I just finished Chomsky's essay "Toward a humanistic conception of
education", which also nicely elaborates on themes evoked in the Supercool Educational Philosophy. Chomsky's main concern is that "the purpose
of education must be to permit the growing principle of to take its own
individual course and to facilitate this process by sympathy,
encouragement, and challenge...". This stands in stark contrast to the
dominating utilitaristic view of education "On this conception of human
nature the goal of education should be to train children and provide
them with the skills and habits that will fit them in an optimal way
for the productive mechanism, which is meaningless in itself from a
human point of view, but necessary to provide them with the opportunity
to exercise their freedom as consumers, a freedom that can be enjoyed
in the hours when they are free from the onerous burden of labor".
He then develops the argument that learning and even work are immanent
motivations; or as Wilhelm von Humboldt put it "to inquire and to
create - these are the centers around which all human pursuits more or
less directly revolve" (von Humboldt, 1969).
Even more to the point of learning to be: "Whatever does not
spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction
and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but remains alien to
his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but
merely with mechanical exactness" (ibid). In this case we may "admire
what he does, but despise what he is".
So the BIG question is how to encourage people to choose learning rather than to consume entertainment? Von Humboldt believes that "...all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into artists; that is, men who love their labor for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures.(ibid)"
In other words the Enlightenment project - to awake people from their “self-incurred tutelage" (Kant)- is still very current and indeed necessary. The demand driven social learning marketplace setup by Supercool School is but one attempt to provide technology which allows "to free people from the role of tools of production in the industrial process It provides the possibility, perhaps for the first time in modern history, to free human beings from the activities that, as Adam Smith pointed out, turn them into imbeciles through the burden of specialized labor" (Chomsky).
So while we of course allow the participants of the marketplace to determine what is learned on Supercool School, there can be no doubt that supercool learning is promoting an entrepreneurial mindset (and knowledge entrepreneurship in particular) and therefore a conscious choice of shaping the learners being.
von Humboldt (1969) The limits of state action, ed. J.W. Burrow, Cambridge University Press
Dr. Max Senges, Supercool Hausmeister
