Unschooling Thought for the Day

If we look at children only to see whether they are doing what we want or don’t want them to do, we are likely to miss all the things about them that are the most interesting and important. -John Holt, from How Children Fail

Together we have come to realize that the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school. -Ivan Illich, Austrian philosopher

Some who support the  more coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled.  However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled – those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good […]

By supporting school-imposed order, however innocently, parents make enemies of their own children, sometimes lifelong enemies. -John Taylor Gatto, from Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling

It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child’s curiosity and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic difficulties. -Alice Duer Miller, […]

Parents and teachers who defend the use of control without reservation…see the world in dichotomous terms: either you are controlling or you are permissive; either you crack down hard or you let your kids get away with anything.  To devise flexible and reasonable rules for children, preferably by working with them to solve problems rather […]

George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever “graduated” from a secondary school. -John Taylor Gatto, from Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling

The good news is that once we say yes to children’s full range of feelings, they learn to manage them in healthy ways Dr. Laura Markham from Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality. -Helen Beatrix Potter

Children are able to teach one another best if they are permitted to interact socially and playfully throughout the day. -Vivian Gussin Paley, from The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter: the Uses of Storytelling in the Classroom