I spent the last year working on a book called
"Hacking Your Education" which is about
my own non-traditional educational background
and it tells my story in a narrative basis,
but it also weaves the story together about
40 other people I've interviewed
who've done interesting things in their lives
without relying the form of education.
Some got college degrees, some didn't,
some never went, but the common things' that
what they do professionally
has absolutely nothing to do with
what they've learned in the classroom.
When I was in 5th grade, I was 12,
I came into my parents and said to them that
I didn't want to go to school,
well a lot of 5th grader said that,
but my parents actually took me seriously,
and they said, "You know it's your life,
you should make your own decisions,
if you don't want to go to school
the worst thing could possibly happen
as you might go back one day."
My parents spent their sleepless night
wondering about whether or not I would be able to
sit outside the school
But my mother was a school teacher,
my dad, an engineer both products off the system,
but ultimately they allowed me to become an unschooler,
the self directed from home schooling.
So instead of going to middle school and high school,
I found mentor that know businesses,
I did internships, I lived in France for half a year,
I volunteered my community,
I was able to do things that I would've never been able
to do, had I been inside a classroom.
Unschooling is an educational philosophy
that started back in the 1960s,
the term was coined by a guy named John Holt,
he's a teacher in New York City for 27 years,
and he's been asking the question you normally ask
when you talk about improving something,
he's been asking "How do We Make School Better?"
and that came up with all the traditional solutions
of getting class size smaller,
personalizing the education,
and he eventually came out with a conclusion that
that was not the right question,
the right question to ask was rather the outcome
do we really want from school,
do we want schools to form a community?
Do we want to get social equalizer?
Do we want it to deliver knowledge?
So, based on those outcomes,
what is the best way to actually achieve those outcomes?
Now I go back to this,
because people like to talk about education reform
that changes the education system today,
but I want to remind you all that education reform,
particularily ideas about anti-institutional educational
are not new.
A. S. Neil started a school in UK in 1920s
called Summer Hill,
Neil wrote a book by the same name in 1960
and that book, about a democratic free school,
sold 3 million copies of the 13-year period
from 1960 to 1973,
Summer Hill is a democratic free school that teachers...
that there's no curriculum,
students hire the teachers,
and it's student-center in any possible way.
John Holt sold a magazine called
"Growing without Schooling" in 1970s
to push his idea into the world,
and the interesting thing is that the magazine
was actually deliver to your mail box,
in a brown paper bag,
as those content would be as the objectional
to the postmaster, or to your neighbors
as an pornography,
and that's how crazy and radical this idea
about turning education were.
The real question here is not about whether you should
go to school or whether you should leave school,
is about whether or not we trust people
on innate capacity to be curious.
And that's the real question,
do we think people need to be put into a system,
to be guided and molded and tested and shaped?
Like a bag of flour?
Or do we think that to left you own your devices
and you'll be able to ask questions,
answered that, and came up with answers.
One point that I want to stopped on and clarify is that
"homeschooling" is not the same thing as "unschooling"
my parents didn't pull me out of school
because they didn't want to teach me elvolution
it's not the case at all.
Leaving school was my idea,
and unschooling is something that has done
for educational reason.
Another good thing to clarify is that unschooling
and leaving school doesn't mean that
I've learned in a solitary way,
I wasn't sitting in my room, on my computer,
looking a lecture for 16 hours a day.
I had a very vibrant community who were around me,
who were able to support me in the process,
so like I mentioned, I did things like
running political campaign,
I organized club of groups,
I played in band, I helped in the library in my hometown,
I went to conferences, I worked in silicon valley start ups,
and eventually even after spending 6 years
outside the system, I still went to college,
and that's because it's what I thought
the next step was, even as an unschooler,
I justify my choice to leave school by saying
"Hey my friend Sara was unschool
and she got in to Harvard,
so it must be OK for me too, right?"
My parents have gone my peers are going,
that's what the society expects you to do
if you want to be an educated member of society right?
And I found that in college the same frustration
I had in my 5th grade classroom was still present.
People were not because they actually wanted to learn,
because they knew what they are curious about,
but because they didn't know what else to do
with their lives, and that's perfectly normal,
I don't know what to do with my life,
I'm 20, and most 20-year old don't either,
but if you don't know what to do with your life,
they are a lot cheaper ways to spend for 4 years
than in the institution of higher education.
