My oldest daughter is also heading to Kindergarten this fall and I’m finding it a bit hard to stomach. We’re feeling the same way about the alternatives…they seem so much more difficult and expensive and constraining (in different ways than school).

That said, this particular goal doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with school. There are all kinds of online learning taking place in 43 Things and I think we’ll eventually see a growing recognition of the importance of the sorts of “informal learning” fostered here. As the web connects more people to the information, people and resources they want to learn in order to achieve their personal goals, they will stop looking to the education system to tell them how, when and what they should be taught instead.

Your initial thoughts about the “age of the amateur” are still spot on. Nearly everyone in here is an “expert”, a teacher, and/or a learner of something—we’re learning plenty from each other already, but it’s not in a form we’re used to associating with learning, and it’s hidden in a thousand different niches.

I also think there may be some overlaps between tools like 43 Things and more formal education, probably using RSS feeds pulling data from here and course management systems into some sort of personal e-portfolio like ELGG. I’ve been trying to mapsome of these ideas with limited success.

Anyway, I’d encourage you to not mark this one completed yet. I think it should continue to be a work in progress…although there may not be much you can do to speed it along.

The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity.

In its most rudimentary form, communication between client and computer could be established by return mail. In big cities typewriter terminals could provide instantaneous responses. The only way to retrieve a name and address from the computer would be to list an activity for which a peer was sought. People using the system would become known only to their potential peers.

A complement to the computer could be a network of bulletin boards and classified newspaper ads, listing the activities for which the computer could not produce a match. No names would have to be given. Interested readers would then introduce their names into the system. A publicly supported peer-match network might be the only way to guarantee the right of free assembly and to train people in the exercise of this most fundamental civic activity.

(the rest of the book is at http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html#chapter6)

...a little short.

(Although this post is over a year old, I’m commenting anyway.)

I went through the School of Education to become a teacher (why I didn’t is another story), and one of the first things I was taught was that there is a difference between schooling and education.

I think Western (and for that matter, “Westernized”) society is placing too much concern in schooling and not considering enough how it can be a tool for education overall.

I think the question is, then, “how can I empower my child to learn?” I don’t think you’ll find a teacher on the planet that honestly disagrees with the notion that parental involvement is critical to a child’s learning, at least in academic terms.

Schooling is not the be-all, end-all problem that must be fixed. If children are given the proper tools to think for themselves, I believe they will stretch forth and do what they need to do to learn and grow. While “rags to riches” and “climbing out of the ghetto” stories are not commonplace, the fact they do exist speaks to the power of the human spirit to rise above and excel even given less than ideal circumstances.