in some fields – like science, engineering, medicine and law – I also strongly believe (based on my own experience) that a person can develop technical and professional skills (for many types and aspects of business) mostly outside of formal schooling.

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I’m in the midst of reading Matthew Appleton’s book, A Free Range Childhood, about his experience in the 1990s being a “houseparent” at the Summerhill independent boarding school in Leiston, Suffolk in England. It is a fascinating glimpse into a more egalitarian (I would argue more evolved) way of adults, children and youth interacting with each other in a living and educational setting. It is also the world’s most iconic, long-lasting and successful democratic free-school that has inspired other such schools around the world. And finally, the account of life and learning at Summerhill recalls similar experiences I have had in my own life, as a youth and later as a parent, that confirm the efficacy and vitality of this unorthodox approach to childhood and education.

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Saw a piece today in Education Week magazine, “Panel Says Ed. Schools Overlook Developmental Science”, commenting on a report released this morning by a panel convened by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. As the title suggests, the panel calls out a disconnect between educational practice and what we have learned about the nature of how human beings develop.

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Following up on my piece yesterday that called out the “Education Industrial Complex”, I want to talk more about the impact of this hugely hierarchical and bureaucratic leviathan and its impact of the very personal, naturally self-initiated process of learning. These mega institutions that exercise such control over us rather than facilitating our own initiative (though well intentioned) I see as remnants of an ancient world view of external authority (which I call “Patriarchy”) that I see as an obstacle towards our human development in the direction of a a more evolved “Circle of Equals”.

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Not sure who coined the phrase “Education Industrial Complex”, a play off the more famous “Military Industrial Complex” used by President Eisenhower in a 1961 speech. I kept thinking it was radical educator and public school critic John Taylor Gatto, but in my research on the Internet could not find any confirmation of that. I did find a use of the term by Paul Peterson, director of Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard Kennedy School, in a 2008 commentary…
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There is a Buddhist proverb that “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear”. Yet many of us seem to be ignoring this wisdom and pushing our kids to fixate on mastering academic subjects in their high school years (that they may or may not have an aptitude for) and then plunging into an increasingly expensive college education immediately out of high school before they really have a sense of what they “want to be when they grow up”. I fear we are devaluing both educational experiences in the process.

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I find it sad to watch what is happening to our nation’s public education system. It seems fixated in the thrall of a bureaucratized, regimented, OSFA (one size fits all) approach to learning that goes against all the principles of democracy, human nature, developmental science and every other pragmatic wisdom about what makes people (adults and youth) tick. For at least half the kids that are processed through its institutions, and much of its adult staff, it seems to lead to a profound ennui with learning and teaching… framing it as something you have to do rather than want to do. A hazing ritual to be endured, rather than a voyage of discovery, joy and mastery.

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One of the best features of the educational path that is becoming known as “unschooling” is the opportunity for “deep learning”, that is, delving into something of great interest with all your mind, heart and soul, to whatever extent your inspiration and/or need takes you, instead of being told it is now time to learn something else. Even more so than her pursuit of learning the French language (see my post “The Unschool Pursuit of French”), our daughter found the opportunity to deep learn when she got involved in an Internet-based role-playing game community over the course of several years.

Starting in the fall of 2003 at age 14, in the midst of ninth grade (what would turn out to be her last year of school), her older brother Eric turned our daughter Emma on to a “massively multi-player online role-playing game” (or MMORPG) called “Never Winter Nights” which was his favorite among several such games that he had played. This is one of those games where you create a character and the avatar (representation) of that character which you then navigate through the various environs of a fantasy world, along with or encountering other avatars controlled by other people logged into and playing the game. You communicate with other players by typing, and little dialog bubbles appear above your avatar’s head.

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