• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Videos

Charles Eisenstein

  • About
  • Essays
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
    • Charles Eisenstein Random
    • A New and Ancient Story Podcast
    • Outside Interviews
  • Courses
    • Climate — Inside and Out
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course One
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course Two
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course Three
    • Dietary Transformation from the Inside Out
    • Living in the Gift
    • Masculinity: A New Story
    • Metaphysics & Mystery
    • Space Between Stories
    • Unlearning: For Change Agents
  • Books
    • The Coronation
    • Climate — A New Story
    • The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
    • The Ascent Of Humanity
    • Sacred Economics
    • The Yoga Of Eating
  • Events
  • Donate

Our Failing Education System

April 2019


It used to be that the really bright ones went to Harvard. Now, the really bright ones drop out.

Filmed by Jonathan Hiller: HillerVisual.com

#CharlesEisenstein #Education #DeSchool #Unschooling #Parenting #Philosophy #Authors

You can access a transcription of this talk here or below. Thank you to Rachel Wakefield!


Our Failing Education System
Transcript of Charles Eisenstein’s Talk

I have a twenty-one year old son and a nineteen year old son. Neither of them have gone to college or seem to be going to college. One of them dropped out of high school. And that would have been a rather insane choice a generation ago, or almost unthinkable. But now, I mean, I’m totally fine with it, but even my parents, who – they have PhDs; when I was growing up, college came after high school, it was just not an option to step out of that. And so even they totally understand the decision of my sons, and they’re a little uneasy about it, but they support it, because the conventional educational system is just so dysfunctional. You can’t ignore it or deny it now – the enormous amounts of debt that you have to go into to get a degree that is increasingly worthless, the bureaucratic hoops you have to trot through, the tests, the examinations, the requirements, the huge classes taught by professors who can’t possibly give you any personal attention even if they wanted to. I mean, the whole enterprise is on life support.

So a lot of really bright young people that I run into….it used to be that the really bright ones went to Harvard. Now, the really bright ones drop out. And they look outside of the curriculum of life, the curriculum that’s been offered to them, for other ways to learn. So yeah, some of them piece together an education on the internet. And you can get some things that way, but learning is much more than the acquisition of information. It requires doing, which is why apprenticeship is such a powerful way to learn. Trial and error – you know, like getting your first video camera and trying to make films and learning the editing and making all these mistakes – that is a way to learn, and you can learn something that way, but it’s much faster to learn in a community. And the community ideally would have masters and other apprentices.

So how to piece that back together again from the wreckage of the institutions of mass education that we have today is, again, not a trivial enterprise. But yeah, it is a piecing together from the splinters of the system as it disintegrates, which still has maybe a long way to go. But even – well, not everybody, there are still people who really believe in it, who believe that the best way to develop your mind and your life is to get a good education, and that a good education is well-represented by the institutions of higher education that we recognize in our society. There are still people who believe that. But it is a belief that is hollowing out. So many people who go into that system, they’re not going into it because they really believe they’re going to get a fine education. They go into it because they think they’re going to get a good job when they come out, or because they feel like there’s no choice, there’s no alternative.

And in a way they’re right. If you don’t go to college, and instead you go to a PDC, permaculture design course – are you going to get a well-paying job in permaculture? I mean, you probably won’t get a well-paying job with your marketing degree from Penn State either. But you’re even less likely to get a professionally compensated job doing hugelkultur on someone’s organic farm.

So if you want to make your way in the conventional world, which is shriveling but still dominant, then yeah, you’re probably going to need to get a conventional education. If that world does not interest you very much, then a conventional education is going to seem unfit, repellant. You can try to push yourself through it. You’re going to be fighting yourself the whole time. And there are not well-established alternatives. There are some alternatives. Some of the have accreditation, but the really radical, innovative ones do not have accreditation. You have to piece them together yourself. And it’s just something that’s forming right now. I envision this kind of distributed, maybe four-year program where you go to this eco-institute and that permaculture center and this nonviolent direct training thing and this meditation center, etcetera etcetera etcetera, and this natural building thing, and these things kind of coalesce into a four-year education in the technologies of the story of interbeing.

It doesn’t quite exist yet, but maybe by raising the possibility, it will come to us.



Previous: How Much Good Can One Person Really Do?
Next: A Better Money System

Primary Sidebar

All Videos

From a PANDEMIC of CONTROL to a Paradise of Possibility W/ Dr. Zach Bush MD & Charles Eisenstein

Can Our COLLECTIVE MISTRUST Ever Be Repaired? w/ Charles Eisenstein | Aubrey Marcus Podcast

An Epidemic of Control, Charles Eisenstein

The Pandemic Is A Prism with PAUL KINGSNORTH & CHARLES EISENSTEIN [FULL SESSION]

Why Is The Climate Debate Such A Mess? – Charles Eisenstein | Modern Wisdom Podcast 382

And the Music Played the Band

Trust Your Heart

A Gathering of the Tribe

Systems of the Damned: Russell Brand & Charles Eisenstein – Under the Skin

Morphic Resonance and a New Reason for Activism

Amazon Rainforest Fires – Avoid This Trap

Campfire Stories – An Unlearning: My Meeting with Charles Eisenstein

Campfire Stories – On the Story of Separation and the Story of Interbeing

What Kind of World Do You Want to Live in?

