How I Learn Stuff

A young man from South Africa, William Boshoff, recently wrote me with a familiar story of trouble in school…

School! Nobody could ever justify why knowing the structure of fauna RNA is vital to my future. Solving problems which had no relevance to my life was one thing, but something else really bothered me: If I solved those problems with answers not found in the book, I was automatically told that I was wrong. No intellectual debate, second thoughts, or checking of sources. I was just “wrong.” I quickly lost will to do homework or pay attention in class. The teachers told me that I would get nowhere in life and that I was doomed to sweep the streets.

William didn’t accept that. He quit school in 10th grade.

I spent my time teaching myself anything and everything that I could get my hands on about computers. I tinkered, toyed and experimented and when I had run out of material to go through I would break it and try to fix it again.

I grew up in an exceptionally poor home. It was to the point where we were forced moved to a farm house because that was all that we could afford. No background, no financial help, nothing. Even when faced with a bleak future I still continued to educate myself. Not to change my future, but because I loved what I was doing. I was growing stronger every day and with that growth passion followed.

Finally, I was old enough to spread my own wings. We moved to another farm close to the city. I bulked up on self-help-get-employed information and set out to find a job. No job experience. No qualifications. Not even my own transport. I went to half a dozen interviews. Minimum pay and long hours never scared me. I just wanted to do what I love. Regardless, nobody was interested.

William’s experience to this point seemed to justify the predictions of his teachers. But notice what he does next. This is a classic buccaneer move…

I was at an all-time low. I decided that whatever my next interview would be, I would get the job. I saw an ad in the paper for a “technical call center agent” and decided to apply. I remember walking into that office like it was yesterday. This company had a library full of books, a server to test things on and more than enough room. It was my dream opportunity. Right there and then I decided that I had enough. I told the interviewer that I knew on paper I was not much to look at. “But,” I said, “I promise that if you hire me you won’t regret it.” I told him about my thirst for knowledge and how my passion drives me. Five hours later, I got the call: I got the job.

It was only as a Technical call centre call logger but I was proud. My employer nicknamed me ‘future’ which I wore with a smile on my face because on that day of the interview I promised him that I would be the future of the company. Let it be understood that I was not seen as arrogant: because I fully believed every word that I said.

In four years, William has gone from being a call logger, to a call center consultant, to a junior systems engineer, then systems engineer, senior systems engineer, messaging architect, and technical manager.

Today it’s nearly four years later. As I’m writing this I am sitting in my own office, with technology that I helped build from the ground up and an e-mail signature that reads ‘Technical Manager’ which will soon change to ‘Technical Director’. Today as your reading this I am more driven than ever and doing what I love. I can say with full conviction that I am William Boshoff and I am a buccaneer!

I have never been wealthy by American standards, but William was downright poor. Still, he doesn’t see poverty as a barrier.

In today’s world, there is no excuse not to learn. While living on a farm, I didn’t have access to libraries. But even when I had nothing, I would go to an internet cafe and download ebooks.

I love hearing stories like William’s. I dip my colors to you, fellow buccaneer!

Hand me a Band-Aid. Make a Xerox of that. Get some more Kleenex. FedEx that package. These are all examples of a synecdoche. That’s when one kind or form or part of a thing is made to stand in for an entire category. This is not necessarily a bad thing, except when language becomes a prison. Xerox is not the only company that makes copiers. FedEx is not the only package delivery company. We know that.

A more insidious and sad example of synecdoche is that a lot of people say education when they mean schooling.

Schooling is an approach to improving education. Another approach? Just living and never going to school. Extremely different paths, yes, but both result in some sort of education.

My definition of education is the mind I have constructed and my process of constructing it. This definition is consistent with deep nature of education as no mere collection of static facts and formulae stored on your hard disk between your ears. Your education is the sum and synergy of all that you have become. Not just your experiences, but what your experiences mean to you, and how they helped you shape yourself. (Notice when I speak strictly, I don’t say that experience shapes you. Experience can’t shape you. Your own mind shapes itself in reaction to experiences, and there are many ways to react to the same exact experiences.)

Unschoolers believe that a rich education can be gained without schooling of any kind, and certainly without compulsory schooling. Schooling, or some parts of schooling, may help, but it isn’t necessary. This truth ought to be obvious to anyone who studies how people learn, or looks at the history of education among the peoples of the world. But there are rich and powerful interests dedicated to promoting formal (and invariably expensive) schooling as the ONLY way– THE ONLY WAY– to gain an excellent education, or even a barely adequate one.

