*My friend is an English teacher and her take is that school is the best place to learn the foundation and experiment with them SAFELY. Learning in the real world as a young learner involves a lot of possible safety issues and thus, risk management.* Yes, from the very begging school was intentionally created to be a "miniature" or "experiment field" for the real society -- so that students can play around without real-world consequences. However, from my experience, the problem is that people tend to forget the fact that school is a temporary imitation of reality -- instead, new rules and systems grow (grades, curricula, hierarchy, etc.) -- many of which non-exist in the real world -- and the illusion becomes the new reality. It's somwhat similar to the post-modernist idea of "simulacra" replacing reality by Baudrillard. From my perspective, school also don't really provide the opporunity to "experiment" with the knowledge we learned -- except applying them to pass exams. Again, exams are supposed to be simulacrum of the challenges we will encounter in real life, but after all these years exams have grown only more and more divergent from reality, as least according to my observation. There is this growing disconnection between what we do at school and what we will face in reality. Lots of research of have proven this. The is always a balance point between "safety" with "learning", and I do agree with you that most learning happens in discomfort -- when old beliefs are shattered and challenged. Especially as the child grows older, I see no reason to keep students in school if they want to learn by directly going into the world. --- *Why is the 90-minute/class model so popular? / why specialization is the chosen scheme for our world these days. I was just dicussing this with Will the other day (he was at our school for a few days for a special program), and he gave me a very powerful explanation -- it is used on students so that they get used to the time shift in factories from industrial eras. I belive the deeper explanations lie in the fact we are still, in a large sense, living in a post-industrial world -- a lot of our thinking (in management especially) is still heavily influenced by the idea that humans are machines to be carefully managed and specialized the maximize the profits / products of the factory, as proven by Adam Smith. --- *Not every young learner is aware about and interested in learning about everything.* / *a "forced" education is actually necessary for students to become versatile and self-sufficient?* I am not saying that every one *needs* to be versatile. Instead, the point is to illustrate that each student should be able to learn to do whatever they want, and there should not be a standard curriclum. I think a child given freedom naturally develops versatile skills—those relevant to their actual life and needs. Skills should emerge from authentic needs and curiosity during direct world engagement, not curriculum mandates. Versatility is a natural result of exploration, not an enforced objective. Versatility is good and good only because it helps us survive better in this ever-changing world. A think a child left to deal with the world on its own will naturally learn this lesson. --- *Classes can't help one learn? Meaning one can only learn on their own?* This is indeed a very challenging and anti-intuitive claim that I am making. First of all, this is based on my personal expereince which is again as I stated in the preface, built on my unique experience and priviledges. So this is not a universal claim. However, the more universal underlying message this: every one has different ways of learning that suits them. We always assume that classes is where learning happens, simply because that's where most students learning -- by listening to another adult talking and writing on a blackboard. Passing knowledge orally has been the deafult way for centuries -- until the recent development in information technology opens up new possibilities. Online textbooks are more easily-accessible; Platforms like Khan Academy and Youtube popularize online courses. Teachers are no longer the sole source of knowledge and learning. Learning can still happen in classrooms, and there are certain aspects of in-person mentorship that cannot be replaced by online classes -- But again, the idea is simply that technology has opened up new possibilities for learnin (reading textbooks, watching videos, doing web research, note-taking, chatting with AI, etc.) that one doesn't have to be in a classroom to learn. My goal is simply to illuminate these possibilities for those who haven't recognized them. --- *How would you approach students who "don't want to learn anything"?* I think underlying assumption of this question is that learning requires intentional effort. Interstingly, I asked the same question to the head of school in Sudbury School Ammersfoort in the Netherlands, and the response I got was "let them play". Learning is not an action to take; it's a state of being. There is not one moment of life that we live we are not learning. It's only just some learning we recognize while some others we don't. There is nothing as "no motivation to learn". Someone who only wants to play video games find great joy and learn from playing it. One day he might get bored and look for other interesting things to do with his life. All he needs is a little bit of freedom to play game on his own, and figure out if that's what he truly wants, or does he want to play just as a sign of rebellion for that short amount of dopamine injecction. --- For the books -- no I didn't read them "intentionally" for the writing of this book. Instead, they are all books in the field that I enjoy (educaiton, management, etc.), and my book is built upon all of their ideas as I read more and more of them -- ideas emerge together and shaped my worldview.