Children are subject peoples. School for them is a kind of jail. Do they not, to some extent, escape and frustrate the relentless, insatiable pressure of their elders by withdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts of their minds from the scene? -John Holt, from How Children Fail
Unschoolers Rock!
A month ago today, my family attended the Life Rocks! unschooling conference in beautiful North Conway, NH. It was five days of non-stop, jam-packed festivities. To be among like-minded people was, for many of us, a blessing, a respite, a sanctuary from the world in which we usually live. It was easy to see how […]
Paley: Credibility
Only as I began to seek the children’s approval could I concentrate on individual needs and differences. If you want a certai nperson to like you, then you find out what makes him or her happy. I began to realize that I could not teach much to anyone unless the person liked me a lot. […]
Kohn: Human Nature
…we assume that people naturally avoid challenging themselves, that it is “human nature” to be lazy. The evidence shows that if anything deserves to be called natural, it is the tendency to seek out optimal challenge, to struggle to make sense of the world, to fool around with unfamiliar ideas. -Alfie Kohn, from Punished by […]
Silent No More: How Unschooling Gave My Son a Voice
I recently remembered a bizarre and painful phenomenon that occurred in my elementary school years. Although I had plenty to say at home (a fact to which my harried mother would have attested!), I recoiled at the prospect of speaking at school. I never raised my hand to volunteer answers, but despite that (or maybe, […]
Dr. Markham: Feelings
Most of us learned as children that our feelings were unacceptable, even dangerous. Dr. Laura Markham from Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids
Holt: Where Children Learn to Be Stupid
To a very great degree, school is a place where children learn to be stupid. A dismal thought, but hard to escape. Infants are not stupid. Children of one, two, or even three throw the whole of themselves into everything they do. They embrace life and devour it; it is why they learn so fast […]
Arthur C. Clarke
If children have interest, then education happens. -Arthur C. Clarke
Paley: Respecting Tears
Decisions about fairness, it seems, often appear as the result of someone’s tears. We teachers are not overly fond of crying when there is no physical hurt, but the children insist that crying means something is unfair and needs to be corrected. It is never a case, for them, of the adult “giving in” to […]
Ippie: Unschooling In Action
In my last post, I had the great pleasure of introducing you to Ippie, the main character in my new children’s book about unschooling. I’m super-excited about this book for a bunch of reasons, but here’s the best one: because the publishing of the book itself was an amazing unschooling experience. Want to know why? […]