Fifty years ago John Holt woke the dreary world of educational theory by showing that for small children “learning is as natural as breathing.” His brilliant observations are as true today as they were then. Over a million copies were sold worldwide in the decades that followed. This new, 50th anniversary edition features a Foreword by teacher/author Deborah Meier, who praises Holt's influence on herself, in schools, and in homes.
Read MoreA new report encourages states to promote homeschooling as a viable option to families. Citing research and the current political situation, this is a good summary of homeschooling from an education policy perspective.
Read MoreOn Thursday, June 22, noon to 9 pm, you can ask me anything online at the Alliance for Self-Directed Learning member forum. We can chat about John Holt, homeschooling, unschooling, learning, teaching, schools and what they can learn from looking beyond their learning paradigms, issues and regulations that challenge the growth of homeschooling and self-directed education around the world—whatever you want!
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Learn about free CLEP and AP classes, free How to Homeschool videos, and radio broadcasts about self-directed education and homeschooling issues.
Read MoreThe photo shows the cast and crew of the homeschool, teen-operated Firebird Youth Theater's 2015 production of Alice in Wonderland (photo by Katherine Bourbeau), one of a few theater groups operated by teenagers. I interview teen directors/founders Leo Lion of Firebird and Abby Dickson of Youthquake about their latest shows.
Read MoreTwo conferences to check out this summer: The Education Jam, July 3–9, in Baltimore and the AERO 2017 conference, August 3–6, in Greenvale, NY.
Read MoreThis video announces the official opening of self-directed.org. Pat Farenga describes the Alliance for Self-Directed Education and why you should check it out.
Read More. . . If I could have given myself one piece of advice when I was a child, it would have been: “If you happen to make your mark by doing what you purely enjoy, then fine. But never do what you fail to enjoy for the sake of making your mark.” . . .
Read MoreIt seems that every discussion about education assumes the primary goal of lower educational institutions is to get people into higher educational institutions. But there are better ways of thinking of one’s learning besides as a means to get a checkbox ticked on an application—after all, learning never stops, it ebbs and flows in intensity over your life . . .
Read MoreBooks about homeschooling tend to be nonfiction and educational in tone, so it is a pleasure to see an increase in novels written by homeschoolers that add fresh perspectives and stories about homeschooling and family life. I want to call out these two novels because they share a common inspiration—John Holt’s writing.
Read MoreHolt's most political book, Freedom and Beyond is also a very practical and useful book for parents and anyone who works with children because it explores in detail many of the tensions caused by giving freedom. Partners who argue over the value of self-directed learning, who worry about discipline, and so on will find that Holt presents both sides of these tensions and notes they will never go away . . .
Read MoreFrom Freedom and Beyond: "In sum, a deschooled society would be a society in which everyone shall have the widest and freest possible choice to learn whatever he wants to learn, whether in school or in some altogether different way . . . . It would be a society in which there were many paths to learning and advancement, instead of one school path as we have now . . . a path far too narrow for everyone, and one too easily and too often blocked off from the poor."
Read MoreNow, there’s no doubt that homeschooling is a choice, but for me and other homeschoolers I know, it was not a choice of schools, it was a choice for our family to avoid the rat race of school: its busy work and pressure for labels, grades, class status, and homework. Our choice was not to go to school and to not turn our home into a school—and that’s a choice I never read about in the school choice literature . . .
Read MoreMontessori’s ideas are being adapted by some to meet the growth of the homeschooling movement and the organizer of the Montessori Homeschool Online Conference asked me to talk about some general principles I’ve learned as a homeschooling advocate . . .
Read MoreI often encounter fake news as a reason the election went the way it did. But I’m more upset by the real news accounts and analysis of the election results that claim, in short, this election was the triumph of the less educated over the educated—the idiocracy wins!
Read More"Informal or spontaneous learning is often far more effective than formal learning." If you agree with this position, please share this video with your friends and let us know your thoughts, or join the Alliance: http://www.self-directed.org
Read MoreThe movie’s exploration of how children and adults learn and grow together without following conventional school and child-rearing practices is vivid. Indeed, its celebration of childbirth and parenthood at the start of the film sets a beautiful tone for why parents might want to continue this type of holistic family life as opposed to conventional, fractured work/school/family schedules.
Read MoreWe want ASDE to be a self-sustaining and steady voice in support of self-directed education in this time of intense technological and bureaucratic surveillance and control of our lives and learning. We want self-directed education to be seen as normative, rather than alternative, in the public discourse about education . . .
Read MoreDocumentary films from France and Portugal explore unschooling and other paradigms of learning in juxtaposition to the factory model of modern schooling.
Read More"Many of us may coerce without meaning to.
"The question is, what kind of influence do we exercise over other people, what kind of open or hidden pressure do we put on them, what chance do we give them to say No, what do they risk if they do say it? . . ."
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