Education Without Schooling
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.
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Good point.
Hey, your book finally arrived and while I would like to say that I have already read it, I cannot. A kid took a strong liking to it and hasn’t given it back yet! I love that.
[James' Reply: Yay!]
September 29th, 2009 at 3:24 am
I went to James’s talk on Friday at the East West Book Store. If he has a choir to whom to speak, then I am in it.
Having been raised in a - if I may - “secular fundamentalist” family and community, I am a recent 30-something out-and-proud unschooler. No longer buying into the belief that there is something wrong with me for not being able to comprehend the insanity of the status quo (schooling as the only allowable path to “success”), James’s book has provided me some much-needed tools as I find my footing in this evolving world.
Buy this book!
October 17th, 2009 at 4:27 am
James,
I just finished Buccaneer Scholar a couple of hours ago. Bought it yesterday and started reading it while Kris was in the dentist’s office. Throughout yesterday and today, I put it down often and picked it up again when it seemed time to do so. It was “Plunge In and Quit” I now recognize.
I would like to say I had no expectations about what I’d find, no expectations about how I’d feel after reading it.
But actually I did. I expected that I would not read it cover-to-cover. I expected to find myself struggling through dense and technical language. I expected that at some point I’d be irritated and feel distance from you because of the difference in the way I “believed” we operate from the few times we have interacted.
Truth is, I was moved, inspired and ‘educated’ by your book.
Another truth, in some places I had no idea what you were talking about, in other places it was like you plucked words, thoughts, and beliefs from deep in my inner being.
I want my son (14) who lives with his mother (and is not so keen on schooling), to have this book. I want my daughter (19) in second year university, to have this book. Both are, in my mind, candidates for buccaneering. They just need to realize it exists. I admit, I have been remiss in showing them the possibilities of education beyond what they have been told is the meaning of the word. I have no doubt they can be educated wherever they are, because they are both hungry and passionate for life. I just want them to know there are other and different ways.
I notice that in both recent Bach books, Hypnotizing Maria by Richard Bach, and Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar by James Marcus Bach, there appears the question “So What?” Each time, in each book, I read those two words and grinned. In my coaching practice I call “So What?” the Magic Question, and use it to ‘test’ a client’s fears, frameworks, and resistances. I consider what I do as a coach to be testing a client’s software (i.e. attitudes, opinions, beliefs, truths) and “So What” works so very well!
(If I knew how, I’d include a picture of my “So What Rock” a.k.a. “The Rock of the Magic Question in this posting. If there is a way to do that, please let me know, I love to share it.)
For much of my life I have been a modest buccaneer and a barnstormer (a buccaneer with an airplane?) and my life has been richer because of it. I can say, reading your book has added to my riches.
And one other significant bit, your book led me to this blog, and to learning more about you, and your family, my in-laws. Bottom line, I like them more, and feel more drawn to you.
Cheers
Kerry
[James' Reply: Thank you very much, Kerry. I'm working a lot with Dad, these days. Doing a lot of flying, too. We're the Flying Dutchmen.]
October 20th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Ah, so you are the ghostly glowing flyers, forever doomed (or blessed) to wander the skies of the Pacific Northwest? I have heard rumors of you guys!
Cheers
Kerry
November 10th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
interesting book James, I’ve often felt that College or school for that matter was designed to teach us how to think, and not necessarily about tests or learning a litany of facts. I was taught by Jesuits, and they, I have to admit, taught me how to argue, and think.
[James' Reply: The Jesuits are famous for that. I don't understand how to reconcile reason with religion, personally, but I respect that they tried.]
Perhaps the best education I ever had was two semesters of Father Lewis, who had a profound impact on me… which was to apply these learning techniques to whatever direction you feel you are most passionate about. I liked that view…
Wiki and Google are my friends too, and considering we are both in the same profession, they are our friends. I also enjoy reading about people who talk about their learning process, since it allows me to inspect my own methods and add news ones when they might improve my thinking process.
[James' Reply: Cool. Thanks for writing.]