Supported Self Direction—an experiment in over simplification
This is contingent upon an oversimplification:
There are two sorts of Ivory Towers among the many. The sort that foster a self directed education and the sort that are filled with rails, leading to a specific track based education.
For some reason or another it seems that the Ivory Town of which I am a part, one which professes a self directed education, seems to take “self directed” to mean “alone.”
I feel that this isn’t a perfect state of affairs. I think that the more self directed an education is the more support that the institution fostering and nurturing such an education ought to offer. “Support” doesn’t mean “coddling,” or “instruction;” “support” means that said institution ought to offer certain tools for navigation, not merely the space and freedom inwhich to navigate. Of course offering space and freedom is an important step, but the job is only half (perhaps this isn’t the correct fraction?) done. Without the proper tools with which to navigate an explorer is just a lonely-lost wanderer.
While perhaps not directly corollary, I feel that this issue is some how connected to a distinction that can be drawn between “community” and “collective:” A community is a symbol. A community can justify removing bits of itself for the “greater good,” while a collective is entirely itself: if any constituent bit of a collective is removed the collective is no longer what it once was. It is something entirely new.
