From ‘I’m Unschooled. Yes I Can Write’ One of the greatest sources of so called “concern” when it comes to school-free learning is “socialization.” It often seems that at least 50% of the questions we get asked as home-learners boils down to “but what if they don’t have any friends?” […]
By Idzie Desmarais I’m Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write Passion. We hear the word constantly. Parents and teachers want children to “find their passion,” adults are encouraged to find theirs (as if everyone has just one in the first place), and every new interest found is met with excitement: maybe they’ll […]
By Idzie @ I’m Unschooled. Yes, I can write People just discovering unschooling often have a lot of questions. How do unschoolers learn what they need to? Do schools really have the right idea in dividing everything into separate subjects? And can unschooling really work for every individual? My short […]
Ivan Illich explored how schooling is not the same as education in his book Deschooling Society in 1971; other writers, such as Paul Goodman in the U.S. and A. S. Neill in the UK, also wrote about this distinction. Nonetheless, in the twenty-first century most parents and educators are quick […]
Dr Peter Gray Peter Gray A very good author on Self-Directed Learning is Peter Gray. He’s a Psychology professor at Boston College and has been researching the topic of self-directed learning and forced schooling for decades. He has compiled much evidence demonstrating the detrimental effects of compulsory schooling and the myriad […]
By Patrick Farenga John Holt Publicity shot 1983 In doing some research for unpublished material by John Holt I’m working on with a colleague, Akshay Ahuja, I came across this fascinating exchange of letters between Prof. Jerome Bruner of Harvard’s Center of Cognitive Studies, and John Holt. Holt reviewed Bruner’s book,Toward […]
By Idzie Desmarais I’m unschooled. Yes, I can write. I read a new post on how “fun for the fun of it” is good enough by Wendy Priesnitz, and it got me thinking. I like to talk about how we’re constantly learning–how we can’t help but do so–and how unschooling is […]
By Idzie Desmarais I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen article headlines proclaiming “Unschooling: No Classes, No Books!” I always shake my head in frustration. I suppose when people hear that unschooling is not school, they jump to the conclusion that any and all even vaguely school-like trappings of […]
(Roy Shakespeare/LOOP IMAGES/Loop Images/Corbis) Unschooling—child-directed learning—is “the final and most extreme frontier in the broader cultural shift toward ‘child-centred’ parenting,” says the Globe and Mail. Unlike more traditional homeschooling, in which parents “try to replicate the formal curriculum of the school system in the home,” says University Affairs, unschooling “encourages kids to do pretty much whatever […]
I was happy to be part of a recent conversation on the online TV show For the Love of Learning, along with Pat Farenga and Pam Sorooshian. We covered many interesting topics, and I was left feeling like there was so much left we didn’t get to explore. While I […]