Petrovic & Rolstad (2017) - Educating for Autonomy

Petrovic, J. E., & Rolstad, K. (2017). Educating for autonomy: Reading rousseau and freire toward a philosophy of unschooling.*Policy Futures in Education, 15*(7-8), 817-833. doi:10.1177/1478210316681204

## Unschooling Background

* "the ideal of unschooling is unique in its promise to oﬀer such an education, but perhaps insuﬃcient." (p. 818
* " the simultaneous need for the freedom of unschooling and the structure of traditional schools." (p. 818)
* In order for students to flourish, they must have freedom, defined as "freedom is the non-restriction of options to the extent that the option one might choose does not interfere with the freedom of others to pursue their options." (p. 819)
* Rousseau's choice: "choose between making a person or making a citizen" (p.819)
* ~3% students homeschooled in US.

## Defining Terms - Alternatives to Traditional School

* Similarities
	+ Constructivist at core - " children learn by constructing their own mental models of knowledge and the world, aided by or ‘‘apprenticed to’’ more knowledgeable others." (p. 819)
* **Deschooling** (Ivan Illich) - establish learning webs (i.e. skill exchange networks) to replace schools to give students the freedom to explore their interests
* **Democratic Free Schools** - structured environment, but students have more control over when, how, and what they learn about. Students consult teachers, parents, and each other
* **Unschooling** - homeschooling method focused on freedom and self-decision making
	+ reject restrictions of traditional school
	+ based on philosophy of non-coercion (freedom) in order to develop autonomy
	+ promotion of critical democracy - "citizens see themselves as subjects. As subjects, they control their own lives. They understand their society and their role in troubling the assumptions and contradictions inherent to it, especially as those contradictions undermine the autonomy of others. In other words, a democratic education built on freedom is necessary but insuﬃcient for educating for democracy." (p. 822)
* **Homeschooling** - heterogeneous movement, with many forms and motivations
	+ Traditional Homeschooling defined as "those forms of homeschooling driven by religious fundamentalism or that simply do school at home" (p. 821), since they oppose philosophy of non-coercion

## Freedom and Rousseau (start p. 822)

* According to Petrovic and Rolstad's understanding of Rousseau, "Learning must be restricted only by natural capacities and guided by interest, self-initiated discovery, and practical experience" (p. 823)
* "Contemporarily, we might consider the example of competitive grading as instruction in inferiority and as against freedom, that is, as corruptive. Grading isn’t competitive merely because children compare grades and determine who is and who is not ‘‘smart,’’ as they do. Grading is competitive because teachers use grading to construct categories of students, categories of A, B, C...students. There is nothing natural, or neutral, or objective about this process. Some might argue that it is objective to state that 9 answers correct out of 10 on, say, a multiple choice test is 90%.That, of course, doesn’t dull the fact of categorization and the construction of competition. But, also, consider that 90% is, arbitrarily, a ‘‘B’’ in many schools." (p. 823)
	+ Rigor of schools is arbitrary and doesn't need to be this way; works to manipulate students into forced competition that reduced autonomy

## Autonomy in Neoliberal Order

* Traditional schools based on "hyper-individualism" of neoliberalism is false autonomy (students don't actually have free choice) - teach students how to maximize their economic benefit in environments of choice, competition, and personalized learning (e.g. teach students how to maximize their benefit in school by earning good grades; carries over to business to maximize profit and for consumers to minimize "cost"/effort to earn grades)
* Credentialing of education "'serves as a ritual of initiation into a growth-oriented consumer society for rich and poor alike,' transforming education along the way from an end to a means. In other words, education is not about humanity, human interest, or ﬂourishing. It is, instead, an economic commodity, and a scarce one at that, required to ‘make it’ in consumer society." (p. 825, Ivan Illich quoted)

## Conclusions

* "unschooling in school will only be possible to the extent that schools can begin to relinquish control over children’s thoughts, communications, activities, and access to people from a wide range of ages, abilities, and domains of knowledge." (p. 829)
	+ No set curriculum (at least in primary school)
	+ Engage with variety of community members (philosophers, plumbers, chemists, lawyers, etc.) and practice their work
	+ No grades, tests, assessments

## Link To

* Kuntz & Petrovic - *(Un)fixing education. Studies in Philosophy and Education*
* Petrovic & Kuntz (2016) - confusion of grading and assessment
	+ Petrovic JE and Kuntz AM (2016) Invasion, alienation, and imperialist nostalgia: Overcoming the necrophilous nature of neoliberal schools. Educational Philosophy and Theory. Epub ahead of print 18 July. DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2016.1198249