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Blog Archives Highlights -  Unschooling/Homeschooling/Natural Learning/Life Learning Close the Schools, Not the Libraries – September 11, 2009 Public libraries are a great example of a learning  institution that works. People of all ages use them even though their use is not compulsory. They have useful resources and employees who can help users find their way around those resources. Unfortunately, as a society, we tend not to value them as much as we do, say, schools. So they are often underfunded. Where I live, some libraries were forced to cut back on hours recently, due to budget constraints. But today, I heard that the city of Philadelphia’s libraries are scheduled to be completely closed at the beginning next month due to lack of state funding. This might be a tactic to focus attention on the issue during a budget crisis, rather than a sure thing. If that’s the case, it’s not a bad tactic because we tend to undervalue libraries. I don’t suppose they’d close the schools instead… Posted: 2009/09/11 9:07 PM The Lies We Believe – September 10, 2009 After a week of doing media interviews, I am weary of the back-to-school clichés like parents celebrating that their kids are finally out of their way, like the “cute” stories from kindergarten teachers laughing about kids crying on the first day of school, like new clothes and new backpacks, like being glad to be back in the routine, and all the rest. I’m beyond weary of explaining that unschooled kids are well socialized and educated. My mood brightened temporarily as I read an article about a public school that understands how kids learn. Imagine that! But then I read the accompanying comments (I really need to stop reading the comments at the end of newspaper articles!) of the “those-kids-will-never-amount-to-anything-because-they’re-not-being-forced-to-toe-the-line” sort…and they’re so like the criticisms familiar to us unschoolers. I have to wonder why so many people insist on clinging to outmoded beliefs about how children should be treated and educated – especially in spite of so much evidence to the contrary. Author and co-founder of the Institute for Humane Education Zoe Weil has something to say about that. She says the problem originates with a lack of critical thinking ability. And she refers to a recent essay in Newsweek called Lies of Mass Destruction that sheds more light on the subject. In that piece, author Sharon Begley notes the common tendency of people to believe untruths even in light of a great deal of evidence discounting them. For instance, the desire of those who voted against President Obama last November to justify their choice allows them to believe some of the preposterous claims of the rabid right wing’s opposition to his health care proposals. So perhaps those who refuse to believe that schools are harmful and that children should be respected are justifying the fact that they have chosen themselves over their children…and, perhaps, need to give their kids more of the harsh treatment they experienced as children. Cognitive dissonance is what Begley calls it, and that’s as good an explanation as any. Perhaps too polite, though. Posted: 2009/09/10 1:49 PM Learning What We’re Bad At – August 5, 2009 I’ve just been glancing back at the bits I highlighted when I first read Kirsten Olson’s book Wounded by School. School left me with many wounds, some of which are poignantly described in Kirsten’s book. Perhaps the major one is perfectionism. I have a need to do things correctly the first time, which leads to a disabled sense of adventure. Even though I was a good student as a child, there were, inevitably, things that I wasn’t so good at. The humiliation I was made to feel at my lack of pitch, my inability to memorize multiplication tables and my physical clumsiness negated any pride I took in my physical attractiveness (I thought I was ugly until well into adulthood), my ability to read and write well, to articulate my insights, to lead groups or my other considerable strengths. For much of my youth, that humiliation hobbled my self-esteem, blinded me from learning new things, and prevented me from taking on challenges. In fact, it has been my life’s work to fully heal. So was fascinated by a posting that I read a month or two ago on the Ecology of Education blog about a guy who finished last in a golf tournament but turned it into a learning experience. His list of ways in which he turned his failure around is entertaining and illuminating, but I wish he’d analyzed how he overcame his school-inflicted wounds in order to accomplish that – smiling all the while. In his article in the upcoming fall issue of Natural Life Healing Trauma and School Disease, David Albert says that one way to alleviate the pressure and heal the school disease problem is to homeschool. Intuitively, both Rolf and I knew that before we had children, and vowed to keep our daughters safer than we’d been. That’s why I get so infuriated when social workers, school administrators and other pro-schoolers suggest that not sending a child to school is abusive. And that’s why it is so important that we get brave works like David’s and Kirsten’s as much coverage as possible. Posted: 2009/08/05 12:48 PM Traumatized Children, Traumatized World – July 26, 2009 Melting ice caps, droughts, a revived nuclear threat, dysfunctional democracies, renewed hunger in Africa, millions losing their jobs and homes due to others’ greed, the emotional impoverishment that gives more media coverage to a dead rock star than to repression in China.... The world’s trauma is, thankfully, far away from my life. And yet, as I wait for the fall issue of Natural Life to come back from the printer, David Albert’s brave and important article about the effect of trauma on children (bits of which can be previewed on the magazine website) keeps the concept top of mind. In his article, David is not thinking about trauma in far off places, although that is certainly of concern to him (and healing it is part of how he lives his life). He writes, instead, about the wounds experienced by children in our own society through adult pressure, especially as a result of their forced attendance at schools that all too often rob them of their dignity, respect and human rights. Some readers will think he overstates the case when he likens the effects of the repetitive and ongoing stress felt by children to the experiences of soldiers returning from Afghanistan or Iraq. But he makes a compelling case by comparing the hyper-arousal, defiance and dissociation that are hallmarks of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to the behavior of some children and young people as they try to deal with the pain of humiliation, disrespect, injustice and constant assessment of school and their other day-to-day environments. And, he notes, these are also the “symptoms” of so-called disorders such as ADHD and ODD. As David Albert’s writing partner Joyce Reed says, “Repetitive stress makes children stiff with resistance. They lose their flexibility, resiliency, their open minds and comprehensive vision.” And that, writes David, is ominous, for the sake of both our children and our world: “Our society’s inability to deal creatively with major social issues – from war to poverty to ecological devastation – stems from our collective incapacity to think straight because of the impacts of past injuries and insults to our psyches.” We know what we have to do. Posted: 2009/07/26 1:41 PM Respecting Children – July 15, 2009 Someone asked me yesterday how I would sum up my philosophy of parenting and education in one word. “Respect,” I responded. She was surprised that I hadn’t said, “Trust.” But respect goes farther than trust. Unschoolers trust their children to learn to read, write, do math and science, etc. without attending school, as a result of their naturally programmed curiosity and interest in the world. However, having respect for children is harder. It means that we unconditionally respect their rights, freedoms, feelings, personality, temperament, challenges, opinions, motives, needs, desires, abilities, perspective, personal space and privacy. We not only trust them to learn but respect their right not to learn certain things (nobody doesn’t learn….) in certain ways and at certain times/stages. That’s what I expect as an adult and I believe that children deserve nothing less. Posted: 2009/07/15 11:53 AM Appearing to Do Nothing is Dangerous – July 6, 2009 Appearing to hang around and do nothing at all is dangerous – whether you’re a teenager in a public place, an adult at work or a child in school (or even in some homeschool settings). I can recall sitting at my desk in school pretending to read a text book as a cover for thinking (or “daydreaming” as it was derisively called)...or practicing looking attentive while the teacher was talking and my mind was somewhere else entirely. Unlike some of my peers – most often boys – I got away with it in school because I was an otherwise well-behaved girl who got good marks. And now, I get away with “loitering” in public places with my MP3 player or my journal because I’m a well-dressed and groomed adult. As I was loitering this morning at my favorite sidewalk café, I listened to a couple of moms feverishly programming their children’s summer activities, apparently unwilling to leave a single minute unorganized and dangerously non-productive. Not for those kids any time to watch ants crawl along the sidewalk, time to dig in the sand or lie on the grass, time to consolidate or expand upon any bit of information they might remember from the whirlwind of facts jammed into their brains over the school year, time to think or to daydream. No, they might miss an opportunity to “learn” and to advance their school careers. They might even forget how to “learn.” Or learn how to think for themselves. And that would threaten adults’ erroneous belief that they are in change of their children’s minds and their learning. Now that is dangerous. Posted: 2009/07/06 11:14 AM Learning to Write Without Being Taught – July 1, 2009 I’ve been busy working on a wonderful new natural parenting and radical unschooling book that we’ll be publishing in the fall. It goes to the printer in two days. The title is For the Sake of Our Children and the author is Léandre Bergeron, a well-known Canadian author and social activist who originally wrote it in French. As I was finishing up the fiddly bits of formatting and tedious final proofing, I reached into my briefcase and found a sweet little note from my daughter Melanie. I wonder if it’s the last one I’ll find of the many she stuffed into nooks in my suitcases and bags and pockets just before I left her ocean-side home after a visit last month. She and her sister wrote many notes thirty-or-so years ago, although not to say they’d miss me when I went home. Those notes were a way to get my attention – “Will you play a game with me?” They were about learning to spell – “What is this word?: M _ _ A N _ E.” And they were about using language to communicate – “Heidi loves Wendy.” Slowly, but surely, their simple little notes became longer letters and even stories. Reading and writing were learned as effortlessly as was the art of speaking just a few years earlier. And now, writing – novels, funding proposals, public presentations, how-to books – is a part of their lives. Léandre’s three daughters learned the same way, first asking how to spell every second word in their little notes, then eagerly moving on to composing letters to their schooled friends…who, ironically, were too busy being taught how to write to have time to respond. Posted: 2009/07/01 9:44 PM The Importance of Questions – May 13, 2009 Perhaps the most common question I get asked about unschooling/homeschooling/life learning/self-directed education involves a parent’s ability to help his or her child learn, which involves doubts about being qualified to answer all the child’s questions. My response is that answers are easy to come by; it’s the questions that are important. The answers will come to the child who is curious and open – not to mention supported in finding the answers by a caring adult. Unfortunately, in school, that idea is stood on its head, with the adults asking the questions (to which they already know the answers) and the children expected to parrot back the “correct” answers. When children are born, they want to learn about their world by exploring their surroundings in ever widening circles. Learning is not something that we do to them, or that we can produce in them. An education is not something they “get”…it is something they create for themselves, on a life-long basis. The best learning – perhaps the only real learning – is that which results from our children’s personal interests and investigations, from following their own passions and asking their own questions. Our role as parents is to help them to pursue their own answers, not necessarily to provide the “correct” answers. Posted: 2009/05/13 3:44 PM Why Kids Don’t Like School – April 27, 2009 I was reading an essay last night by a highly educated mother who was unhappy about the chaos in her son’s grade three classroom, and with the fact that he was lethargic at school and not reaching his potential as a “scholar.” She was equating his lack of interest with society’s expectations of black males. No doubt that’s a problem, but as a white woman, I had lots of sympathy with her son after reading her description of the classroom and school, where maintaining “smoothly running classes” seemed to be the main focus. The description was full of descriptions of kids behaving like they weren’t engaged in what was going on or even wanting to be there. One of the assignments in which the boy and his classmates had no interest involved writing a letter to the drama teacher explaining the meaning of a play – a sure-fire way to destroy anybody’s interest in reading, writing, plays and scholarship, all at the same time! I am always amazed at why people don’t get that forcing people to do things “for their own good” is counterproductive. But today, a news release came across my desk from the University of Virginia that gives me a tiny bit of hope that things could change. “If you ask high school students if they like to learn new things, almost all of them will tell you they like to learn,” says Daniel Willingham, a cognitive psychologist. “But if you ask those same students if they like school, many of them will tell you they don’t.” He addresses these issues in a new book Why Don’t Students like School?, in which he explains how the mind works – and what it means for the classroom and, reportedly, for homeschooling parents. The mind is actually designed to avoid thinking, he says, and forcing students to think makes them turn off. “Thinking is a slow process; it’s effortful and even uncertain. People naturally want to avoid that process, and instead rely on memory, the things we already know how to do and are successful at.” However, he continues, people also are curious and, paradoxically, we enjoy thinking. He says that to teach somebody effectively – to “create learning experiences that last” – one needs to find that “sweet spot, a level where learning is neither too simplistic to be interesting, nor too difficult to be enjoyable.” I do not believe we can create learning experiences that last for other people. We can, however, create circumstances that allow for real learning to happen. We can, in effect, trust people to find that “sweet spot” for themselves. That is what happens naturally when kids are engaged in a topic that interests them: Their learning is in context, builds upon previous learning and is at exactly the right level to satisfy their urge to explain the world without turning them off because the experience is too difficult or too boring. The best learning experiences – those that create real learning – are those instigated by learners, based on curiosity and interest…and on the trust that they won’t have to regurgitate what they have learned in some meaningless way like writing a letter to someone to explain something they already know. Posted: 2009/04/27 12:52 PM No Use For Marks – April 15, 2009 Marks have been in the news quite a lot recently. First there was the University of Ottawa professor who lost his job because he doesn’t believe in marks. (He has other unconventional and invigorating ideas that don’t sit well with the academy, that you can read about in the article…in one instance, he allowed a couple of 10-year-olds to register for one of his coursse with their mother – and supported the filing of a human-rights complaint claiming ageism when the university said they couldn’t stay.) Then there is the apparent problem of private tutors/schools granting higher marks to teens that they were getting in public school. Marks are, after all, sacred in schools  because they serve as the currency that makes the educational economy work. They are, as a consequence – and just like praise and other rewards offered by schools and many parents – used as bribes to get young people to behave in way that society wants. They also encourage competition, as the second article illustrates. But they have nothing to do with learning. As Alfie Kohn writes in his 1999 book Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, the use of marks and grades in education is based on Pavlovian and Skinnerian behavioral theories, which are supported by experiments with laboratory animals. Unlike rats, people are motivated by autonomy and choice, as well as curiosity and relevance to their lives. And that is one of unfortunate problems with the use of marks in schools: Self-direction, independent thinking and collaboration are traits highly in demand these days but our educational systems are too fearful of the consequences of those traits to nurture them. So they plod along defending meaningless and debilitatingly old-fashioned practices. Posted: 2009/04/15 4:29 PM We Don’t Need No Education – April 7, 2009 A wonderful article has just been posted to an academic journal about unschooling (now, there’s an oxymoron for you) that documents the process of self-teaching music and compares it to unschooling. Even more interesting is that it’s written by an education professor who was inspired by a question from one of his “curriculum methods” students. He describes the “war” between taught and self-taught musicians, then goes on to write about his own joyous life-long hands-on approach to music, his unhappy stint studying music at university and his subsequent alternative approach to teaching music at the secondary school level and parallel career as a professional musician. There appears to be hope for academia. Posted: 2009/04/07 11:53 AM Why Trusting Kids is So Hard – March 29, 2009 A woman called me the other day in tears. She misses Life Learning magazine (now part of Natural Life) a lot because it helped her trust her children to learn. Why is trusting children so hard? Why do we find it so difficult to trust them to learn, to eat properly, to develop “good manners” (meaning to treat others mindfully), to generally do the right thing? Trusting kids isn’t popular in our society. We “know” that they can’t make their own decisions, that they won’t say “thank you” unless we teach them to, that they’ll grow up to be slobs unless we bribe them to do “chores.” (That word “chores” is a topic for another day.) I think it’s because we don’t trust ourselves and, therefore, can’t trust our children.. And that’s because our parents and our teachers didn’t trust us. After all, society says children aren’t trustworthy, and that they are loud, inconsiderate and uninterested in learning about the world around them unless forced. Growing up, most of us weren’t allowed to make our own decisions – what to wear, what and when to eat, whether or not we were cold, what friends to have, what to learn, to participate in family decision making. We were managed, not trusted. We were dictated to, not allowed to think. Then, as we became young adults, our parents and teachers worried about us – not realizing that their lack of trust and the resulting control had ill-prepared us to make our own decisions. In the end, their lack of trust became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most of us broke out of that, learned from the mistakes we made. But many of us have spent a lot of time and money on therapy, retreats, workshops and self-help books in order to learn to trust ourselves. And, when we find it hard to trust our children, we are passing along the legacy of our upbringing and schooling. Those of us who have decided there is another way need to be sure the pattern doesn’t get repeated. We need to give our children the message that they know what is best for them, and that we are available to help and guide them if they are confused...and ask for our help. By choosing life learning, we have chosen to protect and encourage their ability to live their lives with joy and the knowledge of who they are. We can listen to and treat them with respect. We can model self-respect, mindfulness and care for others. But we also need to be kind to ourselves as we walk the alternative parenting path, remembering that trusting kids is not something that we’re programmed for. Posted: 2009/03/29 9:43 AM What is an Amateur Anyway? – February 11, 2009 I’ve recently been reading The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen. Its subtitle is “How blogs, MySpace, YouTube and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture and our values.” The book is an opinionated rant (and far be it from this opinionated ranter to quarrel with that!). But I think that Keen has got it wrong…or is, at least, over-reacting. There is, undeniably, a lot of dumb, incorrect, narcissistic and dangerous stuff on the web. There are lots of folks who don’t respect intellectual property rights (the definition of which is changing as a result). There are too many unjustifiably anonymous posters. Conventional media companies (like mine) are rewriting their business models in order to survive. And, yes, sometimes the professional journalist in me bristles. When I bought the book, I really wanted to agree with Keen. But I started to feel queasy when he talked about monkeys versus experts. He is spittingly dismissive of “amateurs,” whom he defines as uneducated, untrained and uncredentialed – definitely not experts, to his way of thinking. (Full disclosure: I am a proudly self-trained, uncredentialed but very professional journalist, writer and editor.) Worse, Keen confuses talent with training: “Talent always has been, and will always be, scarce. So just as I want my doctor to have gone to a credible medical school and my lawyer to have passed the bar exam, so I want to be informed and entertained by trained, talented professionals.” I agree that I’d like my brain surgeon to be highly trained (as well as competent, passionate and awake), but I don’t think that entertainers need credentials to be effective – they just need to be talented enough to entertain me. In fact, raw talent is often more entertaining because it retains its passion, awareness and innocence. Some people know more about some things than others do. And if you want to call those people experts, I won’t stop you. But they don’t have to have credentials, or training to know that stuff (unless they are doing brain surgery). And for me to be entertained or informed, they don’t  need to be making money at it. They don’t need to be “professionals.” In a couple of my books and in many articles, I’ve written about the dangers of the expert mentality. Experts are gatekeepers. Keen thinks that’s a good thing because they’re where the money lies. Making money from one’s talent, training and passion is undoubtedly a good thing. But it doesn’t mean one is better at something or more qualified to engage in that activity. In fact, there is as much bias, sloppy journalism, bad writing and incompetence on the part of the so-called “professional” and employed media as there is among the volunteers who rule Wikipedia. Keen also confuses expertism with seriousness. He writes: “The simple ownership of a computer and an Internet connection doesn’t transform one into a serious journalist any more than having access to a kitchen makes one into a serious cook.” “Serious” is the wrong word. If he means skilled, then having a computer and Internet connection, or a kitchen, will go a long way toward developing that skill…if one has the interest. Training or not. The solution, if there needs to be one from the consumer perspective, is that each of us has to learn to discern what is information and what is entertainment…or just democracy in action. We need to be (and to help our children become) media literate in order to trust the information we confront, no matter what tools are used to deliver it. The solution is not to limit the technology to “professionals” but for each of us to learn how to sort through the muck…to be able to think creatively, to know how to use the technology (reading the revision history and using reload buttons in the case of Wikipedia, for instance). And those tools are no different, really, than the ones required to filter Natural Life magazine from the supermarket tabloids, Fox Television from public radio, or PR content from news. We also need to find ways to demonstrate our knowledge without formal credentials, to abolish the structures of authority that too often surround information, news and “knowledge,” to live and learn actively rather than passively. Posted: 2009/02/11 7:39 PM How Do They Know That? – August 2, 2008 Ever since our daughters began to learn without school over 35 years ago, I have wondered about something. I’ve not been curious about how learning happens, but about why so many people need to know. Reporters, relatives, colleagues, other parents and the merely nosey have all, over the years, expressed a burning curiosity to understand how my children learned to read, write and multiply. I used to say that it happened by osmosis. Interestingly enough, I’ve never once been asked how they learned to talk or walk. But why does it matter how children learn? Or adults, for that matter? So much of educational research is aimed at