‘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 [...]
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 [...]
We’re All Life Learners
I’ve been doing the New Year clean-up shuffle over the past few days. Among the piles of random notes falling out of my journal and cluttering up my desk was this quote from John Holt: “People should be free to find or make for themselves the kinds of educational experience they want their children to have.” When I first came across this [...]
Learning to Write By Doing It
I had a chat this morning with someone who was bemoaning kids’ use of technology. Her fifteen-year-old daughter wants either a cell phone or a laptop computer for Christmas, she said, but she and her husband are worried that the teen won’t “learn to write properly because of all that Facebook, Twitter and texting nonsense that young people [...]
The World is Discovering Autonomous Learning
"Kids learn on the Internet in an autonomous way, by looking around for information they're interested in or connecting with peers who can help them. This is a big departure from how they're asked to learn in most schools, where the teacher is the expert and there's a fixed set of content to master." I, and many other unschooling advocates, [...]
Not Boxing Ourselves In With Labels and Definitions
Back in the 1970s and 80s when my daughters were young, they learned by living their daily lives, through experience...both that which found them and that which they sought out. They reacted to a need or an interest by exploring, researching, asking questions, listening to others, testing their ideas and putting them into motion, getting feedback, [...]
It Hasn’t Shut Me Up
When I began working as a writer and a journalist over 30 years ago, I had a sense of coming home, that I was doing work that perfectly fit my temperament and personality. In fact, I felt a sense of relief that I was finally able to ask questions; that I could make money doing so was a bonus. I’m known in my family as a questioner and a [...]