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
It’s not other people’s concern and comments over socialization and “keeping up.” It’s not the worry that you’re doing it wrong. It’s not the moments when your kids are bored and trying to figure out what’s next. It’s not the constant work of making sure your kids have what they need to explore their various…
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.
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
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.
Nobody grew taller by being measured.
— Roland Meighan
Have you read this yet? This brilliant article discusses the “disease of being busy,” our culture’s obsession with activity and with accomplishing tasks on our to-do lists. When our own family found ourselves caught in the throes of being busy, we were incredibly unhappy. We were stressed and tense. Even after we started unschooling, it…
Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.
— John Muir, John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
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…
The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.
— George Bernard Shaw
I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.