You are the One Person Schoolhouse

You learn in a schoolhouse built for one student—you. The schoolhouse opens when you’re ready to study and closes when you’re done for the day. The schoolhouse closes for your holidays. You set the pace of study, so you are neither bored nor overwhelmed. You choose how you learn, eliminating busy work. You are the One Person Schoolhouse.

Never before in history has education been so personalized.

So, let’s tour your new schoolhouse.

You are a Student for Life

Education never ends. It’s a fact of life now. Technology may not eliminate your job, but technology will remake it. The best skill you can have right now is adaptability. The people who succeed today are those who adapt quickly to changes in their environment. For that, you need continuing education.

Until the day comes that you can learn kung fu or piloting skills from a software download into your brain like in the movie, The Matrix, you’ll just have to crack open the books. Or YouTube. Or a computer game. Or a virtual reality headset.

No Graduations

There are no graduations in the One Person Schoolhouse.

In contrast, two graduations define hard stops in your education in the Grade-Based Education system.

A high school graduation stops the educational process for some American students. They cease formal education once they have met the minimum requirements as defined by their home-state legislature. Plenty of corporations offer jobs to people with a high school diploma and some of those jobs pay very well. But for many people, having only the high school diploma is a limiting factor.

The university graduation stops the education process for students who committed to another four years of study. For many people, this graduation ends their educational career. The degree gets them their first professional job, and their experience earns them every job thereafter.

You’re witnessing society evolve rapidly as technology brings automation to more and more aspects of your life. Hard stops in the education world give people the false security of being permanently qualified. You know by standing still you risk being left behind, rendered obsolete. Continuing education is now a fact of life if you are to remain employable.

Stream of Certifications

The One Person Schoolhouse is a lifetime commitment. But it’s not just a system of “read a book now and then”. You need goals, challenges, and rewards as you increase your value to employers.

Certifications meet all those requirements. You’ll set a goal to earn a certification, you’ll take on the challenge to learn the subject matter, and you’ll pass a rigorous examination to earn a certification as the reward for your effort. That certification increases your value to corporations seeking employees with your skills.

You’ll earn certifications for mastering skills instead of accumulating grades for courses. As your job demands change over time, you’ll earn certifications to open new doors in your career.

Over time, you’ll build an impressive collection of certifications. Each certification you earn is not a hard stop in your education but a stepping stone to the higher-level certifications.

Educational Agility

Certifications offer agility. When you sense industry changes, you can quickly pick up certifications relating to the future needs of your industry.

In the One Person Schoolhouse, you have options. Rather than committing to a four-year program, you select the specific certification most relevant to your immediate needs. And if you realize after you start studying that you’ve misjudged, you just switch your focus to earning a different, more relevant certification.

Normal Sucks: How to Live, Learn, and Thrive, Outside the Lines

Buy from Amazon Now

You'll Work Hard

The One Person Schoolhouse is not an easy alternative to traditional schooling. On the contrary, parts of the OPS will be harder.

You’ll have to set aside time to learn. You’ll have to discover your best learning techniques. You’ll have to assign yourself tasks and then complete those tasks. You’ll need to locate some of your study materials yourself, because you’re no longer just a product being assembled on a conveyor belt.

The One Person Schoolhouse requires self-discipline, so chalk that up as another skill you’ll gain over time. It’s not the self-discipline to get yourself up at six o’clock each morning to catch the school bus. It’s the self-discipline that you’ll sit down for a serious study session every day starting at two o’clock in the afternoon and going until eight PM.

You need to pass difficult examinations to prove you know the material. The One Person Schoolhouse isn’t a cover to blow off your education. The companies offering certifications have their reputations to protect. Why would a business accept your certifications if the issuing company hands them out to anybody who requests one? You have to earn this.

The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux

Buy from Amazon Now

You'll Explore More

You’re free! Get out there and explore! Shoo! Shoo!

You can study anywhere you wish in your One Person Schoolhouse. You want to work on your laptop or read your textbook at the coffee shop? Do it. You want to travel the “lower 48” in a RV? Do it. You want to learn a language in a country where that language is the native tongue? Do it.

A university education can cost tens of thousands of dollars. You’ll pay for a sitting fee when taking an examination to earn a certificate, but the rest of the costs are up to you. Why not apply the money you would have spent on college courses and room and board to get that history degree to visiting the very historical sites you would have otherwise read about in a book?

A good connection to the Internet would certainly aid in your studies but even that is not a constant requirement. A cellular phone with a tethering plan, connected to a laptop, gets you the ability to download what you need for when you are out of the coverage area.

