ENABLING THE FREEDOM TO LEARN: An update on our own journey towards effectively containing and enabling self-directed learning

To say that 2024 was a challenging year for our ecosystem is a massive understatement, and yet now we find ourselves in such a beautiful place half way through our first term of 2025, that I think it is important to document the journey, and the learning, as a potential shortcut for others following in our footprints.

Our founding premise as an organisation was always to create an ecosystem that supported and enabled emergent learning processes for children as customised experiences (both individually and collectively), not one that taught children a fixed body of standardised content and tested them to ensure that they all remembered it the same way. When people found our ecosystem, I assumed that they understood this premise and purpose, and trusted the ever-unfolding process we were collectively engaging in. And yet, we used that problematic little word “school” to define what we were doing, and therein lay a huge problem.

I love the origin of the word “school”, which comes from the Greek word scholӗ, which means “leisure”. The word evolved over time to take on its modern meaning of “a place for discussion” or “a place of education”. A place of leisure where ideas can be discussed and explored sounds to me like a beautiful thing. This is what I wished I had had when I was growing up, and I imagined creating such a place for my children.

The problem is that our society’s collective understanding of the word school has come to mean one thing, and one thing only: It is an institution at which (standardised) instruction is given and tested. I would add the following unstated, but observable, corollary: so that your child can be measured to be acceptable by society.

Rupert Sheldrake wrote of morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields. The word “school” now so deeply embodies the resonance of the above concept, that even those who consciously choose an alternative education for their children cannot seem to let that concept go. The number of families who have arrived at our “school” over the years professing to love our philosophy and operating principles, and then finished their first sentence with “…, but what about matric?” is quite astounding.

Maybe we can partially blame the law around education, which does not recognise any other form of learning than the mainstream mandated curriculum and testing, for this fixation with a standard outcome for all children at the institution called “school”. And yet, I assumed that more of those of us who questioned the one-size-fits-all education system as a product would be open to letting that metric go. It seems I was wrong. Whilst many people seek an alternative to the mainstream, most want that alternative with the assurance of the standardised metric of the mainstream at the end. We initially believed it might be possible to satisfy these people, because we believed that children who are encouraged to explore their interests would have the capacity to achieve whatever outcomes they choose… but that is the kicker… it is not usually the children who choose the outcome of matric, it is usually their parents, and although the children want to make their parents happy, and are brought up to believe that matric is actually the purpose of all education, and therefore they have to submit to this perceived necessary burden in-spite of their lack of interest, they don’t actually have any interest in the content they have to learn in order to get the required piece of paper at the end, and therefore seldom commit whole-heartedly to it.

Over the years at Misty Meadows we have tried to offer numerous compromises to the fearful in the form of a hybrid learning approach that included teaching some “core skills” (reading, writing, maths) and some recognised subjects, like science and geography, in addition to trusting children to follow their own curiosity outside of these subjects (which included offering a range of non-academic and collaborative curiosity catalysts like MasterChef and Survivor). Repeatedly, we found a broad and persistent lack of engagement in our "core skills" subjects when presented in a variation of the mainstream way. This is not to say that children are not interested in these subjects, just that the reductive way in which they are taught as abstract concepts called “subjects”, out of context, has very little innate value as a curiosity catalyst for most children, most of the time.

We started to notice a lot of apathy and passivity emerging when we made these core skills sessions compulsory in our ecosystem. The analogy of “you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink” springs to mind. Just because you have taught someone something, that doesn’t mean they have actually learned it. Without motivating children with the carrot of good marks or the stick of failure, very few actually choose to engage fully in this form of learning. Since we did not measure and test, we noticed a lot of disengagement when we tried this hybrid approach. The children blamed the teachers for not being interesting enough, but really it was the hybrid-system that did not work. Those subjects only work in the mainstream because the outcome that is being measured is a test score, not inherent interest or engagement. The mainstream doesn’t care about the lack of interest, as long as the learner achieves a pass mark.

The other challenge we faced in our attempt to offer core skills as subjects is that we then found ourselves increasingly breaking our community down into age groups that roughly aligned with school grades to learn specific content geared to their age (as per mainstream curricula), and this meant losing so much of the mixed-age interaction that was previously an integral part of our ecosystem. As we quickly discovered, there is nothing more apathetic than a class full of 11-13 year olds – all experiencing huge physical, hormonal and emotional changes at the same time. I would hate to have to teach these ages in a mainstream school. It would seem to me that they have very little energy for adult-defined productivity at this age – they just do a lot of what adults would term “lurking”. And yet, when you mix these kids with younger children, they suddenly become so much more playful (and even enjoy being role models), and when you mix them with older kids, they watch and learn a whole new range of ways of being and thinking beyond where they may be at personally. Having again let go of age categorisation almost completely in 2025, the result if so joyful to behold. Our lived experience over 13+ years is that the mixed-age interaction is undoubtedly beneficial to all (even if not always what adults might deem respectful).

