Its actually terrible to let kids direct their own learning, they just end up wasting their time and getting into trouble, few teachers are actually skilled enough to keep a whole classroom of kids engaged...
Yep, that's why "public" (compulsory) schooling is a joke, there is no way one single person could supply the required resources, meet the emotional needs, and hold the interest of 30-some-odd independent and active human beings with unique minds all at the same time.
As for kids just wasting time and "getting into trouble," nah. You're wrong. A whole litany of firsthand experience, expert research, and scientific study beg to differ.
When kids are not engaged they get in trouble, you know as well as I do that "research" in the educational field is almost all total bullshit. When you look at it then it turns out they are trying to base a policy change on a self report study of 8 middle school kids or that sort of thing. I have seen some teachers who can pull of the self directed thing but most simply can't. Education is one fad after another and the fads are all created by people who hate teaching so they don't have to do it anymore or those who have never taught.
The public schooling system makes it impossible. I agree. But that is not what I am talking about here. Self-directed learning does happen and children are most definitely not by default wasters of time or "troublemakers."
school as we currently conduct it is anachronistic, it's a holdover from the industrial age, in one or two generations brick and mortar schools will be gone.
Right. I am not talking about those schools!