Unschooling Thought for the Day

…in no other arena do we take for granted so asymmetrical a relationship as that between parent and child. -Alfie Kohn, from Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes

The constructive way to handle anger is to limit our expression of it, and when we calm down, to use it diagnostically: what is so wrong in our life that we feel furious, and what do we need to do to change the situation? -Dr. Laura Markham, from Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop […]

Your child will delight and exasperate you, thrill and annoy you. By accident, really, your child will ask you to grow, too. If you can notice when you’re triggered and restore yourself to equilibrium before you take action, if you can soothe your own anxiety, if you can reflect on your own experience and make […]

The practice of rewarding people conveniently spares us from asking hard questions about why we are asking people to do things that are devoid of interest in the first place. -Alfie Kohn, from Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes

Since we can’t know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned. -John Holt, from […]

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. -Henry David Thoreau

Anyone can memorize facts and figures. The real way to learn anything is to go out and experience it. Let your curiosity lead you. -The Man in the Yellow Hat, from Curious George the Movie

play [is] that most ordinary of human functions, as natural as crawling, walking and running. Without instruction, these skills flourish. No one is taught to walk – or to act out a fantasy. The patterns and incentives arise from within. -Vivian Gussin Paley, from The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter: the Uses of Storytelling […]

Our teaching is too full of words, and they come too soon. -John Holt, from How Children Fail

I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was at the foot of the class. -Thomas Edison