finding better ways to teach things (and, of course, better ways to artificially motivate children to be receptive to that teaching)…things that would be learned anyway without the teaching and better, in some cases, without what amounts to interference masquerading as helping. I think that mostly comes from academic elitism, an adult arrogance that says we can help them do it faster or more efficiently than if they left to their own devices. We also need to understand (and control) the process of learning because we think it is difficult, a belief seemingly reinforced by most school experiences. However, children who have the opportunity to learn informally instead of attending school demonstrate that much learning happens effortlessly without adult interference when the time is right – meaning the motivation is present – and usually without the learner being aware it is happening. And when the motivation is present, even inherently difficult information can be mastered with joy in the absence of planned pedagogy or professional organization. Or maybe we misunderstand what learning really is. Much of what is supposedly learned in school is mostly material that has been memorized, whether history dates, mathematical formulae or the difference between a verb and a noun. Absent any interest in learning the material and any context for it, as well as sufficient time to experiment with, adapt and apply the information, this process cannot be called learning. Rather, it is memorizing, regurgitating and forgetting. (Why else would teachers and some parents bemoan the “ground lost” during summer vacation?!) When supporters of informal and home-based education try to understand how learning happens, their motivation is somewhat different. For instance, British academics Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison researched and wrote How Children Learn at Home (Continuum, 2008) in order to challenge many of the assumptions underpinning educational theory and to demonstrate the efficacy of parent-modeled life learning. And their book does that well, largely by quoting parents who admit often to not having a clue how their children learned something! And I think that’s just fine, especially if it helps us learn to trust the children and the process. Thomas and Pattison write: “If we begin with a child’s eye view of the learning situation, asking what attracts children’s attention, why, and how they then go about exploring these things, we begin to be able to see learning as a form of growth in which children add, flexibly and organically, to their understanding of the world around them. Such a view further enables us to see how learning is structured by the child’s day-to-day environment and is accomplished as an ongoing facet of the things that children do.” Just like adults learn. Posted: 2008/08/02 7:10 PM Expectations of Childhood – June 23, 2008 I was recently asked my opinion of this quote from Dr. Robert Mendelsohn (author of How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, Ballantine Books, 1987 and Confessions of a Medical Heretic, McGraw-Hill, 1990 ): “We must learn to accept the fact that during their developmental years, children cannot be expected to exhibit adult behavior.” I was quite puzzled by the quote until I looked it up in the book and read it in context. The preceding sentence is: “It is sometimes difficult for parents with high expectations, who may themselves be high achievers, to remember that the occupation of children is to play and to learn.” Ah, now it makes sense! He is pointing out – albeit a bit clumsily, I think – the folly of hurrying children. I have always admired Mendelsohn’s work. I like his anti-corporal punishment stance and commonsense approach to health. And I remember when How to Raise a Healthy Child came out wishing it had been published 15 years earlier when I could have used it to weather some of the common scrapes and ailments experienced by our young daughters. However, browsing through it today, I am feeling uncomfortable about a lot of the language he uses. For instance, the word “expectation” appears far too often for my comfort. In fact, the excerpt that was presented to me is entitled “What You Should Expect of Your Child.” I hope that is tongue-in-cheek because it’s our expectations that get us into trouble as parents (as well as in many other areas of life). If we must have an expectation of our children, it should be that they will develop in their own way, at their own speed, according to their own agenda – which is something Mendelsohn seems to believe, at least with reservations. However, expecting that children will be “normal” (Mendelsohn’s word), let alone better-than-normal so as to help them reach their potential, negates their unique individuality. It also assumes that the Western sort of childhood is the norm, whereas it’s actually an anomaly in much of the world and a relatively recent phenomenon that has always been subject to differences of ethnicity, class, region religion, gender and politics. Because the time of innocence is so short, I don’t approve of hurrying children to act beyond their years; but neither do I think prolonging childhood and keeping children sequestered away from the day-to-day life of their communities (presumably for their own protection and for adults’ convenience) is the best way to help them learn to function in those communities. Mendelsohn sums up, in this same excerpt, by stating that “Children aren’t adults, so don’t expect them to behave as though they were.” Perhaps what is lacking here – aside from a smaller dose of expectations and a new perspective on childhood – is a definition of “adult behavior.” I have known lots of children who behave in a much more responsible manner than many adults! What children need instead of expectations is respect. Posted: 2008/06/23 5:25 PM Threadbare Words – April 20, 2008 I was recently asked to speak about the “pedagogy of homeschooling.” I declined because I saw the phrase as an oxymoron. The definition of the word “pedagogy” involves teacher-centeredness, with students as recipients of directed learning rather than being in control of and making decisions about their education. However, the ensuing discussion and my later ruminations reminded me that relatively few homeschooling families see themselves as part of a counterculture that is resisting the dominant education system. And many of those that do tend to define themselves in other ways, like “radical unschooling” or my preference “life learning,” or even the less confrontational “home-based education.” That leaves “homeschooling” for those who school at home. Doesn’t it? That’s why I’m puzzled that so many homeschoolers – especially in the U.S. – persist in wearing that threadbare terminology when it has long ceased to fit. The result is a seemingly never-ending argument about what should or shouldn’t be defined as homeschooling. I understand the concern about loss of freedom that results from including charter schoolers, correspondence schoolers and those enrolled in public systems for other reasons under the homeschooler umbrella. One of the concerns is that the powers-that-be will force “homeschools” to be more like regular schools. But I think that will be a problem until secular homeschoolers, unschoolers, radical unschoolers, life learners, home-based educators and all the rest stop lumping themselves in with the school-at-homers. And that includes allowing patriarchal right wing organizations like HSLDA to speak for them. The current situation in California, about which I wrote last month, is a good example. Homeschooling there is legal but unregulated, as it is in many places, give or take a regulation or two. But homeschooling in many places is much more regulated than it used to be before the fear-mongering, create-a-problem-so-you-can-solve-it-and-sell-memberships HSLDA came along. What does “homeschooling” mean anyway? Maybe it simply means what it says: schooling at home. If that’s the case, how our family learned decades ago wasn’t homeschooling and, further, must have been illegal. After all, the law here says families must provide “satisfactory instruction at home or elsewhere.” Aside from the fact that there is no definition provided of “satisfactory” (and I’m confident there won’t be because if they defined it for homeschooling, I’m pretty sure unhappy schoolschooling parents would be calling their lawyers to apply it to their situations), we didn’t instruct our kids about much, if anything. That lack of instruction is why I have a hard time identifying with the term “homeschooler.” (And why I have decided to decline most media requests for interviews unless I can be sure we’re speaking the same language.) So maybe the term isn’t being misused after all. Maybe it’s just evolved…or been co-opted. I believe that it’s usually a good thing – a sign of progress – when a formerly uncommon term becomes common. In the same way, although I abhor the meaningless misuse of words “natural” and “green” and “eco-friendly” in this age of environmental greenwashing, I am glad people care enough about the environment for marketers to use the terms. Unfortunately, words that we use to label things are shorthand, conjuring up a whole set of attitudes and practices, which people use to slot and pass quick judgment. So if, in its popularity, a term has become misconstrued or otherwise problematic, why not find another? I’ve always felt that it’s a bad idea to define something by saying what it’s not. The type of education – the philosophy of life – that I call “life learning” involves no school. And who cares that it’s sometimes home-centered? That’s not very descriptive of the values involved. In my opinion, we’re long passed the time when we should find better terminology that doesn’t signal a view of education and of children that maintains the same oppression and powerlessness found in schools. Posted: 2000/04/20 5:45 PM Surprise, Surprise: Feminists Can Homeschool – February 20, 2008 While I’ve been doing little else except launching our new Natural Child magazine over the past few months, readers have been sending me links to wonderful writing and fascinating articles. I’m now coming up for air and have been ordering books like mad, getting re-motivated to finish the book I’m working on and wanting to share some of these great links with the rest of you. A few people have pointed me to an article in the winter issue of the feminist magazine Bitch called “Learning Curve.” The topic is the how the “new” generation of radical unschooling moms are changing the definition of both stay-at-home moms and homeschooling. It’s a good read, despite the fact that many Life Learning readers – some of whom, like me, homeschooled decades ago for reasons involving “social consciousness and open-mindedness” – will chuckle at the caricature-ish portrayal of homeschooling and unschooling, as well as some of the misconceptions that never seem to go away, such as education as teaching. However, I’m glad to see this aspect of the homeschooling community gaining some credibility (if an article in a magazine called “Bitch” can do that!). And the article does poke at the questions with which many of us have struggled over the years, which occasionally spill over into Life Learning’s pages…and which are the foundation for many of the essays in that book I hope to finish this Spring (you’ll be the first to know when it’s published!). One of the questions that writer Maya Schenwar poses in this article is: “Can women trade their careers for their families without sacrificing a few of their feminist values – the very values that inspired many of them to homeschool in the first place?” That apparent conundrum supposedly eats away at radical unschooling feminist moms. There are many reasons why many people believe that feminism and bringing up your own kids – let alone unschooling them even when the free child care of public schools is available! – are not compatible. That includes our habits of defining our identities by our careers and success as the ability to make lots of money...not to mention the lack of value we place on children and childcare. But I’m bothered by the presumptions this supposedly feminist writer, writing in a self-described feminist magazine, seems to make about fathers’ place (or, rather, absence) in the scheme of things and about mothers’ individuality getting lost because they like to hang out with their kids. This sort of thinking-inside-the-box is why so many women (myself included) are uncomfortable with the feminist label, even though we identify with the movement’s principles. Fortunately, if my two 30-something daughters are any indication, feminist homeschooling or radical unschooling (or whatever other label one wants to give it – I’m weary of fighting labels) could help create a new generation of truly egalitarian (oh dear, that word is probably loaded too!) young people. Posted: 2000/02/20 2:15 PM Finding Our Tribe – January 16, 2008 I’ve never been comfortable identifying myself as a “homeschooler” or an “unschooler”…or, for that matter, as a “life learner,” although I’ve fit the definitions for over three decades and am a bona fide advocate for all of the above. It’s just that I have a hard enough time being “the person who’s learning to be human”! I’ve also never been comfortable with other categories of self-description like “environmentalist” or “feminist,” although I probably fit into both of those too…in some ways. And that’s the problem: Part of being human is having an individual identity and not slotting oneself into various categories ending in “ist” or “er” or “ism” and filled with millions of other people. In fact, all that wearisome slicing, dicing, slotting and labeling is one of the aspects of school that I’ve ranted against for all these years! Since we need descriptive words in order to converse among ourselves and to communicate about our lives with others, I’ve at least tried to find terminology that is, indeed, descriptive (such as “life learning”) and positive while not limiting what is, after all, a very fluid approach to living, learning and parenting. Still, discussions about the definitions of the myriad categories – and how one fits into them or not – always leave me feeling a bit uncomfortable. There will be one in the March/April issue of Life Learning magazine, which I’m just finalizing: In her “Talking About Life Learning” conversation with Sandra Rakovac, New Zealand mother Lishelle de Young talks about the difference between “radical unschooling” and “unschooling.” When I took this topic of language to our Reader Advisory, someone pointed out that such terms are used more or less in various countries, and perhaps even have slightly different meanings in different places. Aarrgghh. But as I’ve thought more about this, I’ve realized that describing ourselves and our families’ lives through the use of such words is not about labeling, one-up-manship or peer group pressure. It’s about finding our tribe. It’s about identifying with like-minded people in a world of other-minded ones. In addition to our strong need to establish a unique persona, we human beings also have an equally strong desire to be accepted, to be among people who understand our choices, who accept us as we are, without reservation, and who support us on our journey. The need to identify and to be identified by a supportive community is especially intense when our journey follows a lightly trodden path, when we are taking risks. The need for nourishment from such a group of like-minded people is probably also stronger when we’re living in nuclear families, isolated at home with very young children or feeling the lack of the status that society unfortunately gives to those who go to jobs. The Internet has helped many people find their tribes. And I’m pleased to know (because so many of you take the time to tell me) that Life Learning magazine has, over the last five years, become such a community. It no longer matters to me how you label it. Posted: 2000/01/16 8:20 PM When the “Cure” is the Problem – December 9, 2007 Last month, I wrote about new research that found children who have been “diagnosed” as having ADHD have normal brains that just develop later than those of other children. That finding, I mused, should help end the labeling and medicalization of so-called “learning disabilities”…the preferred treatment for which is drugging with powerful and side-effect-laden stimulants like Ritalin. But now, the psychiatric watchdog group Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) says that report is misleading because the use of those drugs wasn’t taken into account by the researchers. CCHR says the researchers underplayed the fact that 66 percent of the ADHD subjects studied had been on stimulants, which the FDA has warned cause suppression of growth – which could logically include brain development. “With stimulant ‘treatment’ the only physical variable, and ADHD never validated as a real disease, it is likely that the stimulant drugs, not ADHD, are to blame for the slow brain maturation reported by the study authors,” says the release. Earlier researchers have also ignored the probable connection between the drugs and problems with brain size and growth. At a 1998 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Conference on ADHD, 14 MRI studies of people treated for ADHD were reviewed. The presenters reported on-average 10 percent brain shrinkage in ADHD subjects and pediatric neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman pointed out that the vast majority of the ADHD subjects had been treated long-term with stimulants – again, the only physical difference from the control group – suggesting that it was the drugs, not the so-called “disorder,” that was causing the brain atrophy. Does this mean that the “treatment” for the “problem” is actually creating the problem  when none existed before??? Bottom line is that the diagnosis of ADHD is entirely subjective, based on a checklist of “symptoms” that sound a lot like normal childhood behavior: “Fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in chair” and “difficulty engaging in activities quietly.” And for that we medicate children with drugs that can cause psychosis, aggression, heart attack, stroke and sudden death, not to mention brain atrophy! Many families have found that the best “treatment” is to liberate their children from the need to sit in chair for long periods of time and from engaging in activities quietly. In order to accomplish that, they remove their children from school, upon which the “symptoms” often subside or disappear altogether. Now there’s a research angle that probably won’t be funded by governments or the pharmaceutical companies anytime soon. Posted: 2007/12/09 1:10 PM Exciting New ADHD Research – November 26, 2007 For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the crime of labeling kids as having some mythical disease called ADD or ADHD. In recent years, I’ve been pleased to see others – including Naomi Aldort who writes about the subject in the current issue of Life Learning – take up this cause. But it’s not a popular one, and I have received a lot of verbal abuse on the subject…even had a few canceled subscriptions by people who were indignant that I could suggest these problems weren’t real. I don’t actually suggest that – what I believe is that by the use of these negative labels we are creating medical problems that need solving with medication and that it is harmful, useless and inexcusable to problematize a normal childhood behavior in this manner. As John Holt once put it, there were no learning disorders, only teaching disorders – meaning that the “problem” on surfaces for teachers and parents when children do not fit into the classroom regime. Over the years, I’ve heard from many homeschoolers whose children’s “symptoms” have disappeared when they were sprung from the mind-numbing environment of school. So I was pleased to see, during my regular perusal of the abstracts of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) for article ideas, a research report that found children who have been “diagnosed” as ADHD just have normal brains that develop later than those of other children. The researchers found that the average age for the maturation of the cerebral cortex was 10.5 years old in ADHD kids, as opposed to 7.5 years old in non-labeled kids. I think this is a huge finding, so I went searching for commentary on it. There wasn’t much – doctors, educators, many parents (alas) and pharmaceutical companies might not like the ramifications. But Thomas Armstrong, the author of Awakening Your Child’s Natural Genius, The Myth of the A.D.D. Child and many other books, didn’t disappoint me. In his blog about his latest book, Armstrong notes that in working with children who have been subjected to the ADHD label, he has noticed that they act younger and more what is often referred to as “immature” than their peers. In a characteristically gracefully and positively worded posting, he suggests that the word “neoteny” could be used, rather than “immaturity” to capture the vitality of these kids. Neoteny is a Latin word meaning “holding youth” and refers to the retaining of childlike characteristics into adulthood – such as was true for brilliant people like Einstein and Picasso. So, like me, Armstrong is happy to see the PNAS research report. And he suggests that the kids who are labeled with these so-called disabilities are actually to be admired for being the vanguard in the evolution of our species. Although I’m not sure of the need for any labels, he suggests “evolutionarily gifted.” Now we just have to find a way to convince Neanderthal education systems to evolve away from desks, tests, workbooks, bells, lineups, rules and other old-fashioned creativity-killing bad habits. PNAS is an important journal; here’s hoping some of the professionals who work with kids will read this report and wake up to the damage they’ve been doing and the wonderful possibilities involved with allowing children to be their curious, active, imaginative, playful selves. Posted: 2007/11/26 2:26 PM Demolishing the Elitist Label – October 11, 2007 One of the assumptions I’ve long argued against regarding homeschooling is that it’s elitist. When I’ve managed to demolish all the other arguments against life-based learning, reporters and critics who consider themselves to be too progressive to ever support homeschooling pull out what they figure is their trump card: Well, they allow, it might be tolerable for well-educated, upper middle class, two-parent families to homeschool, but kids who live in poverty or with uneducated parents need school in order to succeed academically and socially. They’ll have to rethink that smug little generalization now that the conservative think tank The Fraser Institute has released its latest research on the subject. According to Claudia Hepburn, co-author of Home Schooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream, 2nd edition and Director of Education Policy with The Fraser Institute, homeschooling appears to improve the academic performance of children from families with low levels of education. “The evidence is particularly interesting for students who traditionally fall through the cracks in the public system,” Hepburn said in a statement. “Poorly educated parents who choose to teach their children at home produce better academic results for their children than public schools do. One study we reviewed found that students taught at home by mothers who never finished high school scored a full 55 percentage points higher than public school students from families with comparable education levels.” It also appears from this research that some of the factors that are commonly thought to negatively affect a child’s school success may be based on biases inherent in school systems. “The research shows that the level of education of a child’s parents, gender of the child and income of family has less to do with a [homeschooled] child’s academic achievement than it does in public schools,” says Hepburn. Posted: 2007/10/11 2:30 PM Whose Learning Agenda Is It? – August 1, 2007 I had a phone call today from a mother wanting advice – ostensibly on behalf of her preteen daughter – about learning a foreign language in an “unschooling” environment. She spent the first part of the phone conversation telling me what she wanted, what she had researched, what she was so her daughter could learn French. She had figured out her goals for the exercise and her expectations for the outcome based on want she wanted her daughter to do regarding the language (speak and write it fluently). She had reviewed a number of courses and programs but none of them met her criteria, she said. The word “I” must have been used a hundred times in five minutes. “I’ve sent away for information from all the language curriculum companies.” “I’ve looked for books in the library.” “I’ve been keeping my eyes on newspapers and magazines for references that I can pursue to pique her interest….” When the woman finally stopped talking to catch her breath, I asked her what her daughter’s goals were for learning this language and why her daughter wasn’t doing the research. Well, said the woman, her daughter just doesn’t seem that interested. Aha. I told her, as gently as I could, that unless the girl was interested enough to research ways to learn French, she wasn’t interested enough in learning it. And, I said, perhaps the woman herself was interested in learning French and that wasn’t a bad thing because while she was doing it she would be a good role model for her daughter. There was a big silence on the other end of the phone, followed by the woman hanging up as soon as she could. I can only hope she thinks about this and doesn’t waste her money, her time, her daughter’s time and their relationship on French lessons that won’t work. Posted: 2007/08/01 5:58 PM A Bad Idea From the Start – July 24, 2007 I was just reading yet another media account of cyberbullying, where students are making life miserable for teachers on websites like Facebook and YouTube. This time, the teens had used a supply teacher’s cell phone to disrupt her personal life, which led to her having a nervous