Episode 8: Vue's Education Philosophy Brought to Schools (feat. Hope Wilder)

The theme of this episode is EDUCATION. We have special guest, Hope Wilder, the Founder of Pathfinder Community School, which is a self-directed learning community for ages 5-14, located in Durham, North Carolina. They focus on self-directed education and applying principles with children. Remember these catchphrases: Is it good enough for now? Is it safe to try? Those who do the work decide.

[00:01:13] Chris starts off and talks about his background as an educator and voiced his opinions on the traditional education systems.

[00:04:21] Hope discusses how she got into education and founding a school. The more she worked with kids, the more she saw that forcing kids to learn things just doesn’t really work.

[00:06:08] Hope explains what it means for it to be a democratic school and how it’s a very systems level of approach.

[00:11:22] How do the kids learn skills such as conflict resolution and being responsible for getting their work done when working in groups?

[00:15:41] Ari wonders if Hope provides any sort of suggestions, guidance, or options for the kids to work from or if it’s very much from their own imaginations and personal motives.

[00:19:36] Chris brings up finding your own resources and how a former student at Pathfinder, now co-works at a tech company and he’s only 15 years old!

[00:23:08] Ben asks both Chris and Hope about how they feel that self-directed learning relates to development in the Open Source community as far as the relationship between them and how we can learn from that.

[00:28:00] Hope discusses sociocracy which is a form of democracy. There are two important principles or catchphrases that they use a lot at the school.

[00:41:12] Chris gives his thoughts on bootcamps vs self-taught.

[00:49:09] Hope reveals why she created Pathfinder, which was a part of self-healing.

[00:57:26] Hope mentions some resources people can dig into if they are looking into self-directed learning for their kids. She gives MANY, so listen.

Picks of the week:
[01:01:02] Ben’s pick is a book called, “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown.
[01:01:54] Chris’s pick is to check out self-directed education, like Pathfinder.
[01:03:18] Hope has two picks: “Outlander” on Netflix and a blog called “Post Secret.”
[01:06:38] Ari has three picks: two songs by music group “Moderat,” called, “A New Error” and “Les Grandes Marches.” The third is a TV show on HULU called, “Community.”

Sponsor:

Linode

Special Guest: Hope Wilder.