And one of the massive problems is that
the cost of college is rising astronomically,
and the US loan for the cost of college since 1980
has got more than 350% more than any of good economy,
like transportation, healthcare, medical cost
and it's quickly being followed by
the cost of education in other countries,
the UK triple tuition fees last year,
they protest all across South America right now
about the rising cost of college,
and it's not hard to imagine that other places won't
soon will have to raise university tuition fees
to be sustainable.
The other thing US students
take some 27,000 in debt upon graduation,
which is an astronomically number
and it really forces you in one path
if you want to be able to pay back
your loans when you graduated.
Student loan debts is now surpassing credit card debts,
that's more than 1 trillion dollars,
which is pretty scary and means we might
have a crisis on our hands
that could be bigger than the housing bubble.
But the problem is not just the cost is rising,
but the quality is declining at the same time,
this is why the New York Times has writing article
about "Generation Limbo",
the generation of college students who are under 25,
who hold college degree,
of them 22.5% are unemployed,
the other 22% are working in jobs
that don't required their degrees,
they didn't except to go to Yale
and get a English degree just to work in Starbucks.
There's been a referent grade inflation,
6 years ago only 15% of grades were
going to be over A, today more than 40% are.
And academically adrift was something
on the NYU last year, from that 36% of students over
the course of 4 years of college showed no improvement
whatsoever on skill like critical thinking,
complex reasoning and writing.
So challenges are not just about the cost,
but the quality is plummeting as well.
My argument is not that the school should go away,
but rather there should be more ways for people
to forge multiple paths.
About a week before I left college,
I was having dinner in the cafeteria,
a friend of mine was asking serious question about
how and what am I going to do when I left school,
and finally he came out with these question,
which I found that was a little bit funny,
not because that he thought that going to
date girls and drink beers was main purpose of college,
actually it's like one of the best reason
to go to college honestly,
but rather he didn't understand that's something
you can do outside the university.
You can get drunk, and go on date
in the real world too, right?
You don't have to pay for 40,000 dollars a year
to do that, just as the same,
you don't have to pay 40,000a year to learn.
And I finally got about this
i finally came up with a good comeback
that I prefer guys with champagne
and there was more than in San Francisco,
but then everyone was a Arkansas while I was at college.
So I started writing publicly about
my frustration at uncollege.org
and sort of this movement is grown
over the course of past year
and now we provide resources
and create real world educational experiences
that people want to learn outside the university,
we provide academic camps,
get people all over the world to learn,
about the skills of self-directed learning,
and next year we also want to make
"Gap Year Programme" to take an entire whole of people
through the entire process of
what not going to school might look like.
But what we're doing is a little small piece
of the greater trend,
which is that education is becoming decentralized.
You used to go to school and get everything from it,
your professors, your teachers,
your classes, the network, the community,
and now those things are slowly being taken apart.
It used to be that you go to a lecture
and get that knowledge, and now MIT's
putting their courses online for over 11 years,
and more recently we see things like course room ...
but it also means that is pretty boring
the knowledge bit is easy to access.
What's more interesting is ultimate ways to find community,
looking in incubator to see what things can surprise there,
and look in things like skill shelter
which enable people to create real world classes
and that's how decentralizing parts of the university.
The last and probably the most difficult part
of the university to decentralize is its secondary effect.
College is an effective function as a form of currency
to show as a proxy to employers that you're confident
and can accomplish something in the world,
but already if you want to be a programmer
or a designer in Silicon Valley,
you don't sent your resume and your transcript,
you upload your portfolio to a web site like
"Github" ,"Stack Overflow" (09:43) ....
and prove your knowledge through
contributing to that community to give
a kind of value with your work in real time.
Education is changing rapidly than we can possibly imagine,
and I think when most people talking about
changing the education system
they think about this in a wrong way,
the point that I want to drive home here is,
to me is not changing the education system,
it's about removing the education system.
20 years in the future, there won't be an education system,
because current education causes a fraction of
prices of college education,
and it's magnitude more meaningful.
Thank you very much.