another article on autonomous education

Some highlights from another article on autonomous ed:

The aims of autonomous education are:

To respect the child as a real person with a right to her own thoughts.
To maximise the innate impulses to learn.
To maximise children's opportunities to participate in real life contexts for learning and to succeed in a modern society.
To give full scope to successful learning systems. Particularly conversation and multi media opportunities.
To allow for undamaged emotional and personal development.
To allow children to develop such abilities as being able to define problems, ask hard questions, work independently, argue coherently and use a wide range of thinking strategies.
To establish a model for life long learning.

In conclusion

Autonomous education is a valid system of education, which allows children and young people to develop the lifelong habit of being self-directed and intrinsically motivated learners.
Autonomous education takes as its premise the idea of instruction from within.
Education is the process by which we develop intellectually as our knowledge grows and it relies on the rational development of conjecture and refutation. Autonomous education is simply that process by which knowledge grows because of the intrinsic motivation of the individual.
The core to understanding autonomous education is the primacy of intrinsic motivation.
Autonomous education, in addition to being centred in the child's intrinsic motivation, demands a broad definition of education, a step back from the products and outcomes thinking of conventional education, a positive view of children as creative and rational and an ability to conceive of problems as having solutions.
Autonomous education does not have a list of essentials, but considers that children will learn whatever they need to live the lives they choose and they will do so at ages that suit their own particular and individual processes.
Education is not something that can be demarcated from the bulk of life, but rather involves the whole of life, in both breadth and duration.
Autonomous education is not only theoretically supportable, but also a consistent legal way for parents to discharge their duties to educate their children under section 7 of the 1996 Education Act
It is the optimal approach for ensuring that a process of flexible, creative, lifelong learning is set in motion.

Full article: http://www.home-education.org.uk/ac/article-ae.htm