Learning: An Individual Prerogative

The Highland School, described as a “democratic day and boarding school,” summarizes nicely its school’s thesis on its homepage. My favorite passage covers the individualistic aspect of effective learning.

It is literally impossible to entice, to cajole, or to discipline a child into maturity. Maturity and personal responsibly can only be learned with freedom, time, and the democratic process. Respecting that fact allows children to appreciate that they are individually responsible for what they know now and for the rest of their lives.

I think this is an interesting approach by the Highland School. Rather than just describing their coursework, they took the initiative to define, through their eyes, what learning is and how it’s most effective per student. They continue:

Alternatively, the students who, for various reasons, perform well in traditional schools don’t realize the downside of their structured education until they have successfully navigated it, graduated from it, and entered the ‘real world’. It is only at that point that many admit that much of their education was pointless. Others are left lacking in important abilities: confidence, self-direction, and the ability to move on after failure.

While they make a point to emphasize how other schools “are doing it wrong,” individualized learning is a process that plenty of universities are catching on to. During my senior year at my university, a large majority of my coursework was dependent on activities I was already doing, and learning from, by choice.