If you only use this newfound freedom to sit outdoors in your back yard on a beautiful spring day as you study for next week’s exam, you’re better off than any of those days you sat in a classroom.

Certification Proctors Everywhere

For you to travel freely as you study, you’ll need the ability to sit for examinations anywhere. Certification proctors (businesses that proctor examinations for one or more certification-issuing entities) will be distributed across the nation, providing you easy access to examinations.

Easy access to proctors so you can travel freely and still sit for an examination promotes the Certification-Based Education system that is the cornerstone of the One Person Schoolhouse.

The Future of Smart: How Our Education System Needs to Change to Help All Young People Thrive

Buy from Amazon Now

Choose Your Educational Tools

It’s your school. Choose your educational tools. Do you prefer to learn by reading a book alone in a corner? Or would you enjoy the company of a lively group of fellow students who are studying for the same certification as you? Maybe you’re drawn to computer software that feeds you a steady stream of puzzles to solve.

At this time, the traditional school system dominates education, and tutoring, software, and books are just after-school helpers. In the One Person Schoolhouse, you can find a traditional classroom setting in which to learn the material, if that’s what you want. But the books, tutors, and software are no longer mere helpers. As the number of people earning certificates grows, so too will the quality and quantity of learning materials. Some material will be free and some material will be sold by individuals or companies looking to make a profit.

The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control over Their Lives

Buy from Amazon Now

Set Your Schedule

As the sole administrator of your schoolhouse, you define the school calendar and set the schedule. The calendar includes the days school is in session and the holidays and vacation days school is not in session.

As a caring school administrator, you want your (one) student (you) to succeed. A regular schedule goes a long way toward ensuring a student will succeed in education. You will block out the hours in the day during which you will focus your attention on your studies.

Pull out a calendar and mark the holidays. Those are the days school is not in session.

Choose your weekends. They don’t have to be Saturday and Sunday. Perhaps your family owns a restaurant, and that restaurant is closed Sunday and Monday. Make that your weekend. Maybe your religion recognizes a holy day other than Sunday. Base your weekend on this. Or you might enjoy having a three-day weekend every week, and you’re willing to put in four long days per week studying to make that happen.

Choose your vacations. Maybe you want two weeks for Christmas and one week for Thanksgiving and three weeks in July for some serious beach time. Rather than taking off three months, during which you forget everything you’ve learned to date, you can take shorter vacations more often. Would you prefer that?

Now that you’ve filled in your calendar, what time do the doors open each day in your schoolhouse?

Are you a morning person? Get started at 6 AM every day. Maybe you only see 6 AM as you’re on your way to bed after staying up all night. You can sleep in until two in the afternoon and start your school day at 6 PM.

Arrange your study schedule around your work schedule, if you need to. Finding a job should be easier if you don’t have to limit your availability based upon the public school hours. The beauty of the One Person Schoolhouse is you are free to work when the rest of the world works. Maybe you can get a job related to your chosen career path with opportunities to move up the corporate ladder.

Passion-Driven Education: How to Use Your Child's Interests to Ignite a Lifelong Love of Learning

Buy from Amazon Now

Earn Certificates

You can learn for fun, but if you want credit for your efforts, you need credentials. In the One Person Schoolhouse, certifications are your credentials. From the time you graduate from elementary school, you acquire certifications. You’ll take increasingly challenging certification examinations beginning with the basics and eventually becoming more specialized as you zero in on your preferred career path.

You’ll schedule your examinations when you feel you are ready. You can make unlimited attempts to earn a certificate, but each attempt costs for the sitting fee. Government may cover the costs of examination sitting fees just as government pays for public education today.

The certificates you earn for most courses are permanent. Some certifications related to technology will expire. All the certifications for courses equivalent to school courses never expire.

You’ll know how your accomplishments compare to others your age. The companies that offer certifications can report statistics such as the average age of the person taking the test and the number of attempts the average person makes to pass. You’ll know if you are older or younger than the average person who passes a test, so you’ll know if you’re progressing at a reasonable pace.

You may find you earn certificates along one path quicker than other paths. Some people will dash ahead of others their age in mathematics, earning certificates well ahead of their age group, but find themselves behind the average in earning English certifications. This is to be expected. Unlike traditional school that moves everybody forward at a set pace in all subjects, you’ll advance at a different pace along each track. You may have earned certificates for what would be today considered ninth grade math but still be working on that seventh grade history certification and sixth grade English.

Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?: The Case for Helping Them Leave, Chart Their Own Paths, and Prepare for Adulthood at Their Own Pace

Buy from Amazon Now