One of the principles behind most of the writing and speaking I’ve done about education over the past 30 years is that education is not something one produces in someone else; rather, it is something one does for oneself. Real learning is that which we have gained for ourselves, based on our own interests, motivations and timetables.

Now, that’s not news to adult educators, who regularly toss around terms like “lifelong learning”, “learning organization” and “learning society”. In the adult education world, it is assumed that learners will set their own agendas, study independently and think creatively. But the contrast between that and the way we treat younger learners is striking...and a bit puzzling. A good example of what I’m talking about is a recent study authored by academics at two post-secondary institutions that called for less learning autonomy and more “program experience” for young children in daycare in order to prepare them for school. This is the very sort of academic who, years later, has to put more programs in place to help all those teenagers with “program experience” recover from it and learn once again how to be autonomous learners in order to thrive at the post-secondary level! How much sense does that make?

People are hard-wired to be autonomous learners from birth. Developmental psychologist Robert White says we are born with an “urge toward competence” – the need to have an impact on our surroundings, to control the world in which we live. We do not just sit and wait for the world to come to us. We try actively to interpret it, to make sense of it. Of course, this drive to discover means we are constantly learning...and experiencing the pride that comes with having gained that mastery.

So then why is so hard for people – academics, non-academics and even many home-educating parents – to trust children to learn without interference? It has, I think, to do with what the British writer Roland Meighan, in his article in the November/December issue of Life Learning magazine, calls “adult chauvinism”. The way our society looks at education involves power, control and the arrogance that makes us think we always know what is best for those younger than ourselves. Until we societally adopt the principle that childhood is not a rehearsal for personhood and lose our coercive attitude toward children – especially but not solely in terms of how they learn – we will not be able to call ourselves a learning society.