Episode notes
A. What Is Self-Directed Education?
Education is the sum of everything a person learns that enables the person to live a satisfying and meaningful life. Most of education for everyone occurs naturally and efficiently outside of formal schooling, through self-directed play, observation, exploration, conversation, and collaboration.
Children come into the world biologically designed to educate themselves. Their curiosity, playfulness, sociability, and wilfulness are all shaped by natural selection to serve the function of education.
If we look back far enough, Self-Directed Education is traditional education. Coercive schooling is a historical blip that served societal purposes that are now counterproductive.
B. The Educative Instincts
1. Curiosity—the drive to understand.
2. Playfulness—the drive to practice and create. ...