 |
||||
|
Janice Campbell
|
||||
|
Articles:
Self-Directed Education [An Exerpt from Micro-Business For HighSchoolers] It is your life. What determines your success in life is not what you learn in your head, but what you learn in your heart. When education is “free,” the deepest truth learned is that life is already paid for—the world owes it to you. Only, that “truth” is not really true. Many young people sit and receive what they are given; they do what they are told. Nothing more is required of them, so they do nothing more. It costs them nothing, and they produce little of value. You have chosen a different path. You have taken charge of your own learning. You decide what is important and what is not. But learning that creates value doesn’t just happen. You have to work at it, commit yourself to it, and make your work valuable. When you are doing something fascinating, something that takes skill and effort and that gives the potential of a return, suddenly, learning what you need to know to accomplish your purpose becomes part of being successful! But there is more. Sitting in a classroom desk year after year becomes very boring to most students. Sure you learn things that are important, but it doesn’t seem real, it doesn’t have a purpose right now. Real learning comes when the people in your life need you, when they need what only you can provide. When your genius solves the problem, when your labor provides the food on the table, when your skill gives the people you care about a better life, that is real learning. Self-directed education, then, begins with a purpose. You want to accomplish something of value, and so you reach for the knowledge and the skills you need. When you have accomplished your purpose, you know you have added value to your life and to the lives of those around you. In your junior high years, that purpose may have been centered around projects. But in your high school years, you want to take what used to be just “projects” and turn them into value that people desire to have for themselves — business-based learning. Project-Led Learning Those of you who are starting your micro-business now may not have had your junior high years filled with project-led learning. But chances are you have done many things that were not “school” that you enjoyed. And you probably learned more real stuff than you think from those hobbies. Project-led learning is choosing some project: growing a garden, raising a goat, building a go-cart, doing community service, the potential projects are innumerable. And then building your learning around those projects. You read so that you know how to grow better corn. You write stories about your goat. You study physics so you can make your go-cart go faster. Business-based learning at the high school level is actually built on the foundation of the projects you did in junior high. It is a simple matter to step over from projects to business. However, if you have not been doing “projects,” don’t worry, it will make little difference for you in the long run. You will simply need to learn your “project” (which we call your “craft”) while you learn your business. You have plenty of company. We all are still learning our craft. In the next block, you will read more about projects as you think about what business you will start. Business-Based Learning In most schools, most of your work for all those years went right into the trash can. Yes, you may have learned something, and if you did, what you learned had value. But think about this: would a stranger, walking in off the street, have paid you for the work you did because they wanted it for themselves? Think about this as well: if you got a 95% on that paper you threw in the trash can, you imagined you did pretty well. And so did everyone else. But what if you got a hair cut and the barber did 95% of it correctly, but messed up badly on the other 5%, what would you do? You would be angry and embarrassed, you would demand your money back or insist the hair cutter do it again at his own expense. You would certainly not go back. That’s the real world! In reality, a 95 or even a 98% job is a terrible failure, one that no customer would accept. Would you buy a new car that was 99% perfect, with just one deep scratch down the center of the hood? On the other hand, let’s say you got a 60% on your paper. “Man, I failed,” you thought. You were embarrassed and tried to forget all about it. But in the business world, failure is your ally and teacher. In fact, as you build your micro-business, you will expect to fail, and you will learn to do it quickly, and then keep changing what you are doing until it works! Thomas Edison failed hundreds of times as he tried to invent a useful light bulb. But he still tried again, finally got it right and changed the world. In other words, both high and low grades at school fail to give you real information. The worst possible thing you learned from all those years of work that went into the trash can is that work done for “learning” has little value; no one will pay you a dime for it. Business-based learning is different. Business is, first of all, a service. You are seeking to add value to the lives of others. Profit is the increase that you bring to the world as you serve. In fact, most businesses make their profit from returning customers, those people who benefited from their first experience and who are convinced that that particular business will add further value to their lives. The more you serve and add value to people’s lives in the beginning, the greater return you will see in the long run. Providing value for others becomes the reason to learn. You see an immediate return from what you do. When your work is valuable, it makes you feel that you are valuable. Micro-business is a wonderful way to learn. You don’t have to make a lot of money, because your primary purpose is to learn. But then, who knows, if you learn your stuff, you just might make more money than you imagined! Some teenagers will bring benefit to the lives of many people and will make a whole lot of money as they do. |
|
|||
Contact Us Privacy PolicyPartners & AffiliatesYGuide Publishing, Inc. |
||||
