The Autonomous Child in the Workplace?

From the discussion in comments here, it seems that there is some anxiety as to how autonomously educated children will ever fit into hierarchical structures such as a workplace where they may have to deal with issues such as producing work to a deadline, to meet the expectations of others, and to deal with bullying.

I have to admit to little experience of this myself, since most of the AEd children I know personally are yet to make it to this stage in their lives, so I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has more experience of this, but from the little I have seen, and from the books (such as Julie Webb's Those Unschooled Minds) that I have read, I would say that the most important factor in regard to the problem of whether the autonomously educated child copes with adult life, is whether or not the parent has helped the child to be well prepared for the environment of his choice.

Therefore, many AEing parents will be talking to their children about issues to do with earning a living, how best this can be done, the likely nature of the workplace, and if necessary, about topics such as working competively as opposed to co-operatively, about meeting deadlines, about presentation of work and person, about ways of dealing with stress and bullying.

The advantages that the AEd child may have is that he is familiar with being in charge of his life and learning. If he is well advised about the likely nature of the workplace, he can then make the choice as to whether or not to go for it. Having made that free choice, he knows that he can walk away, which in itself immediately makes the stressful environment seem less so. He also knows, having been encouraged to solve problems with creativity and ingenuity, that he needn't acquiesce in terrible situations, that he can seek to solve these problems. He may be very familiar with the benefits of working co-operatively with others, that competition within the workplace as often as not actually stymies productivity, rather than enhances it. He may also be familiar with taking criticism, (since there is often less terror in receiving it when the stakes are lower, as they can be at home), that he may be able to stand the criticism far better than a schooled child can. He may be gentler in giving it too. He may also be a truth seeker, since again there is often no reason not to be in a healthy family, whereas lying (eg: to protect friends from a bullying teacher) frequently seems a proportionate response to some of the strains of schooling.

In other words, I suspect that AEd children could have an advantage over coercively schooled children because the former are aware that they are freely choosing these environments, that these environments are not necessarily optimal, but that they can use their ingenuity and creativity to try to solve the problems that hierarchical structures create.

As regards solving problems creatively, it is the case that some inspirational company directors, such as Bravilian CEO Ricardo Semler, who managed a six-fold increased his company profits by dissipating the hierarchical structure of his company, have shown that it is possible to manage big organisations by creating a situation where autonomous individuals can work collectively. In Semco, workers set their own salaries, share company profits and hire and fire their own managers. They say: "Our philosophy is built on participation and involvement. Don't settle down. Give opinions, seek opportunities and advancement, always say what you think. Don't be just one more person in the company." An autonomously educated child could fit in very easily in such an environment.

Because AEd kids understand that they have freely chosen to be at their place of work, and can see a good reason for being so, and because they can envisage a better way of doing things and since they still do feel empowered to solve their problems, it may the case that they can actually cope with it better than the schooled child who has lost all hope of a better life, who feels compelled to continue in a miserable existence, who cannot imagine a better future and who does not try to solve the problems he faces in the workplace because he is not familiar with acting autonomously.