Self-directionIn an

open world

Ken Carroll

Self-directed learning:

-Autonomy, freedom, control

-You educate yourself in resource-rich environments

-You act on personal decisions and direct

experience-Not as response to

instruction

Why it’s goodRespect for the

individual

Ownership

It’s more motivating

But it barely exists in schools

At school, the individual makes essentially no decisions and simply

follows instructions

Schools will not yield the ownership, control, testing, or

mass-consumption model

And self-direction

barely exists in

wider society

Wherever you look, very few are

self-directed

Why is it so rare?

Our institutions were never designed for it

We don't know how it’s

done

But in an open world, new choices are coming

at us

When power devolves from the center to the edges, the individual gains more control, relative to political, social, commercial Institutions.

Are we ready for these freedoms?

No. We’re not ready for self-

direction

Technology alone can make us

neither free nor self-directed

And the key lies with individuals, not institutions

True autonomy comes from the

inside

If we wish to be free we have to think like

self-directed individuals

Not defer to institutions or to inner processes

Two levels of freedom

Both Rousseau and Isaiah Berlin recognized the existence of psychological

freedom

Externally driven freedoms

Political freedomsLegal freedomsSocial freedoms

You receive them

Psychological freedoms are internally driven

They don't pre-exist

You create them

How do we create them?

Through ownership of your own mental and emotional states, your psychological experience

By knowing their cause and effect you get to direct them

Through a process of self-empowerment and self-mastery

If you're not self-directed then you're directed by something else...

You're not empowered, but in thrall to your ego, emotions, assumptions, etc

You locate control over your actions outside yourself

You're not self-directed

All the social, legal, and political

freedom in the world will go only

so far.

You must possess it

psychologicallyIn order to become

self-directed