Mission:

1. To change the notion that university is the only path to success.

2. To prepare people for success in an ever changing world in which it is [virtually] impossible  for educational intuitions to be relevant.

We believe that:

• We pay too much for university and learn too little.[!]
[Every text book takes up to three years to come out.  Our world is moving too fast  for that process to provide current coverage. ]
• You can get an amazing education anywhere—but to get it you’ll have to break some rules and piss off some people.[!]
• University is not inherently bad, but university isn’t the only path to success.
• You must get an excellent education to survive in a world where 50% of the population is under 30.
• [Subjects taught in ]Traditional universities are often contrived, theoretical, and irrelevant [and are generally better at enforcing compliance and conformity than teaching scholarship or critical thinking].
• Education must help narrow the opportunity gap.
• You can contribute to society without necessarily having a university degree—becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg or smoking pot in your parents’ basement are not the only options.
[The technical and communications skills needed in business and society are not covered particularly well in college and may easily be acquired elsewhere.]
• University lacks academic rigor.  [This is far too broad a generalization. Rigor as defined by academia exists only in academia — peer reviewed journals etc.  I would leave this one out. ]

[University makes students slog, wait in line, demonstrate fealty, and jump through pointless hoops on cue but this experience does not teach them critical thinking and problem solving skills. (Frequently bypassing these requirements does teach these skills.)]
• The skills required to succeed in today’s global economy are not taught in school.
• If you want to gain these skills, you must hack your education. [And here’s how!]

On 10/8/2011 7:44 AM, Priscilla Sanstead wrote:

What is our mission? What are our values?

These values may not be universally shared, but I hope everyone will give them due consideration:

1. We should spread the word that excellent education is now available to anyone dedicated enough to seek it out.
2. We should help create and collect resources and establish support communities to aid those who want an education to acquire it outside of sanctioned academia.
3. We should help to promote learning and the value of education (particularly in the US where it is fashionable in popular culture to subject erudition to mockery and ridicule).
4. We should call into question the value of traditional university education, particularly when it is out-of-date, entirely theoretical, contrived, and irrelevant.
5. We should, where appropriate, attempt to discredit traditional degrees whose value is increasingly questionable in an environment in which the use of cyber-pseudepigraphy — thesis and dissertation sales and custom ghostwriting — are reducing the conferred degrees to an expensive commodity of no educational significance (a fact assiduously ignored by academia).
6. We should help the world to recognize the fact that higher education is not only not worth the price, but it is largely for sale — and is therefore one more rift forming between rich and poor.

Of these points, I think that number three is the most important.  An appreciation not only of science and technology but of languages, cultures, philosophy, history and the arts is sorely needed in our fractious society.

I fully expect the suggestion that traditional degrees be discredited to be disputed and, indeed, it should probably not be among the stated intentions of uncollege. On the other hand, it is an elephant in the room that universities are trying hard not to see and I’m not sure we should assist them in their efforts to appear oblivious of the ubiquity of cyber-pseudoepigraphic practices. This is indeed a significant factor in higher education that should be subjected to some scrutiny and should be considered by students trying to determine the best way to acquire an education — students who, whether or not they engage in such practices, will very probably be competing against those who do.

This blogging thread (http://uninspiredteacher.blogspot.com/2011/10/20-things-teacher-wants-nation-to-know.html) was initially a teacher’s response to a list of student criticisms which then received a response from Dale Stevens, one of the leading voices of the uncollege.org movement and a 19-year-old college drop-out who speaks and writes far better than do most high school teachers, one of whose speeches to a university audience has been posted in our classroom.

Please read the postings. How many SAT grammar and style errors does the teacher make?

I could not resist adding a comment of my own:

This is an interesting discussion with many excellent points made, but to the homeschooler/unschooler, repairing or improving the existing system really seems rather pointless.

Dale’s response it spot on, particularly his contention that everyone involved is responsible for the education that takes place, and that alternative approaches to education may well marginalize the traditional teacher and classroom.

Those who have seen education at its best cannot but despair of ever achieving anything remotely comparable in a traditional classroom. The Learning/Time quotient in a truly benign educational setting is orders of magnitude greater than the best levels encountered in public school and is achieved without the onerous hours of confinement, drudgery, busywork, waiting in line, and the “being mocked for being smart” that characterize every day of school.

It is not at all uncommon for homeschoolers to start taking college classes at age 9 or 10 (if they see college as having any value to them) and to test out of highschool requirements as soon as they reach the age limit (passing The California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE) is the legal equivalent of a high school diploma and homeschoolers routinely breeze through it — often despite unfamiliarity with standardized testing.) My daughter celebrated her high school and community college graduations simultaneously at 16.

This extremely effective learning process is certainly not to be found universally in homeschooling environments, but drudgery and mediocrity do definitely seem to be all but obligatory in public school education and it would be very difficult to do worse with an alternative approach.

It must be clearly understood, however, that many of the shortcomings of education stem from the constraints within which the teacher must function. Even a superb teacher cannot accomplish much under these conditions and most teachers remain utterly oblivious of what could be achieved were these constraints lifted.

The mass production classroom system is destined to provide only minimal value and to do so at enormous expense in money, time, misery inflicted and in the lingering damage to poor young minds that might, given a tiny fraction of those resources, have blossomed and developed in amazing and unexpected ways. The unexpected is virtually extirpated by public schooling.

As Dale points out, there is an immense field of alternative approaches to education that will permit the aspiring learner to bypass the plodding quotidian regimentation of public school. My preference is the small 4-8 student mixed-level collaborative homeschooling semi-virtual environment but there are many other scenarios that may be equally effective.