Who Decides What We Learn?
We spend years following someone else's curriculum. What happens when we're finally expected to decide for ourselves what we want to know, explore, and do with our lives?
Imagine being asked a simple question: What would you like to learn?
Not what would help you advance in your career, improve your qualifications, or become more productive. Just what you would genuinely like to explore, given the opportunity.
For some people, the answer comes easily. They have interests they've been waiting to pursue, questions they've carried for years, or projects they would love to begin. For others, the question is surprisingly difficult. They may know what they're supposed to be doing, what skills would be useful, or what other people expect of them. But identifying something they want to learn simply because it interests them can feel unfamiliar.
It's an interesting predicament for adults who have spent so many years being educated.
Prefer listening? This article was inspired by a conversation on Radical Learning Talks with Alex Bretas, author of Informal PhD and Schooling Beliefs. Together, we explore what it means to reclaim ownership of our learning as adults, why that can be surprisingly difficult, and how our experiences of schooling continue to influence the lives we create.
Listen to the episode here, or keep reading.
In this episode, we explore:
Why adults can struggle to identify what they genuinely want to learn
How schooling shapes our relationship with curiosity, initiative, and autonomy
The idea of an informal PhD and learning beyond institutional credentials
Why lifelong learning is about more than professional development
The role of community, intention, and appreciation in adult learning
How taking ownership of our learning can change our relationship with our lives
When Someone Else Has Always Decided
From the time children enter school, most of the important decisions about their learning have already been made. The subjects are selected, the curriculum is established, and the progression from one topic to another is determined by adults and institutions. There may be opportunities for choice along the way, but these usually exist within a framework that students have little power to change.
Over time, children become familiar with a particular relationship to learning. Someone introduces the subject, explains what needs to be done, establishes a deadline, and evaluates the result. The student's responsibility is to complete the work and demonstrate that they have learned what was expected.
This arrangement can provide structure, introduce children to unfamiliar fields, and make certain kinds of learning accessible. But it also means that students can spend much of their childhood practicing how to meet educational expectations without necessarily developing the ability to recognize and pursue their own interests.
The distinction is significant.
A person can become highly skilled at completing assignments, preparing for examinations, and meeting external standards while having relatively little experience deciding what deserves their attention in the first place.
And then, at some point, formal education ends.
The timetable disappears. There are no more required subjects or teachers determining what comes next. In theory, a whole world of possibilities opens up. Yet the freedom to choose doesn't automatically come with the confidence or experience to exercise it.
For someone who has spent years responding to other people's educational priorities, the question What do I want to learn? may require a kind of thinking they have rarely been invited to practice.
The Difference Between Learning and Being Educated
We tend to speak about education as though it were something a person acquires. Years of schooling, completed courses, qualifications, and degrees become evidence of how educated someone is.
These measures can tell us something about what a person has studied and accomplished. They tell us considerably less about their relationship with learning.
Does someone feel capable of investigating a subject independently? Can they follow a question without knowing where it will lead? Are they comfortable entering unfamiliar territory, making mistakes, changing direction, or discovering that something they believed was wrong?
These capacities are important throughout life, yet they don't necessarily develop simply because someone has spent many years in educational institutions.
Learning also extends far beyond what institutions recognize. People develop sophisticated knowledge through their work, relationships, creative projects, community involvement, and the problems they encounter in everyday life. They learn to understand people, navigate unfamiliar situations, build things, solve problems, and make decisions without necessarily identifying these experiences as education.
But when we've learned to associate legitimate learning with instruction, curriculum, and assessment, it can become difficult to recognize the significance of what we're discovering outside those structures.
We may even hesitate to trust our own knowledge unless someone with recognized authority has validated it.
This is one of the more curious consequences of a society that places such enormous value on education. We can become so accustomed to looking for evidence that learning has been formally recognized that we overlook the learning itself.
When Curiosity Needs a Purpose
The idea of lifelong learning has become increasingly popular. Employers encourage it, universities offer continuing education, and professional development is often presented as essential in a rapidly changing world.
There are good reasons for this. People need opportunities to develop new skills, adapt to changing circumstances, and continue growing professionally.
But the way we talk about lifelong learning reveals something about what we consider valuable.
“The process of learning, it’s not an instrumental one. It’s not a mechanical one. It’s a way of approaching life in which you can be fascinated with life.”
Much of the conversation revolves around employability, competitiveness, productivity, and keeping up with technological change. Learning is encouraged because it helps us remain useful in the workforce.
Curiosity, meanwhile, rarely receives the same attention unless it can be connected to an outcome.
