1. Self-direction In an open world Ken Carroll

2. Self-directed learning: -Autonomy, freedom, control -You educate yourself in resource-rich environments -You act on personal decisions and direct experience -Not as response to instruction

3. Why it’s good Respect for the individual Ownership It’s more motivating

4. But it barely exists in schools At school, the individual makes essentially no decisions and simply follows instructions Schools will not yield the ownership, control, testing, or mass-consumption model

5. Wherever you look, very few are self-directed And self-directionbarely exists in wider society

6. Why is it so rare? Our institutions were never designed for it We don't know how it’s done

7. But in an open world, new choices are coming at us When power devolves from the center to the edges, the individual gains more control, relative to political, social, commercial Institutions.

8. Are we ready for these freedoms? No. We’re not ready for self-direction Technology alone can make us neither free nor self-directedAnd the key lies with individuals, not institutions

9. True autonomy comes from the insideIf we wish to be free we have to think like self-directed individualsNot defer to institutions or to inner processes

10. Two levels of freedom Both Rousseau and Isaiah Berlin recognized the existence of psychological freedom

11. Externally driven freedoms Political freedoms Legal freedoms Social freedoms You receive them

12. Psychological freedoms are internally driven They don't pre-exist You create them

13. How do we create them? Through ownership of your own mental and emotional states, your psychological experience By knowing their cause and effect you get to direct them Through a process of self-empowerment and self-mastery

14. If you're not self-directed then you're directed by something else... You're not empowered, but in thrall to your ego, emotions, assumptions, etc You locate control over your actions outside yourself You're not self-directed

15. All the social, legal, and political freedom in the world will go only so far. You must possess it psychologically In order to become self-directed