Early in his college education, Dale Stephens had a radical idea: drop out. Okay, maybe not so radical – except Stephens is extremely interested in the concept of education. He simply thought he could educate himself better outside of the hallowed halls of Arkansas' Hendrix College. That’s where Stephens’ idea of "UnCollege" was hatched. It’s a self-described social movement about “hacking” education, and now Stephens is trying to spread the concept across the country from his home base of San Francisco. KALW’s Ben Trefny asked Dale Stephens to tell me more about the “UnCollege” idea.
* * *
DALE STEPHENS: We've taken a step back from college and looked at the outcomes we want to achieve. We've broken it down into three things: College gives you knowledge, a community to learn, a network, and a signal. We have resources that provide individuals with alternative mechanisms to achieve one or all of those things. We think that even if you're in college, it makes sense to take your education into your own hands. You don't want to be a part of what New York Times called in August "Generation Limbo,” the class of college graduates who are going to school only to graduate with $27,000 in debt to work at bars and collect welfare checks. That's a promise that has not been delivered upon.
BEN TREFNY: Do you think it's the fault of the colleges or the fault of the economy?
STEPHENS: I think it's a fault of the colleges, the economy, and the students. We've got costs skyrocketing, and institutions saying, "Here, come, enroll. You'll get a job afterwards and a shiny piece of paper awaiting you.” And we've got students not understanding student loans, which is unforgivable.
TREFNY: So, UnCollege works in a way, whether people are in college or not. It's a way for young people to look upon their own situation and the situation of society, and then find their way to having a job that will hopefully be fulfilling and pay the bills. So you said you helped create a framework that begins with knowledge. So how to do provide that outside of the traditional college environment?
STEPHENS: One thing UnCollege does is host salons. We host salons like we were back in the French enlightenment to get young people together to support and challenge each other as they go about hacking their education.
TREFNY: So like a reading group or a book club?
STEPHENS: It's like a modern book club that centers around a subject that enables people to connect in the real world in a way that they'd never be able to. That's one thing UnCollege is doing. There are other initiatives that are, for example, allowing people to teach classes anywhere. Something like "skill share" which is based in New York. It allows anyone to create and host classes.
TREFNY: So as I'm listening to you talk about these modern day salons, a lot of seems like you have to be very self-motivated and self-directed and focused on your goal to pursue. For example, when I was in college I took a class in civics. There was a teacher who helped us to develop our thoughts, and that helped me understand deeper levels of what I was studying. So with something like, macroeconomics, for example how – if I don't know anything about macroeconomics – and I go to a salon full of other people who don't know anything about macroeconomics, how am I supposed to utilize UnCollege to learn about this?
STEPHENS: Certainly there's nothing to say that experts shouldn't be involved. They can and should be. But experts and teachers and the like shouldn't be there to give you knowledge. They should be there for you to call on for when you need them.
The mindset that many individuals have after 12 years in the school system is that they haven't been asked what they're interested in or what their goals are. They've only been told, "This is what you need to learn.” That's when you have students asking, "What's going to be on the test?" And that's all they are interested in.
TREFNY: You essentially are not a very big fan of the education system on the whole, from basically say kindergarten up through graduate school, am I right in saying that?
STEPHENS: I am a fan of individuals defining their own education. And it's not uncommon to see unschoolers who don't learn to add or read for example until what would be considered late by traditional standards. But they always do, and they do it on their own terms. A friend of mine, for example, didn't learn to read until she was nine; she didn't have a need to. She learned to read when she discovered eBay, and wanted to sell her stuffed animals.
TREFNY: That's a market-driven motivation!
STEPHENS: Indeed, it provided enough of an incentive for her to learn to read and she's a fabulous writer today.
TREFNY: Do you think unschooling and UnCollege is for everybody?
STEPHENS: Absolutely not. It would be as ludicrous for me to say that should be everybody should be unschooled, or everybody should go to school. And ultimately, the philosophy of unschooling is one of the individuals finding their own path. Unschoolers would say if you were in school for the right reasons, because you enjoy a structured environment, because you want to interact with a particular teacher, then you are an unschooler.
TREFNY: So you're within school but you're thinking like an unschooler?
STEPHENS: Right. You're doing it for the right reasons; you're taking advantage of the opportunities because that's what make sense for you, for your goals, for your learning style.
TREFNY: I see, so for people who are really quite used to a standard path for education, whether it's elementary school, primary school, and high school and then into college and so on – how do you get them to think more freely and openly? What is the big motivation, how do you help people take a leap into thinking different about this?
STEPHENS: The motivation is that individuals have the capacity to imagine their own futures. I help them realize the structure they've been in is one they haven't necessarily chosen, but one that makes the decisions easy. That's not to say the work is easy, but the flow is easy.
If you're the kind of 12-year-old that enrolls in AP Art History, you become the sort of person who gets 800's on your SATS and goes to Harvard, and pretty soon you'll end up in medical school not exactly knowing how you got there. You might be a cardiologist in surgery, or pediatric surgery, and as you become deeper and deeper in the funnel it becomes harder to realize who you once were or even who you are now.
TREFNY: It kind of seems hard to argue against someone who ends up becoming a pediatric cardiologist. That seems like a pretty good career, helpful for the world.
STEPHENS: But if they hate it? You can have someone that contributes positively to society but is dissatisfied with their life.
Do you think higher education does what it should to encourage creative thinking? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.
