Time to learn your ABCs, Daddio.

This is an interesting pedagogical strategy, that is pre-hippy, of letting children learn in whatever fashion they want. The kids in this video seem to feel they'll learn more if they constantly smoke cigarettes, ride motorcycles with wild abandon, and dress like members of The Cramps. The matter-of-fact narration describe the students as being, "allowed to find out for themselves whether conventions are good or bad." 




The school is trying to induce autodidacticism in these bee-bopping, leather-jacketed, kiddos. This is an astonishing approach whose only analog is home-schooling.

I would love to see a follow-up to see where these kids featured in the video are now. I suspect that unlike members of other British boarding schools, which are infamous worldwide for psychological cruelty, – if you don't eat your meat, how can you have any pudding?– these motorcycle ridin' kids probably grew up to be innovators in whatever field they chose. Sitting in a desk all day only prepares a kid for future cubicle work.

It seems like in the 1970s there was an educational movement, influenced by the Utopian politics of the hippies, that espoused the notion that the only rule, is there are no rules. The so-called Freedom School from the counter-culture film Billy Jack is an example I can think of, but I've never met anyone in real life who went to a school like that. An early Simpsons episode has Bart conning his way into a school for "gifted students" that allow the kids to set their own agenda. It doesn't work for Bart.

Looking at the educational histories of highly successful people, like Richard Branson and Bill Gates, it's hard not to notice that they took a different educational approach. Of course, I'm not suggesting that if you drop out of high school like Richard Branson, you'll wind up running a billion dollar empire like Virgin Atlantic like he did, you'll probably be destitute. But I like the idea of having kids discover their own path.

Thanks to Disinfo.com for the link!