breakdown. The article quoted a teacher’s organization official as saying cyberbullying has become “the number one non-academic problem facing classrooms today.” The official said he hopes cellphones will be banned in schools. His time would be better spent questioning why students feel the need to taunt their teachers and others using any means, technological or not. Maybe he’s already decided that this is expected behavior from students. After all, they are people who have few rights, and who are at the bottom of a hierarchy of power where teachers and other adults have the right to compel, arbitrarily punish and confiscate. One of my major frustrations is that most people – and virtually all so-called educators – fail to challenge any of the assumptions that our society makes about education. If they did, they’d quickly see that schooling is the problem with education. As Winston Churchill once said, “Schools have not necessarily much to do with education…they are mainly institutions of control where certain basic habits must be instilled in the young. Education is different and has little place in school.” In an earlier age – before cell phones, Facebook and YouTube – schools might have had a fighting chance at control. But not now, when rigid, inflexible systems and rules just get in the way of young people’s ability to set their own goals, to structure their own lives and to learn from the vast array of societal resources. Sorry, Mr. Teacher’s Organization Official, this is an academic problem. And it won’t be solved by compulsion, coercion and confiscation. It will be solved, for starters, by modeling respect, which our school systems, by their very natures, are ill-equipped to do. As John Holt once told a reporter, “It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It’s a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life.” Posted: 2007/07/24 1:35 PM Innate Math Ability – June 11, 2007 Researchers at the University of Nottingham and Harvard have just “discovered” that young children are able to solve approximate mathematical problems involving large numbers without having been taught symbolic arithmetic. The study, published in the journal Nature on May 30 and undertaken at Harvard University, suggests that children do not need to master either the logic of place value or the addition table in order to perform approximate addition and subtraction. That means they have an innate number sense by which they easily understand relative concepts like “more” and “less” and are, in fact, interested in and fascinated by such relationships. Before, that is, they have been forced to pass tests full of addition and subtraction questions. The researchers suggest that children’s difficulty with learning “school arithmetic” may stem from the need to produce an exact number when solving problems before they’ve had enough experience just playing around with and thinking about numbers. Gee, they could have just asked some kids who haven’t been exposed to “school arithmetic”! Posted: 2007/06/11 4:55 PM A Brilliant Idea – June 4, 2007 I recently stumbled across a fascinating book called What is Your Dangerous Idea? (HarperCollins, 2007) Edited by John Brockman, it is a collection of short essays written by scientists and first posted on the website The Edge. Some of the ideas are breathtaking and many of them are daring. One, in particular, caught my eye. Roger Schank is a cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, and currently holds the title of Chief Learning Officer at Trump University. He founded and was director of Northwestern University's prestigious Institute for the Learning Sciences, and before that was the director of the Yale University Artificial Intelligence Project. He is also the author of Coloring Outside the Lines (HarperCollins, 2001,) which bothered me because of his arrogant writing style. Anyway, his supposedly dangerous idea is entitled “No More Teacher’s Dirty Looks.” Yup, he says, schools should simply cease to exist. “The Government needs to get out of the education business and stop thinking it knows what children should know and then testing them constantly to see if they regurgitate whatever they have just been spoon fed,” he writes. “Schools need to be replaced by safe places where children can go to learn how to do things that they are interested in learning how to do. Their interests should guide their learning. The government’s role should be to create places that are attractive to children and would cause them to want to go there.” Obviously, this isn’t an original idea (why do so many guys seem to need think they invented what they just discovered?), but it is surprising to see it expressed by someone with heavy-duty credentials in and connections to the mainstream academic and capitalist worlds. I wonder if any of the Fortune 500 companies and governments with whom he consults will be listening. Posted: 2007/06/04 12:44 PM Not a Movement – May 26, 2007 For over two years now, I have been engaged in a dialogue with Natalie Zur Nedden, a PhD student whose dissertation topic is my life history, focusing on my 30+ years as an advocate for homeschooling within the perspective of progressive social change. To some people, that sounds like an oxymoron; to others, it may be the definition of what has come to be called “radical unschooling.” Many people call this thing that I publicized and kickstarted in Canada in the mid 1970s a “movement.” And I think that has been one of the assumptions of the life history. However, I’ve never been totally comfortable with that word and its connotation. (Sorry, Natalie, to quibble about semantics one more time!) Movements, it seems to me, are headed up by ambitious and outspoken  men, rather than by women who just want to create change. By joining a movement, you identify with a manifesto or other sort of well-defined rhetoric that defines the purpose of that movement. I’ve always resisted and rejected that model of homeschooling (or any other alternative to the mainstream) and have felt awkward claiming to be part of its hierarchy. And today, I read an article that brought my discomfort into focus. It was written by Paul Hawken, a writer and green entrepreneur whose work I’ve admired for many years. (Back in 1995, we published an interview with him in Natural Life magazine.) Writing about what he estimates are hundreds of thousands of groups and individuals around the world fighting climate change, war, poverty and other social problems, Paul describes a phenomenon that is “dispersed, inchoate and fiercely independent.” And, he says, there is no authority to check with (she notes, gleefully.) The organic and collective desire among disparate people to provide a better educational experience for their children fits Hawken’s model. And that model feels good to me because it allows homeschooling (or unschooling, or radical unschooling, or home-based learning, or life learning, or whatever label we give it to facilitate conversation) to fit into what is a massive convergence of citizens who are putting aside constrictive ideologies in the name of creating a better world. And what’s more, says Hawken, “This is the first time in history that a large social movement is not bound together by an ‘ism’.” Yes! I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve rejected being labeled with an “ist” or an “ism”…and Natalie and I have had many a conversation about that as she has tried to understand where I am coming from and where I am going. I prefer to discuss – and identify with other people on the basis of – ideas, processes and goals rather than ideologies. Maybe that sets me apart from some in the homeschooling “movement.” So be it. Hawken ends his article (which, by the way, is an excerpt from a newly published book called Blessed Unrest) by noting that change is rooted in our willingness to re-imagine and reconsider. That’s what life learners are doing in terms of education. And I’m proud to be part of that, however we label it...or not. Posted: 2007/05/26 8:15 PM It’s OK to be an Introvert (except in school) – April 1, 2007 Thanks to a good friend of mine, I have been thinking about being introverted. I’ve always know that’s my personality type: needing hours alone every day, preferring to work alone, loving quiet conversation about feelings and ideas, preferring to write letters rather than talk on the phone because writing allows me to think through my responses, able to give great presentations to big audiences (where it feels like I’m acting) but awkward in small groups, disliking small talk, easily worn out by being with others…. But now I’m thinking about (and remembering) what it’s like to be an introverted child. Our society favors extroverts – and they apparently outnumber introverts by about three to one. They dominate public and social life, doing well as politicians. Being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable, and is seen as a mark of confidence and leadership. Introvert-type behavior, on the other hand, is considered abnormal. An introvert is considered to have a problem – to be antisocial and shy, to have an illness which needs to be overcome. However, research has shown there is a biological basis to it, relating to different types of brain activity. The introvert/extrovert concept goes back to the 1920s and the psychologist Carl Jung, on whose work the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is based. Jung was, in fact, an introvert, as were Katherine Hepburn, Hans Christian Andersen and Albert Einstein. Stock market guru Warren Buffet and philanthropist billionaire investor George Soros are others. Of course, like anything else, most of us are a combination of both types. School can be a terrible place for an introverted child who dreads its demands to “perform.” I shudder even now when I remember my fear when called upon to read aloud in front of the class, to write a rhyming couplet on demand, to stand in the aisle beside my desk and sing the scale or answer a math question. Group activities are prevalent at school, and that inhibits the development of ideas in introverts. Also, we need time to think about the answer we will give to a question, but teachers tend to move on to the next person if a student doesn’t respond quickly. Fortunately, introverts tend to be artistic and smart – more than 75 percent of people with an IQ above 160 are introverted – so I did well in school. Another feature of introverts is that, unlike their opposites, they don’t need a lot of encouragement or positive reinforcement to work hard or succeed; nor do they care much what others think of them. Nevertheless, school was not a pleasant experience for me. Hmmm, come to think of it, it might not be a great place for extroverts, either, because their short attention spans, impatience with frustration and love of action could get them labeled! Anyway, not understanding that introversion is normal and doesn’t need to be cured, my more extroverted mother pushed me to be more social and less “shy,” in the same way she tried to push my father into social situations where he wasn’t comfortable. Thinking about how frustrating it must have been for her to live with my father and me, I realized that this is probably the source of much conflict and concern among home educating families. How much simpler life would be if parents understood and appreciated these sorts of personality differences, gave their introverted children a place to be themselves and trusted them to be extroverted when appropriate. Here’s a good website for parents of introverts. Posted: 2007/04/01 7:35 PM  Treating the Symptoms and Not the Problems – March 26, 2007 Today, the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada is releasing a new study on the societal costs of learning disabilities in Canada. Putting a Canadian Face on Learning Disabilities took three years and $300,000 of federal government funding to develop. The study examined 20 years of Statistics Canada reports looking at key areas of a person’s life, including education, employment, social relationships, family, health and finance to develop indicators of how a so-called “learning disabled” person compares with the general population. And, not surprisingly, they lag behind in most of those areas. Learning disabilities were defined as any one of a number of “disorders” from dyslexia and dysgraphia (writing) to dyscalculia (mathematics). The solutions suggested by the authors include a broader societal approach to dealing with learning disabilities, including mandatory early screening for children aged four to eight, publicly funded support through provincial health insurance plans, more awareness and training among medical, mental health and educational professionals and raising awareness of employers to offering accommodations to their workers. Two things trouble me about this report. First of all, the underlying assumption is that school is the best and perhaps only method of education and that anyone who cannot learn in that environment has a problem. I can’t describe how angry I am at the idea of mandatory screening of children to find “symptoms” of a “disorder” that doesn’t need to exist! Who is spending $300,000 worth of taxpayers’ money to figure out how to dismantle our archaic school system and replace it with a community-based, learner-directed one where children are free to learn naturally…and that doesn’t victimize, medicalize and stigmatize its unsuccessful clients? Unfortunately, we are apparently going in the opposite direction. An article in today’s Toronto Star about the report quotes its co-author Alexander Wilson of Mount Allison University as saying, “We have to get away from thinking of this as an education problem. We need to make a systemic change and look at this across a person’s lifespan and involve more agencies in their care and support.” And that leads to my second concern. The study found that about 40 per cent of children who were identified with learning disabilities at age seven were prone to ear infections and allergies at age three. Since, according to the study, up to 85 percent of those labeled as having a learning disability also have a reading disability (not sure how they differ), there is a need for early learning disability screening, presumably so that children can learn to read better. Here, once again is a confusion between symptom and problem. Of course, someone who doesn’t feel well will have trouble functioning, especially in a structured, noisy environment like school. But ear infections and allergies aren’t normal. In fact, like many so-called learning and behavioral “problems” experienced by children in school, they often are associated with diets full of chemicals and processed foods, and with nutritional deficiencies or weakened immune systems. Conventional medicine treats ear infections with antibiotics rather than addressing the underlying causes of the problem; this report wants to “treat” children who don’t learn well in school in the same manner, rather than questioning our assumptions about education and health. The way to really help stem the mushrooming “problem” of people with “learning disabilities” is to admit that our factory model of education doesn’t work anymore and needs a major demolition and reconstruction. Maybe we need to get rid of junk food first, so that we all think straighter! Posted: 2007/03/26 12:31 PM  Liberating Education – March 18, 2007 Thanks to a reader for sending me the link to this opinion piece that he recently read in the Times of India while on a flight in that country. (Alert: if you open the link, you’ll get lots of ads popping up in addition to the newspaper’s site.) It’s really quite an remarkable article, especially given the formality of formal education in India. The writer, a college professor, clearly understands the difference between being taught and learning. The piece begins, “When learning is eventually liberated from institutionalized teaching, people will wonder how a system as inefficient as the current education system lasted so long.” It argues for a more open, learner-directed style of education, noting that, “It is decided for them by the system what they will learn, from whom they must learn and in how much time they must learn it.” And, the article goes on to say, the system also dictates where students will learn what they’re told they should learn. The writer knows why, too: “This is because institutionalized teaching primarily exists to support itself, and to ensure its own continuance, authority and power. This overrides any thought of reforms.” Yup. Same in this part of the world. The writer also points out that most parents actually welcome this deprival of freedom for their children. Change happens slowly, but it happens. Posted: 2007/03/18 4:38 PM  Who Creates the Structure? – February 11, 2007 Thanks to readers for some lovely bits of feedback about my unstructured play posting, mostly reminiscences of outdoor childhood games that were gloriously free of rules and adult supervision. However, as a friend sadly reminded me, there are now many situations where it is dangerous for children to play without some adult supervision, if not structure. The term “unstructured” is probably misleading. “Self-directed” might be a better choice because, of course, everything – play, learning, life – has some sort of structure (thanks for the reminder, Sandra!). The issue for me is not whether something has structure, but who is in control of creating the structure. Play is, I think, a state of freedom…of movement, action, exploration, enjoyment. As such, it is inherently both unstructured and self-directed. Anything else probably isn’t play. Posted: 2007/02/11 2:45 PM Too Busy Playing  – February 8, 2007 I have received a couple of responses to yesterday’s post about Baby Einstein. They’ve all been along the same lines of some critical letters sent to us at Life Learning a few years back after we published an article about the Alliance for Childhood’s study about children and computers. In addition to pointing out that unschooled children use television and computers differently, in a different context, than schooled kids, Pieter from Los Angeles suggests that I’m being inconsistent with an article in Life Learning’s current issue entitled “Fear of TV Beast.” That piece, by Julie Persons, describes how she and her husband gave up restricting television and allowed their son to watch as much as he wanted. But there is a world of difference between parents buying Baby Einstein and its ilk (which Mendizza calls “junk food for the developing brain”) in order to supposedly kickstart their babies’ intelligence and trusting an older child’s ability to choose quality activities for him/herself. Person’s son eventually gravitated away from the TV and toward other play activities, as Mendizza suggests children will. And that’s because they are hard-wired to play. Unlike adults, for whom play is something to be done when more important jobs are finished, children live to play. And it’s crucial to their development. Unfortunately, unstructured play makes many parents fearful that their children are wasting precious time. And so they try to control that play and create or buy products that make the “work” of learning seem like “fun.” I’m working on some articles about the value of unstructured play for a future issue of Life Learning and welcome input or contributions. Posted: 2007/02/08 1:49 PM Too Busy Learning From the Real World – February 7, 2007 In his recent State of the Union address, the U.S. President applauded Julie Aigner-Clark, founder of Baby Einstein for her entrepreneurial and philanthropic spirit. I guess it’s a huge honor for a business person, especially a woman, to be mentioned in such an important speech, so congratulations are due to Aigner-Clark, whose business was bought by Disney in 2001. But I’ve always had a problem with Baby Einstein and other such concepts that fall into the “infant developmental media products” category. So I was pleased to see documentary film-maker and author Michael Mendizza ranting against them in his recent newsletter. He wrote: “Baby Einstein, however, is one of my Orwellian ‘double speak’ pet peeves, for there exists compelling evidence that the more time a young child spends watching Baby Einstein the less like Einstein that child will become.” He goes on to note that Einstein’s imagination was fueled by reading descriptive language, not by watching pictures flash by on a screen, which is a sensory experience (like skipping rope) rather than an imaginative one. In fact, he claims, “Babies would never buy Baby Einstein videos. They are too busy playing and learning from the real world.” Mendizza has posted an article on the subject, entitled Just Say No to Baby Einstein on his Touch the Future website. Posted: 2007/02/07 4:10 PM Neat-freak Education – January 18, 2007 Self-directed learning is messy. That’s one reason why it’s disliked by public school supporters. Actually, I should probably amend that to read, “Learning is messy…and that’s why schools aren’t great places for it to happen.” In the upcoming March/April issue of Life Learning, which I’m just finishing up, Karen Whitescarver explores the meaning of chaos, which she concludes is essential for growth and change. Rote memorization of facts and the orderly regurgitation of them tend to be neat – not to mention easily assessed – processes, but they’re not learning. When my office gets particularly messy, I just quote the cliché that a messy desk is the sign of a creative mind. Fortunately for me, there is increasing evidence that disorder is, indeed, “the detritus of a creative mind”, as Penelope Green wrote in the New York Times late last year. In their recently released and highly publicized book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, business school professor Eric Abrahamson and journalist David Freedman show that moderately disorganized people and institutions are frequently “more efficient, more resilient, more creative and in general more effective than highly organized ones.” And probably more successful too. They cite a survey done by a professional staffing company, which found that the higher the salary, the messier the person: “Sixty-six percent of Americans making $35,000 or less are self-described ‘neat freaks,’ whereas only 11 percent of those earning above $75,000 claim the same.” Abrahamson and Freedman are at the forefront of what one might call the “anti anti-clutter movement.” They are encouraging people to invite confusion into their lives in order to be more creative and productive both personally and at work. In an article in Inc. magazine, they advise us to “be inconsistent, pile up, blur categories, make noise, bounce around, get distracted.” Sound like any kid you know? In fact, unschooled kids are a good example of how making a mess gets things done. And usually, the more they’re learning, the bigger the mess they create. Places that stress neatness, order and quiet might make good retreat spas, but they don’t function well as learning environments. The art of learning to read can be one of the messier processes, and it’s also one of the processes that academics attempt most often to standardize. As professor Alan Thomas writes in the same issue of Life Learning, the fact that children can learn to read on their own is shocking to professional educators who, in spite of (or perhaps because of) being highly educated, stick to the “simple ideology” they were taught was true and refuse to allow for other possibilities. Thomas quotes one school authority who dismissed the idea that people can read without being taught as “plain crackers.” Unlike that dinosaur, unschoolers are at the leading edge of the chaos theory of learning. But we’re still learning how to implement it and recovering from our own experience of the neat-freak theory of education. Just ask reader Junyee Wang, whose personal confessional tale about overcoming the programming she received in school, which taught her she isn’t a writer, rounds out the next issue of Life Learning. Posted: 2007/01/18 7:19 PM Better Than Homework – January 7, 2007 Did you read that story last week about a 14-year-old boy who became the youngest person on record to make a solo voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in a sail boat? Michael Perham, who skipped school to make the six-week, 3,500-mile trip, learned a lot. Aside from honing his sailing skills and undergoing valuable character building experiences, he watched dolphins swimming alongside his boat and had flying fish land in his lap. In one media report, he was quoted, rather lamely, as saying he even had a bit of time to do homework! Good grief, do we have to measure everything against the supposed danger of missing some school? I wonder how Mike will manage with interrupting his education by going back to school. Posted: 2007/01/04 1:54 PM When Kids Reject What They’re Offered – December 15, 2006 In a coffee shop yesterday I overhead a conversation between the barista and a teenage girl who was studying her marketing textbook. The 20-something barista shared his scorn with the teenaged student about the dumbing down of the curriculum – simplifying it, he said, so it had little relevance to the real world. We’re not stupid, he said, so they could make what we were supposed to learn more relevant, more real. And not as boring. That made me think about the law that was passed this week here in Ontario changing the legal school leaving age from 16 to 18 and allowing the courts to prohibit a teen from getting a driver’s license as a punishment against truancy. Fortunately, the originally proposed legislation was watered down quite a lot thanks to lobbying by the homeschooling community and others. But it should never have been conceived in the first place. Refusal to attend school is a result of dissatisfaction with school, not of criminal intent. But for almost as long as schools have existed, those who reject their services have been blamed. The word “truant” has early English origins meaning “vagrant,” “beggar” and “wretched.” Christopher Shute, author of the book Compulsory Schooling Disease, writes in the new issue of the British journal Personalised Education Now: “Our criminalisation of our children solves a lot of problems for us, and absolves us from thinking about the environment we create in our schools for those who reject the schooling process. Yet…their behavior is no more unreasonable or immoral than that of an adult who walks out of a bad play or refuses to pay for an ill-cooked meal in a restaurant.” It’s high time our society started to respect young people’s ability to make decisions for themselves, and to facilitate their access to what they need to grow and develop. If something is not working, providing more of it won’t help. Nor will punishing the victim. But I dare say most if not all of the folks who are making these decisions went to school, so perhaps they can be forgiven for their lack of commonsense and vision. Here’s hoping they continue to listen to those of us with more of both. Posted: 2006/12/15 12:22 PM What’s Happening at Summerhill? – November 13, 2006 I’ve now heard from four readers asking my reaction to an article that was circulated recently in Jerry Mintz’s Education Revolution e-newsletter. Entitled “School with No Rules is Forced to Lay Down Law Because of Spoiled Pupils” and bylined Richard Garner, the piece first appeared in June in the British newspaper The Independent, where Garner is education editor. It refers to a book published last Spring called Summerhill and A.S. Neill. Zoe Readhead, the daughter of Summerhill founder A.S. Neill and its current principal, has contributed a chapter to the book. I have yet to read the book, and only this morning was able to track it down – it doesn’t seem to be available here in North America yet. That is why I’ve been reluctant to comment on this article, which may be taking a small part of it out of context. (I was also trying to find a more succinct way to write this post!) Anyway, the British media picked up on Zoe’s description in the book of how the democratically-run free school has changed over the years. According to the article, the book “reveals” that Summerhill is having to adopt a more disciplinarian tone towards its current pupils, who have been so pampered by their parents, Zoe is quoted as saying, “that they no longer know the boundaries of acceptable behavior.” In fact, a book review in the Times Educational Supplement in early June quotes the head of the school, which has become famous for non-coercion, as writing, “We see the result of parental interference and over-indulgence all the time. In the 1940s and 1950s, Summerhill was the place where children learned that adults would not brutalize or frighten them. Now the Summerhill community finds itself in the role of disciplinarian, teaching kids that they can’t do what they like and that they have to have regard for other people’s rights and feelings.” If it’s the whole community – children and adults alike – that is doing the teaching here, this is nothing new, because that’s how Summerhill and, indeed, all democratic schools work. But more than that seems to be involved. And I find that troubling and puzzling. The Times review quotes Zoe as writing that even “quite traditional” parents do not give enough thought to the boundaries for children, resulting in the “proverbial ‘spoilt brat’ kind of situation…Even though the ‘old days’ were authoritarian and repressive there was at least some security in knowing where everybody stood in the hierarchy of life.” In Life Learning, our writers and columnists regularly demonstrate that when children are respected and trusted, they do not need to be coerced to behave appropriately…unless, of course, what we want them to do is not in their best interests. Or if they’ve been not respected, distrusted and subjected to “hierarchy” for so long they have trouble with “the boundaries of acceptable behavior.” That is as true today as it was when A.S. Neill founded his school. As Neill wrote in the introduction to his 1960 book Summerhill – A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, “The difficult child is the child who is unhappy. He is at war with himself; and in consequence, he is at war with the world.” The only curing to be done by teachers or psychologists, he wrote, is the curing of unhappiness. Has the school lost that focus? Maybe not. As I browsed through Summerhill this afternoon for the first time in decades, I realized that Neill felt that parents are part of the problem and that he knew better than many of them what is best for children. (Perhaps that’s why one begins a school!) His daughter’s phrase “parental interference” reminded me of a discussion I had a few years ago with Sudbury Valley School co-founder Mimsy Sadofsky, in which she spoke about the need for and difficulty of children separating from their parents, as well as the need for compulsory attendance at her school. Additionally, she said, “not being accountable to your parents during the day can be empowering.” (See page 12 of Life Learning’s July/August 2004 issue.) I guess I see the role of parents in kids’ lives as quite different, although I realize not all parents are capable of what’s required. Instead of blaming kids and parents for their poor fit with a school and coercing them towards a better one, maybe the money and hard work that keeps such schools alive should be put into supporting parents so they can raise happy, respected, trusted children. Posted: 2006/11/13 6:43 PM Fear of Everything – November 8, 2006 A reader just sent me this quotation by Thomas Merton, pertinent to my last post about fearing young people: “At the root of all war is fear: not so much the fear that men have of one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another; they do not even trust themselves.” So then how can we expect people to trust their children!? Posted: 2006/11/08 11:03 AM Alienation Leads to Fear – November 1, 2006 British adults fear young people, according to a new report by the Institute for Public Policy Research entitled Freedom’s Orphans: Raising Youth in a Changing World. And since youth crime is not increasing but adults are increasingly scared of teenagers, the problem could be that the two groups no longer know or understand each other. Julia Margot, from the IPPR, told the BBC Radio’s Five Live program, “In Britain, as opposed to countries like Spain and Italy, adults are less likely to socialize with children in the evenings. So we don’t have this culture of children hanging out and playing out in the town square where adults are also socializing and drinking. We don’t have a culture where adults go out to pubs and bars and bring children with them, and so there is a problem about adults being less used to having children around.” The idea of adults taking kids to pubs and bars might seem controversial to some readers, but the point is that when children are a part of family and community life, as opposed to being segregated into their own activities or banned from certain aspects of adult life, they become aliens who are not seen as part of a multi-age community. So this report has got it right, yes? No. Its bizarre recommendation is that every secondary school pupil (from 11 to 16 years old) should participate in at least two hours a week of structured and purposeful extracurricular activities – like martial arts, drama clubs, sports, Scouts, and so on. This would take place through extended school hours of between 8am and 6pm and would involve a legal extension of the school day. Parents who did not ensure their child attended two hours a week of activities could be fined, in the same way as parents are punished for their child’s persistent truancy. Now there’s a solution that doesn’t have anything to do with the problem if I’ve ever seen one! All it does is formalize the very alienation that caused the fear factor in the first place. What are these people thinking? Stick these supposedly troublesome kids away from the community in age-segrated groups for even longer, rather than integrating them into the lives of their communities. When will we understand that our mindless dependency on institutionalization is most often the problem, not the solution? Posted: 2006/11/01 11:10 AM The Fragility of our Ability to Learn – October 22, 2006 I’ve often written and talked about how easy and natural it is for children to learn. But that is only if their interest and ability are not impeded by well-meaning adults. Reading and math are two areas assumed by schools to be so challenging that intervention is required…intervention that usually ends up impeding instead of helping. A press release about women’s ability to do math, which came across my desk a few days ago, underlines how easy it is to get in the way of learning by convincing someone that a certain subject is hard, or that they aren’t cut out to master a specific skill. Women and math is a controversial topic that led to the resignation last summer of Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard. He had speculated in public that one of the potential reasons why women are represented less in math and science professions is that fewer women than men have the intrinsic ability required by such jobs. Some teachers of children seem to agree with Dr. Summers. But a new study underlines how that theory itself is, in fact, detrimental to girls’ and women’s ability to do math. Researchers at the University of British Columbia have found that women perform differently on math tests depending on whether they believe math-related gender differences are determined by genetic or social differences. Women who were told they are naturally as good at math as men did twice as well on math tests as women who were told men have more natural numbers sense. In a paper published in the October 19 edition of the journal Science, UBC investigators Ilan Dar-Nimrod and Steven Heine suggest that women tend to perceive gender differences in math to be innate or genetic, but when they consider such differences to be based on theories of nurture rather than nature, they can improve their performance. “Our study doesn’t explore whether innate sex differences exist,” says Dar-Nimrod, a Psychology doctoral student. “Instead, we investigated how the perceived source of stereotypes can influence women’s math performance.” Associate Professor Heine, who teaches in the Department of Psychology at UBC, adds, “The findings suggest that people tend to accept genetic explanations as if they’re more powerful or irrevocable, which can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. But experiential theories may allow a woman to say this stereotype doesn’t apply to me.” There are a number of messages here for life and learning, including one that says if you belong to a group for which there is any kind of negative stereotype, you may end up acting out that stereotype, whether or not it really applies to you. Posted: 2006/10/21 11:40 AM AD/HD or Doing What Comes Naturally? – October 19, 2006 I just received a news release on behalf the Attention Deficit Disorder Association (ADDA). They have conducted a survey of people working in various types of jobs to see which ones had more people who had AD/HD “symptoms,” based on their responses to a short questionnaire. I’m not sure what the results tell us, since it looks to me like the classic chicken or egg scenario. But here’s some of what the AD/HD in the Workplace survey found: The profession associated with the highest likelihood (23 percent) of adult AD/HD is the trades – plumbers, electricians, carpenters – followed by elected officials and entertainers at 21 percent. Lawyers, law enforcement personnel, retail clerks and the media are among the least likely to have symptoms of AD/HD. Business executives, athletes, clergy and scientists fall in the middle, along with teachers (11 percent). The “symptoms” of this “disorder” are defined as frequent fidgeting; inability to get organized, sit still or wait in line; as well as distractibility and procrastination; lateness and relationship problems. I’m guessing that the latter “symptom” is more a result of living with a disorganized, pushy fidgeter, but nobody asked me. According to the news release, “with treatment, a person with AD/HD can sometimes turn negatives into positives.” Uh, or without treatment, maybe people find careers for themselves that fit their personalities! Those supposedly AD/HD-ridden tradespeople (who are often very highly paid, by the way) may simply be cut out for jobs that are free from rigid structure and prolonged desk-sitting. On the other hand, office, bank and retail clerks, with more structure, more public contact and more sitting still (but presumably less pay,) were among the group reporting the fewest symptoms of AD/HD. David Giwerc, a past president of the ADDA who apparently has AD/HD, is quoted as saying, “Adults with AD/HD have unique strengths that can also manifest as a result of understanding their AD/HD. They are often creative, spontaneous, inventive, humorous, risk-taking problem-solvers.” So where’s the disability from this disorder? Those qualities sound to me like they bode well for success in life. Unfortunately for some kids (those with parents who don’t know about, believe in or feel they can take advantage of unschooling), those traits pose problems in typical school situations. And perhaps that’s the disability for which they “need” to be treated with drugs. Posted: 2006/10/19 3:42 PM Early Learning, Not Necessarily Early School – October 14, 2006 I recently came out from under the cloud of a stress-induced lupus flare to hear an acquaintance inform me that I’m hopelessly out of step with public opinion. She then quoted a statistic she’d read in that day’s paper. Nearly 90 percent of Canadians view early childhood learning as critical to success in today’s society, according to the Survey of Canadian Attitudes Toward Learning, conducted on behalf of the Canadian Council on Learning, which is funded by the federal government. That, said my acquaintance somewhat triumphantly, negates my position that young children don’t need – and are even harmed by – formal instruction.  Nice try, I said, but my body’s forced slow-down had given me the leisure time to read the papers too. And I countered that the survey had found that Canadians feel that fostering positive attitudes toward life and learning in early childhood is more important than school readiness and personal development. It also found that we believe that parents should have the primary responsibility for providing early childhood learning opportunities, which should comprise play rather than academic pursuits. That does not mean that we all think babies should be sent to schools of one sort or another; it does illustrate an impressive awareness of the need to protect and nurture children’s inherent enthusiasm for exploring the world. However, since they frequently reference the need for access to quality child care, I suspect that the researchers/report authors haven’t made the distinction between teaching and learning. That’s not surprising, since most people fail to admit that one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other, and forget that young children are always, energetically learning. There were some interesting (although perhaps not surprising to many unschooling mothers) differences between mothers’ attitudes and those of fathers. For instance, more mothers than fathers said that informal activities are more important than organized classes for young children, while a majority of fathers felt that organized classes were at least as important as reading and playing, and that the instruction should involve communication and problem-solving skills. These are important topics for public discussion. I hope that this survey, which claims to be the first edition of “a yearly barometer of opinions, perceptions and beliefs about lifelong learning in Canada,” will explore attitudes about informal learning and help to place non-institutionalized education on the menu of choices for people of all ages. Oh yeah, and I’m learning how to say no more often so that I don’t get so stressed, but that’s another blog entry for another time. Posted: 2006/10/14 4:21 PM Sit Still or Be Drugged – September 10, 2006 Thinking once more about the notion of teaching young children to sit still so they can function well in pre-school (see my September 7 post, below), I recall the article I wrote earlier this year for Natural Life magazine about the dangers of medicalizing normal behavior, of labeling kids with so-called behavioral or learning disabilities, and of treating them with drugs. I listed some of the side effects of Ritalin, the drug of choice, which include increased blood pressure, heart rate, respiration and temperature; stomach pains; weight loss; growth retardation; facial tics; muscle twitching; euphoria; nervousness; irritability; agitation; insomnia; heart palpitations; and more violent behaviors like psychotic episodes and paranoid delusions. And I reiterated what I wrote in my last book, Challenging Assumptions in Education, that the behaviors being labeled ADD and ADHD are the result of lifestyle issues and school oppression. I continue to receive both support and censure for that stand. So it’s good to see others coming to the same conclusion. Jane Fendelman, an Arizona-based child and family counselor, says that psychiatrists who participate in this diagnosis and treatment are on the wrong track. The author of the book Raising Human Beings calls ADD and ADHD “an adaptive response to a society that’s stuck in the hamster wheel…We want them to go fast when we say so and slow down and stop when we say so.” Plus, she notes, “they may be bored with a below-par curriculum.” Fendelman was recently interviewed on a radio show produced by the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights, a three-decade old organization fighting psychiatric abuse. She points out that not only are the pharmaceutical companies making billions of dollars selling Ritalin and other addictive (and sometimes fatal) drugs, schools also have a vested interest in students being diagnosed with ADD or ADHD because they then receive money for servicing these “special needs” children. The interview discusses how the psychiatric drugs children are given do not address the basic problems they may be faced with, and often lead to many other problems, such as serious physical and psychiatric side effects, drug addiction and even death. She reasons that difficulties can well be expected later in life when one has gotten through school using amphetamines as a crutch, because the students have not learned new skills or how to deal with their problems. However, the situation is not hopeless; as the show’s guest explains, knowledge equals power. The interview can be downloaded here (patience is required.) Posted: 2006/09/10 4:40 PM Sitting Still – September 7, 2006 My breakfast reading material this morning was a complimentary copy of a new parenting magazine called Wondertime, which I pulled randomly from the massive pile of back-to-school stuff that has come my way over the past few weeks. It’s a lovely production and the cover copy says to “celebrate your child’s love of learning.” It’s published by Disney and full of ads from VISA, HP, General Motors and cosmetic companies, so it’s clearly a very mainstream publication. But for a brief moment or two, I thought perhaps the life learning philosophy had gone mainstream, at least as far as little kids go. Then I reached the article entitled “Preschool Confidential – the three things teachers wish our children arrived at school already knowing.” These three apparently very important skills are self-care (putting your own coat and shoes on), sharing…and sitting still. The author writes: “One of the primary components of preschool is circle time, when children sit and listen to a story or sing songs or even do some simple academics as a group.” So parents are told to have their pre-pre-schoolers practice sitting still by having a circle time at home. Having a set time at home for snacks is important too, apparently, so that your preschooler will learn how to sit and eat at specifically scheduled times. Of course, this could be important advice for people who send their ever younger offspring to school and don’t want them diagnosed with ADHD, which, by the way, I heard mentioned yesterday in a radio ad as one of the “mental illnesses and addictions” for which the local association for mental health could provide help. What is an illness is the idea that such classroom passivity should be inflicted on active, joyful three- and four-year-olds. Posted: 2006/09/07 10:34 AM The Power of Images – September 5, 2006 We recently had an indignant phone call from a homeschooling dad in the US midwest who had seen a copy of the May/June issue of Life Learning magazine. He had some major complaints about the cover photo, which depicts a little girl working hard at learning how to throw and catch a ball. This reader feels strongly that the photo does a major disservice to the whole concept of homeschooling. This young girl will, he noted, inevitably be hit on the nose by the ball she has thrown because she is holding her hand at the wrong angle. Since, he said, it portrays homeschooling parents as not even being able to teach their daughters to catch a ball, other parents will, he feels, reject the idea of homeschooling as worthless. But more than that, as a self-declared passionate proponent of girls’ softball, he feels that this photo also sets that cause back into the dark ages. If I’d taken the call, I would have pointed out that the very essence of life learning is that people learn best through experimentation – yes, even if that means being hit on the nose by a softball from the height of a few feet. Perhaps this particular little girl had a knowledgeable person (of any age) nearby with whom she could have discussed the problem post-nose bonking. Or perhaps she would have tried a different hand angle all on her own. As for “girls’ softball”, maybe this little girl was just having fun tossing a ball around. Maybe she didn’t have aspirations to play a competitive sport. Or maybe she was on track to developing a high level of competency, based on an acquired passion for throwing and catching balls. Posted: 2006/09/05 8:23 PM Let Me Know When They Get the Facts Right – August 25, 2006 So the experts at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Prague have, after much heated debate, finally agreed upon the definition of a planet. And, contrary to the press release they issued a week or so ago, they’ve also decided that we have eight planets rather than 12…or the nine that we used to have. (See my August 17th posting below.) Interesting to know that the decisions were made by a small minority of scientists present at the meeting – only approximately 300 of the estimated 2,500 astronomers present actually voted. Poor old Pluto. Does that change things for astrologers as well as school teachers and students? Pluto has been relegated to a new category of “dwarf planets” and could, according to scientists, be joined by many others over the next few years. Now there’s a challenge for those who believe that education is the accumulation of facts! Posted: 2006/08/25 12:05 PM Are “Facts” Worth Memorizing? – August 17, 2006 The “experts” have decided to agree on the definition of a planet. Who would have thought there wasn’t one? When I was a kid in school, 45 or so years ago, I assumed those guys already had decided. I was, after all, taught as fact that earth was one of nine planets in our solar system. In fact, I was tested on that bit of “knowledge” and chastised if my memory failed and I said that there were eight or, say, 12. But now, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is holding a meeting at which the issue will be debated. A proposal is being presented that will define the term and set the current number of known planets at 12. The scientists say that their “refinement of the body of knowledge” is as a result of the advent of powerful new telescopes on the ground and in space, which have caused planetary astronomy to evolve over the past decade. The chair of the IAU’s Planet Definition Committee admits that the discussion of both the scientific and the cultural/historical issues surrounding this issue had its members losing sleep last month. But they have ended up in agreement and, with all probability, there will soon be Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon and 2003 UB313. I wonder how long the old text books will hang around in classrooms. If nothing else, this is an affirmation of John Holt’s statement that: “Since we can’t know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.” Or to know how to research current facts when they need them, rather than memorizing information when they’re young that will turn out to be wrong later in life! Posted: 2006/08/17 11:20 AM September University – July 24, 2006 Yesterday, I received an update from colleague and occasional Life Learning contributor Charles Hayes. He is promoting a new way of aging, with the aim of erasing the notion of retirement from our vocabulary. And he’s dubbed it “September University.” He writes, “September University…is a vision of retirement that replaces a time devoted to doing very little with a time of reflection, when people who’ve entered the September of life have the opportunity to make their greatest contribution to the generations to follow. A September University frame of mind means looking forward to sifting through a half-century or more of experience, sorting those things that are truly important from those that aren’t, and finding ways to pass on that wisdom.” His sense is that many people were so turned-off learning by their formal education experiences that they avoid the kind of contemplation and knowledge-creation that the world so badly needs. Hayes has been writing about self-education for more than two decades. He has published five books on the subject and one novel. His latest book, The Rapture of Maturity: A Legacy of Lifelong Learning, is concerned with using our knowledge and experience in our later years and leaving the world a better place in the process. And he has a new book in progress entitled September University: Rediscover the Wonder of Existence and Help Change the World. He’s set up an online