A Quick Youth Relevance Poll: School, Church, and "Unschooled" Youths

Following up on that last post questioning whether it’s time for the very idea (and institution) of “school” to die, a thought experiment:

Create a real-world project with all the right ingredients:

• relevance: it’s not a school exercise that ends up just another class project on the web, primarily designed to make students learn content they’ll forget within ten years (to be generous), and to give teachers something to grade

• citizenship: it’s about “enlightened community self-interest,” saving our own skins from the guaranteed miseries that will define the 21st century by helping effect some prudent changes now, while (maybe) there’s still time

• fun: it invites youths to organize a youth version of the worldwide Live Earth concerts (high school, college, and other local musicians at festivals on Earth Day ’08 – plenty of time ’til April), and to create a website to stream those concerts, create meaningful digital content, and contribute to their communities through engaged citizenship (really, look at the Live Earth website and tell me why our students can’t create the same thing for the monthly global price of maybe 20 bucks – a dollar per country, say – and you know, really, it’s on me. I’ll spring for it.)

• empowerment: it pushes students beyond their schools, instead of sequestering them inside them, to experience the challenges of persuading their community to make practical changes, which is a pretty good definition of real “empowerment.” It liberates them from infantile school-based “projects” like “cafeteria reform,” “prom committee,” debating “school uniforms,” and writing for their “school newspaper” to broaden their sense of belonging to the world, not the school.

• learning: from the persuasive speaking skills to the scientific research skills to the managerial, organizational, and digital production skills, a campaign like this offers learning only limited by poor imaginations

You get the idea – especially if you’ve been reading this blog since mid-June (the “world citizenship” tag includes all those posts).

Now here’s the experiment:

Send invitations to participate to the three social groups most in touch with youth in industrialized nations:

1. Educators affiliated with schools
2. Youth leaders in churches
3. Parents affiliated with home-schooling / deschooling communities

In your own thought experiment, tell us what you think would be the answer to the questions in the following polls. (I’m aware that polls are unscientific and that school, church, and home-schoolers communities are diverse, so go with your gut, if you can. And add an “other” if I you think I left a potentially valuable youth group out.):

Me? I think the home-schooled / deschooled youths are better situated to contribute to this project than the other two. So I’m going to post this on a few of their websites.

Again, the poll is not the thing. It’s the question about which institutions create the most relevant and socially responsible youths that interests me here.

Thanks for playing. Comments would be interesting too

1. 21st Century Relevance: Some Kindred Spirits about Real-World PBL
2. Unschooled Abby’s First School? Princeton.
3. Tech Test: Do Flash Embeds Work in Bloglines and Google Reader? (Java doesn’t)
4. “Quick In, Quick Out” Podcast: PLN Class Design Discussion with Cleveland, Maryland, NYC, Qatar, and Seoul

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