Posts Tagged ‘autonomous learning’
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 [...]
Unschooling from a Father’s Perspective
Life Learning Magazine's publisher Life Media also publishes a small selection of books under The Alternate Press Imprint, founded in 1976. Our most recent book is For the Sake of Our Children by Leandre Bergeron. This book is unique in many ways. One of them is that it's a natural parenting memoir written from the perspective of a father who [...]
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 [...]
Five Requirements for Effective Parenting
In an interview this morning, I was asked to name the five things that I think are crucial for effective parenting. Respect and trust were the first to come to mind; I’ve been talking about them forever as prerequisites for creating an environment in which kids can develop and learn. It took me a little while longer to distill everything else [...]
Why is it scary to honor and trust our children?
Thanks to Kyla Matton for her insightful review of our recently published book For the Sake of Our Children by Quebec author Leandre Bergeron. I know the book is challenging (otherwise, why publish it!?), but I'm wondering why the ideas of honoring one's children (rather than treating them as possessions), allowing them the freedom 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 [...]
Self-directed Learning Happens Everywhere
Reconciling our beliefs about the flawed nature of schooling with the need for education in the developing world is an ongoing dilemma for many unschoolers. It's often the basis for the criticism "it's okay for you to do, but..." There was, in fact, a spirited discussion on the topic about a year ago in the letters section of Natural Life [...]
January/February Issue of Life Learning
The password-protected January / February 2010 issue of Life Learning Online is now available to subscribers. Not a subscriber yet? Here's where you can check out what you're missing. Subscribe today and receive access to the PDF as the first issue in your subscription. Your online subscription will also include access to PDFs of all the [...]
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 [...]