Higher education in its present form… at its current price.. is it worth it?
It’s dependent on where you go!!! One could claim.
What are we paying for?
Is it social capital that we look to acquire in our education? Do we seek to be taught intellectual openness? To be taught the great books?
Are we taught that understanding our learning is easier when we can view our knowledge as a continual updating repository? (i.e, knowledge is subject to change) (see: Dynamic Knowledge Repository)
Dynamic Knowledge Repository: is a living, breathing, rapidly evolving repository of all the stuff accumulating moment to moment throughout the life of a project or pursuit.
Our current form of education isn’t active, it’s passive.
When we think of job training, how in the hell are we even supposed to predict what is coming next, as automation takes on more of a role?
In our modern-day economy, what are the things that cannot be automated?
Our intellect? Elon Musk begs to differ but that is a whole different story.
The main question really is ... what is the purpose of education?
To be better off than you were before it?
To leave with a plethora of experiences, embracing our growth in taking risks?
To stand on a limb, to create & complete projects on your own.
To ponder what’s more meaningful, turning in a project “assigned" by someone else, or turning in an assignment that you set out for yourself?
Taking a shot on yourself first.. even though chances are you may fail (if you try only once).
However, for some reason you fight through with what initially may not be such a good plan… to create an exquisite one.
To create & to inspire others on the journey with you.
In creating a environment intellectually where this whole notion of taking a moonshot (going after something unthinkable) is actually encouraged.
With a guiding space of peers/collaborators/mentors who are there to back you up & support you. To help envision & create a better world with you.
A space where creativity is encouraged.
A space where our emergent humanity from our learning flourishes.
A space where reading self-assigned works is more important than class readings.
Where the dream envisioned is no longer intended only for a mainstream audience, but instead on starting a niche community. These online learning communities enabled by digital communication technologies have the potential to become the largest they could ever possibly be.
1,000 true fans/participants here we come!
Perhaps we can call this vision: self-edu.
Our goals for the next years should be to pursue a self-educational journey. To give us that deep, fulfilling, interwoven, intellectual journey. The biggest challenge being: maintaining the discipline to learn day-in and day-out. To actively take steps towards becoming a polymath.
To read, to write and to share what we’ve learned.
Looking back in the storybook in which I call my life.. the best lessons in which I’ve learned have been empowered by my self-education.
This is why I want to share this self-educational experiment with the world. This is why I have started The Freelance Graduate Student.
Let’s create a co-working/co-living space with others determined to learn. To commit to learn by reading, creating, writing and sharing. To be advocates of “Working in Public” while taking fundamental leaps in our education in a classical way.
Self-education has the potential to bring us back to being more human.
Cheers to lifelong learning,
-Adam Bartley
(Written on August 30th, 2020 on a typewriter.)
(Edited on July 14th, 2021 on a computer.)
Additional writing of mine on education: Deschooled, Building an intentional rabbithole, Mona Lisa Framing and The only way out is to publish.
PARTING NOTE
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