Chris Lehmann on Practical Theory recently posted that one goal he anticipates for next year is getting students ready to go off to college.
I've been thinking about where students who attend learner-centered self-directed high schools with a sense of community will want to go to college. Maybe Hampshire College has some of that atmosphere, maybe New York's Empire State. There must be others.
I was recently helping a student at Union Institute and University (University Without Walls in the 1960s) to prepare for his thesis. When he was accepted, the institution was designed to be student centered. Because of concerns for accreditation, guidelines are much more strict now. Rather than construct an individualized program, the student, to be interdisciplinary, needs to learn two or three individual fields. I found myself "enforcing" the rules I have come to reject for academic evaluation. After that realization, I wasn't able to continue supporting him in his project. So where will students with experience in designing their own learning go to college?
My experience with home schooled children has been that if they want to, they fit into traditional institutions of higher learning. But as their interests and skills expand I think it is a shame that they need to contract into prescribed boxes.
For a couple days I had a fantasy of starting a university that was never to be accredited. Accreditation seems to require the lowest common denominator. What if college just continued in a free-style home schooling approach? Ask members of the community with more specialized knowledge to take on kids as apprentices. Surely the world, the community and the World Wide Web combined provide enough resources for college age to learn.
But then I thought about how they would or wouldn't be able to get jobs in a global market place. Degrees that are accredited are supposed to attest to some basic skill levels. But so often they don't. I'm reminded of the conversation I had with my brother when my kids were graduating from and looking for jobs. He's the VP of a hospital and he said, "Give me a bright person with a good work ethic and I can teach her what she needs to do the job. What I can't teach is a work ethic." Students who are self-directed in their learning should be learning the basic skills this employer is looking for.
How can we balance the need students have for self-direction in the college setting and requirements of portability of a degree? Is there assessment that could substitute for degrees? What colleges are available now that might be responsive to the high school students who have learned to be self-directed?
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