"Hacking Your Education" which is about

my own non-traditional educational background

and it tells my story in a narrative basis,

but it also weaves the story together about

40 other people I've interviewed

who've done interesting things in their lives

without relying the form of education.

Some got college degrees, some didn't,

some never went, but the common things' that

what they do professionally

has absolutely nothing to do with

what they've learned in the classroom.

When I was in 5th grade, I was 12,

I came into my parents and said to them that

I didn't want to go to school,

well a lot of 5th grader said that,

but my parents actually took me seriously,

and they said, "You know it's your life,

you should make your own decisions,

if you don't want to go to school

the worst thing could possibly happen

as you might go back one day."

My parents spent their sleepless night

wondering about whether or not I would be able to

sit outside the school

But my mother was a school teacher,

my dad, an engineer both products off the system,

but ultimately they allowed me to become an unschooler,

the self directed from home schooling.

So instead of going to middle school and high school,

I found mentor that know businesses,

I did internships, I lived in France for half a year,

I volunteered my community,

I was able to do things that I would've never been able

to do, had I been inside a classroom.

Unschooling is an educational philosophy

that started back in the 1960s,

the term was coined by a guy named John Holt,

he's a teacher in New York City for 27 years,

and he's been asking the question you normally ask

when you talk about improving something,

he's been asking "How do We Make School Better?"

and that came up with all the traditional solutions

of getting class size smaller,

personalizing the education,

and he eventually came out with a conclusion that

that was not the right question,

the right question to ask was rather the outcome

do we really want from school,

do we want schools to form a community?

Do we want to get social equalizer?

Do we want it to deliver knowledge?

So, based on those outcomes,

what is the best way to actually achieve those outcomes?

Now I go back to this,

because people like to talk about education reform

that changes the education system today,

but I want to remind you all that education reform,

particularily ideas about anti-institutional educational

are not new.

A. S. Neil started a school in UK in 1920s

called Summer Hill,

Neil wrote a book by the same name in 1960

and that book, about a democratic free school,

sold 3 million copies of the 13-year period

from 1960 to 1973,

Summer Hill is a democratic free school that teachers...

that there's no curriculum,

students hire the teachers,

and it's student-center in any possible way.

John Holt sold a magazine called

"Growing without Schooling" in 1970s

to push his idea into the world,

and the interesting thing is that the magazine

was actually deliver to your mail box,

in a brown paper bag,

as those content would be as the objectional

to the postmaster, or to your neighbors

as an pornography,

and that's how crazy and radical this idea

about turning education were.

The real question here is not about whether you should

go to school or whether you should leave school,

is about whether or not we trust people

on innate capacity to be curious.

And that's the real question,

do we think people need to be put into a system,

to be guided and molded and tested and shaped?

Like a bag of flour?

Or do we think that to left you own your devices

and you'll be able to ask questions,

answered that, and came up with answers.

One point that I want to stopped on and clarify is that

"homeschooling" is not the same thing as "unschooling"

my parents didn't pull me out of school

because they didn't want to teach me elvolution

it's not the case at all.

Leaving school was my idea,

and unschooling is something that has done

for educational reason.

Another good thing to clarify is that unschooling

and leaving school doesn't mean that

I've learned in a solitary way,

I wasn't sitting in my room, on my computer,

looking a lecture for 16 hours a day.

I had a very vibrant community who were around me,

who were able to support me in the process,

so like I mentioned, I did things like

running political campaign,

I organized club of groups,

I played in band, I helped in the library in my hometown,

I went to conferences, I worked in silicon valley start ups,

and eventually even after spending 6 years

outside the system, I still went to college,

and that's because it's what I thought

the next step was, even as an unschooler,

I justify my choice to leave school by saying

"Hey my friend Sara was unschool

and she got in to Harvard,

so it must be OK for me too, right?"

My parents have gone my peers are going,

that's what the society expects you to do

if you want to be an educated member of society right?

And I found that in college the same frustration

I had in my 5th grade classroom was still present.

