‘autonomous learning’ Archives
Computers and Self-Directed Learning
In the July 9 online edition of The New York Times, Silicon Valley-based business professor Randall Stross published an article entitled Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality. He described some studies in which economists have been measuring a home computer’s impact on the school performance of children in low-income [...]
What Really Matters is Now Available
Our latest book is hot off the press! What Really Matters by David Albert and Joyce Reed is subtitled "Two veteran homeschooling advocates discuss what learning is really all about." The official publication date is September 1, but copies are now available for sale (with no shipping!) to friends and subscribers. We are thrilled with all [...]
Unschooling: Doughnuts and Peanut Sauce
The ABC News show Nightline has recently featured “unschooling.” I guess budgets are low and the network is repurposing content – or at least ideas. Last month, one of the Nightline segment “reporters” did a similar piece, with a different family, on the ABC show Good Morning America. It was equally as ignorant, unbalanced, and [...]
Having Fun…For the Fun of It
One of the unfortunate mainstays of the homeschooling industry is inspirational books and magazine articles describing fun things to do with your kids that are also educational. This notion that we have to make learning fun by dressing it up as games or other enjoyable activities is nonsense…and, more often than not, our kids know that. And [...]
We Know How to Learn…Until Schools Gets in the Way
I’m often bemused to read how important it is that children “learn how to learn.” It seems to be the phrase du jour among self-described progressive educators, book authors, school critics, and those who promote ever-earlier attendance at pre-school institutions. Some young children might be able to be trained – in dog-like fashion – to [...]
Quotations About Life Learning / Unschooling
As any unschooler / life learner and many homeschoolers know, there are many benefits to a self-directed education. However, I have always been surprised and pleased by how many writers, thinkers and doers from various times in history have also known and written about the folly of school and the importance of a learner-directed education. [...]
More Than the Absence of School
A number of people have recently asked me questions about our family life back in the 1970s and 80s. And I realized that, in all of my books and articles over the years, I haven’t written much about that. So here goes! When Rolf and I got married in 1970, we had already decided that our future children wouldn't go to school. So when Heidi [...]
Life Learning – the book
Last year, we published a book of essays from Life Learning Magazine, which has been a great hit among unschoolers as well as those who are curious about unschooling. Life Learning: Lessons from the Educational Frontier demonstrates how families are embracing this learning lifestyle - and making it the fastest growing segment of the homeschooling [...]
There’s No Right Way…So Let’s Lose the Insults
For many years, I have taken it for granted that people know what the term “unschooling” means. Truthfully, I really haven’t paid much attention, since I dislike the word…and labels in general. Since many people seem attached to it, I just happily play along, using it when necessary – as a web keyword, for instance – and quietly [...]
Beginnings: It Hasn’t Shut Me Up
As part of the process of writing a memoir called It Hasn’t Shut Me Up (my 10th book, to be published when it’s done), I’ve been examining the roots of my radicalism – especially as it relates to education. Like most other people, my upbringing and my schooling in the 1950s and ‘60s taught me to accept what I was told by my parents, my [...]