The unifying theme of my education has been its variety; throughout my life, I’ve learned through a wide range of different avenues. I never attended school as a child. But I did do many other things. I played. A lot. I went to museums, I went on road trips, I had long conversations with adults who took me seriously, and defended myself to those who didn’t. I learned dissection from a doctor, rhetoric from a lawyer, and drawing from an artist. I lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, Paris, and Sydney. Later, I turned to more traditional schooling in coming to college. All of these things, and more, are part of what I would broadly term “my education.”
The educational philosophy by which I was raised is generally referred to as unschooling, but I prefer to describe myself and my education as having been free range. As the principle actor in shaping my own education, I was free to follow my curiosity and learn about whatever interested me most. That’s not to say that I was never told I had to learn something – learning to read comes to mind – nor that I never studied something I didn’t particularly want to because I knew it would be important later, but even in these cases I learned at my own pace and in my own way. For the most part I was free to explore essentially anything I wanted, which I did by reading copiously, doing research in libraries and on the internet, corresponding with professionals, and holding jobs and internships. My learning was always facilitated by access to a variety of resources and a great deal of support from my family and the larger community.
The flip side of this was responsibility. When the time came to take standardized tests, I was responsible for preparing myself, again with resources and support. I also had a fair amount of responsibility in my family and household, and that too I consider part of my education. In all these cases, the reasons behind things were always explained to me; I never had to do something because someone said so or because it was arbitrarily deemed important. Looking back, this – being respected and treated as an intelligent and capable person no matter my age – is one of the things I appreciate most about my education.
In addition to learning on my own, I frequently learned in groups with other home educated people I knew, often in the form of relatively casual subject-specific workshops usually taught by one of the parents from the group who had expertise in the area. After finishing “high school” when I was about 15, I began working as a fashion model. This gave me the opportunity to travel to cities around the world, often for extended period of time, which in turn allowed me to learn about a variety of different cultures. I loved my career, but always knew it wasn’t my final destination, so a few years later I settled down in New York once again and entered college.
In college, I’ve continued to learn in many different ways. In addition to classroom work, much of my learning has come from reading widely on my own, discussing material with my classmates, and carrying out research projects, and especially from actively working in my field (neuroscience) by holding research positions in various laboratories, attending lectures and reading relevant academic journals. Looking forward to my continuing education – I’ll soon be preparing to enter graduate school to pursue my doctorate – I think that the ability and tendency to seek out knowledge in many different ways will continue to be a vital aspect of my learning.
So the course is now officially over, your final grades are posted, and I'm having a hard time admitting that we're finished! But since we've had a course (and a terrific course, thanks to all of you) about the future of education, I guess it doesn't really have to be done. When are we "finished" with the future? 
I also think that you touch on some interesting points about a) parental expectations, which we sort of talked about before in the forums and which I think is really closely related to the similarities you and I see between our own experiences, and b) how things like the economy shape the educational system. Of course, since education and the economy are both part of the same society, it makes sense that they influence each other, but I think the connections are pretty interesting.
Interesting indeed, and I think we’ll be returning to these questions in the next unit.
I really find it intriguing that Kaitlyn’s and your experiences end up being so similar, or at least leaving you in such similar places. I think a lot of “hard-core” proponents of “traditional” education would think it’s impossible for someone who was schooled “free-range” to get to where you’ve gone, and I know some “hard-core” “unschoolers” (I’m getting tired of these quotation marks) who would say that it’s impossible for a traditional education like Kaitlyn’s to end up in a place so similar to yours.
I wonder if there is a way (or will be, by the time we finish the course) to extract some of the real keys to what worked for both of you. If we can put some traditional in the free-range and some free-range in the traditional, what will we get?
Having read your reflection, I had a similar reaction. I definitely think there are many ways to achieve similar ends, and that the overall learning environment might be more important than the form of education per se.
I understand your point on the practical restrictions of unschooling – it definitely take a lot of time from one’s parents, among other things (although I think parents putting time and effort into their kids’ education is important no matter what form that education takes) – but it’s not necessarily as simple as working or not-working parents. I know unschooling families in all kinds of different situations, socioeconomic positions, etc. I went to work with my mom all the time as a kid, and in fact I think that that exposure early on was a really important part of my early learning; the idea of having children around as active participants of the so-called “real world” and having them engaged in many of the same tasks as adults are central ideaa of unschooling. Of course, I realize that society is such that many workplaces aren’t very accepting of having children around. Anyway, I just wanted to say that while there absolutely are some restrictions, it’s not quite so cut and dry.
Celine, I definitely agree that this kind of education fosters the skills Frieda mentioned. Though I haven’t posted my reflection yet, it’s interesting how similar your ‘free range’ educational experience sounds to my own, despite my fairly traditional path – perhaps because I had parents who fostered these skills.
I think that even if unschooling were to become a more mainstream idea, it would unfortunately still only be experienced by a select group of children. Simply having two parents who work (or a single parent who works) pretty much bars a child from having this experience (unless they have another adult in their life who takes responsibility for at least looking after them), and in this economy that is becoming increasingly common. Also, I think a barrier to children’s success is lack of expectations on their parent’s part, and if that is already the case, I doubt these parents would be willing to take on their child’s education.
Despite the fact that I don’t see unschooling (or whatever you want to call it 🙂 ever becoming very widespread for these practical and cultural reasons, it does sound like a great educational experience, and I think it would be wonderful if it became more common (I could see it at levels similar to the number of children that attend private school, perhaps?).
Well, I think that I probably had more exposure to diverse fields as being viable career options than I might have had otherwise – quirky and highly personal career paths were the norm rather than the exception among most of the people I knew. I don’t think that my interests would have been particularly different if I’d had a more structured curriculum; as far as I know, I was expose to pretty much all the same things are people with more traditional educations, I just didn’t necessarily distribute the time I spent on those things in the same way. Of course, it’s kind of hard to make a guess at how things might have been if I’d grown up differently.
On another note, I definitely agree that this type of education isn’t for everyone, but I actually think that it fosters the skills you mentioned, rather than requiring them to be inherently present. I think many students, even pretty young ones, are capable of handling more responsibility, and are more motivated, than they’re sometimes given credit for. Especially when learning is not cast as a chore, I think it does come very naturally to many people.
Wow that certainly is a fresh view on education. While it sounds like you gained a lot from this unique “unschooling,” my guess is that this is not for most people; a person must be extremely responsible, mature, and self-motivated for this technique to work. But it sounds like a wonderful way to grow up if you have those qualities.
I wonder, do you think you were exposed to more diverse fields of knowledge because you had all that freedom? Or, perhaps, do you think you may have developed different interests had you been forced to pursue a more varied curriculum? (Rather than focusing more on your self-developed passions)