People were not because they actually wanted to learn,

because they knew what they are curious about,

but because they didn't know what else to do

with their lives, and that's perfectly normal,

I don't know what to do with my life,

I'm 20, and most 20-year old don't either,

but if you don't know what to do with your life,

they are a lot cheaper ways to spend for 4 years

than in the institution of higher education.

And one of the massive problems is that

the cost of college is rising astronomically,

and the US loan for the cost of college since 1980

has got more than 350% more than any of good economy,

like transportation, healthcare, medical cost

and it's quickly being followed by

the cost of education in other countries,

the UK triple tuition fees last year,

they protest all across South America right now

about the rising cost of college,

and it's not hard to imagine that other places won't

soon will have to raise university tuition fees

to be sustainable.

The other thing US students

take some 27,000 in debt upon graduation,

which is an astronomically number

and it really forces you in one path

if you want to be able to pay back

your loans when you graduated.

Student loan debts is now surpassing credit card debts,

that's more than 1 trillion dollars,

which is pretty scary and means we might

have a crisis on our hands

that could be bigger than the housing bubble.

But the problem is not just the cost is rising,

but the quality is declining at the same time,

this is why the New York Times has writing article

about "Generation Limbo",

the generation of college students who are under 25,

who hold college degree,

of them 22.5% are unemployed,

the other 22% are working in jobs

that don't required their degrees,

they didn't except to go to Yale

and get a English degree just to work in Starbucks.

There's been a referent grade inflation,

6 years ago only 15% of grades were

going to be over A, today more than 40% are.

And academically adrift was something

on the NYU last year, from that 36% of students over

the course of 4 years of college showed no improvement

whatsoever on skill like critical thinking,

complex reasoning and writing.

So challenges are not just about the cost,

but the quality is plummeting as well.

My argument is not that the school should go away,

but rather there should be more ways for people

to forge multiple paths.

About a week before I left college,

I was having dinner in the cafeteria,

a friend of mine was asking serious question about

how and what am I going to do when I left school,

and finally he came out with these question,

which I found that was a little bit funny,

not because that he thought that going to

date girls and drink beers was main purpose of college,

actually it's like one of the best reason

to go to college honestly,

but rather he didn't understand that's something

you can do outside the university.

You can get drunk, and go on date

in the real world too, right?

You don't have to pay for 40,000 dollars a year

to do that, just as the same,

you don't have to pay 40,000a year to learn.

And I finally got about this

i finally came up with a good comeback

that I prefer guys with champagne

and there was more than in San Francisco,

but then everyone was a Arkansas while I was at college.

So I started writing publicly about

my frustration at uncollege.org

and sort of this movement is grown

over the course of past year

and now we provide resources

and create real world educational experiences

that people want to learn outside the university,

we provide academic camps,

get people all over the world to learn,

about the skills of self-directed learning,

and next year we also want to make

"Gap Year Programme" to take an entire whole of people

through the entire process of

what not going to school might look like.

But what we're doing is a little small piece

of the greater trend,

which is that education is becoming decentralized.

You used to go to school and get everything from it,

your professors, your teachers,

your classes, the network, the community,

and now those things are slowly being taken apart.

It used to be that you go to a lecture

and get that knowledge, and now MIT's

putting their courses online for over 11 years,

and more recently we see things like course room ...

but it also means that is pretty boring

the knowledge bit is easy to access.

What's more interesting is ultimate ways to find community,

looking in incubator to see what things can surprise there,

and look in things like skill shelter

which enable people to create real world classes

and that's how decentralizing parts of the university.

The last and probably the most difficult part

of the university to decentralize is its secondary effect.

College is an effective function as a form of currency

to show as a proxy to employers that you're confident

and can accomplish something in the world,

but already if you want to be a programmer

or a designer in Silicon Valley,

you don't sent your resume and your transcript,

you upload your portfolio to a web site like

"Github" ,"Stack Overflow" (09:43) ....

and prove your knowledge through

contributing to that community to give

a kind of value with your work in real time.