In the course posts from a few weeks back, the topic of having education be learner-led rather than educator-led was brought up. Essentially, the educator guides the learner as they construct a plan to learn some type of content, then help them in following through with that plan.
The system is interesting, since it is distinct from the educator-led system which is used in most settings. For the sake of reference, the current system has an educator create some set of lesson plans, then learners are expected to learn the material from those lessons. This has the advantage of guaranteeing that learners have access to the information they need from an education scheme, but it has the disadvantage that those being educated may be passive observers in their own education, and may only learn information in order to pass a series of tests, rather than to gain the knowledge.
The free inquiry system seems to have the inverse advantages and disadvantages. Learners are more likely to be engaged with what they want to do, but may not cover all the topics which would be considered necessary. The theory behind this system is that since many topics require elements which would be unpleasant to learn otherwise, but become worthwhile when learned in pursuit of a goal.
Personally, while the results seem to show promise, I remain skeptical. I don’t know if this is common for everyone, but given the option to educate myself in any topic, I would certainly only choose things which seemed easy to me. In the past, my high school law class functioned with a model somewhat similar to this one, and while it was freeing, I would usually just turn in reviews of case law which I could throw together in half an hour, and then spend the rest of the class playing Moto X3M.