Learning: Will My Kids Go To College?

Learning is ...acquiring knowledge or skill through study, experience or teaching... but also ...an increase in the capability for effective action...This definition emphasizes the importance of taking actions and achieving results vs. intellectual knowledge without application.

Are my kids going to go to college? My answer is a smooth and unhesitant: NO, they will not.

"Education - the means by which young people learn the skills necessary to succeed in their place and time - is diverging from schooling.

Photo credit: Galina Barskaya

Media-literacy-wise, education is happening now after school and on weekends and when the teacher isn't looking, in the SMS messages, MySpace pages, blog posts, podcasts, videoblogs that technology-equipped digital natives exchange among themselves. "

Source: Howard Rheingold

Schools, colleges and universities do not represent anymore the best way to help someone educate oneself and learn how to best utilize her innate skills to maneuver and navigate the requirements of life, whether professional, interpersonal or spiritual.

Yes, if you want to pre-package your kid behaviors, responses, attitudes and founding beliefs on the industrial society paradigms of scarcity, competition, dogmatic, science-fed truths, specialization of work and thinking, then traditional academic institutions may be still your best resources for molding more industrial-complex managers-marketers-consumers to keep the old wheel spinning some more.

But if you are seriously into helping "human 2.0", the all-human self-actualizing techno-animal we so rarely see around us become a reality, it may be worth taking back responsibility and control of the opportunities that out-of-school, non-degree-dependant education can indeed provide.

In a very inspiring letter to his young kids (both of which are bloggers), edu-blogger and educational technologist Will Richardson lays openly the reasons and motivations that lead him not to force his kids to go to college.

The sentiments expressed and the ideas contained in this very short and simple letter to his kids, reflect in great part my own sentiments of aversion for what traditional, classroom-caged learning can indeed still offer to today's kids, while emphasizing the richness and value of experiential, contextual and shared-, group-learning, in which passion and like-minded interests are the all-powerful natural aggregators-motivators.

Dedicated in turn to my very own wonderful kids, Ludovico and Chiara, here is Will Richardson letter:

Dear Kids, You Don't Have to Go to College

Dear Tess and Tucker,

Love always, Dad

Update: Less than thirty minutes after I published this article this morning, my good friend Michael Pick, who is also executive news editor, writer and video producer for the Robin Good's Media Network wrote me in a private email:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Pick
Date: Nov 16, 2006 10:11 AM
Subject: Re: Will My Kids Go To School?
To: Robin Good

"Dear Robin,

I just wanted to say thank you for today's post, as it really struck a chord with me.

I am just completing a second masters degree now, in that I was so far into it, there was little point in pulling the plug. But for all of my years of formal education I have learnt far more in the few short months we have worked together than any of it put together. That's why I turned down the offer of a PhD that arrived in my inbox at the beginning of the week.

What did I gain from my university experience? A few good friends and a mountain of debt that visibly aged me, and maybe even put me in hospital. I learnt that what was really worth learning was brought to the table by the students, and that seminars were far more engaging than lectures, surely a remnant of another era.

I have just completed courses in emerging environments for learning and teaching online, among others, and found that far more interesting things were being discussed and introduced by the community of practice formed around the course than any of the content provided as stale readings within it.

Sure, educators have cottoned on and are now using wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0isms in their courses, but the big difference is that you have to pay to join in, and to share your knowledge with others. How many people would consider paying thousands of dollars for a one or even two year subscription to an online community?

I have learnt my lesson the hard way, and just wanted to thank you for bringing to my attention the alternatives.

We were brought up to not even think twice about going to university, and I feel like I have now been deprogrammed. It's a shame, because I dropped out when I was seventeen and spent a year learning what I wanted to from life and from public libraries.

These days the web is so much richer than it was then, and the kids today have huge opportunities to create a sustainable online living, and to draw on what each other have to teach, without the need to call themselves teachers, or students.

Besides the raft of skills I have learnt with Robin Good's Media Network (and continue to do so, every day), I have learnt the value of independence, and the fact that it is a very real, and tangible thing. I have become somewhat of a zealot for the cause, and have to agree with you.

My kids, if I have a say, will not be wasting their time and getting into debt upon debt for a handful of dust.

Thank you!

Michael"

Originally written by Will Richardson as "Dear Kids, You Don't Have to Go to College" on November 7th 2006.

About the author

Will Richardson is known internationally for his work with educators and students to understand and implement instructional technologies and, more specifically, the tools of the Read/Write Web into their schools, classrooms and communities.

A public school educator for 22 years, Will's own Weblog (Weblogg-ed.com) is a primary resource for the creation and implementation of Weblog technologies on the K-12 level and is a leading voice for school reform in the context of the fundamental changes these new technologies are bringing to all aspects of life.

His critically acclaimed, best-selling book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms (March 2006, Corwin Press) is already being used by thousands of teachers to reinvent their practice, and his keynotes, presentations and workshops to audiences around the world communicate a fresh and inspiring vision of what schools can and must become.

He is a founding partner of the Connective Learning Group which is dedicated to assisting educators contextualize and implement Read/Write Web tools into their schools and classrooms. Will lives along the Delaware River in beautiful Western New Jersey with his wife Wendy and his children Tess and Tucker, all of whom are bloggers.