An adult who studies a language for career advancement is investing in their future. Someone who spends months studying the history of an unfamiliar place, learning to identify birds, or investigating a philosophical question may be asked what they intend to do with that knowledge.
The assumption is subtle but powerful: learning ought to lead somewhere recognizable.
Of course, interests often do develop into professions, businesses, or other meaningful contributions. But insisting that learning justify itself through an external purpose changes our relationship with it. Exploration becomes difficult to defend when we cannot explain in advance what it will produce.
And this raises an uncomfortable question about the education we've received.
If we've spent much of childhood learning what other people consider important, and much of adulthood learning what makes us economically valuable, when do we get to decide what is worth knowing for ourselves?
Learning to Direct Our Own Lives
The ability to decide what we want to learn is closely connected to something larger: the ability to decide what we want to do with our lives.
Both require us to recognize our own interests, make choices without guarantees, and take responsibility for what follows. They also involve a willingness to venture into unfamiliar territory without someone else determining the route.
These capacities develop through experience. We learn to make decisions by making them, including the ones that don't work out as expected. We discover what interests us by having opportunities to explore, and we develop confidence in our judgment by using it.
Yet much of conventional schooling organizes learning around decisions that have already been made.
This doesn't mean that people who attend school cannot become independent thinkers or capable decision-makers. Clearly, many do. But it raises questions about how much of that development happens because of their educational experiences, how much happens despite them, and what opportunities might be lost when children have limited influence over their own learning.
The consequences can extend beyond education.
Someone accustomed to waiting for instructions may find it difficult to begin a project without a clear plan. A person who has learned to measure success through external approval may hesitate to pursue something that others don't consider worthwhile. Even the prospect of choosing freely can feel uncomfortable when we're accustomed to knowing what is expected.
These patterns can emerge for many reasons, and schooling is only one influence among them. Family expectations, economic circumstances, workplace cultures, and broader social norms also shape how comfortable we feel exercising autonomy.
But schooling is one of the few institutions nearly everyone encounters during the years when their relationship with authority, initiative, and personal responsibility is developing.
It deserves closer examination for that reason alone.
The Freedom to Begin Without Knowing Where We'll End Up
One of the difficulties of directing our own learning is that we cannot always know in advance where it will take us.
Formal education generally offers a destination. A course has a syllabus, a program has requirements, and a qualification has an established set of expectations. We can usually find out what completing it will involve and what recognition we will receive.
Learning independently is often less predictable.
An interest may begin with a question that leads to another question, an unexpected encounter, or an entirely different field of knowledge. A project may change direction several times before we understand what we're actually trying to accomplish.
For people accustomed to clearly defined educational outcomes, this uncertainty can make independent learning feel less legitimate. Without a curriculum to follow or an institution to certify the result, how do we know whether we're doing it properly?
Yet uncertainty is part of what makes genuine inquiry possible. If we already knew everything we were going to discover, there would be little reason to investigate.
This doesn't mean that self-directed learning has to be unstructured. People can create their own frameworks, seek out mentors, join communities, establish goals, and develop rigorous ways of evaluating their progress. Serious independent study can require enormous discipline and sustained effort.
The difference lies in who has the authority to determine the direction and purpose of that work.
A person pursuing a subject independently can decide what questions deserve further investigation, which resources are useful, and when an unexpected discovery calls for a change of direction. They can draw on expertise without surrendering responsibility for their own inquiry.
And as they gain experience, something else begins to develop: trust in their capacity to navigate a process they cannot entirely predict.
That trust can become valuable far beyond the particular subject they're studying.
Why Learning Doesn't Have to Be a Solitary Pursuit
There's a common misconception that directing our own learning means figuring everything out alone.
In reality, learning has always been deeply social. We encounter ideas through other people, develop understanding through conversation, and discover possibilities we might never have considered without the communities around us.
The freedom to choose our own direction doesn't eliminate our need for guidance, collaboration, or support. It changes our relationship with them.
Instead of relying on an institution to determine what everyone should learn, people can come together around shared interests, exchange knowledge, and contribute to one another's investigations. Someone with extensive experience in one area may be a beginner in another. Expertise becomes something that circulates within a community rather than belonging exclusively to the person designated as the teacher.
This is particularly important for adults who have little experience directing their own learning.
Being surrounded by people who are exploring their interests can make possibilities more visible. Conversations introduce unfamiliar subjects. Seeing someone pursue a project without formal qualifications can challenge assumptions about what is required to begin.
And when the inevitable difficulties arise, a community can provide encouragement, perspective, and opportunities to think together.
