Education through the eyes of an unschooled kid
Cole Summers' philosophy of education
"You're just a kid. You can't do that!" - Cole Summers quotes "way too many adults"
Cole Summers was a pioneer. At the age of six, the Utah boy was taking on the responsibility for maintaining and repairing his family’s vehicles. He started breeding and selling rabbits by age seven, and owned his first pickup truck at age eight. When he was nine, he started paying his own taxes. By age ten, he purchased a 350-acre farmstead, where he started a business raising goats and turkeys. He bought himself a tractor for his eleventh birthday, at which time he was also remodeling his first home. And by age 14, he had developed a water conservation plan.
Summers, who drowned during an unfortunate kayaking accident, was unschooled. He described his unschooling journey and laid out his philosophy of education in his debut memoir, published at the ripe age of 14, titled Don't Tell Me I Can't: An Ambitious Homeschooler's Journey. Summers' biggest motivation in his unschooling journey was proving the adults wrong who were constantly telling kids that they can't do this or that thing simply because they are kids. This was also the motivation behind writing his memoir. He wanted to "help other kids and parents see that we're capable of much more than most of us are allowed to do."
According to Summers, and others in the movement, unschooling is a means to become educated through which the child chooses what to learn, when to learn it, how to learn it, and at what pace. Some parents include stipulations in such self-directed learning, and Summers was no exception; his parents had one rule: some of his learning had to be done through reading. Other than that, Summers' parents empowered him to do things on his own and take on whatever endeavor he wanted to pursue, unless it was illegal.
Summers' approach to his education included four key elements:
Learning processes for thinking and making decisions;
Learning from others and through trying things on his own;
Using the resources at his disposal, including technology, people, and the power of observation; and
Recognizing his strengths and weaknesses, and asking for help to address the latter.
His foray into self-directed learning began as early as age two. Summers insisted on doing things on his own, what his parents came to call his "me do it" moments. One such moment was the first time he helped change a tire on his family's car. He adamantly took over and started tossing the lug nuts as he pulled them out of the socket. His parents didn't correct him, they sat back and let him make that mistake. As a result, after hunting down each lug nut from the grass, he learned to be more tidy and careful about his work .
Summers' official unschooling journey began when he asked his father, "how do people get rich?" His dad was not well-suited to answer that question, so Summers began his financial education watching videos by Warren Buffet. Buffet also taught him about processes of thinking and making decisions, as did Charlie Munger. What would be Summers' first-grade year of learning was dedicated to how to think. For him, learning processes for thinking helps "avoid problems and make better decisions for your circumstances." A few of his lessons included:
"Learning to use mental tools like the 80/20 Principle and opportunity cost."
"Applying the process of elimination to daily life" to "give real thought to the best use of our time."
"Using First Principles to break down things we want to do or have to [do to] its most basic parts" to "achieve goals."
Charlie Munger gave the commencement speech to Harvard's graduating class of 1986, during which he outlined seven tips to guarantee a life of misery. Summers listened to this speech, took notes, and lived by the inverse of these tips. One tip was to "learn everything you possibly can from your own personal experience, minimizing what you learn vicariously from the good and bad experience of others, living and dead." Summers, to the extent that he could, absorbed as much knowledge and wisdom from the experiences of others: "There are so many things I don't want to ever learn by my own experience because they reliably create misery and hardship."
He knew what to avoid in his business ventures and how to get a head start on his achievements by learning what worked well for others. Summers used a cooking recipe as a simplistic example of his approach. Starting with a recipe saves time and money and provides a path to reach the goal faster, but following the recipe does not foreclose experimentation to learn how to make the food better or to suit one's tastes. Likewise, learning from others provides a starting point, a launching pad, and trying things on one's own, applying that knowledge and building upon it, helps one reach their individual goals.
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” - a quote by Mark Twain that Cole Summers folded into his educational philosophy
But Summers wouldn't take advice from just anyone. Many people in his life told him that kids can't start a business. Instead of taking them at their word, because they weren't well-versed in corporate law, he did his own online research to learn that he, in fact, could start a business with the help of his parents. Summers approached all of his undertakings in a similar manner. He memorized basic math facts and formulas, then picked up all other processes as he needed them. He treated his first business raising and selling rabbits for meat as a start up, which forced him to learn for himself the ins and outs of running a business. And he studied tax law to learn how to pay taxes.
Summers used every educational tool at his disposal. He learned from workers, masters of their craft, that he hired or encountered through his business adventures, such as his local well driller who taught him about the region's water table. The wisdom of the well driller contributed to Summers' plan for solving the area's water conservation issue. But much of his education came from what he deems "one of the greatest educational tools ever created. YouTube." He "learned plumbing, roofing, flooring, cabinet making, painting, and electrical work. [He] learned them all. And did them all." Through YouTube, he also learned from Warren Buffet how to grow, not extract, value, which also contributed to his water conservation plan. "Right now, extraction is what hay farms do. Extract water, extract soil nutrients, and ship hay around the world. Growing value in farming means building soil, conserving water, and raising animals naturally."
Learning from others, through in-person interactions and online resources, was a central component of Summers' education because he recognized that the self-made man, and their self-made riches, is "a load of crap." He maintained that "the start of every success story is a team. The people who have the idea, put together the teams, and take the biggest risks to make it work get most of the wealth and fame, but none of them did it alone." Along with this humble recognition comes acknowledging what you know and don't know, and what you're good at and need help with. Summers was not good at spelling or grammar, for example. For him, spellcheck was an important tool as well as editors who could proofread and correct his work when needed.
Summers also valued observation and personal, first-hand experience. While developing his water conservation plan, for instance, Summers learned of so-called experts who advocate leaving the land to be reclaimed by nature as a solution to rural desert problems. But he was not convinced because his own eyes told him differently: "I've dragged my dad around, getting him to drive me to different fallowed fields to look at them. Only one of all the fields I looked at was recovering, and it's on the slope of a mountain, giving it extra water from runoff when it rains." These observations, the experiences of local workers, and his online learning, which began at the young age of six, culminated to help 14-year-old Summers develop his Great Basin Green plan.
Unschooling centers education around the interests of the child. Summers' interest was in solving a pressing problem facing his community: aquifer depletion. Such a single issue focus may strike some, notably those who value institutional schooling over home education, as neglecting to gain a well-rounded education. But Summers acquired a broad range of knowledge by following his interests. Raising animals, farming, and dealing with a dried-up well took him from his first-grade inquiry into "how do people get rich?" to developing a comprehensive plan that environmental professionals had not come up with. And, had he been fortunate enough to live well into adulthood, likely would have used his knowledge to solve other problems and live an enjoyable life—two central aims of a good education.
Summers did not liken himself as better than his public schooled friends. He often felt bad for them because they were routinely told they can't do things because of their age, but ultimately he recognized that some of his friends had abilities he didn't and studied different things, thus thought about things differently. He viewed these differences as an asset, another key ingredient of Cole Summers' philosophy of education: "Different people with different skills and interests. That's a good thing. We're supposed to be different. [...] Being different is just a tool that we have to help us achieve whatever goals we set for ourselves."
The name "Cole Summers" was the pseudonym Kevin Cooper wrote under and used for his online presence.