Daniel Pink on Homeschooling

Manisha and I are reading "Free Agent Nation" by Dan Pink. He has many interesting observations about free agents (the Self-employed, Freelancers, Independent Professionals, Consultants, Nanocorps, Solopreneurs, Small Business, Home-based Business). Homeschooling figures prominently in his analysis of where the American (& increasingly global) economy is going:

The main crisis in schools today is irrelevance. And the main problem with most education solutions is that they incrementally improve Taylorist [assembly-line] solutions for a Tailorist [individuated] workforce. Of all the institutions in America, schools have least adapted themselves to the free agent economy. Watch for more middle-class families opting to home-school their children on their own terms and consistent with their own values. And expect more Americans to being questioning whether formal schooling should be compulsory and whether a college degree is necessary.

In Chapter 15, "School's Out: Free agency and the future of education", he writes:

[...] home schooling is almost perfectly consonant with the four values of the free agent work ethic [...]: having freedom, being authentic, putting yourself on the line, and defining your own success.

Needless to say, I agree with his overall analysis and recommend the book highly. Now I want to go read his newer book "A Whole New Mind".