dialog, accessible on the September-U website for people who are interested in exploring the concept. Posted: 2006/07/24 5:29 PM Is it the Bullying or the Drugs? – July 23, 2006 Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko is a Canadian writer whose three daughters learn without attending school. For the last five years she and her husband have been producing Radio Free School, a weekly radio show by, for and about unschoolers. She is also an occasional contributor to Life Learning magazine. Beatrice has begun a series of six columns on the subject of homeschooling to be published on the CBC website. The first column went up last week. At the end of each column is a selection of comments from readers. One poor, uninformed public school supporter asked, “What about the social skills that home-schooled children will never experience due to seclusion?” Aside from displaying his total ignorance of the subject and ignoring what Beatrice wrote about the richness of the life learning lifestyle, this guy must be talking about a school system on another planet. He wrote about the “important life lessons [that] are learned on the playground every day” and said that homeschoolers are overprotective parents who are keeping their kids away from the real world, which he equates to child neglect. Maybe it was supposed to be irony. Or maybe the guy is an articulate (albeit macho) ostrich. I can’t imagine he’s a caring parent…or else why would he want to expose his children to the bullying, violence, competition, drug dealing and otherwise general mean-spirited and negative “socialization” that occurs on playgrounds, let alone what goes on in many classrooms? His reasoning appears to be that “These children will then lack social interactions once they leave the home, furthering their educations in university and/or college.” Aha! Life is violent, competitive, mean-spirited and boring, so we need to expose our children to those things from an early age in order to prepare them. Nonsense. Even if one agrees that life is that awful, the best preparation for a bad adult experience is a good childhood one. One like that experienced by most life learners – rich in contacts with people of all ages, full of meaningful interactions in their communities and grounded in trust and respect for their humanity. And gosh, what about trying to change that awful life?? Is that not one of the purposes of good socialization? There may be valid reasons for parents to send their kids to school, but socialization isn’t one of them. That homeschooled children are poorly socialized is a dead argument, slaughtered a long time ago by generations of superbly well-socialized adults who learned without attending school and buried by the ongoing socialization problems in public schools. Posted: 2006/07/23 3:14 PM Freedom and Self-Knowledge – July 19, 2006 I continue to ponder the idea of the sort of group learning that we call school. Is the institution inherently good or bad, benign or problematic? Is the concept flawed, or is the word merely tainted? For me, there are a couple of issues involved. One is the idea of group learning and group interaction; the other has to do with choice. As my children were growing up, I saw the benefit of being able to figure out who they were first, on their own and within their supportive family environment, before moving away from the family setting and on to collaborative learning in larger groups. There are varying opinions on the appropriate age for this to happen, but I trusted that they would find their own speed and path. And they did. (Their choices eventually involved regular school, choices I respected but did not agree with.) And that leads to the choice part. I’ve always felt that the biggest problem with the concept of school is compulsory attendance. While there may be some schools for children that are voluntary, they are rare. Even the much-lauded Sudbury Valley model forces students to make an attendance commitment. And maybe the infrastructure involved – building, staff, materials, meetings – needs the stability of a somewhat dependable group of regular participants. But is a school truly democratic if attendance is compulsory…even if it’s run democratically on every other level? Or, to put it another way, does it rank the freedom of children lower than its own health or survival? In response to my July 6 post on this subject, Jessica Kiley wrote: “I think it was John Holt who shared this perspective on schools –the ingredient that is missing from every school, even the ‘free schools’ that were experimented with years back, is that attendance is required, not a choice. Even if a child has complete freedom to choose the lessons, or to choose an activity other than participating in the lessons, the choice is generally not included to leave the school altogether or to attend by personal motivation alone.” In fact, as Life Learning columnist Sandy Lubert shared in the May/June issue, in Instead of Education, Holt “used spelling creatively in order to distinguish between S-chools, where educators ‘get and hold their students by the threat of jail or uselessness or poverty’ and s-schools, ‘which help people explore the world as they choose.” An interesting concept, but I think we’d be better off designing some new language to describe learning that is truly non-coercive, rather than using creative spelling or appending prefixes like “home”, “un” or “de” to the “s” word. A democratic school is better than an undemocratic one, but it’s still a school. I don’t mind leaving schools of all stripes to those who want them, but my work involves changing the whole paradigm to reflect the fact that people do not have to be forced to learn. Nor do they have to attend special places to do it.  Posted: 2006/07/19 8:09 AM 30 Years of History – July 16, 2006 This fall marks the 30th anniversary of the company that publishes Life Learning magazine – a company that my husband Rolf and I launched in 1976 to publish books and Natural Life magazine. We were looking for a way to generate an income so that we could both stay at home with our life learning daughters Heidi and Melanie, who were ages four and three at the time. Looking back over those three decades, we are proud that we have been at the leading edge (and ahead of it, in some cases) of many progressive trends and movements, from independent publishing itself, through environmentally sustainable business practices, home-based business, green politics, the natural foods industry (I published a natural foods industry magazine in the early 1980s) and, of course, learner-directed homeschooling. For Natural Life magazine’s birthday, I have been putting together a retrospective of the last 30 years. In doing so, I recently came across an editorial that I wrote in 1979 sharing a bad experience we’d had with a truant officer – he’d entered our home by means of a lie, then threatened us with the removal of our 5-1/2- and 7-year-old daughters if we didn't enroll them in a public school within two hours. That, of course, was not the correct procedure (to put it mildly!) and he found out that we knew more about our rights than he did (again, to put it mildly.) As a result of that experience, I decided there was a need to organize homeschooling families. So my editorial also announced that I was founding a pioneering homeschool support and advocacy organization. Our daughters have grown up, the movement has grown up and our business has matured with the addition of Life Learning magazine almost five years ago. It’s been an exciting journey, and we look forward to more adventures and more progress towards a better society. Posted: 2006/07/16 7:40 PM Ranking Educational Alternatives – July 6, 2006 Over the past few months, I’ve had two articles submitted for publication in Life Learning magazine from parents who have sent their children to a specific model of “democratic school” after a period of homeschooling/unschooling. In both cases, family circumstances led to the change. And in both cases, the families were very happy with the schools, to the degree that they have both become big boosters of that particular brand of school. In fact, they both feel that the school experience is “identical but superior” to learning at home. These two articles have got my mind churning. Is there a need to rank alternatives? I don’t think so – there is a need for many alternative choices in all aspects of life and some will be more suitable for each of us at different times and in different situations. (Did we learn to rank in school?) Can the life learning process really happen in a school, democratic or otherwise? I don’t think it can, but I need to be sure my own bias isn’t getting in the way. Are parents and other immediate family members an integral part of the education process? Not necessarily, but most of the time they provide the best type of nurturing for their children. Do most of us at one time or other create sweeping but incorrect generalizations from specific situations? Of course we do. What, in fact, is a school? I don’t have the answer to that one right now. I wrote five fast pages in my journal this morning about these questions and their answers. I feel another book…or at least an article…coming on. Feedback, as always, is welcome. Posted: 2006/07/06 3:45 PM Kids Can Claim Age Discrimination – July 1, 2006 I can’t think of a better way celebrate Canada Day than to thank the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal for ruling against age discrimination against children. This province’s Human Rights Code currently prohibits those under 18 from claiming age discrimination. (Who knew? And I wonder how many other jurisdictions have that provision.) Anyway, the government has been using that provision to cut off therapy funding for autistic children once they reach the age of six, in spite of the ruling Liberal party’s pre-election promise to fund the therapy for all autistic children. A group of families has been trying to access the funding through the courts; the government has been claiming the right to cut off funding on the basis of age. But now, the Human Rights Tribunal has ruled in favor of the children, saying that the Human Rights Code provision that allows for age discrimination under the age of 18 violates children’s rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The tribunal’s decision is not law unless/until it is adopted or cited by the courts, but it is good news for the families in the autism case who are now free to proceed in court with their argument that the government is discriminating against them on the basis of age, as well as disability. But it could also be very good news for all children, who may now be able to complain that they are being discriminated against in other aspects of life. Hmmmm. Wonder that could mean for compulsory education laws? Posted: 2006/07/01 1:51 PM Hooray for Fooling Around – June 28, 2006 As school ends for summer vacation, parents have apparently begun to worry what to do with the little brats once they get bored by the middle of next week. So the media trots out the interviews with “experts” about how to find replacement warehouses…er, babysitters…and how to schedule their children’s time so that they don’t get too undisciplined and so that the facts stay firmly stuffed in those apparently highly porous brains during two months of supposed inactivity. Nothing makes me work up to a rant faster than those interviews, which are usually juxtaposed with sounds and pictures of kids celebrating their emancipation. This morning, I heard one “expert” cautioning that children need free time over the summer, except that it should be the “fooling around with a purpose” kind of free time. Aside from the hidden message that learning and fun are incompatible, this person, being an educator apparently knowledgeable about play, should know better. Fooling around is how kids learn. Fooling around always has a purpose for kids. This educator meant the kind of purpose that an adult imposes…that is, a curriculum-related purpose. If, on the off-chance, a child has really learned something in school, she won’t forget it over the summer. In fact, she might use what she learned while fooling around this summer! However, most of what these well-meaning adults are concerned about children forgetting hasn’t really been learned; it’s been memorized with indifference. And it may well be long forgotten by September as the emancipated children steer clear of anything that looks or smells like school. And in place of that memorized stuff that seemed so irrelevant to their lives is bound to be some real learning that resulted from a summer of freedom to think, experiment, make mistakes, correct them, read, day dream and fool around. Posted: 2006/06/28 5:13 PM Definitely Not Deprivation – June 14, 2006 I’m just off the phone from speaking with a reporter who called to explore the idea of writing an article about “unschooling”, which seems to have suddenly hit the media’s radar...even if they don’t understand it. True to her training, she was poking around trying to find a clue to the negative aspect of learning outside of school. “Nothing’s perfect,” she told me assuredly. “What about the lack of structure, the lack of exposure to diversity, the socialization….?” I suddenly realized that she thinks that children who are not attending school lead empty daily lives, unless their time is filled up by teacher-emulating parents. I sighed and told her that nothing short of total immersion would allow her really to understand the concept of life learning because it is so apparently foreign to the way most people think of education and, indeed, of childhood. Home-based learning is not deprivation, of course. It is not a lack of something, whether it be structure, social experiences, exposure to diversity, information, facts, intellectual training, or anything else positive, for that matter. It is the very opposite, embodying a filling up of children’s lives, rather than an emptying, exposure to a wealth of positive socialization and intellectual experiences flowing from real-life. This unfortunate misconception about non-school-based education results from a view that a child is clay to be shaped, that the brain is a vessel to be filled, that school procedures are the “gold standard” of education. Those misconceptions meant that this particular reporter wasn't willing or able to hear what I was saying. Nor could she admit that she hasn’t got a clue what home-based education is and isn’t. So much for journalistic “balance.” Posted: 2006/06/14 10:25 AM Five Reasons To Skip College – May 4, 2006 Interesting article recently in Forbes magazine. (Thanks to a couple of readers who sent me the link.) It deconstructs conventional wisdom about the need for a college education, citing guys like Bill Gates (rose up out of Harvard to start Microsoft), Larry Ellison (co-founded Oracle after he rose up out of University of Illinois), John Simplot (didn’t finish high school but made billions after inventing the frozen French fry) and others. Intelligence and street smarts, rather than education, are, according to the article, better predictors of success and high income. And what about investing the money it would cost to attend an elite university, while learning a trade, possibly on-the-job? (My husband Rolf is famous for wowing high school kids with the fact that steamfitters can easily and regularly make over $100,000 a year.) And – ready for this revelation? – “You don't need to be in a classroom in order to learn something.”  Posted: 2006/05/04 2:56 PM Go Look It Up – May 2, 2006 I was in a home recently where a curious eight-year-old, delighted with the warm spring weather, kept bouncing into the house and asking questions about various flora and fauna. Mom, a trained botanist, refused to answer any of the questions. Instead, she told the child to “go look it up”. I wanted so badly to ask the mother if that is that how she would answer another adult who asked her a question. She probably thought she was encouraging independence or the learning of research skills. Instead, she frustrated and bewildered a child who had an immediate need to know something that she knew her mom already knew. Later, the woman compounded the problem by quizzing the child to see if she had, indeed, looked it up. The child sullenly refused to respond, perhaps, once again, because she knew her mother knew the answer to the question. Posted: 2006/05/02 5:27 PM Not Meddling – February 20, 2006 For some reason, this is the time of year when I start to hear from parents exploring the idea of home-based education. Maybe the novelty of a new school year has worn thin by now! Anyway, I’ve recently received a bunch of phone calls and email messages from parents wanting to unschool their kids and wondering what “the method” involves, and how to best prepare themselves…what books to buy, how to keep their kids “progressing in the basics”, as one dad put it. The people who contact me for direction are often articulate and highly motivated parents. So it’s no wonder they are surprised when I tell them to back off and practice keeping out of the way of their children’s learning. They agree with me when I point out that most people learn best when they have time to muddle...opportunities to explore, to investigate their questions and ideas, to create theories and test them, to make mistakes and try again, to take risks without somebody monitoring what or if they are learning. But they sometimes get a bit hostile when I tell them that in order to encourage muddling, they will need to learn how to stop meddling. And that is harder than it sounds, especially for highly motivated and formally educated people who, by nature, are organizers and achievers. In spite of the best efforts of the education industry, learning is a process that defies organization and sequencing. And observing that somewhat messy process can be frustrating and even scary for some people. So, I tell these folks, relax, practice being flexible and let the learning lifestyle happen. Please don’t try to slyly introduce “topics”, engineer elaborate “field trips”, choose specific library books, or plan other well-intentioned activities on your kids’ behalf, I urge. To support their need to feel like they’re “doing something”, I tell them that non-meddling parents give control of the learning process to the learners. They respect their kids’ ability and motivation to learn what they need to learn. They talk with them; provide opportunities for interaction with people and things; share and model learning; support the risk- and mistake-making processes; enrich the environment with books, pens, paper and other creative materials; celebrate good ideas and satisfying accomplishments; and commiserate about experiments that don’t turn out the way they were expected to. We’re not programmed to trust in human nature, in people’s love of life and of learning. School-type education is based on extrinsic motivation, on learning what someone else has decided is good for you, in the manner someone else has decided is the best way to learn, and for the reward of someone else’s praise. It can be hard work to overturn all that meddling. Posted: 2006/02/20 11:25 PM Mindfulness – February 8, 2006 I have long admired the Buddhist principle of mindfulness. As a way of applying it to my own life and work, I’ve been reading as many books as I can on the topic. Among my recent readings have been Mindfulness and The Power of Mindful Learning, both by Harvard psychologist Ellen J. Langer ( Da Capo Press). Langer points out that a mindful state is a learning state. When one is fully present in each moment, one is constantly interacting with one’s environment and constantly adapting and changing in response to small changes in that environment. Mindfulness, she says, results in us being aware of multiple perspectives and realizing that failure is not a rigid category, but rather dependent on the situation. And that creates a good climate for successful (and, I might add, joyful) learning. When you think about it, mindlessness, on the other hand, is the rigid reliance on old categories, on pre-formulated distinctions. This is the state that most schooling creates by requiring the acquisition of facts as unconditional truths, without questioning, and by testing for the “right” answer. And, notes Langer, mindlessness is definitely not a condition in which real learning can happen. Posted: 2006/02/08 4:44 PM The Legacy of Caring Assessment – October 18, 2005 A few days ago, I spent a remarkable hour with David Booth, who was my English and drama teacher in grades six through eight. It was lovely to be able to thank him for the huge influence he had on me, helping me to explore a broader world of literature and expression than I had been exposed to by my family…in effect, helping me find my voice. During a chat about how much public education has changed due to high stakes testing, I asked him how he had evaluated us all those years ago. He laughingly said he’d given us all high marks and went on to describe what energetic and enthusiastic learners we’d all been, as well as how much he’d learned from us. That last statement was no small compliment, given how his career developed over the next 40 years as he became an influential teacher of teachers, an advocate of childhood literacy, a prolific author and a sought-after speaker. Things are different now in public school classrooms (and in many private and home schools, too). Courses like drama, art, music, physical education – and even recess in some areas – have taken a back seat to preparation for standardized tests. There is an increasing body of research that shows these tests fail to improve students’ performance on tests like the SAT or their success rates in college/university. There is also a great deal of research that documents the damage this fanatical focus on testing does to kids, schools, teachers, the arts and learning. Being in David’s drama classes in the early 1960s helped me become the writer, public speaker and advocate that I am today – my success has nothing to do with teacher evaluation and marks or lack thereof. Still, policy makers seem fixated on “improving” education with more tests and punitive measures for those students and teachers who perform poorly on the tests. As David Booth understood so early in his teaching career, there are other, more creative, ways of ensuring children are having a good educational experience. He knew that there are far more important measures than success on a test…things like the patience and passion to sustain interest in a topic, the ability to plan and organize, to design and carry out research, to work independently, to ask questions (as well as to answer them), to formulate alternative solutions or answers and to communicate clearly and persuasively. These were all goals that Rolf and I had for our daughters’ childhood learning experiences. And I think most of them were achieved. But even then, 25 years or so ago, we had to fight with the educational “authorities” for them not to be tested. If public education is ever to provide all learners with that kind of learning experience, policy makers will have to stop taking the regurgitate road. In spite of increasing government pressure (such as the detestable and grossly mis-named No Child Left Behind act in the U.S.), there are still some brave educators dedicated to nurturing active learning as opposed to passive receptivity. David Booth is one. Alfie Kohn is another who is speaking out against testing. The New York Performance Standards Consortium, a network of small schools in New York, is another and they’ve documented their approach on a very useful website. Posted: 2005/10/18 1:28 PM Learning Doesn’t Have to be Hard – September 26, 2005 At the café I visit each morning at the end of my routine walk, I overheard a conversation between two dads. Their expensive business attire, laptops and leather briefcases indicated that they were probably on their way to high-powered jobs. This morning, they were discussing their children’s school experiences. One child is, according to dad, not working hard enough to reach her potential. This child is apparently “coasting” and dad is upset because she didn’t get a high enough mark on the first test of the school year. The other dad’s problem was the same, but expressed in a slightly different manner. He blamed the school, rather than the child, stating that the curriculum isn’t challenging enough for his son, whose high marks must mean the bar should be raised back to where it used to be when he was a student. It reminded me of what my mother told me over and over when I was a kid: “It’s not worthwhile unless you work for it!” This is the 21st century, and while there is satisfaction in some kinds of hard work, that old cliché is no longer true (if it ever was!). But it is perpetuated in our view of education, which says that learning is hard, challenging, unpleasant work. But watch a young child grow and develop and you will realize that when the time for it is right, learning comes effortlessly. On the other hand, when we’re not interested or engaged in – or ready for – a specific piece of information or skill, when we are presented with a bunch of out-of-context facts to memorize, then even paying attention (let alone learning!) becomes unpleasant and difficult. As I pointed out in my book Challenging Assumptions in Education, hand-in-hand with the notion that learning is hard, goes the idea that it must be measured…or that, in fact, it can be measured. In fact, not only do high test results not measure the amount of learning that has taken place, they can often signal a lack of real learning. What they likely mean is that a great deal of time has been spent force-feeding facts into brains so they can easily be regurgitated and perfecting the skills associated with successful test taking. Unfortunately, governments and taxpayers alike value quantifiable achievement. Apparently, so do success-driven, achievement-oriented fathers. And the easiest way to quantify the achievement of schools, teachers and students is by measuring the retention of a narrow, but organizable, range of information. But this definition of academic success is a very sad