Shutterstock Is time travel possible for humans? Jasmine, age 8, Canberra, ACT. Hi Jasmine. I wish! In books and movies, our favourite characters can use “time-turners” and treehouses to travel through time. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy for people in real life. Let’s look at why. First, there are two types of […]
Shutterstock How would they bring the International Space Station back down to earth? Grace, age 7, Watson, ACT. Hi Grace! The good news is we can bring the International Space Station back to Earth. The bad news is it will be a broken mess of melted metal. To understand why, […]
Let them have some iPad time. iStock Nermeen Dashoush, Ph.D., is a mother of two and a clinical assistant professor of Early Childhood Education at Boston University. She was a classroom teacher for over 10 years in New York City. This story originally featured on Working Mother. I have given a […]
By Idzie Desmarais If a child learns in the forest, and there are no adults there to see it, did they really learn at all? The summer my sister turned 13 was spent in a patch of woods–one of the few semi-wild spaces near us to be spared from development–with […]
bokan/Shutterstock As schools resume for most Australian students, a new group of parents have emerged. These parents have decided to give home education a longer term try, finding their children have improved academically and benefited from the calmer home learning environment. This change may mean some families move to a more child-led […]
A Harvard law professor wants to ban or greatly restrict homeschooling. Ouch. By Peter Gray Ph.D. Freedom to Learn An article published in the May-June 2020 issue of Harvard Magazine sent shockwaves through the homeschooling community. At the top of the article, entitled “The Risks of Homeschooling,” is a drawing of a forlorn girl […]
Shutterstock Most Australian children are stuck at home due to the outbreak of COVID-19. They need to find ways to socialise, do their school work, exercise and entertain themselves. It’s not surprising parents may be hearing “I’m bored” a lot more than before. People hate being bored. So much so […]
How are your kids managing at home? By Peter Gray Ph.D. Freedom to Learn We are in the midst of a terrible pandemic. Certainly, there is cause for all of us to be anxious, but I want to focus here on the effect on children. It is a well-established fact […]
“As you can see, individual differences in writing can be seen as early as kindergarten,” says Cynthia Puranik, associate professor in the College of Education & Human Development. On her computer, she pulls up writing samples from two kindergarteners who were asked to print words that they know. One child […]
Education is much more than what is taught in school. Take advantage. A pandemic is never a good thing. It’s a terrible thing. But maybe some good can come from it. Anything that disrupts our usual ways of being can lead us to try new ways of being, ways that might in the […]