Of course, access to these opportunities is uneven. Time, money, caregiving responsibilities, disability, and working conditions can significantly affect someone's capacity to pursue independent interests. It would be simplistic to suggest that everyone can simply reorganize their priorities and create unlimited space for learning.
But those constraints also raise questions about how we organize adult life.
If continued learning is considered essential for professional productivity, why is it so difficult to make room for learning that serves no economic purpose? Why do we so readily recognize the importance of education during childhood while treating curiosity and exploration in adulthood as optional luxuries?
A society that genuinely values lifelong learning would have to take those questions seriously.
What Children Learn From Adults Who Are Still Learning
There's another dimension to all of this that becomes particularly interesting when we think about children.
Adults often devote considerable energy to ensuring that young people are learning. We choose educational environments, look for resources, arrange activities, monitor progress, and worry about whether they're developing the knowledge and abilities they'll need.
Yet children also learn something about learning by observing the adults around them.
They see whether curiosity continues into adulthood, whether questions are welcomed, and whether people are willing to try unfamiliar things. They encounter adults who have interests, make discoveries, change their minds, and sometimes struggle with things they don't yet understand.
Or they encounter a world in which learning appears to be something children are required to do while adults supervise.
This distinction is especially relevant in educational environments that seek to give young people greater autonomy.
If adults understand their role primarily as facilitating children's learning, they can unintentionally recreate a separation between those who learn and those who oversee the process. The environment may offer children considerable freedom while the adults remain focused almost entirely on what the children are doing.
But what happens when adults are also actively engaged in their own learning?
The relationship changes. Children encounter people who are genuinely interested in things, who have questions they cannot yet answer, and who pursue projects because those projects are meaningful to them.
Learning becomes something people participate in throughout their lives, rather than an activity assigned to one age group.
And adults who are occupied with their own interests may find it easier to give children room to pursue theirs. Their attention is no longer directed exclusively toward evaluating, encouraging, or improving someone else's learning.
There is a profound difference between growing up surrounded by adults who believe learning is important and growing up surrounded by adults for whom learning is an active part of life.
Reclaiming the Right to Be Curious
The question of who decides what we learn ultimately leads back to how we understand education itself.
If education is primarily preparation for a predetermined future, it makes sense to organize it around established outcomes. We identify what people should know, create systems to deliver that knowledge, and measure how successfully they have acquired it.
But human lives rarely unfold according to a predetermined curriculum.
Our interests change. Circumstances challenge what we thought we understood. We encounter people, ideas, and experiences that alter our sense of what is possible. Some of the most meaningful things we learn emerge from situations we could never have anticipated.
The capacity to remain curious, investigate unfamiliar territory, and make choices about our own development becomes important precisely because life is unpredictable.
And it doesn't suddenly appear when we reach adulthood.
We develop these capacities through opportunities to exercise them, through relationships that support our autonomy, and through experiences that allow us to discover what we care about.
For adults who have spent much of their lives responding to external expectations, reclaiming that relationship with learning may take time. It can involve recognizing interests that have been neglected, questioning assumptions about what counts as worthwhile knowledge, and becoming comfortable with the uncertainty of beginning something without knowing exactly where it will lead.
There may be no qualification waiting at the end, no professional advantage to gain, and no one evaluating the outcome.
The experience can still be profoundly worthwhile.
Because the ability to direct our own learning is also part of our ability to participate actively in shaping our lives.
And that raises a question worth asking long before children leave school: What kind of relationship with learning are we helping them develop, and will it still serve them when there's no one left to tell them what to do?
Want to Explore More?
Our relationship with learning begins long before adulthood. The opportunities children have to follow their interests, make decisions, and take initiative can influence how they approach learning throughout their lives.
If you'd like to explore these ideas further, you might enjoy:
→ Why Do Children Stop Taking Initiative?
→ You Don't Need to Be a Teacher for Your Child to Learn
Explore Un-Skool
If you're interested in rethinking how we support children's learning, autonomy, and development, Un-Skool is a place to explore these questions more deeply.
Our free online learning portal offers masterclasses, practical resources, and guidance for families questioning conventional approaches to education and parenting. You'll also find a community of people exploring similar questions, along with deeper programs on unschooling, relationships, consent, and personal transformation for those ready to take the next step.
→ Explore Un-Skool and see what's available
Listen to the Conversation
This article was inspired by our conversation with Alex Bretas on Radical Learning Talks, where we explore lifelong learning, his concept of an informal PhD, and what it means to take ownership of our learning as adults. Listen to the episode below:
