Unschooling: The Truth about College?

Is Unschooling Superior to Horace Mann’s system of Public Schooling?
Description: Horace Mann: Father of the Public School System
Attribution: Southworth & Hawes (1850)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Confession: In my youth, I considered school a massive waste of time. As an adult, I feel exactly the same way. School didn’t prepare me for the real world. If anything, it dulled my creativity, tempered my love for learning, and caused me to hide the most interesting parts of myself in order to avoid being an outcast. Hence, I find the idea of unschooling, or encouraging kids to learn through natural interaction with the world, quite interesting.

Americans love their schools however. Out of 56 million kids, just 1.5 million are educated outside of a traditional school. And the vast majority of those kids are homeschooled using the same curriculum and textbooks. It’s believed just 100,000 kids are unschooled.

It’s good to see people starting to challenge the education system, even if it’s just at the college level. For many people (perhaps all people), college is an enormous waste of time and money. Now, we just need a little more attention paid to unschooling. Here’s more from John Tamny at Forbes:

Whether the ambition is to become an investment banker or a Starbucks barista, the dirty little secret is that nothing learned during the four (or five) fun-filled years on idyllic campuses has anything to do with either form of employment. That four years of English Lit or finance courses wouldn’t be required to work behind the counter at Grumpy’s is obvious, but it’s also the case that what’s learned in those finance classes is not necessary if your desire is to thrive at Goldman Sachs either.

To believe otherwise is to believe that someone (the college professor) who for the most part lacks any background in the real-world application of finance could transfer skills to those who desire that real-world knowledge. Lots of luck there. If Wall Street is your goal, major in whatever interests you. Ultimately the top financial firms are looking for “good athletes”; as in people who are smart and who work hard. Anything you need to know you’ll learn on the job.

(See the rest at Forbes)

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