Jackson Miller

I just read Fred Wilson’s recap of the Hacking Education meeting. I am really looking forward to seeing the full transcript. While we wait for that I thought I might share how a single magazine article about self-education changed my life.

First, a little background. For whatever reason, I didn’t do well in school. I got really high test scores throughout, but failed more classes than I could count. Well, technically the reason I didn’t do well in school is because I didn’t go to many classes. It strikes me as odd that I could not go to class, not do my homework, and yet, still get > 90 percentile on “the tests”.

Long story short, I dropped out of high school in my 3rd year (1994). Since I do well on tests it was easy for me to get my GED, take the ACT, and go on to college. I failed out of college (1996). After getting my head on straight I went back to school at a local liberal arts college (1997). A year or two later I read “How I Got My D.I.Y. Degree” in Utne Reader (best link I can find). It was written by William Upski Wimsatt. He wrote the following description of self-education:

So I quit college and enrolled as a student at the University of Planet
Earth, the world’s oldest and largest educational institution. It has
billions of professors, tens of millions of books, and unlimited course
offerings. Tuition is free, and everybody designs his or her own major.

1. Recognize that you’re self-motivated.
2. Enjoy yourself.
3. Team up with others.
4. Scare away your shyness.
5. Save all your ideas
6. Act on what you learn.
7. Attend conferences.
8. Feed and water your mentors.
9. Don’t quit school if you like it.
10. Recognize that friendship is learning.
11. Be prepared to be scared.
12. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

I would like to say that I read that article, gained a sense of purpose, and set out on a journey of self-education. Of course, that is not what happened. However, that article gave me permission to think about education as a series of experiences and outcomes instead of a process to follow and be graded on. That was a key shift in thinking that heavily influenced my decision making a few months later.

In 1999 an opportunity presented itself for me to quit college and take a job organizing a national conference on community service and activism. I thought I would go back to school, but instead I continued on in a series of quick careers that taught me more than I ever learned in formalized schooling. I organized that conference, created databases for non-profit organizations, worked with political campaigns, taught high school in the inner-city of DC, helped professors use the web in their classes, worked for some startups, opened a family business, almost went bankrupt, got fired, helped Fortune 1000 companies figure out how much money they were making and how to make that data available to decision makers, became a father (again, and again, and again), and now I essentially have my dream job (trying to build a business from scratch). More importantly than the work I did was the people I had the opportunity to work with/for and learn from. I was on my second or third salaried profession before many of my peers graduated from college.

During my bouts with school, critical thinking was neither taught nor valued. It seems to only to have gotten worse with the increased weight placed on standardized testing. “Teaching to the test” is the exact opposite of what our kids need.

I am not saying that the way I did things is any better or worse than the traditional education system, but it has taught me one thing:

The most important thing I can teach my kids is how to learn; how to figure things out.

Interesting note: I selected Upski as a speaker for that conference I organized. I didn’t realize it was the same person who wrote that article until later.