It's interesting how stuck parents and school authorities are on a single way to learn. Any youngster who refuses to perform as demanded is treated as a major threat to the entire system. Experts are consulted, complex personal or family causes are fabricated, special programs are invented, all to protect the system from changing itself and accommodating difference. People like Rick then get channeled into marginal school experiences and, too often, marginalized lives.
As an adult education instructor, I frequently worked with students who had finally thrown themselves out of the system Kohl describes, only to find an outside world that was just as unaccommodating and rigid. And as a high school teacher, I see students who are clearly not being helped by these label-happy bureaucracies.
The idea of public education is certainly a noble one, but I don't think many astute and concerned educators would disagree with me if I were to say that the typical American public school approach to educating students is nothing short of stultifying, offering limited opportunities for profound social and intellectual development.
Earlier in the chapter, Kohl raises another important point when he essentially says that it is important to allow learners of all ages to make decisions about what is or is not appropriate learning for themselves. That doesn't mean we should never try to teach something to someone who is reluctant to learn it; it does mean that we may need to take some time to show that student how the learning can benefit them or connects to something they do care about, though.
