It is not easy to grow a Self-Directed Education (SDE) community. Society does not trust children, and Self-Directed Education is rooted in trust. Most adults believe that children must be told what to learn and when to learn it. Many adults find comfort in schools that use the language of personalized, individualized, or student-led, so long as it is understood that the adults are still deciding how students spend their time, what topics they focus on, and what the bounds of their quests are. So except for the unschoolers, those looking for liberatory environments, and those who simply have run out of options, SDE is just too radical to consider.
Community is the curriculum.
But the conservative nature of parents and guardians is not enough to stop SDE communities from dreaming that we will one day convince them that their children should be free! We figure if we could just get them in the door they would recognize that their children are competent human beings who have the capacity to do remarkable things with their lives, if only they were supported. That schooling is not only an inefficient way to learn, but it is also harmful to most children. That happiness, relationships, and meaning making should not take a back seat to chemistry or Texas history. That learning is natural, the medium is the message, and that all people should have the right to decide how to spend their time. And that children are people, too.
Practicing freedom without explicit instruction.
But we cannot convince them to allow their children to be free if we don’t get them in the door. And if we are too blunt with our language of liberation they will surely be turned away. So we try to schoolify our messaging. We highlight that when young people are freed of all the academic requirements school places on them that they get to do the cool stuff that interests them. And that stuff will help them develop their inborn love of learning and their ability to dive deep. And that will help them do well in their future work life, as well as in college. And it will even make it easier to gain admission into selective colleges. No, we don’t force them to read, but they learn anyhow. And therefore they are more likely to love reading, and less likely to find it painful. No, we don’t force them to learn algebra, but their mathematical reasoning and numeracy skills will have a stronger base. So when they decide to engage with algebra, trigonometry, and calculus they will be able to thrive.
Searching for snails because snails are cool.
And this concern about messaging leads into social media. In particular, how we document what’s happening at SDE communities through pictures. We wonder, is this picture Instagram worthy? We know many parents and guardians are looking at pictures to determine whether this is a place they would feel comfortable having their kids. And we want them to want to come in. So instead of taking pictures of an exhausted adolescent taking a nap, we wait for the adolescent to begin writing. Because students write at school, they don’t sleep there. Instead of taking pictures of a Learner playing Roblox on their computer, we wait for them to begin editing a film they were working on. Because students work on projects at school, they don’t play video games there. And instead of taking pictures of young Learners sitting around talking to each other, we wait for them to begin reading. Because students read at school, they don’t just socialize.
Look out the window.
And it is a bunch of nonsense. We spend an inordinate amount of our time worried about easing the insecurity of adults because we are holding onto the absurd notion that parents and guardians who want schools to shape their kids into Harvard admits may just consider liberation … if only we could get them to come in and have a conversation with us. Here’s a fact—I have helped more people gain admission into Harvard and Stanford than I have any other college or university. And I have used that fact to make skeptical guardians and parents feel more comfortable while talking about how Self-Directed Education can work for their child. But I have never had a parent or guardian who needed to know that Harvard and Stanford could still be an option through SDE, or a more likely option, ultimately decide to allow their kids to be free. They were wasting my time and I was wasting theirs.
The people who end up choosing Self-Directed Education are choosing freedom. And that includes the freedom to not be schoolish all the time. It allows for, unapologetically, conversations with friends, playing video games, and even sleeping. And we SDE communities need to let go of our own insecurities and embrace that, and not filter our social media in the hopes that it will make the uncomfortable comfortable.
Joy is reason enough.