Unlink WASHINGTON, D.C. – More parents than ever before are choosing to homeschool their children, driving a movement that’s grown by 62 percent in the last decade. The National Catholic Register reports that recent data from the U.S. Department of Education shows explosive growth in homeschooling among American families, particularly in […]
Kindergarten and preschool teachers everywhere are struggling to preserve play. by Peter Gray The war against childhood continues. Children are no longer generally free to roam, play, and explore on their own, as they were in the past and are designed by nature to do (here). Parents who allow such play are being arrested (here andhere(link is external)). […]
Academic skills are best learned when a person wants them and needs them. by Peter Gray In my last post I summarized research indicating that early academic training produces long-term harm. Now, in this post, I will delve a bit into the question of how that might happen. It's useful here to distinguish […]
Simply being a good dad. Credit: Bike fix by Shutterstock Dads toss their kiddos in the air, they roughhouse, and they're always game for a water-balloon fight. Those may be stereotypes about Daddy's brand of parenting, but they have some basis in reality, at least according to research. Thousands of studies […]
Research reveals negative effects of academic preschools and kindergartens. By Peter Gray on May 05, 2015 in Freedom to Learn Many preschool and kindergarten teachers have told me that they are extremely upset—some to the point of being ready to resign—by the increased pressure on them to teach academic skills to little children […]
Digital technology, and those who have grown up with it, are forcing the venerable lecture to adapt to the times. uniinnsbruck/Flickr, CC BY-NC Enlarge The idea that teachers should teach and students should listen presumes that teachers know more than their students. While this was generally true back when textbooks where a rarity, and may […]
Students at Visitacion Valley School in San Francisco meditate, as part of a program in which students meditate for fifteen minutes twice a day. Silence isn't something people usually associate with middle school, but twice a day the halls of Visitacion Valley School in San Francisco fall quiet as the […]
Peter Gray has studied how learning happens without any academic requirements at a democratic school. The Boston College research professor also wrote about the long history and benefits of age-mixed, self-directed education in his book Free to Learn. Over the years, as he encountered more and more families who had adopted this approach […]
I'm seeing a tag going around, proclaiming today to be National Start Homeschooling Day. In honour of that, I figured I'd share my top reasons to start unschooling. I understand that, for any number of reasons, unschooling just might not to be doable in your life. If that's the case, I […]
Research shows that video-game play improves basic mental abilities. by Peter Gray In two previous articles (here and here), I summarized evidence countering the common fears about video games (that they are addictive and promote such maladies as social isolation, obesity, and violence). I also pointed there to evidence that the games may help children develop logical, […]