Learning Center

If you go to my about me page, you will see that my life purpose is to help kids and teens live life purposefully and passionately. Replacing the current school system with what I call The System of Learning Centers will be the long term implementation of my life purpose. Go here to see the short term implementation.

On this page, I will post my current drafts of my plan for the System of Learning Centers.
Send me feedback on my contact me page.

Drafts are versions in working. Versions are drafts that are ready to be implemented.
Old drafts can be found here: musiclifephilosophy.com/learning-old

Draft 1.8 (Feb 25, 2012)

Description

The System of Learning Centers will provide a friendly and enjoyable environment where it will be easy for people to discover their true purpose in life, to find their interests, and to learn meaningful skills. It will do so by having staff who themselves life a purposeful life, by allowing students to explore a variety of professions, and by giving students freedom of choice in everything they do.

For the most part, this will be done at physical "centers" spread around every neighbourhood, similar to how schools are placed today. Students will be able to choose when they will go there, what they will do and when they will leave. Unlike the current educational system, attendance and use will be optional. Because of that, the centers will have to be so interesting that students will want to spend their time there. That way, the culture of the centers will be very free and relaxed but also focused and effective as the people who don't think the centers are useful won't come and the people who do come will use it well. (Premise: Most people do the things they choose to do well and try to do it better.)

There will also be an online Learning Center where users can find excellent tutorials and reference material for a variety of topics for free. It will also be a great place to connect with people who have similar interests.

How Things Will Work

At the physical Learning Center, students will have the options of attending lessons, joining clubs, participating in guided explorations, or working independently. All of those are "activities" and and are scheduled into 2 hour blocks of time. (See schedules below.) Lessons won't be held very often: only when there is a large enough group of people who want to learn the same thing. Clubs are groups of people who get together to do some activity and are run by students. Guided explorations are things like dance or choir and are led by a "leader." Independent explorations can be done in classrooms or study rooms. "Topic Guides", people who are knowledgeable about a certain topic stay in their respective classrooms and help students when they have questions. There will also be "General Guides" who will help students with things like making a schedule and choosing activities.

Cost

Using the centers will not be free. Students can pay weekly, monthly, or yearly to use the resources. New people will have a one week free trial. (Premises: Some people will only want to use the centers for a short period of time)

Process of Change

Eventually, more and more people will leave the conventional educational system to use the Learning Centers as the centers will be a lot more enjoyable than conventional schools. When enough people leave, conventional schools will probably fight to try to get their customers back. They will be fighting a losing battle as our customers will like our services so much that they would fight for us and help spread the word about us. (Premise: The Learning Centers will be so much better than the conventional educational system that almost everyone would be willing to support us.)

Soon, conventional schools will become obsolete as hardly anybody will want to spend their time there. (Premise: Hardly anybody thinks a conventional school and classroom is a fun place to be.)

Problems

There is still a problem that needs to be addressed. What about the kids who don't want to learn anything or build any real life skills and just want to watch TV and play video games? If mandatory attendance were removed, wouldn't such people be unprepared for the real world?

Although such people seem to exist, what if such behavior is caused by forced schooling itself? What if them not wanting to learn anything is caused by the association that learning = tedious and boring? (Premises: Almost all kids consider learning in school to be tedious and boring and many kids aren't exposed to learning outside of school.) Like what the unschoolers say, might such people change if they were removed from conventional school? This still needs further investigation.

Physical Learning Center

Resources

Daily Schedule

Sample Weekly Schedule

Type of Activity

Online Learning Center

The current experimental implementation is here: musiclifephilosophy.com/center/

Design