“Kids learn on the Internet in an autonomous way, by looking around for information they’re interested in or connecting with peers who can help them. This is a big departure from how they’re asked to learn in most schools, where the teacher is the expert and there’s a fixed set of content to master.”

I, and many other unschooling advocates, have written similar things over the years. But this particular statement is a quote from a  prof at the University of California’s Irvine campus. Mizuko “Mimi” Ito is studying kids’ use of the Internet, digital media and social networking sites. Her work is supported by a $2.97 million grant from the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

“Kids today are learning outside the boundaries of formal education,” Ito says in a release from the university. “Technology is allowing them to access information and craft their own identities in unprecedented ways, without interference from parents or teachers.” And, she says, teens have embraced the digital world because it facilitates self-directed learning and independence.

Some of this research forms the basis of a new book, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (MIT Press, 2009.)

The findings of Ito and her team are expected to help not only schools, but libraries and museums plan programs to better prepare students for the workforce. And, in fact, that’s already happening. The project has inspired an outreach project called YouMedia at the Chicago Public Library. Free to kids with library cards, the 5,000-square-foot center makes online resources and digital media available to urban teens from largely working-class backgrounds who might not otherwise have access to this new world, given the lack of computers in most schools, especially ones in low-income neighborhoods. Separated into “hanging out,” “messing around” and “geeking out” sections, the center also offers workshops in digital photography, graphic design and video and music production.

This is evidence of the fact that  education systems will be dragged – albeit kicking and screaming in many cases – into the future of non-coercive, interest-based learning, which unschoolers are pioneering. The stupid behavior by governments trying to stop that from happening is just a brutal and futile backlash against the inevitability of that change.