Readers Digest Interview With Will Smith

These are a couple of questions from an interview that Readers Digest had with Will Smith. I think he is an unschooler and doesn't even realize it :)



Interviewer: Have you ever thought about going back to college?

Will: The things that have been most valuable to me I did not learn in school. Traditional education is based on facts and figures and passing tests – not on comprehension of the material and its application to your life. Jada and I homeschool our children, because the date of the Boston Tea Party does not matter.

Interviewer: But there are some basics in education that need to be taught.

Will: Of course there are. Reading, writing and arithmetic, because those are the languages of our country.

Interviewer: So, you don’t see any reason to go back to a formal education yourself?

Will: I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand in front of a class.

Interviewer: They put physics in a book, but I know I could never be a physicist.

Will: The first step is you have to say that you can.