20 Under 20

A few days ago I learned that my nephew’s neighbor friend, Dale, is one of Peter Thiel’s 20 Under 20. I’d heard about the program when the news first came out—this wealthy lawyer was giving $100,000 fellowships to 20 young people to not go to college. While that was the sensational sound bite story—when you look closer, you find that Thiel wanted to provide support to young entrepreneurs as an alternative to college and as a way to jumpstart their already developing ideas for businesses, products, and organizations.

When I heard about Dale, I wanted to know more—not about Thiel necessarily—but about what Dale had in mind. I don’t know Dale, but I have heard about him over the years. He was homeschooled in the unschooling philosophy. According to my parents, he was careful during his high school years to affiliate with a homeschooling charter school to assure that getting into college would not be a problem. Dale applied to colleges and was awarded a full scholarship to a small liberal arts university in the south where he looked forward to learning with like-minded people. Apparently, college was not what Dale dreamed it would be. He found it stifling. Instead of a place where thoughtful, intelligent young people come together to learn from each other and from the big ideas their professors bring them from the world, he found a place where hierarchy rules. The professor had the stage and there was little room for innovative thought, dynamic discussions, and what he understood as academic rigor and opportunities for true learning. Dale didn’t last the year at this university. When I looked up Dale on the 20 under 20 webpage to learn more about his entrepreneurial angle, I learned that he had founded UnCollege, something that aims to be a movement for people like himself who crave a kind of learning different from the college experience he had recently lived—a kind of college version of unschooling.

So thinking about Dale and Thiel’s 20 Under 20 makes me wonder about public education and who it serves and doesn’t serve. It also makes me consider the current state of public education in our nation. Isn’t our American right to publically financed schooling the great equalizer? The hallmark of our democracy? It seems that lately education has been under siege—teachers attacked for not being smart enough or hardworking enough, parents attacked for being too permissive, students attacked for not trying hard enough, schools attacked for not making sure their teachers are teaching well enough… the list goes on.

The accountability movement that arrived with No Child Left Behind has pushed schools and teachers into a standardization mindset. “All students must…” Pressures start early and don’t let up—to have all students “proficient” by grade 3 means that kindergarten is no longer about play, choice, exploration and orientation to the schooling process but is instead a place where students are expected to learn to read before the school year ends—whether they are ready or not. High schoolers aiming for college need to not only have high grades (4.0 is no longer good enough to ensure college acceptance), high SAT/ACT scores, and letters of recommendation from their teachers. They also need evidence of substantial community service, school involvement (from sports and clubs to student government) and it doesn’t hurt to have started their own business or charitable organization.

So—is college the end goal for every student? Who finds success at school—and who doesn’t? Should school be regimented, prescribed, standardized? Is that the key to academic success? What about curiosity, exploration, and play? What about the idea of learning outside of school?

As a public school teacher—I do believe in school. What I’m questioning is the ways that our schooling process expects conformity—of thought, action, language and culture.

Is that why Dale founded UnCollege?