If your academic interests happen to include both knitting and historical writing, chances are you’re still looking for the school that’s right for you. The higher you ascend up the educational ladder, the more pressure there is to specialize, making it difficult to explore diverse interests. And skills like knitting are rarely offered in school, so unless you know someone willing to teach you, learning can be a lonesome process of fumbling with needles.
In this week's Montreal Mirror, David Ravensbergen has a great article about the launch of the Montreal Free School, "a collective of home-schooling advocates, un-schoolers and free thinkers working to provide learning opportunities without red tape." With anarchist roots and idealism at heart, Free Schools are part of a larger movement of learning and personal development without the hierarchy or institutional structure of formal schooling. A forum for connecting people eager to learn with those who have something to teach.