This is a terribly uneducated point of view, ironically.

Anyway, I’m going to be speaking about this at the East West bookstore in Seattle, next week. Come argue with me! (or not…)

I will talk about the Buccaneering way of self-education.

My brother, Rob, taught me to fly in 1991. I thought it would be weird, spending day and night with him as a student. I assumed there’d be lots of sibling tension. In fact, it was glorious. We had a great time. I went from neophyte to solo cross-country flight in three-weeks.

Being a pilot is automatically a sort of buccaneery thing, if you want to be a GOOD pilot. You can get the certification, but that’s just the beginning. An excellent pilot does a lot of extra self-education to learn his aircraft inside and out. After years of not flying, I’m going through training again (this time my father is my instructor.)

Rob is an airline pilot, inventor, and antique aircraft restorer. He never went to college, and none of the things he’s famous for were taught to him in high school.

Here’s Rob talking about how he built his latest plane.

I wish I lived nearer to him, so we could build a plane together.

About five hundred folks, from young children to adults, gathered at the Marriott in Westlake, Texas, last week, for the Rethinking Education conference. The event took place all over the hotel: hallways, lobby, lounge, even the space in front of the elevators on several floors. The whole place had been converted to a free kid zone (the opposite of “kid free”).

The event seemed to stratify into young kids, younger teens, older teens, and adults. I saw not much mixing between the groups, except that very young kids sometimes orbited their parents as they attempted to listen to a keynote talk, causing bit of tolerable noise and disruption.

I spent most of my time with the adults, but I saw lots of kids, who were for the most part friendly and exuberant. Just as I would expect in a self-organized five-day gathering, there were some difficult moments. Someone broke the glass in the elevators, and there were at least a couple of little fights among the kids, including a little kid in a dinosaur outfit whom, it was rumored, walked around making dinosaur noises and punching other, bigger kids.

(My father, hearing about these events, is scandalized. I think he imagines a prison riot, and nothing I say has succeeded in creating a category in his mind mid-way between “prison riot” and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.”)

I appreciate the patience and forbearance of the parents in reacting to these events. Unschooling requires patience and trust. I think that is the number one requirement for unschooling parents: saint-like patience and trust. We want our children to be safe, but we need our children to gain experience, too; to try things, even a lot of things that could end badly, so that they learn about the consequences of their choices. My own son has a habit of making sardonic comments worthy of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. I wish he would say friendly things instead and open his heart to humanity… and yet, I sorta remember being like that at 15, too. Today I am occasionally capable of kindness, and I have good theoretical knowledge of polite behavior, so there’s hope for him, too.

I did a couple of talks about being a high school dropout surrounded by college grads. These went over very well, much better than I expected, actually. Being a technical guy in a non-technical environment, I worried that I’d come across as an alien life form. Apparently that was not a problem. I was happy to see a few young adults in the audience, too. I videoed the talks, and I’m thinking about putting them online.

The most exciting and satisfying part was being with all these other adults for whom unschooling is normal. These are people who don’t panic at the thought of not knowing exactly what their children will do for a living, in ten years.

You know, the idea of not sending your kids to school AND not driving through any sort of curriculum at home is truly bizarre and frightening to most educated people in the world (who are themselves products of compulsive schooling). I regularly fall into debates with folks who imagine that unschooling will cause our very society to unravel, and then implode– as if that hasn’t already been happening despite widespread kid imprisonment call public school! I think, rather, that rejecting compulsory schooling would renew society, because we need a society of self-created hard-to-manipulate adults to counteract the rampant international consumerist corporatism that now controls the world.

Public schools were created as a tool to produce a docile and undemanding citizenry. This has led to amazing paradoxes in America, such as our expectation that fire departments should be a public service, but that somehow medical care should be considered a private luxury. The way things are, here, is not a result of a strong sense of our culture or philosophy as Americans. It’s a result of our collective inability and unwillingness to take responsibility for our own thoughts. Radical unschooling is part of a radical corrective for that.

(That there was the rant portion of this post, if you’re scoring at home.)

The Daily Beast has published an excerpt of my book.

However, they embellished my record, and I need to set it straight.

First, they called me a genius. If I were a genius it would undermine my message. You do not need to be a genius to do what I did. I’m an intelligent guy, sure, but so are you. Unintelligent people don’t read blogs. I prefer to say that I’m “guaranteed not stupid” (most days), but the word “genius” is used to separate people. It’s what you call those special magical people who think in ways you can’t imagine.

