The 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? . . ."
Read MoreJohn Young, a twelfth-grade English teacher, recently contacted me about The Norton Reader, which he uses in his classes and that first introduced John Holt’s thoughts about education to him years earlier. Mr. Young mentioned that Norton was no longer using Holt’s article and he was disappointed in this development . . .
Read MoreHomeschooling and unschooling continue to expand and gain acceptance around the world as conventional schooling ossifies.
Read MoreThe voices and ideas of the young are often paid lip service and then ignored by those in power—at home, in school, and in politics—so is it any wonder the young are jaded about the political process?
Read MoreSome thoughts about about unschooling and homeschooling after speaking in Dublin, Ireland and Brooklyn, NY recently, plus an article, "Awakening Ourselves to New Possibilities in Education."
Read MoreIt is all too easy, particularly in election years, to forget that homeschooling is a wide-ranging social movement, not a party-specific political movement . . .
Read MoreMy thoughts on an article in the Journal of Philosophy of Education that discusses, among other interesting things, the uneasy relationships between homeschooling and mainstream schooling.
Read MoreFrom John Holt's reply to Dr. Jerome Bruner's letter to the NY Review of Books: "The proper business of the intellectual is to make complicated ideas more simple, not simple ideas more complicated; to make the real world more comprehensible, not less so." Read more about this sharp exchange . . .
Read MoreShilpa and Manish Jain are grassroots education activists located in the United States and India, respectively. This spring each is putting on a unique event that approaches vast educational change at a personal, empowering level . . .
Read MoreTwenty-two personal accounts about why and how fathers decide to embrace and support unschooling. Peaceful parenting and thoughtful support for their children's mental, spiritual, and physical development are some of the important themes that get explored by the men in this new collection.
Read MoreThe 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 . . .
Read MoreThis new book surveys 75 former and current teenage homeschoolers about their feelings, thoughts, and experiences about not going to high school. The range of responses and the variety of educational experiences outside of conventional school that they describe will give heart to any parent wondering if homeschooling during the teen years is a smart move.
Read MoreChildren's rights are not a conversation starter in most circles, but this recent interview I did goes there in-depth.
Read MoreOver the last few months we created this series of six videos, handouts, and a private member's forum to help you start and continue homeschooling in your own way. I wrote a new book, How to Report Unschooling to School Officials, as a capstone to this project (you can get the book separately). But you can get a special price on the complete package . . .
Read MoreSeptember 14, 2015, marks the 30th anniversary of John Holt’s death and I’ve been conflicted as to what to write about it . . . As I thought about this anniversary I went through various books and files for inspiration and I came across the documentary slide show we created for the Growing Without Schooling 20th anniversary conference in 1997 . . .
Read MorePeople may criticize you for it, but strong evidence continues to emerge that letting your teenager sleep late and do their tasks and learning when they're well rested is a biologically and educationally sound practice. The problem is, school schedules and adult expectations undermine people who want to do this—unless you are homeschooling!
Read MoreGetting into the Ivy League is not a good reason to homeschool—there's no guarantee you will gain admission and why put all that pressure on a young child? But following your children's interests and developing their character are good reasons to homeschool, as these stories show.
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