Thoughts Aloud

I tuned in to the Liberty Radio Network (FTL) I mentioned last night and caught an articulate young guy named Wes Bertrand doing an excellent interview discussing home schooling, mentioning Ayn Rand and Maria Montessori. He also mentioned a book he had written entitled, “The Psychology of Liberty,” and read a couple of passages out of it. One caught my attention, which was a quote by John Holt, the originator of the “unschooling” movement that is hot in the home schooling community:

Educator John Holt related some of his thoughts about students in universities and colleges and their extended transition process into the workforce:

Most of them were on campus to get a piece of paper that(they thought) would enable them to do whatever they were going to do next, when they got out of school. Most of them, if given the piece of paper, would leave immediately and do that next thing. Most of them, if they left right away with paper in hand to do that next thing, would do it about as well as they will do it after many more years on this or some other campus. Others of the students are here because they don’t know what to do next, or because they want to put off, for as long as they can, whatever they will do next.

Meanwhile, one might say that all those students are learning something. Perhaps they are. But they will not long remember more than a small part of it, or use or benefit from more than a small part of that. They are learning this stuff to pass exams. Most of them could not pass the same exam even a year later, to say nothing of ten years later. And, if some of what they learn should someday prove useful, they would probably have learned it ten times faster when they needed to use it and thus had a reason for learning
it.

I’d say he nailed it!

I listened to a 2 hour podcast of yesterday’s show, and he was taking calls, doing interviews, and pontificating just as well as the average talk radio host, only it seemed serious and not meant as entertainment like the big guys on AM. I enjoyed and would recommend it.

He has written two books, both are now available as free PDF downloads. I have read the education section of the above mentioned philosophy book, which is very well written; and have downloaded the other entitled, “Complete Liberty,” which is billed as more “plain talk” than the philosophy book, and can also be read on line. They are available on his two websites:
Complete Liberty and Logical Learning. â—„Daveâ–º