"The mother who fails at times to be attuned to her child, facilitates her child's healthy development." Don't suffocate your children's development with too much parenting. Here's why you can relax and enjoy being a good-enough parent.
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President Obama called for “more challenging curriculums and more demanding parents” in his state of the union address and the NY Times has followed this up with a debate on its pages, Blaming Parents for Poor Schools which, I think, encapsulate the issues of why schools are so resistant to change . . .
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Eight legislators in France have decided homeschooling is dangerous and should be tightly regulated to prevent the mental, ideological, or religious conditioning of children. This is done without much, if any, evidence being produced to support this claim . . .
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Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education, presents the theories, practices, and real-life experiences of self-determined learners in the 21st century.
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Many American homeschoolers are probably unfamiliar with Dr. Roland Meighan, who died on January 20, 2014, but he was an important and wonderful person whose work should be more widely known. Roland admired the work of John Holt and he reached out to me in the mid 1980s, offering his help to spread the word about alternatives to school . . .
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In 1975 The Continuum Concept was published and John Holt was an early, enthusiastic supporter of the book as another reason why parents should trust themselves and their children to learn and grow without constantly referring to experts to be sure they're doing it okay. Today, hunter-gatherer cultures are studied more but, as this exchange shows, what we can learn from them is difficult for many to grasp.
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A call for homeschoolers, ages 13 to 18, to participate in a research study about their civic and moral development during their high school years.
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"You don’t learn to love freedom by being a slave." This and many other juicy quotes by John Holt and author/psychologist Richard Farson are in this interview from 1974 about children's rights. Read about the interview and listen to it here . . .
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People think research about the efficacy of schooling proves that our national well-being, personal advancement, and intellectual abilities are deeply connected to attending school. A new article argues that research about the efficacy of education is deeply flawed and prevents us from creating better solutions for helping children learn. . .
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Ken Danford, a cofounder of NorthStar: Self-Directed Learning for Teens, does a TEDx presentation about this unique resource center upon its 18th anniversary.
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I lived through the reading wars and survived, though it wasn’t easy in the homeschooling movement. Phonics purists couldn’t quite embrace John Holt’s ideas since he considered phonics to be just one way that children can learn to read, and not necessarily the best way. “It is good books, not good reading methods, that make good readers,” John said . . .
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Erik Martin, 17, notes in How World of Warcraft Saved Me and My Education: "With the exception of a few exceptional teachers, school at large operates counter to the interests of children. In school, we’re not taught to overcome a challenge, we’re taught to fear the prospect of failure . . ."
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This is the complete episode of John Holt and two homeschooling families contending with a fairly hostile audience (one person is so mean in their comments about one of the homeschooled children that Donahue cuts her off!). Though it is from 1981, I think all the criticisms, responses, and issues are pretty much the same today despite the continued growth of homeschooling. What do you think?
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Alison Gopnick's research into how children learn supports so many of the observations John Holt wrote about, especially his chapter from Learning All the Time, "Young Children as Research Scientists."
Recent national news about homeschooling.
Mosaiculture is a horiticultural art form you can share with your family. All sorts ideas and opportunities for exploration are embedded in this unique, outdoor art.
What happens when homeschoolers get to use a technological platform reserved for university-level courses (Blackboard Collaborate) to co-create a free, online, nonsectarian homeschooling event? Read about it and see some presentations to draw your own conclusions.
A short video for John Holt's Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children that features Holt's own description of his work with children.
Here's a short ad for The Legacy of John Holt using a great moment from Holt's second appearance on The Donahue Show, when Phil Donahue asks John to respond, in one sentence, how schools could be better.
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In Germany, homeschooling has been banned due to concerns about children "adopting their parents' opinions"—this was among other reasons, but it is a major reason cited by the authorities. What, exactly, does this mean in practice?
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