In 2000 an American high school student by the name of Marcus Arnold became the leading law expert on the Internet’s most popular knowledge sharing site, AskMe.com. Despite having no formal education or legal training, Marcus managed to acquire his lofty status on AskMe.com after falsely registering as a “law expert.” Marcus simply had the motivation to study law, and the resources to do so were within his grasp. (For more on this story, see Michael Lewis’ Next.)

In the late 1970’s, a high school dropout by the name of John Robison became the lead concert technician for the band Kiss, devising some of the coolest guitars and special effects ever created. John later became an engineer for a toy company, and now restores high-end cars for a living. (For more on this story, see John Robison’s Look Me in the Eye.) How did John manage to learn so much about engineering without ever setting foot in a technical school?

I work as a technical consultant at a software company. Some of the most senior technical positions in my department are occupied by people who have had no formal training in programming, and I can assure you that they are amongst the most skilled and knowledgeable employees in the department. As with Marcus and John, they were able to successfully learn outside a school system because they had the means and the motivation to do so.

Such stories lead me to ask the question: What good are schools if we are able to learn - perhaps just as well if not better - outside school walls?

Sociologist Alvin Toffler explains that schools in their present form were originally devised as a solution to instill characteristics that would make for good factory workers in the 1800’s. Classes run in shifts, bells ring, attendance and shift breaks (recess) are taken, educational material is distributed and taught en masse in a pre-packaged, static format. Toffler also explains how schools are one of the slowest evolving institutions in America, slower even than most other government bureaucracies and regulatory agencies (see Toffler's Revolutionary Wealth). 

Humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers explains that one of the reasons why America thinks it needs schools is due to the normative impact behavioral psychology has had on our thinking. Behavioral psychology claims that man is born with only the barest of innate tendencies, and that he learns primarily by means of rewards and punishments. Sound like school? That’s because most schools operate on the principle that people will avoid learning unless coaxed by means of rewards and punishments, such as grades. Regardless of whether we have an inbuilt instinct to learn or not, schooling teaches us that grades, curriculum, and teachers are required in order to do so.

Religious schools that operate based on the assumption that human nature is inherently evil trust people even less to learn by merit of their own personal motivations…

A third take on human nature and schooling is that man, in the absence of external influences (and complexes, though that is a whole other ballgame), will take it upon himself to learn in harmony with his own personal growth requirements. Some studies have shown that this self-directed method of learning can be quite effective (see Carl Roger's Freedom to Learn). Schools that allow for student self-motivation, self-direction, and self-assessment to guide the learning process - in environments where "teachers" exist merely to facilitate student learning in a dynamic way - make for students that actually look forward to learning, and don't as often forget what they learn. (Freedom to Learn provides examples of such educational systems.)

This is not a new viewpoint on education. Aristotle touches on it in Nichomachean Ethics, and Rousseau wrote passionately about it in On Education. Oxford University is one of a minority of educational institutions that takes advantage of such a “person-centered” approach towards learning. This pdf provides an informative account of how Oxford's tutorial system works. I found some of the stories to be quite interesting.

Yet person-centered schools can be expensive and they are definitely in short supply. So what to do? One option is not to go to school at all, and instead to hire mentors and work on projects by oneself or with groups of like-minded individuals via the Internet.

In Deschooling Education, social critic Ivan Illich states that a proper education requires four things: resources (books, equipment), peer groups, skill exchanges (places where skills can be learned), and mentors. Without going into an exhaustive examination, it is my opinion that the Internet facilitates the first three, and is on its way to facilitating the fourth.