Subtlety

Unschoolers tend to believe that the most important issues of our lives deserve our personal attention, and that our personal attention, in turn, is naturally drawn to what is important—if it’s not schooled out of us. John Holt had precious little tolerance for easy answers—for curricula which would automatically make us healthy, wealthy, and wise; for experts who grew frustrated when asked for examples; and for Big Science Business Government who wrested from people their ability to educate, feed, or physic themselves.

Self-Directed Learning Flourishes Online—Unless We Lose Net Neutrality

This is about more than just saving money: when the internet is a place where anyone, anywhere, can set up a website to talk about their passion and interact with like-minded people, and where anyone with an internet connection can find them, self-directed learning can take us anywhere … If we can't save net neutrality, young people who want to take charge of their own education will find that the internet has been turned into just another place where someone else decides what they can read, watch, and listen to …

Slowness is Not Slothfulness—Learning by Doing Requires Patience

Slow down, you move too fast! Here are some concrete actions and inspiring ideas for stepping way from conventional, multitasked, overscheduled family life and on to the path of home and community built on shared responsibilities and self-directed learning.

Technology That Gives Students Agency, Not Instruction

Sitting in a classroom or at home in front of a teaching machine is hardly a major advancement for a child’s social, physical, and mental growth. Our 19th century school assumptions about how learning happens bind us to an industrial model of the school as a knowledge factory, rather than a model of people as active learners. The photo on this post is from an article about the history of B.F. Skinner and his teaching machine by Audrey Watters.

Parents' Concerns about Their Children's Futures

The questions from parents that Blake responded to at his talk are the same ones myself and others in homeschooling for the past 30+ years also asked when we started—childrearing issues don't differ from previous generations as much as our external circumstances do—and I feel obligated to pass those answers forward . . .

An Unrelenting Focus on Education Mistakes Knowledge for Power

Striking comments and evidence from mainstream economists that increasing college graduation rates and getting better job training are diversions from the real work of finding work worth doing and getting paid fairly for it . . .

John Holt Captioning Project

Help us make John Holt's videos accessible in other languages and to the deaf by joining our new video captioning project . . .

John Holt, Technology and Education, VideoPatrick FarengaNovember 25, 2014YouTube Captions, video, John Holt videoComment

Cool Science Resources

You see children making things a lot when you learn at home with them, and many deep lessons are embedded in these projects. Here are some interesting DIY projects made possible by the Internet . . .

Technology and Education, UnschoolingPatrick FarengaOctober 28, 2014science, google cardboard, 3D vision, periodic tableComment

Slow Homeschooling

"I think children need slowness even more than adults do. It’s in those moments of quiet, of unstructured time, of boredom even, that kids learn how to look into themselves, how to think and be creative, how to socialize. We are doing a great disservice to our children by pushing them so hard to learn things earlier and earlier and by keeping them so busy . . ."

Common Core Curriculum Doesn't Keep Up With the Real World

The Common Core Curriculum eliminates handwriting in favor of teaching keyboarding skills instead. This might make sense on paper, but are we seeing the future clearly with this change?

Buying Learning for Babies is Consumerism Gone Wild, Not Good Parenting

A new study shows that exposing children under 2 to learning videos, apps, and other screen-based educational products is not effective and the educational claims being made by the manufacturers are overblown. But parents seeking an edge for their child continue to purchase these products . . .

A Bright Side to Big Data

Jobs and Credentials, Technology and EducationPatrick FarengaMay 3, 2013Alternatives to Compulsory Schooling, alternatives to college, Cost of College DegreesComment

The Empowered World: Fixing What's Broken In Our Own Ways

Homeschooling Current Issues, John Holt, Learner-centered curricula, Technology and EducationPatrick FarengaNovember 30, 2012Empowered World, Shaping the Future Global, Steve ZuckermanComment

Online Learning's Growing Pains

Homeschooling Current Issues, Public School Issues, Technology and EducationPatrick FarengaJuly 20, 2012Education research, Homeschooling, online learning Comments

Learning Without Us

We need to shift our thinking from a goal that focuses on the delivery of something—a primary education—to a goal that is about empowering our young people to leverage their innate and natural curiosity to learn whatever and whenever they need to. The goal is about eliminating obstacles to the exercise of this right—whether the obstacle is the structure and scheduling of the school day, the narrow divisions of subject, the arbitrary separation of learners by age, or others—rather than supplying or rearranging resources. (p. 6)