Is Outschool the Newest Form of Deschooling?

Classroom attendance removes children from the everyday world of Western culture and plunges them into an environment far more primitive, magical, and deadly serious. School could not create such an enclave within which the rules of ordinary reality are suspended, unless it physically incarcerated the young during many successive years on sacred territory.

Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

We ask children to do for most of a day what few adults are able to do even for an hour.

John Holt, How Children Fail

As I’ve had the chance to talk to more and more people about my book, as well as undertake a few interviews on how homeschooling might change the face of public education in the United States, my main point has become something like this: Learning opportunities surround us everywhere we go, at almost all times of the day. A good teacher or a good parent simply helps the child realize the lesson that is being offered.

When school was made compulsory for all children at the end of the nineteenth century, the reigning idea of industrial efficiency was an important factor in how schools came to be set up. We assumed it was more efficient to educate children in batches, so we created something called a “school house,” which was then divided into a set of classrooms, which we then filled with children of the same biological age.

We assumed that the only way children would learn was through the presentation of logically sequenced “material” or “content.” So we created something called a “curriculum,” which was a collection of subjects (like math or history), which was then further divided into topics or units, which were then further subdivided into lessons or concepts.

Each topic and each concept was then sequenced across time, based on assumptions such as these: addition must be learned before multiplication, local history before world history, and nouns and verbs before adverbs and adjectives. Such was the “logical” organization of curriculum, which was assumed to develop the well-trained “logical” mind.

Of course, when looked at from a strictly logical point of view, such sequencing makes sense! But when looked at from the point of view everyday life, we have to wonder otherwise. Do we learn best when things are presented to us in a logical sequence, or do we learn best when there is a problem to be overcome? When there is a situation that needs resolution? When our curiosity is peeked?

If the answer resides more with the latter options, then perhaps the best way to educate children is to simply involve them in the activities of everyday life, under an adult’s guidance, and teach them to cope with the problems and situations that arise. The key insight here is that children need more exposure to everyday life, in its many varied contexts. With the right guidance, knowledge, skills and character would be the natural by-products of such social involvement.

In many ways, these were the ideas that motivated the deschooling and unschooling movements of the 1970’s. As seen in the above quotes, Ivan Illich was deeply concerned about the consequences of a ritualized “learning,” just as John Holt was worried about the capacity for children to deal with the deadening effects of being in a space where learning is equated with following the teacher’s orders. The early homeschool movement was deeply shaped by thinkers such as these.

However, over the course of the 1980’s, when state after state witnessed court battles to determine the legality of homeschooling, the Evangelical Christian face of homeschooling emerged. It was only through the determination and backing of such organizations as the Home School Legal Defense Association that homeschooling was legalized in all fifty states. The generation that lived through these court battles emerged wary of the public school system that had threated them and their parents with, in some cases, jail time.

But the homeschooling movement of today, as I have argued in my recent piece in The Conversation, is changing. More homeschooling families are open to working with the public school system, just as more school systems are waking up to the advantages of cooperating with homeschooling families. More homeschooling families are also, I have some reason to hope, willing to look beyond the home (but away from the schools) to help their children learn about the world in which they live. In short, I think of all these emerging trends are worth watching.

Ivan Illich foresaw a day in which teachers’ main jobs would be to connect learners who had something they wanted to learn with adults who had something they wanted to share. This was something of a dream in the 1970’s, but with the socially networked society of today, it is much more feasible.

I was therefore quite interested to read about what might well be the next turn in homeschooling, which Amir Nathoo and his San Francisco-based group have dubbed “outschooling.” Here’s what they have to say about their service, in language reminiscent of Illich:

We believe that learning experiences can come in many forms, and from many sources. We help families customize their learning from a variety of institutions and teachers, public and private, professional and amateur. "Teacher" should be everyone's second identity. In the future, we think the most impactful learning experiences will continue to happen in a group setting where participants can interact with a class leader and each other. We aim to facilitate connections through shared learning experiences and so create a vibrant and safe community of self-reliant, life-long learners. We started Outschool with the belief that we can use technology to make learning more flexible and personal than before. We can now answer "what, where, when and who?" more dynamically than a single location, curriculum and class planned months or even years in advance.

I truly love the idea that we are all teachers—that “teacher” should become everyone’s second identity. When I asked Amir how his group made sure that the experiences being offered on his platform were truly educative, he responded by saying:

For screening—we manually review all the class listings and speak to all the teachers as part of our on-boarding process. We also do criminal background checks on the teachers once they get their first enrollments, before the activity starts. So far we've kicked a couple of teachers off the platform for failing to pass our quality bar. We don't necessarily require professional teaching credentials since we believe that people from many different walks of life can provide great learning experiences. And amateurs rarely talk down to their students in the way some professional educators can. Parents are also asked to submit reviews with public comments and ratings, which is probably the best way for other parents to evaluate whether the course/teacher would suit their learner.

A combination of Ivan Illich, the E-Bay system of vendor ratings, and traditional safety checks. To me, this seems like a low-barrier but high-potential solution. I look forward to seeing what the next iteration of homeschooling brings to this country—and if all parents might not one day be considered “homeschoolers” and if all public schools might not seek to support them.