Risky Play: Why Children Love and Need It

Originally published on PsychologyToday.com at my blog, “Freedom to Learn“. Fear, you would think, is a negative experience to be avoided whenever possible. Yet, as everyone who has a child or once was one knows, children love to play in risky ways—ways that combine the joy of freedom with just the right measure…

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Biological Foundations for Self-Directed Education

Originally published on PsychologyToday.com at my blog, “Freedom to Learn“. In many previous posts I have contended that children come into the world biologically designed to educate themselves. The evidence comes from observing the amazing learning capacities of children before they start school (here), the ways that children and adolescents in…

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Why Our Coercive System of Schooling Should Topple

Originally published on PsychologyToday.com at my blog, “Freedom to Learn“. I’ve been called a crazy optimist, a Pollyanna, a romantic idealist.  How can I believe that our system of compulsory (forced) schooling is about to collapse? People point out that in many ways the schooling system is stronger now than…

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The Culture of Childhood: We’ve Almost Destroyed It

Originally published on PsychologyToday.com at my blog, “Freedom to Learn“. I don’t want to trivialize the roles of adults in children’s lives, but, truth be told, we adults greatly exaggerate our roles in our theories and beliefs about how children develop.  We have this adult-centric view that we raise, socialize, and educate children. Certainly…

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Why Don’t Students Like School?

Originally published on PsychologyToday.com at my blog, “Freedom to Learn“. Someone recently referred me to a book that they thought I’d like. It’s a 2009 book, aimed toward teachers of grades K through 12, titled Why Don’t Students Like School? It’s by a cognitive scientist named Daniel T. Willingham, and it has received rave…

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The Wisdom of Hunter-Gatherers

Originally published on PsychologyToday.com at my blog, “Freedom to Learn“. For hundreds of thousands of years, up until the time when agriculture was invented (a mere 10,000 years ago), we were all hunter-gatherers. Our human instincts, including all of the instinctive means by which we learn, came about in the…

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Unsolicited Evaluation Is the Enemy of Creativity

Originally published on PsychologyToday.com at my blog, “Freedom to Learn“. In my last post I wrote of evidence that children’s creativity has declined over the past two or three decades, a period during which children’s lives, both in and out of school, have become increasingly controlled and regulated by adult authorities. Here, now, is…

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The Many Benefits, for Kids, of Playing Video Games

Originally published on PsychologyToday.com at my blog, “Freedom to Learn“. Quite a few parents have asked me, at talks I’ve given, about the advisability of their limiting their kids’ computer play. Others have told me that they do limit their kids’ computer play, or their total daily “screen time,” in a tone…

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Peter Gray – Psychology Professor

Psychology Professor, Massachusetts, USA Editor’s Note: The following was originally published as the Prologue in the author’s book, Free to Learn.[1] It was submitted by the author. “Go to hell!” The words hit me hard. I had on occasion been damned to hell before, but never so seriously. A colleague,…

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