boondoggle, in place to protect and perpetuate the industry of schooling, rather than to help children learn. And teachers are as much victims as children. As Alfie Kohn says in his book What Does it Mean to be Well Educated? (Beacon Press, 2004), “If kids are going to be forced to learn facts without context, and skills without meaning, it’s certainly handy to have a ideology that values difficulty for its own sake.” And if our economy depends on the production and consumption of ever more cars, televisions and logo-plastered t-shirts, it’s handy to encourage the unquestioning mantra of hard work. After all, those well-meaning dads in the café just want their kids to come out the other end of the schooling sausage maker with jobs that will allow them to buy cars, televisions, leather briefcases and stylish business attire. Posted: 2005/09/26 12:16 PM Repopulating Communities With Kids – August 28, 2005 Recently, I was interviewed by an education student who is working on her Masters thesis. She was curious about the ways in which homeschooling families contribute to their communities. I began by saying I’d try to find her some examples of homeschoolers who volunteer, organize charitable projects, etc. And I mentioned my own two daughters’ two decade-old peace education project (see August 5, below). But then I realized that there is a more fundamental way in which homeschooling families contribute to their communities. And that is accomplished simply by living there! The separation of work and play, the compartmentalization of functions in society, the removal of income generation from the home, the devaluation of the work of women and children…these things all resulted from the Industrial Revolution (which created our school system as well). By populating their communities on a daily basis – by shopping, banking, volunteering, going to the library, playing in the park, swimming at the community center – self-educated young people remind their adult neighbors that children and young people are citizens too, that their needs and well-being must be a part of community life. And that, I think, is a pretty big contribution. Posted: 2005/08/28 5:24 PM Ideology As a Barrier to Change – August 14, 2005 Over the past week, I’ve had conversations with two people – both academics – who oppose any educational alternatives that aren’t public schools. I believe their views are seriously myopic and, indeed, harmful to the future of public education. The first person – a woman – carefully explained to me that her feminist beliefs do not allow her to support home-based learning because it keeps women at home. Nonsense, I snorted, explaining that fathers could – and sometimes do – stay at home instead, or, as in our family, both parents could find a way to balance their careers and facilitate the education of their children. Indeed, an increasing number of families are involved with community-based learning arrangements that have the same effect. I also told her that my and my husband’s feminist beliefs were one of the reasons our daughters didn’t go to school! We wanted them to avoid the negative influence of sexism as it existed at that time in the public school system, and in addition, we felt that self-education was a good way to help change such stereotypes. The second conversation, which included similar irony, was with a man who was concerned about the privatization of education. I share his concern, except that he and I don’t share a definition of privatization. He uses the word to describe anything that is done outside the public school system, including alternatives like democratic schools and homeschooling. When I, on the other hand, use the word “privatization”, I am referring to for-profit education, which includes for-profit schools (including many charter schools), testing companies, textbook publishers, corporate sponsors and the like. Back in the 1980s, I was on the board of directors of an organization that was fighting to have its members brought into the public finance tent. They were all not-for-profit – either informally like homeschoolers or formally like Montessori schools, remedial learning centers and religious schools – but all helping kids learn in ways that differed from the one-size-fits-all publicly funded system. That organization’s executive director was fond of saying that the government department in charge of education acted like a “Ministry of Public Schools” rather than a “Ministry of Education”. I believed then – and I still do – that a public education system can and must accommodate these alternatives. And it is my hope that it will, eventually, incorporate the best of all the alternatives into its practices, and come to agree that what we now recognize as conventional schooling is not the best way for most people to learn. I ended my recent conversation with this public school supporter by pointing out that, ironically, 20 years later, the public school system is much more dependent upon the for-profit mentality than most of the alternatives he believes will erode the integrity of that system. It seems to me that these supposedly progressive people are spouting out-of-date, simplistic arguments in favor of maintaining the status quo. People will always come up with reasons – many well-founded – why change can’t or won’t happen. Often, those reasons are some of the biggest barriers to change. Posted: 2005/08/14 11:20 AM No Einsteins Here – July 2, 2005 I’m just getting around to reading a month-old issue of The New Yorker, left over from a recent trip. I was fascinated – and horrified – by an article called “Best in Class” by Margaret Talbot (June 6, 2005). She describes the fierce competition that goes on among seniors in American high schools for the supposedly prestigious post of valedictorian (highest ranking graduating student, who gives the class’s farewell address at the graduation ceremonies). Students are studying overtime in order to boost their grade averages a fraction of a mark in order to end up on the top of the pile. Disappointed students and their families are even taking their school districts to court in an attempt to overturn decisions. And some schools are appointing co-valedictorians or even abolishing the idea altogether in response. A bit of Google research uncovered many more such stories. A 2003 CNN piece described a court case in New Jersey where an 18-year-old (who happened to be the daughter of a state judge) asked a federal judge to intervene, saying that being forced to share the speech with students with lesser grades would detract from what she had accomplished. She filed notice to sue the school district claiming the dispute humiliated her. Interestingly enough for those who favor home-based learning, the school refused to make her sole valedictorian, in spite of her top marks, because she “had to” spend part of her day studying at home due to health issues. Similarly, a MSNBC piece from last month describes the plight of a Texas student who was refused the valedictorian honor in spite of having the best marks because she missed some school early in the term due to undergoing hospital treatment for anorexia. Huh? If we’re talking marks here, didn’t she earn the valedictory honor even more by being handicapped by an illness and lost school time? Talbot’s story in The New Yorker cites some 1981 research by professors Terry Denny and Karen Arnold, which studied the lives of 81 high school valedictorians and led to Arnold’s 1995 book Lives of Promise: What Becomes of High School Valedictorians. The students continued to distinguish themselves academically in the post-secondary environment. The group included lots of lawyers, accountants, doctors and engineers, with many Ph.D.s and master’s degrees. And they tended to stay married, exhibited few addictions and were active in their communities. They were, Arnold points out, skilled at conforming to the expectations of school and chose careers that were likely to be socially and financially secure. None of the serious athletes ever pursued sports occupations; most of the high school musicians hung up their instruments after graduating. None of them exhibited that “powerful early interest” that evolves into “lifelong, intensive, even obsessive involvement” in an area of special talent or passion. In short, there were no Einsteins in the group. And that is not surprising. As Arnold notes, “Exceptional adult achievers often recall formal schooling as a disliked distraction.” Posted: 2005/07/02 1:25 PM Learned Incompetency – June 16, 2005 Perhaps the main thing I learned at school was what I couldn’t do. I learned that I couldn’t do math, was a poor singer, couldn’t run as fast as most other people, and had no aptitude for drawing. I remember wondering when they were going to start teaching me the stuff that I was bad at, as opposed to only teaching me the stuff I was good at, like reading and writing. I felt let down by school, that they weren’t doing their job as I saw it because I kept waiting for them to teach me how to sing if I couldn’t sing and to teach me how to draw if I was bad at art and to teach me to be athletic if I wasn’t. But they never did. I was written off early in those classes. They just reinforced the fact that I couldn’t do those things and kept teaching me stuff that I already knew how to do. I became famous for not being good at math and within my family it became legend-like, this belief that Wendy just wasn’t good at math. And so I started to believe it too. I was left with a lifetime of catching up to do in those areas in which school taught me I was incompetent. Now, I refer to this school outcome as “learned incompetency” and believe it’s one of the worst things you can do to someone, especially in the name of education. Posted: 2005/06/16 11:45 AM Ranking Kids and Comparing Schools – June 11, 2005 The conservative Canadian think tank the Fraser Institute has just released its ranking of Ontario’s 2,850 publicly funded elementary schools. Taking the abominable notion of ranking and slotting of kids by their scores on standardized, province-wide testing one step further, they have decided that some schools are better than others based on those same test scores. Predictably, four upper middle class neighborhood Toronto-area schools “won” and in all, 36 schools received perfect 10 scores, the majority of them in the Toronto area. At the bottom end, five schools received ratings of zero. The ratings are based on scores from annual province-wide testing of grade three and grade six students in math, reading and writing, conducted by the Ontario Education Quality and Accountability Office. Such assessments – of children and of school systems – measure whether or not individual kids learn all on the same timetable. That says little about kids but a lot about the stupidity of a system which would dare to expect that everyone learns in the same way, that there is such a creature as “an average kid” who can provide a benchmark for competition to the front of the pack. Kids are positioned by these assessments as ignorant, empty vessels and schools as the filler-uppers, with the most efficient winning the race. They turn well-meaning teachers into drillers of facts that can be regurgitated on a test so that their schools can, in turn, perform well. What these poor kids are really learning is to be apathetic, bored and competitive. Peter Cowley, director of school performance studies at the Fraser Institute and co-author of the Report Card, waxes enthusiastic about the rankings. “Comparisons are the key to improvement,” he says. “There is great benefit in identifying schools that are particularly effective. By studying the techniques used in schools where students are successful, less effective schools may find ways to improve.” If school systems and conservative think tanks were really interested in finding ways to help kids learn better, they’d study the “techniques” of those who learn outside of schools. They’d ask their students what they want to know and try to figure out ways to let kids control their own learning processes. That, of course, would require the abolition of pre-packaged curriculum and other so-called “techniques”. Oh yes, and they’d get rid of testing. But I guess it’s too much to ask an institution to dismantle itself! Posted: 2005/06/11 5:40 PM The Problem With Worry – May 23, 2005 Yesterday, I was asked a question I have heard a hundred times before: “Didn’t you ever worry that homeschooling wouldn’t be what your kids needed?” The short answer is, “No.” Here’s the long answer. First of all, I learned years ago that worry is a bad habit. It comes from negative assumptions about all the bad things that might happen – and from the magical thinking that worrying will actually prevent the bad things from happening. Worriers often believe that their worry proves their love for the object of their worry. Just ask my mother! But I believe that the opposite is true; worry results from a lack of trust (in ourselves, others and the universe). In fact, you can demonstrate love and respect for a person by not worrying about them. In this case, since I trusted the decisions my husband and I had made about how we would parent and educate our daughters, and since I trusted their ability to learn without attending school, I didn’t worry. While worry is a waste of time, and harmful to both the worrier and the person who’s being smothered by the worrying, concern for our children is an appropriate parental attitude. Our concern for our children motivated us to create an environment conducive to learning. And it reminded us to listen to their needs and wants. So instead of wasting time and effort worrying, we acted in ways that optimized our daughters’ chances of success in life and that decreased their chances of experiencing failure or harm. Worry can actually be paralyzing. I hear from many parents who say they are worried about the quality of the education their children are receiving in schools these days, or about the bullying or other issues. Unfortunately, worry is often accepted as a substitute for taking action and the majority of parents don’t act on their fear that public school is not a good place for their children. Why? Perhaps because as human beings we seldom challenge the conventional ways of doing things. To learn something, we take a course; to get an education, we go to school. And since public education has the weight of government and educational “experts” behind it, it must be the right way to go. Or so the conventional thinking goes. I believe that when a critical mass of people move beyond their programming and make more conscious decisions about children’s place in society, schools will join workhouses as a faintly remembered relic of a less-enlightened past. And every one of us who is unworryingly able to offer our children the freedom to learn from life is helping move society a bit closer to that ideal. Posted: 2005/05/23 12:31 PM Testing & Cynicism – April 24, 2005 An article in the British newspaper The Guardian on April 16 reported an increase in the number of teenagers caught cheating in public exams, fuelled by a 16 percent rise in offences linked to mobile phones. Apparently, some students are using their cell phones to receive answers for math and science tests via text messaging. The paper noted this week that children in England are examined more than in any other country. Cheating in school is nothing new. But I clearly recall from my own high school experience 40 years ago that it was caused by pressure – from parents, teachers and “the system” – to perform well. That meant, of course, getting the correct answer on a test, a feat that would lead to both short-term (a bike if I passed grade 8) and longer-term (advancement to the next grade along with my friends and eventually a supposedly well-paying job) rewards. In the minds of us students, it had little or nothing to do with learning anything. In this era of high-stakes testing, I am not surprised that there is even more pressure on students to produce the right answers on tests. As I’ve written in this column before, many parents are pushing their kids ever harder to perform well so they can get a head start in the rat race by getting ahead in the job market. At the same time, teachers and schools whose students perform well can receive financial incentives, while those performing below standard on tests are threatened with reprimands and/or budget cuts. This sort of pressure has negative consequences on students’ learning and on their psychological well-being. Stressed-out teachers who teach-to-the-test are hardly able to do more than force their students to memorize facts that will soon be forgotten. There is a growing body of research showing that students subjected to such a narrowly focused view of the world lose any motivation, commitment to learning and love of knowledge they once had. (For instance, see Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s work on Self-Determination Theory at the University of Rochester.) In the workplace, it is well understood that assessment which provides specific, one-on-one feedback in an atmosphere without pressure or control will result in employees with increased self-motivation who become more effective in meeting challenges. Why don’t we extend that experience to kids? So it is not surprising that young people are becoming increasingly disengaged and cynical about tests, resulting in increased levels of cheating. In order to change that, we must allow them to feel like competent and autonomous members of a learning society, rather than like parrots programmed to regurgitate other people’s words under pressure. Posted: 2005/04/24 1:19 PM Learn the Craft, Then Set it Aside – May 17, 2005 I’m re-reading the book Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996, HarperCollins). And it occurs to me that he has something useful to say about how we should be going about educational reform (including how we help young people become literate – see May 13, below). He wrote: “You cannot transform a domain unless you first thoroughly understand how it works. Which means that one has to acquire the tools of mathematics, learn the basic principles of physics and become aware of the current state of knowledge. But the old Italian saying seems to apply: Impata l’arte, e mettila da parte (learn the craft and then set it aside). One cannot be creative without becoming dissatisfied with that knowledge and rejecting it (or some of it) for a better way.” We’ve evolved an educational system, academics have studied it into rigor mortis, we’ve tinkered with it (which includes throwing money at it) over the years, and now the level of dissatisfaction has risen to the point that it’s time to reject “the current state of knowledge” for a better way. If it would make the administrators and academics feel better, they can believe there were some aspects of the old system that might have worked once upon a time. But that was then and this is now. Now, we need to build a better way – or perhaps many better ways. And the self-directed learning community can guide us…if the status quo enforcers will get out of the way. Posted: 2005/05/17 10:22 AM Why Can’t People Read? – May 13, 2005 According to a new study authored in part by Statistics Canada, forty percent of Canadian adults have serious reading problems, which interfere with their ability to get and retain jobs, and perform everyday tasks like reading a newspaper. Astoundingly, that percentage has not significantly changed in a decade. The Canadian score results trailed behind those of Norway and Bermuda and ahead of the United States. What, in my opinion, should be a wake-up call about the way we are helping people learn seems to have been accompanied by little more than a few tongue cluckings by those who could read the report about the fate of those unlucky people who couldn’t. Where it was noticed, it became another call to throw more money at the problem, including the funding of adult literacy programs to fix problems schools create. Donna Kirby of the National Literacy Secretariat, a division of the Department of Human Resources, says that the federal government has recognized the existence of a serious literacy problem. Her division receives $30 million each year to improve the literacy skills of Canadians, and the Paul Martin government has promised an additional $30 million over the next three years as part of the 2005 budget. Call me radical (see May 2, below), but why aren’t we looking at the way we help little kids learn to read? Why aren’t we looking at why all the sophisticated reading research and increasingly earlier institutional interventions only work for 60 percent of the population? Seems to me that everyone – teachers, school administrators, parents, politicians, so-called literacy experts – should take a deep breath, take two steps back and look at the root of the problem in a new way. The “old” way – no matter how new – obviously isn’t working. Posted: 2005/05/13 10:40 PM On Being Radical – May 2, 2005 I had a letter over the weekend from a subscriber to Life Learning magazine. She wanted me to know that while she has been enjoying reading about other people’s learning experiences, she won’t be renewing her subscription because she feels it is “too radical” for her and that we “don’t keep to the homeschooling topic all the time”. I thanked her for using the word “radical”, and pointed out that it has a few meanings. My dictionary tells me that it originates with the Latin words radix meaning roots and radicalis, which means having roots. And thus comes the botanical term “radical leaves”, which refers to leaves that arise from the root or crown of the plant. So, for me, a person who is radical is one who examines the roots of issues. And a radical solution to a problem is one that arises from that examination, addressing what we sometimes call the root cause, rather than the more superficial symptoms. I suppose that focus on fundamental change is why radical views, opinions, practices or proposed changes sometimes seem extreme. It is also why I prefer to examine how people learn by living, rather than to isolate self-directed learning as just another homeschooling method or style. When I started thinking about these things 35 or so years ago, I began with the presumption that what was wrong with our education system wouldn’t be fixed by tinkering – by adding more subjects, more equipment, more teachers or more funding, or, in fact, by changing the location of where the teaching took place or the content of the curriculum that was used. I realized then, and believe it ever more passionately now, that what’s needed is an examination of how people learn and whether or not schools provide the best opportunity for that learning to unfold. (They don’t.) That sort of radical examination of the problem – and the radical solutions that life learning families are living every day – is what Life Learning magazine is about. In that sense, we “don’t keep to the homeschooling topic all the time”. Posted: 2005/05/02 12:04 PM We’re All Gifted – April 10, 2005 I’ve recently been approached to write about enrichment programs in school settings, and about whether home-based learning works for so-called “gifted” students. I’m having trouble deciding whether or not I want to take on this assignment. First of all, I believe that everyone is gifted – especially if they are allowed to develop their talents in a richly stimulating environment like some schools offer only to certain elite students. A decade ago, the principal of our local public elementary school invited me to help a multi-grade group of “gifted” students learn about journalism and newspaper publishing. I agreed, preparing a couple of sessions to demonstrate reporting, interviewing and news writing, to which the young people responded well. Of course, not all of them were interested in the topic, but most of them seemed to enjoy the experience anyway. Then they became reporters. They each covered an event at their school and wrote about it, using the techniques they had supposedly learned. The next time I met with them, I provided editorial feedback, in the same way I would to adult journalists, true to the principal’s instructions. Although most of them were indignant that I would ask for a re-write, the pieces eventually were published in a special section of the weekly community newspaper I was publishing at the time. In an attempt to provide these students with an ongoing, real-world learning experience, I agreed to make the column a monthly feature. Unfortunately, neither the teacher nor the students were willing or able to meet my deadlines. And the quality of work was dreadful and spiraling downward, with none of the writers adhering in any way to the most basic principles we had discussed – and that they had used when writing their initial articles. In a few cases, when students had apparently tried to write in a journalistic style, their articles had been badly re-written or incorrectly edited by a teacher not involved with the program. I eventually called the whole thing to a halt, and branded it as a lose-lose situation. I should have known better. I should have remembered that creativity and initiative do not flourish in an atmosphere of coercion. While specific talents and interests deserve special training, the best way to help children develop their creative abilities is to surround them with creativity and allow them to pursue their own ideas and projects in the real world. If adults model creative thinking, children will follow their lead. If adults try to look at the world in new ways and to find new ways to do conventional things, children will do the same thing. Aside from being a non-stimulating environment for all but a few students who have been ranked as part of an elite group, much of the school mentality actually undermines innovation. There is little room for true individuality in a school setting. Nor, for that matter, is there room for any part of the creative process, which is uneven, bumpy and non-standardized. Pressure to produce – as well as evaluation, judgment, criticism and comparison – kills any original thinking and creativity that manage to survive. Posted: 2005/04/10 5:27 PM The Learning Journey – March 17, 2005 I’ve been thinking about the term “growing up”. What does it mean, really? When has a person reached “up”? When they hit six feet tall? When they turn 20? Or 30? Or 50? When they can support themselves financially? Of course, those are all arbitrary criteria, set in relation to our cultural and family experiences. They are mere signposts along the road to a destination that we are not able to locate on anyone’s life map. Maybe, like Peter Pan, we never grow up! In the same way, an education is not a destination, but a journey. We commonly speak of the importance of “getting an education”, of “finishing school”, of a person being educated or not. But I do not believe that we become educated any more than we grow up! There is always something to learn…and, in fact, many important lessons are not learned until mid-life or older. An education is not a destination, but a journey – one that begins at birth and continues until we die (or even after, depending upon your spiritual beliefs!). Posted: 2005/03/17 10:36 AM Slow Learning – March 6, 2005 There is one definition of intelligence that involves speed, results and competition – getting the right answer to a question quickly and doing it faster than anyone else. Many parents seem to buy into this definition by comparing the speed at which their children master skills, and being proud when they have learned to walk, talk or read before the neighbor’s kids have. Many teachers show that they value this type of intelligence by praising students who can come up with the “right” answer to an oral quiz, who solve problems quickly, or who choose the most prescribed answers on a multiple choice test within the allotted time frame. Unfortunately, some people who perform well in this sort of school setting don’t do as well in the real world. And conversely, many successful and unquestionably “intelligent” people like Albert Einstein do poorly in school. That’s why I prefer a definition of intelligence that involves the ability to explore the world and to understand one’s experiences in it. You could call it “slow learning” because it’s not oriented towards quick results or competition with others. Rather, it involves knowing how to create hypotheses and to test them. It also understands that answers are only “right” in certain contexts and favors the personal process over the more public – and testable – product. As Harvard professor Ellen J. Langer writes in her book The Power of Mindful Learning (Perseus Books, 1998), “If we can shed [the] outcome orientation, we may discover that the freedom to define the process is more significant than achieving an outcome that has no inherent meaning or value outside that particular setting.” When education becomes a journey rather than a destination, learning can be seen as a process of active self-determination. And that is a life’s work. Posted: 2005/03/06 12:22 PM Nurturing Instead of Labeling – February 18, 2005 “A Terror in the Classroom” screams today’s headline on the website of the Hamilton Spectator. The story is about a five-year-old boy who has been kicked out of seven day cares and suspended twice from junior kindergarten. Now, they don’t want him in kindergarten either, unless he goes on medication, which his parents don’t want. He has been diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). And according to the article – which is really about government not providing enough resources to schools – the school board apparently cannot afford his own personal teaching assistant to help him fit into the classroom satisfactorily. As Jan Fortune-Wood writes in her column in the March/April issue of Life Learning magazine, ODD is the latest in a long list of non-existent “disorders” that adults use to label kids who don’t do what they want. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says that although all children are “oppositional” to “authority figures” from time to time, it becomes a serious concern “when it affects the child’s social, family and academic life.” According to W. Douglas Tynan, PhD, Director, Disruptive Behavior Clinic, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Behavioral Health (yes, there is such a thing!), AI DuPont Children’s Hospital, “The primary behavioral difficulty is the consistent pattern of refusing to follow commands…” Psychiatric associations claim that between five and 15 percent of all school-age children have ODD! So instead of stopping with the commands and treating children like human beings, parents, doctors and schools decide they are sick and want to medicate them. Instead of taking their cue from life learners and providing children with the trusting learning environment they need, our society continues to warehouse them all day, require them to follow commands and otherwise not respect their needs…and when the kids don’t function well, we blame them. Aside from the fact that school is the only method of education most people have known, most adults believe they know what is best for children – theirs’ and other people’s. Plus, many adults “need” the structure of school in their lives so they can have jobs. And certainly, the education industry “needs” to maintain these non-nurturing environments so that teachers and administrators can have their jobs, text book publishers can make money, and so on. Or do they?? If our society really liked children, wouldn’t we look at other ways for families to live and learn instead of requiring children to serve our needs and call them ill if they don’t? This particular newspaper reporter seems to suggest that more money is the answer, quoting a report by the Human Rights Commissioner, which said the school system “isn’t well-equipped to deal with students whose disabilities cause disruptive behavior.” But what about the rights of children to live in environments that don’t provoke an oppositional or defiant reaction? The little boy’s mother is quoted in the article as saying this five-year-old is “a wonderful little kid” until he is faced with rules or is under stress. My heart goes out to her and I hope she will realize that most of us have problems dealing with rules and stress, and aren’t labeled with a disability because of it. I also hope that she will find a different way of helping her child to learn than in this obviously dysfunctional system. Posted: 2005/02/18 4:50 PM Children Aren’t Like Horses – February 12, 2005 Canada’s national broadcaster CBC has introduced a new column on its website. It’s about education – er, schooling. In the first installment, Mary Ellen Lang – who describes herself as a mom, grandma, writer, teacher, gardener, and equestrian – says that “Teaching kids is like training horses”. Well, maybe. But does that mean that kids learn in the same way as horses do? I know nothing about horses, although I’ve spent 30 years thinking about kids. But Lang must know something I don’t because that sentiment nailed her first job teaching teens in British Columbia two decades ago. And apparently, she still believes that what works for horses works as well for kids. First of all, she says, like horses, a kid has to trust you or “they can’t or won’t learn what you want them to”. Both also have to understand what you want so you have to “communicate clearly”. Perhaps Lang has been successful imparting her agenda to both horses and kids so that they will perform well in the riding ring or on an exam. But the truth is that no matter how well you communicate it, no kid will learn what “you” want them to unless “they” want to learn it, no matter how much they trust you or how well you communicate your desire for them to learn…unless, of course, you brainwash them. She goes on to say that if horses and kids are frightened, angry, confused, humiliated or bored, “they won't invest themselves honestly in what you're trying to teach them”. Probably true. But a kid who is allowed to pursue their own interests, needs and wants will learn without being frightened, angry, confused, humiliated or bored. Trust and self-discipline are crucial, says Lang, so that horses can stand still while their keepers tie them up as a prelude to new shoes and baths. And kids? Well, they need to be able “to tolerate periodic stretches of quiet stillness” in order to reap the rewards of naps, cookies and the development of listening skills. How many kids do you know who consider naps a reward? Cookies, maybe. But the development of listening skills is definitely an adult need, not a kid one. I don’t know how many horses care about getting new shoes. And if those bribes aren’t enough, a dose of reality will get their attention and help them learn to do what they’re told. In the case of a “rebellious” horse, that means helping them understand that they must be "schooled in enclosures” so they won’t hurt themselves. Requiring a horse or a kid to do as they are told is “not some horrible assault on their self-esteem or self-determination” but a necessary component of learning. This, my dear Ms. Lang, isn’t education; it is classroom management. I don’t want to be too hard on this obviously well-intentioned writer, because her views are typical of the child education industry. It’s just that her attitude is one of a benevolent dictator rather than the partnership she describes having with her horse. And this attitude fails to reach its intended goal, which in Lang’s words is to “foster independent and competent thinking.” In the same way that one doesn’t learn how to live democratically unless one lives in a democracy (and most schools aren’t democracies), doing what one is told and trusting that someone else knows what is best for you doesn’t foster independent thinking. Sorry, Mary Ellen. Horses may be lovely animals...and highly trainable, given the right treatment. But they are not children. Posted: 2005/02/13 10:53 AM Teaching Kids to Talk, Walk and Other Adult Silliness – February 6, 2005 I have in front of me a press release for Baby Berlitz, a just-launched series of books and CDs “especially designed to stimulate language learning in infants up to three years old”. They’re published by the venerable Berlitz company that has decades of experience helping adults learn foreign languages. So once again, we have a company trying to capitalize on parents’ urge to give their kids an edge. A writer for the Boston Globe also apparently received the press release, and wrote an article about it last week. She summed up her response by quoting a leading researcher on language acquisition who said, “This is just a bunch of hype.” Fortunately, not all hype is as dangerous or as stupid as is this sort of hype. Kids learn to talk by interacting with people in their lives who talk, and who are sensitive and responsive to their desire to communicate...not by listening to recordings of strangers talk! That observation of and encouragement by loving role models is, by the way, also how they learn how to walk.  In my presentations about deschooling over the past 25 years, I have often pointed out how absurd it would be for parents to formally instruct their children in the fine art of, say, walking...by means of chalkboard diagrams describing which brain waves command which muscles to move which bones...and then to test their knowledge. Will I soon need to revise my presentation because it no longer seems so absurd?! In this context, a reader has just reminded me about an essay written in 1967 by Jerry Farber entitled “The Student as Nigger”. It was probably the first thing I ever read that questioned the status quo of public education. Farber, who is a civil rights activist, education critic and professor of English at San Diego State University, has said of his essay, “The article was an outgrowth of my attempts to be a good teacher. After several years in the English department at L.A. State College, I had decided that there were limits to how well you could teach in an authoritarian and dehumanized school system. So I thought I would do my bit to help change the system.” The highly controversial essay was first published in the Los Angeles Free Press and then in book form (1970, Pocket Books) and became an underground classic that was reprinted and passed along on campuses across North America. It included the tongue-in-cheek “Teaching Johnny To Walk – an ambulation-instruction program for the normal preschool child”. I guess we haven’t come all that far since the mid 60s when Farber wrote his essay and since I began pointing out in the mid 70s that kids will learn if they are given the time and space and encouragement. How silly and how counterproductive to think that books and recordings – no matter how technologically sophisticated – can help kids learn to accomplish things they’ve been learning on their own, with the help of loving families, since humans began to walk upright and develop language. But that’s business. Posted: 2005/02/06 12:20 PM The False Premise of Schooling – February 1, 2005 I’ve been corresponding with a journalist who plans an article on home-based learning. But she is having a hard time understanding how people can learn outside of schools. She believes, apparently based on her own school experience, that a person won’t learn unless inspired by a teacher and that children need some kind of mythical social stimulation that she thinks happens in schools. I’ve been telling her that school is based on a false premise: that children do not want to learn and will not learn if left to their own devices. So we force children to gather together in one place for long hours with others of the same age, so that we can teach them. We assume that children must be manipulated to learn by enthusiastic adults, judged and processed in a variety of ways, and diagnosed as having a problem if they don’t learn what the adults want them to. The comparison I used is one that I wrote about in my book Challenging Assumptions in Education: the assumption that says wellness results from treatment by a hospital. One may get well in a hospital and there are some situations where a hospital stay may be the only way to get well. But there are also many examples where a hospital has hindered the healing process or where relatively well people have become ill in hospitals, either through mistreatment or by catching other people’s diseases. Most people would be healthier if they took responsibility for their own well-being, rather than rushing off to be treated by an institution every time they have a health problem. Similarly, I told her, schools are not the only – or for many people, the best – environment for learning. And that is because they focus on teaching rather than on learning. Human beings do not need to be taught in order to learn. We are born interacting with and exploring our surroundings. Babies are active learners, their burning curiosity motivating them to learn how the world works. And if they are given a safe, supportive environment, they will continue to learn hungrily and naturally – in the manner and at the speed that suits them best. In fact, you cannot stop young children learning from everything they experience. They are always experimenting with cause and effect. And they are always soaking up information from their environment. Speak a language in their presence, and they will learn it. Perform a task near them, and they will imitate you. I told this journalist that I hope she loses her assumptions before writing her article. But, like in most of us, they are pretty deeply entrenched. Posted: 2005/02/01 11:09 AM Reaching Our Potential – January 9, 2005 I had a conversation today with someone who was questioning my posts about parents putting too much pressure on their kids to perform well academically and to be prepared for “success” in the adult world. What, he asked, is wrong with helping our children to achieve their potential? Plenty, I responded, if our attitude is one of fear that they won’t rather than trust that they will. And besides, all this emphasis on performance seems to be sidelining goals relating to family, love, community, having children, being happy. Instead, it’s fostering anxiety and self-absorption. And are these parents really motivating their children or setting them up for failure? If success is defined by the parent and not the child, are the goals even relevant? Will these kids ever be able to meet the standards set by their parents? And if not, won’t they feel that they’ve failed? And if they do meet the goals, will they feel they’ve done their best? I worry a lot about people who feel they are accepted only for what they have achieved, rather than for who they are. Sure, our children need to achieve their potential. We all do. And they will, if they are given the support, respect and trust that they deserve. If we keep out of their way and let their own innate motivation guide them to heights we can’t even imagine. Posted: 2005/01/09 7:59 PM Disrupting the Flow – January 3, 2005 While using some of the holiday downtime to catch up on my reading, I noticed an article published in the New York Times just before Christmas that has me shaking my head once again in bewilderment. Apparently, one of the season’s more popular “toys” was a colorful device called the Time Tracker. Recommended for ages four and up, its stated purpose is to help children improve their performances on standardized tests. It is supposed to help them develop a sense of passing time, which will presumably translate into better time management while test writing. Standardized tests have become a part of schooling, from primary years through college. And parents are apparently feeling the stress of wanting to give their kids a performance edge in such a high stakes world. Poor parents. What about the stress they are inflicting on their kids with their pressure to perform and with this gadget?! Aside from the practice of focusing so maniacally on test scores as a predictor of anything meaningful, test preparation is not real learning; it is, rather, practice for regurgitation. In addition, it is cruel and destructive to limit children’s absorption with their play in such a way and for such a reason. As psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has described so eloquently with his “flow” theory, people enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in an activity where they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction. Children’s capacity for concentration is huge and that is precisely how they learn. Fortunately, many private schools and, dare I say, most families whose kids learn without school avoid subjecting children to testing. Unfortunately, the rest of society is a very large market for the Time Tracker. Posted: 2005/01/03 2:41 PM Valuing Young People – December 1, 2004 “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom – teachers leave them kids alone.” The lyrics on the 1979 Pink Floyd classic Another Brick in the Wall became an anthem for teens, but the 23 teens who actually sang the words on the album experienced some fallout. The students secretly recorded the vocals with the help of their music teacher Alun Renshaw. He took them to a nearby recording studio without the permission of the British school’s headmistress, after being approached by the band’s management. On hearing the song, the headmistress banned the pupils from appearing on television or video in connection with the song. And the local school authority described the lyrics as “scandalous”. The school was paid 1,000 pounds and later given a platinum record of the song but the individuals involved were never paid. Now that, I think, is the scandalous part! It shows just how undervalued young people were, and continued to be. But now, one of those former students has engaged a royalties expert to claim unpaid royalties on behalf of the whole group. They are not suing the band; instead, they are taking advantage of a royalty fund established under British copyright law. Music teacher Renshaw told a British newspaper that he accepted the band’s offer because he viewed it as “an interesting sociological thing and also a wonderful opportunity for the kids to work in a live recording studio. I sort of mentioned it to the headteacher, but didn’t give her a piece of paper with the lyrics on it.” Good for him for understanding that learning happens from real life! The album sold over 12 million copies and the single became No. 1 in Britain and the U.S. And I imagine the lyrics are still scandalizing many people, aside from the appalling grammar. Posted: 2004/12/01 1:17 PM Learning to Use Power for Change – November 18, 2004 Our provincial government has announced some long-awaited democratic reforms. Unfortunately, they are similar in nature to the so-called reforms they are imposing on public education – tinkering with a broken system rather than fixing it. (Details about the problem and the government’s token solution can be found on the Democracy Watch website.) But I shouldn’t be surprised. In the same way that children in school are ruled and regulated by a group of friendly “experts”, we are governed by a professional class of politicians. Instead of self-government, we have a representative democracy in which the elite have centralized power, just as power is centralized in school. And that is the way those in charge like it. It is simply easier to tell us what is good for us and perhaps sell us something than to have us meddling in education, politics or economics. In this kind of democracy, a citizen’s role is not to author public policy, but merely to influence or comment on it. The object of political debate in a schooled society is not to discuss but to persuade, in the same way that a child wheedles and pouts and throws a tantrum in order to get her way. Because we have never learned to take the initiative to make change, we resort to criticizing and complaining...or to misbehaving when the teacher is looking the other way. Physical domination because of size, age, gender or some other supposed right has taught us that power flows from the top down. Big kids bully little kids, teachers and principals have power over their students, strong men abuse physically weaker women and children, big countries invade smaller ones and everyone trashes the environment. Most of us accept this distribution of power, as well as its often brutal consequences. Those who do protest are made to feel like rebels and outsiders. Sometimes the protesters are successful. We change a program here, save a building from demolition there, secure some extra funding for our favorite issue, protect a park from a road that is being widened, persuade politicians to amend a few pieces of legislation. But even when these activities accomplish what they were designed to do, they are just fighting symptoms and effects, rather than the root cause, which is misuse of power. We can look at power negatively, or as the ability to control what happens to us...or at least to work for alternatives. Unfortunately, many of us have never even experienced the kind of collective power that can be used to build alternative solutions. Our schooling has led us to misunderstand the difference between the power to do something and the force that makes us do something. We were told one too many times to sit in our seats and listen, to put up our hands when we had to go to the bathroom, to buy what we were offered and that children should be seen and not heard. Posted: 2004/11/18 5:33 PM Legislating Learning – November 15, 2004 Perhaps frustrated by their inability to engage kids in learning, legislators in various places around the world seem intent on tinkering with so-called compulsory education laws. In France, a new report on school reform recommends lowering the compulsory attendance age to 5 from 6. In various US states, charter school legislation is being used to lure home-educated students back under the public umbrella and occasional attempts are made to impose greater restrictions on home-based learners. In Ontario, Canada, the provincial government has recently said it plans to introduce legislation that will increase the legal school leaving age from 16 to 18. Or as the Premier put it, they are going to “require our young people to keep learning until age 18.” He was quoted in the newspapers as telling policy makers, “It is not our plan...to incarcerate young people because they fail to continue to learn.” Well, that is a relief, since the prisons would certainly be full! What on earth makes this seemingly intelligent (and certainly well schooled) man think that kids who want to drop out are learning in the first place? What makes him think that a law ever made anybody learn? Was this just a slip of the tongue, or does a head of government really believe what he said? To his government’s credit, they are apparently considering the creation of alternative learning situations for young people (read: a slight spin on school), as well as co-op programs, and have already begun promoting apprenticeship programs. But, as Toronto Star columnist Slinger wrote on Saturday in a very funny column, why stop people from learning at age 18? If learning is going to be compulsory, why discriminate based on age? Posted: 2004/11/15 10:40 AM The Trouble With Perfection – November 8, 2004 Spontaneity is one of the great strengths of little children; they live in the moment, following their curiosity, darting here and there, picking things up and putting them down, trying, exploring, laughing. School frowns on spontaneity, as do many jobs and even most so-called recreational pursuits. So, like anything else that is avoided or underused, spontaneity withers away in most people’s lives. We become shy and inhibited about trying new things, about expressing ourselves spontaneously. And that is unfortunate, since spontaneity is one of the components of creativity, something that we can all use more of in our personal and working lives. Spontaneity also dies when we develop the compulsion to do things perfectly (which is a slippery definition at the best of times anyway). Take drawing, singing or playing the piano, for instance. Yes, some people are fabulously talented professional artists and musicians; but we can all draw and make music as a way of expressing ourselves, communicating and just generally enjoying and enhancing our lives. That is, if we don’t