Over the years as an emergent learning ecosystem, we have done a lot of cha cha-ing backwards and forwards to define and implement what is the optimal container for children’s learning. This has sometimes looked like more structure, and sometimes like less structure, but it has always been aligned with our founding philosophy and operating principles of nurturing natural learning. Anyway, 2024 was the year of the perfect storm for our ecosystem: we had several teachers struggling to sustain the interest of their classes without the carrot or stick of marks for curriculum covered, we had several families experiencing heightened concerns about children being “left behind” their mainstream peers academically, we had several children experiencing anxiety about having too much freedom and not being told what to do with their time, nor being forced to learn a specific thing in a specific way, as per the mainstream system. We had two choices, either we had to capitulate and become increasingly mainstream to keep the wobblers happy, or we had to let go of the mainstream world view altogether.

Inevitably, what happened was a rather nasty and extreme polarisation between those who wanted school to look more like what the mainstream offers, and those who were committed to the organic process of learning that looks like whatever the child chooses it to look like (including, sometimes, nothing). Those of us who have been part of the ecosystem for a long time were very reluctant to morph into a bad copy of a bad copy of a mainstream school (there are plenty of those around already, under the guise of “learning centre” – basically a supposedly smaller and more personalised learning environment with the same learning objectives as a mainstream school). And yet, there was a lot of anger from those who felt we were not meeting their needs the way we were, and the perception that we were basically unwilling, or unable, to change in order to do so. Over the last few months of 2024, we experienced a huge purge of families and teachers from our school – it was extremely hard to live through, because there was a lot of nastiness attached, and a huge sadness for those of us still committed to our original dream, and watching it actually work in so many beautiful ways, even despite the fears and doubts of many.

Those of us who were not attached to specific, measurable outcomes were still enraptured by the daily interactions in our ecosystem. The learning was not always linear, predictable and measurable, but it was incredibly rich and complex nonetheless, and often emerged in completely unexpected and magical ways. Unfortunately, the last term of 2024 was a daily battle to maintain the integrity of the ecosystem in the face of a huge and growing wall of distrust, criticism, anger, and even highly-targeted destruction from the naysayers. We had to just baton down the hatches and allow the wave to wash over us, and wait to pick up the pieces after the wave had left.

Luckily, we who remained committed to our ecosystem are a resilient bunch. The old adage of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” remains true. Now that the pruning is complete, we are left with a smaller, yet beautifully distilled ecosystem. Our core Brains Trust had actually been meeting since the beginning of 2024 to discuss our own frustrations with our hybrid ecosystem, and our observations from our own lived experience about what was, or was not, working in the ecosystem. We were ready to let go of any and all pretences towards the mainstream. The outcome of these conversations would probably have been slower to manifest without the purge of 2024, and so for that we are now grateful in hindsight. We had recognised that there were a lot of players in our ecosystem who were not actually comfortable with the unpredictable (emergent) organic nature of our ecosystem. The voices in favour of more recognised and linear structure were getting louder and louder – including teachers, parents and children. We had experienced huge growth over the last several years, with lots of people having defaulted into our system as an alternative to the mainstream, rather than as a specific choice in itself. We have come to realise that there is not a straight line with mainstream at one end and alternative at the other. There is the mainstream, and then there are a million other potential learning paths away from that, many of which are deeply uncomfortable for those seeking certain outcomes. For example, some people still want their children to learn maths the way it is defined in the mainstream, even whilst wanting a more child-centred and caring learning environment for their family. We are not those people, and thus we cannot keep those people happy. Likewise, some people hate the impact that technology is having on our society, and want their children to be sheltered from technology. We are not those people either. Some want stricter rules about bullying. We are not those people either. Etcetera, etcetera.

 So, what are we?

We remain committed to enabling all forms of learning as an emergent process. All we are is the container in which those learning processes are held and supported.

We admit that we have made many mistakes over 13+ years in figuring out how best to support and enable natural learning, but all of those mistakes have been the signposts guiding us to better ways of enabling learning, rather than dead-end failures. Experiential learning is only wasted if you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. We do not do that. We respond to the feedback loops, and continue to evolve in response to them. Some people complain that this looks like too much change, too often, but the one thing we can be sure of is that change is constant in our world, and the speed with which we can adapt to change is what differentiates us from those stuck in a static world view that they are unwilling to let go of. How many more years do you think the mainstream will keep going with the one-size-fits-all learning and testing model in spite of growing evidence of its irrelevance? I don’t know – it seems like it may be longer than I expected, but I do know that when they finally recognise that it doesn’t actually work for our modern world, there will be people like us who can offer them insights from our own journeys into other ways of supporting and enabling all forms of learning.

 I started this essay by saying that 2024 was hard, now I want to share some of the joys of 2025 so far.

In response to the children’s concerns that they often don’t know what they don’t know, and so they end up not learning anything – we thought long and hard about how to support children to catalyse personally meaningful learning processes, and came up with a programme that we are calling Wellspring (the source of all abundance and knowledge). Our tagline is “Master Yourself”, and our commitment is to support and enable each child in our ecosystem to grow themselves towards self-mastery, whatever that looks like for them. Self-mastery does not look like a specific, measurable, standardised curriculum – it is the commitment to a process of goal-setting and accountability for each child to measure and track their own learning and growth, together with the support of a wise mentor.

