(2018-09-03) Strong Consumerism, Culture, And Self-Directed Learning

Michael Strong: The least well understood aspect of my work as an educator is my deliberate effort to create adolescent communities in which the teens themselves develop standards of mutual respect that transcend the shallow standards that currently prevail in most schools, including materialism (Consumerism) and appearance.

This is a category of educational initiative that is almost entirely invisible to almost everyone... while I am largely aligned with advocates of self-directed learning, such as unschooling and Sudbury school, in their passion for liberation they also usually don’t acknowledge the importance of cultural (culture) norms for successful SDL. They are correct that most existing schooling is fraudulent and/or abusive, but they do not adequately attend to the conscious development of positive peer norms, at least in their public rhetoric (though the best ones do in their actual practice).

Montessori is closest by far - the Montessori school movement is acutely attuned to the importance of classroom culture, though largely at the elementary level. Old-fashioned military and Catholic schools also had a tradition of deliberately cultivating virtues, though this tradition has largely been lost in contemporary Catholic schools.

I've been focused on Agency - Unschooling as a key to releasing a child's natural virtue. Does Product Oriented Unschooling provide a bootstrap and then positive feedback loop for Personal Development and growth?

• is an after-school program too short, mired in the bad-place?