Healing Our Democracy

Our Salvation Will Come From the Margins

Signs that Humanity is Returning to Loving a Living Earth

How Can We Reconnect with Our Love of Nature?

Where Does Love Come From ?

My Concern with Drawdown

Historic Denver Psilocybin Mushroom Vote 2019 – What Does It Mean?

How Can We Listen to the Earth?

Listen to and Participate with Gaia

The Core Themes of Climate: A New Story

Q&A Responses Batch 1 – Unlearning: For Change Agents

A Deeper Look at The Green New Deal

Charles Eisenstein on Brexit

A Message to Greta Thunberg and the Youth Climate Strikers

Full Session 1 Premiere from Unlearning For Change Agents

It Is No Measure of Health to be Well-Adjusted to a Profoundly Sick Society

Separation vs Interbeing

Archetypes and Stories Beyond the Hero’s Journey

The Wound of Separation

My Stance on Cryptocurrencies

How Can I Help Heal Our Planet?

Exiting the Matrix

Who Are You?

Can One Person Create a Big Change?

Moving Towards Interbeing

The Case for a Universal Basic Income

Is There Hope for the Planet Among Our Young People?

Humility and Allowing Ourselves to Not Know

A Better Money System

How Much Good Can One Person Really Do?

New Zealand’s Leadership in a Living Planet View

How Our Money System Creates Scarcity

Where Does Addiction Come From?

Glimpses of Possibility: The Pain and Power

Let’s Shift From Control to Participation

What Does a World of Interbeing Look Like?

Will Technology Save Us?

What am I Here to Do?

A Critique of the Climate Narrative

What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do

The Root of Separation

Is Competition Human Nature?

The Gift of Loss

How Do I Stay in the Story of Interbeing?

How Movements are Actually Started

Why We Shouldn’t Label Movements

Every Person Desires to Give Their Gift

The Convergence of Spirituality & Activism

What is Success?

You Are Life

A Revolutionary Mental Health Question

What is Mental Health?

Society Must Support the Changemakers

How Change Happens in the Story of Interbeing

Is Science a Religion?

How Change Happens in the Story of Separation

Why We Think Only the Measurable is Real

Why I Believe in a Living Planet View

The Impact of Ayahuasca & Other Psychedelics

Sacred Economics (2019 Remix)

The Need to Be Right (Sustainable Human) 10.2018

Living the Change Film: Full Length (2018)

Climate: A New Story (2018)

A New Story of Climate Change: New Frontiers (2018)

Beyond the Obsession with Number: Science and Non-Duality (2017)

What Is It Like to Be You?

Oprah Winfrey Interview (7.2017)

Word, Gift, & Money: A Conversation with Orland Bishop (11.2016)

The most important progress comes from letting go (10.2016)

The Speakeasy Forum at Wanderlust (2014)

How Do We Not Succumb to Depression Upon Reading the News (3.2016)

A Question for Everyone

More Beautiful World/Findhorn (9.2014)

Sacred Economics

Story Disruption & Morphogenesis (2015)

A Pattern to the Maze (Sustainable Man)

Dietary Transformation Learning Journey Intro (4.2017)

Empathy: Key to Effective Action (2.2017)

SESC: Vila Mariana (Sao Paulo Brazil) 11.2016

The Rebel Soul with Charles Eisenstein & Kelly Brogan M.D. (Full-length talk)

Pachamama Alliance: On Activism (9.2014)

A New Story of the People (Sustainable Man)

Occupy Wall St – The Revolution Is Love

Centre for Human Ecology, Glasgow 10.2014

Interview with Maria Scordialos: July 3, 2015

The Hive: Paonia, CO (7.2014)

Changing Consciousness Through Relationships

The New Mythology: 2.2015

Embercombe 5.2014

OuiShare 5.2015

Fairventure 2014: Universal Basic Income

The Two Great Stories

Sacred Economics (Portland Oregon Lecture)

More Beautiful World – North Atlantic Books (12.2013)

Open to Magic

Slow Living Summit (6.2014)

Schumacher College (5.2014)

Economics of Happiness Talk

Conversation with Polly Higgins, Oslo Norway

Jamaica Plain Forum (1.2014)

Extraenvironmentalist Interview (with Spanish Subtitles)

Sacred Economics and Sacred Law with Polly Higgins

The Gift Economy & the Commons with James Quilligan

Changes in the Money System with Margrit Kennedy

Introduction to Sacred Economics – The Guardian

London Real Podcast Interview

Conversation with Rev. Peter Owen Jones

The Leading Edge Interview Series

Interview Footage (“AWAKE” documentary)

The Living Planet

Charles w/ İhsan Eliaçık: Sacred Econ. & Social Islam

North Atlantic Books Webinar

Immense Possibilities: Sacred Economics

Sacred Conversation (Simon on the Sofa)

Open to Magic

Conversation with James Quilligan

The Revolution of the Gift Economy (Lecture 7.2012)

Warriors Without Weapons (7.2012)

It’s Time for A Better Narrative w/Chris Martensen (2012)

Interview for Money & Life Film

Occupy Wall St. – NYC ReEnvisioning Money

Money and the Turning of the Age

Deschooling Ourselves

Privacy Policy | Contact

Charles Eisenstein

All content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Feel free to copy and share.