UP #73: Unschooling/Living School: Creating a New Paradigm for Education with Angela Arbuckle and Naomi Irons

The past several decades have seen rapid transformation in many areas of modern life. From the internet to social media to crowdfunding, nearly every sector in the western world uses new technologies to innovate, create, and communicate in ways that were previously unimaginable. The merits and drawbacks are arguable, but the accelerated momentum is undeniable.

There is one sector, however, that remains virtually unchanged.

Created in the mid-nineteenth century, the factory-model of education prevails to this day. Conformity, compliance and competition supplant creativity, curiosity, and collaboration. It is a stark reminder of an antiquated model designed to perpetuate the hypnotic trance that defines the consumptive paradigm of separation.

With its rigid bell schedules and age-based grade levels, the factory-model of education was designed to produce assembly line workers for repetitive tasks without the need for problem solving, analysis, creativity, or critical thought. By monotonously teaching the same curriculum at the same pace year after year, compliant thought is ensured.

The Dalai Lama recently said that, “Education is in crisis the world over. There is unprecedented literacy, yet this universal education does not seem to have fostered goodness, but only mental restlessness and discontent instead.”

With few opportunities for engaging conversations and creative problem solving, students are unable to make important connections that lead them to self discovery, goodness, and truth.

Critical thought is one of the greatest assets in a conscious, awakening mind. In a cultural paradigm that promotes sameness, critical thought challenges the status quo and inspires authentic expression, compassion, creativity, and truth.

It is in our biological nature to think, yet much of our thinking is externally sourced. The blind acceptance of the status quo ensures mindless choices, behaviours, and actions that perpetuate the consumptive patterns responsible for alarming planetary destruction. A mental realm devoid of critical thought is judgmental, uninformed, biased, and outright distorted.

When we deaden critical thought, we deaden wisdom. When we deaden creativity, we deaden the soul. When we run on knowledge alone, we destroy the earth. Author Thomas Berry states that, “Most of the destruction of the planet is being accomplished by people with PhDs.” Mahatma Gandhi’s greatest fear for his country after its freedom was realized was, “The cold hearts of the educated citizens.”

What is critical thought? The basic definition implies the ability to make one’s own decisions along with the willingness to continually challenge one’s own thinking. It also implies the non-acceptance of beliefs, opinions, facts, and statements as valid without first considering a more expansive worldview directed by internal truth. Critical thought is self-directed, self-monitored, and self-corrective. It inspires, enlightens, and empowers.

Critical thinking unites head with heart.

The cultivation of critical thought inspires compassion. Compassion elevates consciousness. Compassion in action transforms the world.

Enter unschooling, an innovative educational philosophy that eliminates the institutionalized, “one size fits all” approach of the factory model of education. Peter Gray, psychology professor at Boston College and author of Free To Learn, states that “children come into this world burning to learn, equipped with the curiosity, playfulness, and sociability to direct their own education. Yet we have squelched such instincts in a school model originally developed to indoctrinate, not to promote intellectual growth.”

Unschooling accommodates a child’s natural passion for learning by nurturing curiosity, creativity, and critical thought. In a world where self-confidence has reached all-time lows, unschooling fosters self-expression, self-esteem,