Perhaps you have felt shut down as a writer.
I might be because of your experiences of formal study.
I recall all the ways over the years I needed to compromise and mask and tamper down my writing so that I comply and fit in with formal learning expectations.
I also learned how to adapt, develop personal agency, and plan and propose independent study plans with trusted professors.
I asked myself what was needed to build my confidence and personal autonomy. And I realized that much more is at stake when we limit our view of ourselves as writers to how we have been evaluated in formal study. I needed to cultivate confidence by expanding my writing activity to beyond the classroom and workplace.
I agree with Eduard Lindemann (1926) who asserts that [ our] most significant learning is not within formal learning spaces (Italics mine).
The key to developing agency and confidence falls in our learning within nonformal learning spaces. We cannot just rely on the exams, essays and performance reviews. Lindemann argues fiercely against the perils of authoritative teaching:
Authoritative teaching, examinations which preclude original thinking, rigid pedagogical formulae – all of these have no place in adult education. […] Small groups of aspiring adults who desire to keep their minds fresh and vigorous; who begin to learn by confronting pertinent situations; who dig down into the reservoirs of their experience before resorting to texts and secondary facts; who are led in the discussion by teachers who are also searchers after wisdom and not oracles: this constitutes the setting for adult education, the modern quest for life’s meaning. (Lindeman 1926a: 4-7)
Quite often, lifelong learners need to adapt and mask and play by the rules during formal learning (in the academy and workplaces), and make themselves smaller, not realizing how much emotional harm that causes.