Second, they said I have an eighth grade education. What I have is an eighth grade diploma. It’s the only diploma-like thing I have. They didn’t give out diplomas for 9th and 10th grade, but I did sort of finish 10th grade (not sure if I passed it, because I don’t know how to interpret my transcript, but I tried NOT to pass 10th grade). So, I have a 10th grade formal education.

I like working with teens who are eager to learn. For four months last year I had the pleasure of working with two brothers, Brandon and Chris Ojaste. Brandon is 18, Chris 16. These young men– both unschooled– worked with me to learn about computer technical support. I was showing them the ropes, and in the process I wanted to experiment with the learning methods I wrote about in my Buccaneer-Scholar book.

Brandon, being older, was a bit more sure of himself as a technical thinker. At the time I worked with him, it quickly became apparent that he could solve most routine computing problems on a PC. I asked him to research a secure and portable approach to computing so that I would no longer have to worry about my notebook being stolen when I traveled oversead. Brandon Googled around, and found a great idea. He suggested that I use a combination of TrueCrypt and portable applications running from a memory stick. Within two weeks he had me completely set up and tested.

Amazingly, my computer WAS later stolen in the Stockholm central station (three thieves working in cooperation pulled off a classic distraction routine– kind of like Cirque du Soleil, except no costumes or juggling, no music, it’s in a train station, and they steal your stuff). But the thieves never got my private data because it was all encrypted. I lost nothing important, and transferred my work to a new computer the next day.

Brandon also built his own computer and wrote me up a detailed account of all that he learned in the process. I am presenting that story as part of my talk at Rethinking Education, next week.

I need practice documenting learning stories. Chris helped me with that when we were trying to repair a cheese grater, at Christmas dinner. This turned into a tutorial in how to analyze, solve, and report on technical problems. Wanting to impress him, I turned our conversation into a written report. This is the cheese grater report on my website.

Chris is the more extroverted of the two brothers, and I took advantage of that by spending hours with him, one-on-one, challenging him to Google the solutions to technical problems. We spent all one afternoon looking for a personal information manager that could interface with Google Calendar. Another day we looked for web tools and performed a link analysis of my site. It became a sort of competition, with each of us trying to out-Google the other. That helps get good energy going for the learning process.

For young technicians, the biggest challenge is often lack of self-confidence. Knowledge can be gained, but without confidence they won’t try very hard to gain it. So, it was satisfying to see the confidence of these young men grow in real-time, with each work session. Physical presence matters a lot, though. I no longer live near them, and the collaboration online doesn’t work so well.

I would love to help more kids find that technical confidence that comes from sizing up problems and solving them for a paying client. That’s critical for transitioning from dabbling child to adult professional thinker who drives his own education. For unschoolers especially, this transition is a vital process.

When my dog was killed I saw the school bus coming back up the long dirt road. I saw it coming as I stood over the broken body of my sheltie Astra, who had been running around alive just five minutes earlier. I guess the bus driver never knew he killed her, because he waved at me. And too late I thought to seize a rock and smash his goddamned windshield. Oh the fury I felt in that five seconds. Maybe broken glass in the driver’s face would help him understand what he had done to me. I looked but there were only bits of gravel on the ground, and a moment later the bus was bouncing away and gone. I couldn’t even bring to mind a fitting swear word to shriek after it (all that practice I had at summer camp for nothing.) I seethed and vibrated for a moment, then my stomach dropped away. I couldn’t look at Astra. I walked to the house and went to bed. I later learned that my step-father, Jon Fineman, buried her in the forest.

Astra was the family dog, but I always felt she loved me best.  Everyone knew she belonged to me.

I had never experienced grief before. It was a completely new sensation, like getting drunk would be, a few years later, or making love, a few years after that. But unlike those things it went on and on. I suppose I could compare it with a very high fever that puts you into delirium, but at that time I hadn’t ever been sick like that. So, it was really new for me.

My body and mind were shutting down, as if a bank of fuses had all gone out at once. I went to bed and everyone knew to stay away. Except Jon.

He came in, sat down, and said some things. I don’t recall exactly what he said. I could tell he was trying to comfort me. It wasn’t working. I didn’t want to hear from him, or anyone. I wanted everyone gone. I wanted time to turn back or the world to explode. Neither was going to happen so leave me alone Jon. Leave. Go. Go. Get out of here.

He did go after a little while.

What he said meant nothing to me, and I was embarrassed for him. What could words do for me? Words are nothing. What the hell was he trying to do?

