Reform Education with Adventure

dreaming of a different world

One of my favorite education writers, Freddie deBoer, recently asked what success in American education might look like.

The answer: making sure that kids at the bottom are no longer failing.

He describes three popular visions for making this happen:

• Equality of outcome

• Proportional representation (across race, class, gender, etc.)

• Equality of opportunity

But each of these visions has a fatal flaw. Equality of outcome penalizes high achievers. Proportional representation doesn’t change the harsh reality for low-achievers, regardless of identity. Equality of opportunity is impossibly difficult to measure and ignores genetic influence. (See Freddie’s piece for nuanced discussion of each.)

The root problem, Freddie believes, is that we measure educational success and failure with academic testing, which is “not a very comprehensive or coherent way to think about education.”

Testing gives us information about how students perform relative to some benchmark and to each other, but can’t in and of itself define how well our education system functions in broader, societal terms. Unfortunately, you can’t determine success or failure until you define what exactly success would look like, and I don’t think we’ve done that as a society. At all, really.

He leaves us with a tantalizing question: What would success in American education mean if we defined it in mundane, everyday terms?

---

Another favorite writer, the unschooling mom and serial entrepreneur Penelope Trunk, recently argued that no data correlates school success to life.

Which is to say: no good evidence connects academic achievement to adult flourishing, which is more about the quality of one’s relationships.

Penelope cites the positive childhood experiences (the opposite of adverse childhood experiences) that lead to better adult mental health, none of which are academic:

• Being able to talk about feelings with family

• Feeling supported by family in difficult times

• Participating in community traditions

• Feeling as though one belongs in high school

• Feeling supported by friends

• Feeling as though at least two non-parent adults truly care

• Feeling safe and protected by adults at home

Penelope asks how society might “support parents in their quest for calm families” rather than demanding that parents juggle the “impossible roles” of caregiver, employee, and homework cop. (I ask myself this when I contemplate having kids.)

If school isn’t about preparing kids to flourish as adults what is it for? Here, Penelope pulls no punches:

The pandemic laid bare why we accept that school has no long-term proven benefits: the short-term benefits to companies. The only way companies can pay low wages is to have children in school all day so parents don’t have to pay for child care. School is universal, government-subsidized child care.

Which makes me think of a New York Times headline article I saw in May 2020:

(red underlining is mine)

No educator wants to be told that they’re running an elaborate daycare center. But it’s also true that any school that offers academics without the childcare function is not a school that many families will choose.

---

Finally, my friend Chris Balme—another excellent writer—recently stumbled upon a book in Paris by a popular Italian author: 50 Adventures to Have Before You’re 14.

Translating from French, Chris recorded the titles of the adventures, including:

• feed at least seven different animals

• organize a treasure hunt

• make a giant soap bubble

• grow a plant from seed

• create a top-secret club

• follow someone without them seeing you

• explore an abandoned ruin

• orient yourself with a compass and map

• get to the end of a hard video game

• let yourself be soaked to the skin by a storm

• put on a play

• make bread (and eat it)

• explore your favorite town while blindfolded

Chris shared this discovery with me because we’re connoisseurs of such lists—see Chris’s 50 Essential Experiences and my 81 Adventure Challenges for bigger and bolder examples—and we both believe in the power of adventure to motivate, inspire, and educate.

“Adventure” can be big or small. It can be international travel or getting to know your own city. It can be outdoor or indoor, active or contemplative, safe or dangerous, interpersonal or intrapersonal. What it cannot be is tedious, tired, coerced, or overly scripted.

Some school activities are adventures, but mostly they’re the electives: sports teams, after-school clubs, and special classes with special teachers. Young people who elect to attend something are far more likely to buy in, pay attention, and work hard.

Adventures are the oldest form of “social-emotional” learning. They’re what atypical education reformers like

Jonathan Haidt

(currently beating the war drum for more screen-free play) and

Peter Gray

(noting the steady decline in children’s mental health) and

Lenore Skenazy

(who infamously let her 9-year-old ride the NYC subway alone) what more of in the world. Adventures should not be relegated to weekends, holidays, or special places like summer camps and forest schools.

I write these words from a dead-quiet theology library in Innsbruck, Austria, which I discovered on Google Maps. I wasn’t sure if they’d let me in as a non-student, so I cycled across the city, wandered through the halls, chatted in English with a friendly librarian, and now find myself happily typing away. My daily micro-adventure.

Cheers from Innsbruck. (Yes, this is an adventure.)

Long-time readers of this publication know that I’m driven by the novelty, uncertainty, and emotion of adventure. (The newsletter was originally titled Notes on Adventure, after all.) I’m certainly biased toward adventure, but I don’t think I’m alone.

---

Now let’s connect Freddie’s and Penelope’s critiques to the notion of adventure.

What if we made real-life adventure—rather than academic testing—the core element of education?

The places we call school could still exist, offering universal child-care and vital social services. But instead of academics, adventure might take center stage. Students could spend their time engaging clever problems, navigating group dynamics, and exercising a wide range of creative skills. Their daily lives could feel like an ever-expanding series of wild challenges, scavenger hunts, escape room-style puzzles, and exploratory missions into the broader world.

In this world, adults might act less like conventional teachers and more like a combination of librarian, sports coach, and camp counselor.

In this world, many children who now sit in the lower half of the “achievement distribution” would find their strides—a new kind of equity.

Academics would certainly still exist, but they would be more part-time, concentrated, and elective. Think of how community colleges function in the United States. Academic studies would sit atop a foundation of real-world experience instead of feeling like a 12-year parade of force-fed floating abstractions. College, vocational training, and on-the-job training would still exist to help young people rapidly transition into economic independence.

Yes, there would still be unfair competition for spots at competitive universities. Yes, deep inequities would persist. Yes, we adults are very good at co-opting new approaches. Yes, this is a ludicrous idea that would rely upon so many other aspects of society and notions of “education” changing.

As John Taylor Gatto once said about his radical proposals to reform American education: “That isn’t going to happen, I know.”¹

Nonetheless, I delight in imagining a new way to answer Freddie’s challenge to define “success” in education: How many amazing adventures might you experience before age 18? I enjoy envisioning a new way for young people of all backgrounds—especially those perpetually labeled “failing”—to experience less boredom, less disengagement, and more honest relationships with adults.

Unschool Adventures, Argentina 2012

---

When John Taylor Gatto wrote that “genius is as common as dirt,” I believe this is what he meant: everyone has the capacity to contribute.

Innovative societies are not birthed by legions of credentialed box-checkers; they’re born of experimenters, risk-takers, and explorers. Such people require large degrees of freedom, few barriers to entry, and the firm belief that anything is possible.

Education is so much bigger than academics. Instead of warehousing children until the real adventure begins, what if we helped them begin today? ■

Thanks to Antonio, Ken, Chris, and Dev for reading a draft.

1. See the final chapter of John Taylor Gatto’s book, The Underground History of American Education, titled “Nuts and Bolts”. (free online edition)