Through our lived experience it has become obvious to us that optimal learning does not happen in a vacuum, and we have recognised that many children have felt intimidated by what they experienced as a too-undefined learning vacuum at Misty Meadows over the last several years. When you are not being told what to do, it is sometimes hard to figure out what you could be doing. I always say that “with great freedom comes great responsibility”, but I have come to recognise that most children need some scaffolding in order to maximise their self-directed learning potential. This does not mean the opposite is better (define it all for them and let them passively follow), it just means we need to continue to refine how to enable the freedom to learn more effectively.

We therefore began to consider the types of enabling environments in which learning processes are catalysed, and figured out how to offer as many of these as possible to children in such a way that they can still customise their choices, but with more facilitation and process-related support. We still wanted to catalyse learning processes, not dictate exactly what and how children learn. We came up with a programme of in-house catalysts that includes open access to an amazing creative makerspace and a fully-equipped kitchen (both facilitated by incredibly wise humans), we still offer wifi and computer access, we have formalised relationships with wise mentors for weekly goal-setting and accountability, and we have curated a range of courses with topics like: public speaking, problem solving, current affairs, technology, life preparation, and enneagram. We have also sourced a weekly human library of speakers from all walks of life - these incredible conversations with fascinating humans from our community have been a personal highlight of the term for me. We also offer a range of facilitated physical activities throughout the week including: hiking, yoga, body improvement, soccer and sports coaching.

We finally feel like we have struck gold on the back-and-forth journey towards optimally enabling natural learning – by finally figuring out the containment of these natural learning processes so that learning freedom can be optimised.

Already we have so many examples every day of children stretching into goals that they have set for themselves across the categories of: physical, intellectual, creative, personal and social. It has been so gratifying to hear children voice their pride in having accomplished a goal that they set for themselves that week – whether this is setting the table every night at home, or completing an academic goal, or committing to an exercise programme. Some of the goals have included getting to know more people in our community, or spending time with a granny. Some are curriculum-related, but self-chosen. There are now often children to be seen sitting self-studying… all that was missing before was the goal-setting and accountability that they were struggling to define in achievable chunks for themselves. Some children are stretching into public speaking, despite being shy. Some are loving the challenges of Ian’s problem-solving puzzles. Some love discussing current events and their implications. Some are learning about apps and coding. Some are making specific things that they have wanted to make for ages, like an outfit, or a dog’s jacket. Interestingly, we always had the materials and resources available in our ecosystem for these activities, but had not specifically defined the options for children as clearly as we have now done, nor had facilitators specifically allocated to open-ended outcomes rather than “subjects”.

And then there are lots of children who still don’t have specific outcomes in mind, but have immersed themselves in the creative processes of making things out of clay, or printing, or drawing, or book-making, or cooking in our facilitated maker-spaces… these creative processes are such clear evidence of thought made visible, and often it is children who don’t really have a clear direction for themselves who excel in the open-ended maker spaces. In these cases, the process of creation is the goal in itself right now.

And then there is our Market Day on a Friday, which is starting to gather momentum, particularly in our kitchen. The number of skills involved in producing things to sell are just wonderful to behold. There is the planning, the ordering of ingredients from the shopper, the costing of the making, the making itself (which includes problem-solving when there is no electricity, or the gas runs out mid-cook), the advertising to the customer base, the cooking process itself, the timing to have everything ready when the customers arrive, the learning from making too much and having left overs, the learning from making too little and having to improvise to satisfy customers who want to buy something when you don’t have anything left to sell (it’s amazing what they can rustle out of nothing), the profit-sharing agreements. Some have burnt their products and had to learn the lesson of failure. Some have made beautiful things, but costed them incorrectly and made no profit. Some have used expensive ingredients and made less money for more work than those who used simpler ingredients. Some have had to share their profit with someone who didn’t do the same share of work, or who didn’t participate in the clean-up afterwards. The learning from Market Prep is literally endless. What better way to learn the trouble-shooting skills that will lead to all sorts of success in our modern world? This is what we mean by providing learning catalysts and not dictating outcomes.

Isn’t it incredible how a very simple shift in focus, catalysed both by frustration and dissatisfaction from within the ecosystem, and those judging the ecosystem from outside, has resulted in such an incredible upswing to a much higher level of order with what is effectively only a few small changes? This is the beauty of an emergent ecosystem – it is always striving towards greater coherence, even when it looks like collapse in the short-term. That is why we had to keep going with this project in spite of the naysayers… we could see that the ecosystem was actually still working beautifully, even whilst many of the participants within the ecosystem were experiencing huge discomfort. Who said learning is always easy or predictable? Sometimes tsunamis and volcanoes and forest fires are necessary for the long-term benefit of an ecosystem… the people experiencing the natural disaster can’t always see that at the time, but what emerges thereafter is always progress.

I would like to thank those who hung in there through the rough times for long enough to see this new growth phase starting to emerge so beautifully in our ever evolving ecosystem. I am so excited by what we see emerging in 2025… we are definitely getting better at enabling the freedom to learn. The journey is always the destination in an emergent ecosystem, and I am so enjoying the ride.