Alfie Kohn: My Wife Is A Great Doctor With Bad Grammar And Poor Math Skills. Awkward.

In his book 'What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated?' Kohn asks deep questions about the nature, function and goal of education that have no satisfactory answers. Are you well-educated because you know a lot? Or is it because you know something really well? Was your school better than the others? Maybe you just know a few things but were never taught any of them?

As a result of this vagueness, there persists troubling measures of educational competency. Some of the prominent measures are standardized test results, number of acquired job skills or even knowledge acquired barring critical thinking. Measuring a student's educational competency by these narrow parameters is dangerously close to measuring their worth as laborers. The information required to do well on a standardized test can be both acquired and lost quickly. Furthermore, test-taking skills neither develop nor examine a student's ability to just be a good person who will lead a meaningful life. 

To tie this back to Selwyn's definition of formal and informal education, it seems that formal education equips its students to hold generic jobs. It doesn't necessitate critical thinking about morality, happiness or productivity. Students have a choice between learning to appreciate facts and learning how to think. Kohn has shown his conviction that formal education is far more likely to lead to the former than the latter. 

Billy Wimsatt: Why do I have to go to school?

From the very cover of his book 'No More Prisons', Wimsatt displays his disregard for conventions. Wimsatt speaks from personal experience and facts supported by data to emphasize the importance of informal learning. He takes it a step further than Selwyn. He not only recognizes the effectiveness of informal learning but also shows that for some students, informal learning is more effective than formal learning. He also identifies groups of people for whom informal learning is the only effective. Financial barriers to education can be overcome through homeschooling so long as the parents of the household are given minimal resources and are invested in their child(ren)'s education. Motivational barriers can be overcome through free exploration of interests. It is entirely possible that their interests will lead them to drop out of high school or college. While the common fear is that a high school drop-out is likely to fail in 'real life', Wimsatt refers to famous drop-outs who built amazing careers. The frustration of a student trying to adjust to the traditional school environment can manifest itself in harmful and potentially irreversible ways. Whereas rejecting institutionalized education has allowed genuinely brilliant people to find their strengths and lead a rewarding life.