Education as Liberation

What a pain it is to send our children into institutions that we don’t, ourselves, believe in.

I was a “sensitive” child, eventually identified as “gifted,” and I absolutely hated school. I dropped out at 15. I never completed high school. Fortunately, I was able to test into college and then university, and eventually completed graduate work and a PhD. I was able to find my own path and follow it.

But why would a child who loves learning as much as I did end up hating school? As one genius famously commented, “school isn’t a place for smart people.” I would refine this: institutions are not generally a place for creative people. Schools are institutions.

Later, I found myself teaching in them.

The same passions that drove my frustrations with school are what ultimately drove me back into it, to teach at both university and international schools. Simply put, my calling is good education. My mistake was thinking that teachers in school systems have the power to actually teach.

Schools aren’t rotten because teachers are bad. Teachers become ineffective and uncreative because school systems are not generally designed with real learning as the top priority. In a prison, guards have no power to make change. There is, after all, a lot of money to be made in prisons.

Education for students demands something else, because true education must by its nature be empowering and expansive - that is to say, liberating. Perhaps it is possible for institutions to achieve this, perhaps not. I have thus far been unimpressed by what I have seen in institutions.

I have, on the other hand, been impressed and inspired by what I have seen in my direct work with students and parents. This is where magic can happen.

Together, we make society. We are a network of expansion, mentorship, learning, and growth. In order to realize our organic power, we must break the binds of institutions that feed on conformity and compliance, and that have therefore lost their inner creativity and joie de vivre, the juice of life.

Choosing a creative lifepath may seem like a risk, but it isn’t necessarily a blind leap. I believe that today we are seeing a great many individuals thrive by finding their own way, by cultivating their unique creative and expressive excellence rather than by conforming. This is not really something that anyone can do alone, however, and it doesn’t just happen. It takes resources and discipline, which requires mentorship and guidance. I would suggest that the ingenuity and focus required for our freedom is the essence of life, and should be the essence of our educations.

Here, we seek to create a space where creativity, thought, learning, and growth are lived facts, not just a words in an empty slogan. Here, we seek to build disciplines and passions that set us free, and help us to set others free. Here, we seek to thrive as unique human beings full of ingenuity and aspirations. Call it what you will - unschooling, tutoring, homeschooling, self-schooling, world-schooling. As for me, I would call it education.