The best small town in America experiments with self-directed learning at its public high school. The best small town in America experiments with self-directed learning at its public high school. A group of students gets to create their own school-within-a-school and they learn only what they want to learn.

For a semester, these students got to learn from a curriculum of their own design. Surprisingly, it wasn't all recess and lunch breaks. One kid even took flying lessons—for science!

Obviously this sort of self-directed learning won't work at all schools or for all students, but it's incredibly refreshing to see a school giving its students the opportunity to do something other than pass standardized tests. Check out what the principal of the school has to say at 5:48, hear from a student one reason why she thinks this program is successful at 9:51, see what happens when a student's project doesn't go as planned at 10:31, and then share this if you'd like to see more programs like this in schools. I know I would.