Well, thirty years later…

I’m thinking about Astra, for some reason. Can’t remember what brought her to mind, but she drifts in now and again. Good old dog.

I remember the day she died. I had been playing with her after school: chase, fetch, and all that. We were running near the long dirt road that crossed by the front of our rural Vermont homestead. Then I got tired and went indoors. I should have taken Astra inside, too. It was my responsibility. When you play with Astra outside you don’t leave her. Because she chased cars. She especially loved to chase the high school bus that would be bringing my sister home any moment. I didn’t bring the dog in. I was careless. Then the bus came, she charged into it, and went under the wheels.

The family knew I left her out. Jon knew, and he was big on the philosophy of consequences. But when he came to speak to me later that night– when I ignored him and despised him– he said nothing of that. He chose not to add his voice to the chorus in my mind screaming at me, that I had killed our happy dog. Then this man, Jon Fineman, who loved Astra too, told me how he also had a dog once that died. He offered his friendship, and he forgave me.

So, What?

When you speak to your child, and you feel that he is not listening, maybe he isn’t. When you speak to him and you suspect he’s silently ridiculing you, maybe he is. When the gift of your advice or sympathy fails in every way to touch him, and you believe yourself a failure, maybe you are. For now.

Bide your time.

Just imagine the man he will be, someday. His now subtle and caring mind clambering back through his life, looking for support in the events that shaped him– just imagine how he’ll come upon your words. The gift you tried to give. Faded on the outside, yet vital still inside, it will open like a blossom. Even thirty years later.

Thanks, Jon.

When you speak to your children today, you are also speaking to every day of their future selves. Parenting is outside of time. Take care and take heart in that.

When my publisher decided to release my Secrets book for “free” as an ebook, I thought it meant FREE. I just found it meant free-for-a-little-while-and-then-gone. Apparently it has some sort of DRM expiration date on it.

[Update: One of my tester friends found that he could defeat the expiration mechanism by playing with the system date, but that's not very practical, I guess.]

They didn’t mention this to me when they told me about the promotion. I suppose they thought “Well OBVIOUSLY it’s only free for a period of time… we’re in the publishing business!” But it wasn’t obvious to me or I would have told you when I announced it.

[Update: Turns out the editors running the promotion did not know that the download had a time limit.]

Anyway, you can still download the book until the 24th of July, and you can read it for some period of time after that before it goes POOF. Not bad, considering that it didn’t cost you anything except the annoyance of downloading it, but still…

Naturally, I hope everyone goes out and buys the hardcover with real money. That way I’ll be encouraged to write more books. Otherwise, it’s an expensive hobby.

Side note: It’s interesting how glitchy the process is, too. Several people found that the special Adobe reader software complained and moaned and wouldn’t install on their systems. QUALITY IS DEAD!

I wrote Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar for several reasons. The principle reason was to impress my dad. But right after that is another important one: I want to talk with people, argue with people, and work with people on the subject of self-education and how to brand ourselves and invent ourselves as thinkers.

My father is quite reclusive. I’m the opposite– though I guess if the book is very successful I will have to reconsider that. Anyway, for the moment, I’m very accessible, and I hope people will write me and tell me how they react to the ideas. I hope my follow-on to Secrets will be something about how these principles work for different people.

Several hundred folks have gotten the free download. So, read it and talk to me!

If it’s successful enough, I expect to get hit with a lot of criticism for my attacks on school. I say: bring it on.

Amanda Enclade (@aenclade) is one of the unschooling lights on Twitter. She posed a problem: How do you help young adults who can’t read, learn to read?

Approaching this problem as a buccaneer, first I remind myself:

Neither I, nor anyone else, can “educate” someone against their will or inclination. Where it appears that this has successfully been done, it’s but a shallow illusion. Yet, I do feel good if I can be of service, so let me look into it…

Next, I focus on a particular person, and think a few skeptical thoughts:

1. Maybe he doesn’t want to learn to read. What makes me think that he does? Maybe his desire is weak, or maybe it appears weak because the desire is masked by fear.
2. Maybe he doesn’t want help learning to read. Has he specifically asked for my help? If not, maybe he wants to ask and doesn’t know how. Maybe he’s embarrassed to ask. Maybe he’s comfortable learning on his own and I should butt out.
3. Maybe he can already read. Illiteracy is not an all or nothing thing. We are all illiterate in some ways. Try reading a patent, for instance. Try reading a medical textbook, or instructions for doing origami. Maybe my illiterate friend has trouble reading novels, but no trouble reading street signs. Maybe he knows the alphabet. I would need to learn what level of reading ability he already had and build on that.
4. Maybe his life would be better if he didn’t read. You know what I love about walking around Lund, Sweden? It’s that I can’t read the signs. I don’t speak or read Swedish, so the advertising on the signs doesn’t burden my mind. I can walk and think more easily than when I’m in New York City. I get along fine in other countries without the ability to read. Depending on what kind of life you want to live, you may not need to read at all. Socrates apparently didn’t read. You can live a quiet, earnest, and helpful domestic life without reading. I saw an interview with a fellow who taught English in Japan, no one ever knew he could not read.
5. Maybe the world would be better if he didn’t read. I believe the world benefits from having in it people with a wide variety of abilities and different kinds of focus. Someone who doesn’t read may focus on music (I’m a musician who doesn’t read music, by the way), or building things, or art. He may become adept at teamwork– getting other people to read things for him. This may lead to new ideas, new art forms, new communities. I like the example of my dogs. My dogs can’t read, but their beaming enthusiasm and affection makes my life more worth living. Bottom line: someone who can’t read may make someone who CAN read better at what they do.

Now let’s say that my friend asks me to help him learn to read. Okay, well, I’ve never helped anyone learn to read before (my son wouldn’t let me help him, except with a word here and there). I have no specific program for teaching reading. Obviously, I’m not an expert in this. But let’s assume there are no experts nearby willing or able to help. Or let’s assume my friend doesn’t want help from a stranger. Based on how I have helped other people (mostly adults) learn various things, this is what I would do.

1. First, talk with him. I want to discover his history of trying to learn to read. What went wrong? How does he feel about it?
2. Discover his talents and achievements. Learning something new and difficult requires us to believe “I AM SMART ENOUGH!” That’s why, as a coach, I’m always alert to any hint of confidence or pride. I want to fan those flames. Often the people I teach are not aware of how smart they already are, and it takes someone like me (with an outside perspective) to point out what is obvious to everyone but them.
3. Discover how I can learn from him. I don’t find it appealing or useful, long-term, to be an authority figure dispensing wisdom. (Short term, for childish ego reasons, I kinda like it.) So, I want to position myself as a fellow student. That means as I help others learn, I also learn. If I’m helping a man read better, I will ask him to teach me something in return. In general, this will improve his confidence, while helping me exercise my sometimes lazy humility.
4. Discover the authentic problem and turn it into a project. There’s got to be a good reason to read. I need to find that. I want my friend to finish the sentence “If I could read better I would be able to [...] which is important because [...].” Maybe he wants to read a novel, or maybe a textbook of case law. Once we have found an authentic problem, we can set about solving it. Put the authentic problem into the context of a project to accomplish something tangible. My son learned to type mainly because I would not type for him when he wanted to enter cheat code for video games. His project was playing better at video games. Knowing his way around the keyboard was crucial. Later, he wanted to appear older than the age of 12 when playing World of Warcraft online, that inspired him to learn to type chat messages in complete sentences, with good punctuation and spelling. Other players guessed that he was 25.
5. Focus on doing. Sometimes lecture matters. Mostly I want to get him doing things. If you want to learn to read, start trying to read!
6. Watch CAREFULLY for ANY improvement or accomplishment and celebrate it. Sometimes students can’t tell when they are getting better, or focus too much on mistakes. Every little success is an existence proof of a better future.
7. Watch for bold mistakes and celebrate those, too. Among my son’s first sentences was “No, please!” Technically an incorrect sentence, but what a bold idea to combine those two words. I told him he hurt my feelings once when he was five or so, and he said, with an elaborate and sincere sigh. “Ooookay Dad, I FORGIVE you.” Wrong words, but such a worthy mistake. Failing while sincerely trying is a kind of failure we must not fear, and therefore, we must celebrate it.
8. Set expectations low, and aspirations high. Let’s set our sights on reading Scientific American or Shakespeare. We can aspire to those things, without beating ourselves up for not getting there very quickly. Expectations must be kept low to prevent discouragement, but aspirations must be set high to stir the heart.
9. Don’t fret about lapses. Energy for this process may ebb, then flow. It’s all good. There’s no need for a do or die mentality. Externally imposed discipline can be a dangerous corrupting force. I might nudge and harass now and again, but ultimately, I watch the energy of the student and reflect that. Helping someone learn should not be like doing CPR or electroshock therapy.