Making Personal Education Widely Available

Philip of Macedon hiring Aristotle to teach Alexander belongs on my list of history's most consequential educational decisions. A ruler sought the best mind he could find to help develop another mind whose future mattered. We cannot reduce everything Alexander later did to that choice, but the ambition is remarkable. What bothers me is how readily we admire such an education as a privilege of kings instead of asking why ordinary children should be excluded from its essential advantages.

Plutarch describes Philip's choice of Aristotle. The resource being purchased was more than access to information. A text can contain an argument without noticing whether its reader has misunderstood it; a tutor can ask, listen, and pursue the point of confusion. Sustained, informed attention is the expensive part. One person's hours can serve only so many students, and the ability to command those hours has long separated the education available to a few from the education available to everybody else.

Putting a library on a screen does not eliminate that scarcity. A learner can now find two conflicting accounts of an event almost immediately and still need considerable help deciding what to do with them. When was each written? What could each author have known? Do they even contradict one another about the same claim? Information has become easy to obtain while the work of making it intelligible to a particular person remains. Distribution is an extraordinary achievement, but it is only part of an education.

And the useful explanation depends on what the learner has misunderstood. A later retelling mistaken for an eyewitness account calls for a different conversation from two genuinely conflicting witnesses. In one case the child needs to understand the source's relationship to the event; in the other, the conflict may be exactly what a serious investigation should pursue. The labor of noticing that difference is part of what personal tuition buys. Delivering the same general advice about reliable sources to both students would leave the most important information unused.

Technology makes it possible to provide parts of that responsiveness without purchasing an expert's uninterrupted time for every student and subject. This is why our ambition for wider access to personal education is more than a proposal to distribute cheaper books. The child needs useful help at the point where the book ceases to make sense. I want us judged by whether the explanation reaches that obstruction and enables more demanding work, because putting personalized on a product does not accomplish any of it.

Responsiveness also changes whose purpose directs the attention. A royal household could command a tutor's time because it had power, while an ordinary child now needs a way for their questions and understanding to become consequential without that power. The education should notice when its explanation fails and change accordingly. Broader access is incomplete if we distribute information widely but leave the learner unable to affect any decision about how it is taught.

The result I want is a society in which developing an unusual mind is ordinary. A historian and a person fascinated by persuasion need not be miniature versions of the same prince, and the resources that once served a royal household can inspire a far larger purpose than reproducing its curriculum. Through TheHomeschoolingCompany, we are trying to make more of that attention available around the goals and interests of actual children. Their differences are the reason to do it, rather than a complication to remove when the number of students grows.

We should be able to admire Philip's investment without accepting the scarcity that made it exceptional. Your child does not need a kingdom, and education should not have to wait for somebody powerful to decide their future is important. Give the person in front of you serious knowledge, responsive help, and room to develop a direction of their own. The royal privilege worth abolishing is the assumption that only a few minds merit that much care.