The Right to Control One’s Learning

Young people should have the right to control and direct their own learning; that is, to decide what they want to learn, and when, where, how, how much, how fast, and with what help they want to learn it. To be still more specific, I want them to have the…

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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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Education in The 21st Century

Originally written in September 2011, when we first began our unschooling journey. Updated a few points and links. A study published in July showed that people have become less likely to remember things that they know are only a click away on the Internet. In other words, our selective memory has expanded…

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The New Theory of Learning

A few people actually read my bio, in which I refer to the New Theory of Learning. Some people asked, “What is the New Theory of Learning?” Well, here it is. This is not really a “rant.” In fact, it’s one of the few topics that I think I actually…

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Curious about Our World

A few years ago, Aunt Hannah rescued a giant laminated wall map of the world from the neighbor’s trash and gave it to us. We put it up on the wall opposite our breakfast room, where, at the time, many of our learning activities occurred. The map had an immediate…

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Giving Them Space to Learn

When our children were small and we decided that they would not go to school, it seemed really important to create a space in the home where learning would happen. I knew I didn’t want desks and blackboards; that definitely wasn’t for us. We chose the round table in the…

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