When I talk about open self learning that Aarohi provides an environment for, I often get this comment – “So this is an experiment”. Some go on to ask “Has this been a success, is there proof”?
Let me make few points here:
Most of what we learn – during non school/college years – that is from 0 to 3 years age and then from 25 years till death – is actually open self learning. Three-fourths of our life cannot be an experiment.
Formal education system has been around for about 200 hundred years. Before that for thousands of years most children / adults did not go to any school. Surely all of those can’t be failures. What sounds like an experiment – the one that has been around for 200 hundred or all of human history before that?
Let me quote David Orr from a speech (he is referring to holocaust that happened in Hitler’s regime):
In most respects the Germans were the best educated people on Earth, but their education did not serve as an adequate barrier to barbarity. What was wrong with their education? In Wiesel’s words: “It emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience.”
When I see plastic bags scattered around everywhere in our country, in despair I say, “The experiment called formal education has failed”.
In conclusion: just because something is embraced by the majority, has become a system does not mean that it is better or successful. And conversely, intuitively if you find something more appealing than keeping its size aside, embrace its value!