Helen Lees, a leading academic in alternative education who has written prolifically on the topic, recently wrote a very to the point piece the Big Issue about the need to separate education away from the institutions.
“We need a new model of education that starts with the idea that education is human. The internet has become extremely useful in this regard. Community is helpful, apprenticing oneself, observing someone who knows, asking questions. Education does not have walls. Go online, pick up a book. Get into it. Meet people. The journey is yours to design. It takes effort, that’s all. You will own it.”
Opinion: We do not need schools, colleges or universities for education (Big Issue, 4 Sept 2018)
Dr Helen E. Lees is Visiting Research Fellow at York St John University. Along with Professor Nel Noddings she co-edits the Palgrave International Handbook of Alternative Education. Dr Lees is founding Editor-in-Chief, of Other Education – the journal of educational alternatives. Recently she has published Education Without Schools: Discovering alternatives (Policy Press, 2014) and Home Education in the UK, co-authored with Fiona Nicholson, in the M. Gaither (Ed.) Wiley International Handbook of Home Education (2016). Her work on home education, from PhD onwards, has focused on what is needed, politically and socially, to better understand home education as a viable choice for life and education.