I posted recently about what, in my opinion, is the hardest thing about unschooling. Today, I wanted to share a snapshot of the best thing: joyful learning. Learning that changes and expands horizons. Learning that sticks. This little 9-year-old wants to build things. Ever since she saw Handy Manny at age 4, she has wanted…
Little children love the world. That is why they are so good at learning about it. For it is love, not tricks and techniques of thought, that lies at the heart of all true learning. Can we bring ourselves to let children learn and grow through that love?
— John Holt
This right here is one of the things I love most about unschooling. Strengths are the focus and drive of our lives, not our weaknesses or struggles. Every weakness is a strength in disguise, and I believe that unschooling gives my children the chance to figure that out.
Quick read on unschoolers and college. I’m posting this because this seems to be one of the questions I get most often. Much more can be found in Peter Gray’s book, Free to Learn.
We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions — if they have any — and…
— John Holt
This article on a ten-year old math prodigy, Esther Okade, was shared with me recently. I loved it, but not for the “prodigy” reason. When the child showed great aptitude in math, her parents enrolled her in a private school. Her mom said, “One day we were coming back home and she burst out in tears…
If we did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
— Thomas Edison
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
A little over a year ago, my daughters attended Yoga for Congo for the first time. They had helped me prepare for the event many times, and we had discussed the subject matter and the seriousness of the issue. Nothing could have prepared me, though, for what it was like to have them in that…
Socialization is something that is so bizarrely over-worried for our children now. I feel that children are so forced into unnatural socialization that they’ve forgotten how to let it naturally evolve. But enough about what I think for today. Nicole Shiffler recently published two great blog posts (here and here) about socialization and her children.…
This. In this brilliant article, Bloomberg columnist Megan McArdle writes about a conversation with a young girl in 10th grade. This girl is so afraid of not getting an “A” that she is afraid to try anything new. In our current system of education, kids almost have to get a 4.0 to feel like they…