Posts Tagged ‘respect’
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 [...]
Kids Are Capable of Much More Than We Give Them Credit For
The recent sailing misadventure of sixteen-year-old Abby Sunderland and the successful climbing of Mount Everest by thirteen-year old Jordan Romero have me thinking about skill and ability as related to age. Whenever a kid accomplishes something major, it hits the media because children aren't expected to achieve much in our society. But the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Unschooled Teens Are Different
There has been some discussion lately about (and by!) teenaged life learners. All too often, teens are collectively discriminated against or looked down upon due to their supposed bad behavior, moodiness, etc., etc. However, I think much of that is due to the way they are treated in our society...and people's expecta...tions of and respect for [...]
The Dark Side of Influence
A recent blog post by a dad with kids enrolled in a Sudbury Valley type school (SVS) has prompted me to think once again about how life learning parents relate to their children in a unique way. The blogger was comparing unschooling to the SVS model because someone had once used the oxymoron “unschooling school” to describe a SVS. He came up [...]
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 [...]
Unschooling, Radical Unschooling, or Something Else?
Most life learners don’t like to label their children – whether it’s using the alphabet soup provided by those who would drug children into submissive behavior or by means of school-style grades. So I’m always amused and disturbed in equal parts when the debate begins about what to call this sort of child-led, non-coercive, lifestyle that [...]