become too inhibited to do so because somebody – art critic, teacher, parent, our own low self-esteem inner critic – defines what is good art and tells us we belong in the audience. The road to perfection is littered with landmines waiting to kill the joy of creativity and spontaneity. Take the kid who is having fun noodling around on the piano. Somebody thinks that kid might “make something” of their apparent talent if they are “serious enough” about doing so. That’s when the budding artist has to stop playing, get a teacher and start practicing. A rigorous schedule is followed, there are competitions to take part it, always on the road to the holy grail of perfection. Yes, there are those talented exceptions who are eager to hone their special skills, but for the rest of us, the joy and spontaneity of play can easily flee as a task becomes goal-oriented. And how sad to be taught that learning is work, that trial and error is inefficient, that there is something wrong with the joy of discovery and creation, that the only valid pursuits in life are those done for reward or for other people’s reactions. Posted: 2004/11/08 10:01 AM Breaking Free of Schools – November 3, 2004 Learning should be taken out of the hands of antiquated school systems and put into the hands of learners, argues a professor and education consultant in an eye-popping article in new issue of The Futurist magazine. Now there is nothing particularly new in “Learning for Ourselves – a New Paradigm for Education” by John C. Lundt, a professor of educational leadership at the University of Montana and co-author of the text book Leaving School: Finding Education (Matanzas Press, 2004). Many writers – from Holt to Gatto, to me – have long argued that the structure of our schools was designed to meet the needs of a world that no longer exists and thus inhibits learning, and that there are better ways to get an education. But this article confirms a hunch I’ve had for sometime now that some mainstream educators are finally “getting it”. In fact, we’ve recently had to go into a third printing of my 2000 book Challenging Assumptions in Education due to the increasing number of post-secondary educators who are using it in their courses. In addition to describing what is wrong with the factory school model, Lundt describes a path toward ending the public school  monopoly on funding so that learners can leave schools and find the education of their choice. But he is at his most compelling when he describes what educational freedom could look like. And he tackles some of the potential concerns, like preserving democracy and economic equity, socialization, accountability, the future of teachers, and more. Good for this generally middle-of-the-road magazine! Posted: 2004/11/03 12:34 PM In Charge of Ourselves – October 12, 2004 When my husband Rolf and I started publishing our first magazine Natural Life back in 1976, the focus was on “self-reliance”. That being the back-to-the-land era, many people understandably misinterpreted the concept to mean “self-sufficiency” and were disappointed at the tiny size of our vegetable garden and that we didn’t have chickens running around the publishing office. The two concepts are related, but quite different. The dictionary definition of “self-reliance” is “reliance on one’s own capabilities, judgment, or resources; independence”. “Self-sufficiency” is defined as “the ability to provide for oneself without the help of others” and, in some dictionaries, has the qualifier of “having undue confidence” or being “smug”. Our mission has always been to provide readers with information that will encourage them to question the status quo and hence make their own authentic choices about the food they eat, the things they buy, the amount of natural resources they consume, the way they educate themselves and their children, and so on. Or, in a word, to be self-reliant. Our meaning is in tune (aside from the 1840s gender bias) with that of Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay entitled “Self-Reliance”, where he wrote, in part, “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion....” That sense of the importance of each of us crafting our own authentic view of the world still underlies what we are about almost 30 years after we published that first issue of Natural Life magazine. If you are self-reliant, you realize the dangers inherent in educating children in schools...and aren’t afraid to try the non-institutionalized path. If you are self-reliant, you refuse to believe at face value the spin that politicians put on health care, or protecting our food supply and our energy resources...and you do your own research and work together with your neighbors to build positive community alternatives. If you are self-reliant, you take ownership of your own feelings and emotions...and replace blaming others for your anger with a decision not to be angry. Yes, it takes time and effort to question conventional assumptions. (And beware: questioning one assumption leads to another, and so on....) But my own journey toward self-reliance has shown me that doing so can make life far simpler, much less destructive and very much happier. Posted: 2004/10/12 11:13 AM Not Yet a Learning Society – October 10, 2004 One of the principles behind most of the writing and speaking I’ve done about education over the past 30 years is that education is not something one produces in someone else; rather, it is something one does for oneself. Real learning is that which we have gained for ourselves, based on our own interests, motivations and timetables. Now, that’s not news to adult educators, who regularly toss around terms like “lifelong learning”, “learning organization” and “learning society”. In the adult education world, it is assumed that learners will set their own agendas, study independently and think creatively. The contrast between that and the way we treat younger learners is striking...and a bit puzzling. A good example of what I’m talking about is the recent study authored by academics at two Toronto post-secondary institutions that called for less learning autonomy and more “program experience” for young children (see September 2, 2004 blog archive). This is the very sort of academic who, years later, has to put more programs in place to help all those teenagers with “program experience” recover from it and learn once again how to be autonomous learners in order to thrive at the post-secondary level! How much sense does that make? People are hard-wired to be autonomous learners from birth. Developmental psychologist Robert White says we are born with an “urge toward competence” – the need to have an impact on our surroundings, to control the world in which we live. We do not just sit and wait for the world to come to us. We try actively to interpret it, to make sense of it. Of course, this drive to discover means we are constantly learning...and experiencing the pride that comes with having gained that mastery. So then why is so hard for people – academics, non-academics and even many home-educating parents – to trust children to learn without interference? It has, I think, to do with what the British writer Roland Meighan in his article in the upcoming issue of Life Learning calls “adult chauvinism”. The way our society looks at education involves power, control and the arrogance that makes us think we always know what is best for those younger than ourselves. Until we societally adopt the principle that childhood is not a rehearsal for personhood and lose our coercive attitude toward children – especially but not solely in terms of how they learn – we will not be able to call ourselves a learning society. Posted: 2004/10/10 1:31 PM Solving Educator-Defined Problems – September 2, 2004 A new study released today in Toronto suggests that the way to solve the problem of kids doing poorly in school is to send them to school earlier. The study is called Early Learning and Care in the City and is a joint initiative of the Centre of Early Childhood Development at George Brown College and the Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE). In a  press release announcing the study’s publication, OISE’s Dr. Daniel Keating says, “One quarter of all children entering grade one have behaviour or learning problems, which is a strong indicator of continued school difficulty. The research indicates these children have not received enough preschool program experience or the quality of the experience was inadequate.” I can hardly write for sputtering with flabbergasted frustration! Those so-called behaviour and learning “problems” result from kids not wanting to be in school, not being interested in what they’re being taught, and/or not having their personal learning styles addressed (as the study’s authors, to be fair, recognize). Six-year-olds need less “program experience”, not more! Behaviour and learning problems don’t exist when kids are engaged with life and learning, when they are not forced into situations that don’t nurture their minds, bodies or souls. If your intent is to create obedient automatons who are socialized into performing well on an outmoded, mechanized educational assembly line, or even kids who make an easy transition to grade school by not disrupting their classes, then put babies into programs at an ever earlier age. If your intent is to help children develop into autonomous, creatively thinking, actively learning adults, then keep them out of school as long as possible...or, better still, abolish school as we know it and spend the resulting billions of dollars on developing a learning society that works for all ages. If we are talking about the very real need for universal access to high quality daycare for those who want or need it, then let’s say that, rather than suggesting that such institutionalization is good for kids and will solve their later schooling problems. Until educators and legislators start thinking outside the system box and realize that education and schooling are not the same thing, our kids will continue to have educator-defined behaviour and learning problems. Posted: 2004/09/02 8:11 PM Symptoms or Normal Reaction? – September 1, 2004 Here is something new from the tell-us-something-we-didn’t-know department. Spending time outdoors can help overcome the so-called “symptoms” of kids labeled with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to new research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. According to a report in the American Journal of Public Health, the study of 452 parents of children with ADHD found that activities in “green” spaces such as farms, parks and even backyards often seemed to temporarily have a “calming” effect on children’s “symptoms”, as opposed to activities performed indoors or in concrete and steel settings. Now, there are two issues here. First of all, while I don’t carry the unfortunate ADHD label, I find that stepping outside or walking/running in a park helps calm me down and relieve stress. Secondly, I wonder if it ever occurred to these or other researchers that perhaps many of these kids don’t actually have a disorder at all. What if their “symptoms” are actually a normal reaction to being in concrete and steel settings all day, to the fatigue that comes from focusing their attention on a boring task while trying to block out the distractions of a school classroom? What if they merely function better when they are allowed to run and play in the park, as children are designed to do? What if the label is blaming the victim? As writer Jan Hunt has pointed out in an article in Life Learning, we don’t blame flowers that fail to bloom...we adjust their growing conditions! Posted: 2004/09/01 11:20 AM Who Are We Testing & Why? – September 20, 2004 Public school teachers have, as a group, long been opposed to standardized testing of students. But I’m beginning to wonder about their motivation. A recent survey released by the Ontario College of Teachers, looked at how teachers and the general public feel about student testing. (It claims they are deeply divided.) A press release announcing the State of the Teaching Profession survey noted that teachers “vehemently oppose” the use of standardized tests “as a means to evaluate staff or schools or to decide how money is allocated to schools or school boards”. Incredibly, the survey results don’t seem to indicate any concern about whether or not standardized tests are good or bad for kids, let alone whether or not they are even good tools for evaluating learning! I have many objections to testing. For one thing, it presumes to judge the growth of knowledge by measuring performance on one test in one moment of time, rather than as a process of growth that occurs over time. The current broadly-based emphasis on standardized testing means that teachers are increasingly “teaching to the test”. They spend much of their time stuffing kids with a curriculum menu of disconnected bits of information so they can be dutifully spit out again in a way that will make teachers and school systems look good in the eyes of the accountability-demanding, tax-paying public. But memorizing facts in order to be able to regurgitate them isn’t learning; true learning is interest-driven, highly individualized and difficult to measure. Tests – especially standardized ones – test test-taking ability. In addition, they can be poorly written, as well as culturally and educationally biased, and are usually used to label and slot children, rather than teachers or educational systems. In a 1986 Canadian Education Association report entitled Evaluation for Excellence in Education, the author put it succinctly: “The modern educational evaluator must recognize that educational endeavors will be supported by the public only to the extent that they understand the objectives being pursued and see that the objectives are actually being attained.” Fair enough. That may be the political reality for educational administrators. But it has nothing to do with learning. When will we stop harming our kids with such misguided bureaucratic practices? Posted: 2004/09/20 12:56 PM Marching to the Beat of the Institution – August 27, 2004 Weather-wise, we’ve had a lousy summer so far. The weather has been cool and damp, until just this week, when we’ve been surprised by more summer-like temperatures. So I was not ready earlier this week when the reporters began their annual phone calls researching back-to-school stories about kids who aren’t going back to school. But now that I have tuned in, I have started to notice the shopping, hair-cutting, dentist-going pre-school-return rush. And I’m also starting, along with the rest of our society, to feel that summer is fast coming to an end, even though there are more than three weeks left in the season. How sad that instead of living in tune with the rhythm of the seasons we march to the beat of the institution. How sad for those kids who are soon to be cooped up in school for another ten months waiting for another two months of freedom. How sad that many kids don’t even get two months away from institutions because there is nobody home all summer to supervise them. How sad for those who continue to wait their whole lives, to be given permission to color outside the lines, for the school bell to ring, for Friday or summer vacation to arrive, until retirement when they are finally in control of their own time (and they often no longer remember what to do with it). On a much more positive note, here is a reminder about Self-University Week, which is September 1 to 7. Sponsored by Charles Hayes’ Alaska-based Autodidactic Press since 1989, the first seven days of September are a time to remind ourselves that school is not the only place to learn and that each of us has a responsibility to help shape the future by pursuing lifelong, self-directed education. On his website, Hayes lists 52 ways to celebrate. Posted: 2004/08/27 10:17 AM Learning in the Moment – July 18, 2004 This morning, while walking along the waterfront boardwalk near my home, I watched a toddler and his mother. The little boy was still unsteady on his feet, but determined to explore as far and as fast as he could, oblivious to the danger created by his proximity to the water’s edge. At one point, he tripped and fell forward onto his hands. And there he stayed, bum up in the air, his body forming a tent shape and his eyes firmly focused on the boards in front of him, his earlier destination already forgotten. He studied the rough wood intently, feeling its texture by rubbing one hand along it carefully, then moving his face even closer so he could smell the slight dampness. After a minute or so (his mother watching patiently), he sat down right there and began a more intense examination of the boards, trying to stick his finger between the cracks, picking at the wood to see if he could take a sample (possibly so he could taste it), experimenting with different visual angles. This, I thought, is what it’s like to be totally absorbed in the present, to be aware of your immediate surroundings in such a way as to learn everything you can from each and every moment. As adults, we would benefit from regaining some of that youthful authenticity...while doing everything in our power to preserve it in our children. Posted: 18/07/2004 10:28 AM Education Can´t be Done to People – July 15, 2004 Perhaps the most basic assumption we make about education is that learning can and should be produced in us – and that we can produce it in others. This assumption leads to another one: that learning is the result of treatment by an institution called school (or homeschool). Perhaps because of their own schooled background,  most people assume that children do not want to learn and will not learn if left to their own devices. Even many people who reject traditional schooling in favor of homeschooling have institutionalized and standardized the educational process, on the assumption that children must be manipulated into learning by enthusiastic adults, judged and processed in a variety of ways, and diagnosed as having a problem if they don’t learn what the adults want them to. Unfortunately for children, this assumption is no more valid than the one that says wellness results from treatment by a hospital. One may get well in a hospital and there are some situations where a hospital stay may be the only way to get well. But there are also many examples where a hospital has hindered the healing process or where relatively well people have become ill in hospitals, either through mistreatment or by catching other people’s diseases. Most people would be healthier if they took responsibility for their own well-being, rather than rushing off to be treated by an institution every time they have a health problem. Similarly, people do learn in schools. However, schools are not the only – or for many people, the best – environment for learning. And that is because they focus on teaching rather than on learning. Posted: 15/07/2004 12:02 PM What We Learn in School – July 6, 2004 Was just re-reading something by author Joseph Chilton Pearce (Magical Child, Crack in the Cosmic Egg, etc.), who quoted a Carnegie Institute study from the 1960s, which found that only five percent of everything we learn in our lives is learned in school. The remaining 95 percent is the result of direct experience. And as adults, most people remember only three to five percent of that five percent that they supposedly learned in school! What a tragic waste of time and resources. Posted: 06/07/2004 10:54 AM Fairytales – June 16, 2004 Sometimes I feel like Alice in Wonderland, in that everything is not what it seems. The term “life-long learning” has become popular (trendy even) and educators of all stripes say they realize that people learn best when they are interested in a topic and when it is in a real-life context. Nevertheless, our age-segregated, factory-model public education system is still firmly in place. And true self-directed learning is still very much on the fringes. It is being given lip service but there is no real understanding of what it really means or of its ramifications.  Why? Educators (and many parents) tell me it is utopian and impractical, not to mention practically impossible for many families. Nonsense! If we really wanted to make life learning available to all, we could and would. Even though most adults would have to admit to the poverty and dullness of their own school experiences, and even though the experiences of many thousands of unschoolers prove there is a better way, few people are willing to admit the Emperor  Has No Clothes. Even the majority of homeschoolers believe that children must be made to learn – at least “the basics” – using workbooks, curriculum programs and other specially tailored products. Part of the problem is that those products are part of a huge school industry, which has a vested interest in perpetuating the myth that tests, texts and teachers are essential to educational success. But aside from that powerful influence, I often wonder why it is so difficult for families to take that leap of faith away from their own familiar experiences toward something so much better, even when they admit that their own experiences were not all that positive. Posted: 16/06/2004 11:48 AM Interfering With Learning – May 5, 2004 This morning, as I walked through the harborside park near my home, I watched a mother and her young child who were also enjoying the warm sunshine. The little girl had on an immaculate white dress, white socks and shiny black shoes. Oblivious to what her activities might do to her clean clothes, she was excitedly watching some worms wriggle through a puddle of water. Gently and with great joy, she was trying to coax one of the worms onto a stick that she patiently held at the edge of the puddle. Unfortunately, her mother dragged her, screaming, away from her science lesson with the admonition that she would wreck her clothes “playing in the dirt”. I hope (but doubt) that was an isolated action on the part of the mother, since interfering with the natural learning process destroys children’s pleasure in discovery. It also contributes to the compartmentalization of learning and reinforces the myth that we only learn in certain places, during certain hours and when certain people (usually older and wiser than us) are in control. Adult control of the learning process can also inhibit kids’ fearless approach to problem-solving. We have all seen that sort of interference in action. I still remember vividly an incident that took place over 30 years ago when my two-year-old daughter was trying to put her shoes on. She proudly put the left shoe on the right foot, then determinedly spent ten minutes creating a massive knot in the laces. Her grandmother, no longer being able to watch in silence, said in her peremptory way, “You’re doing it all wrong. Here, Grandma will do it for you!” My daughter burst into tears. Fortunately, I had the courage to intervene because the legacy of that type of “help” left me with a lifelong resistance to trying something new for fear of not being able to do it perfectly well the first time. When people are fearful, confused or bored, or have been convinced that something is too difficult or messy, or that they are too dumb, they shut down. The surest way to make someone fearful of risk taking is to demonstrate their chance of failing. It is no wonder our schools are full of bored, frustrated, angry, passive children who have lost their ability to question, experience and learn. Posted: 5/05/2004 11:20 AM Instinct to Learn – April 29, 2004 I believe that people have an instinct to learn, that children are born with the desire to discover what they need to know about the world around them. The late Robert White, a developmental psychologist and Harvard professor, called this instinct to learn, to manipulate, to master an “urge toward competence.” What he meant is that we are born with not just a desire, but the need to have an impact on our surroundings, to control and understand the world in which we live. Children who are lucky enough to have families who trust that need are what I call life learners. They don’t need to follow somebody else’s second-hand curriculum, to be artificially motivated to learn, or to be tested about to be sure they are learning. They don’t need school. Unlike people who have been told to sit down, line up, be quiet and wait, life learners don’t just sit and wait for the world to come to them. They actively try to interpret the world, to make sense of it. They are constantly learning...and also experiencing the pride that comes with having understood new things and having mastered new skills. As the adults living with these constantly learning young people, we are most helpful when we can honor their right to set their own learning agenda, trust them to learn what they need to know, help them develop in their own ways, and provide opportunities that will help them to understand the world and their culture, as well as to interact with it. Posted: 4/29/2004 4:59 PM Laziness – April 20, 2004 Few things seem to trouble parents more than the possibility their kids might be lazy. I guess it’s the legacy of that old Puritan Work Ethic (and you don’t have to be part of any particular religion to suffer from it!). Like our current style of schooling, which is based on  it, the belief that hard work makes you a better human being dates back to the Industrial Revolution. It might have been a useful tool for factory owners trying to make their employees productive, but it can actually be counterproductive today. Those who can work smarter and more creatively often get further ahead in today’s workplace. And they certainly live happier, more balanced lives. The Puritan Work Ethic is especially damaging in terms of education, where work for its own sake just doesn’t make sense. Students are often asked to put in long hours in the classroom and doing homework, experiences that seldom produce much real learning. What we call “play”, on the other hand, often results in a great deal of learning. The problem for many adults is their lack of trust in children’s innate ability – yes, their drive – to learn. As a result, they mistrust what seems like inactivity, forgetting that our brains can be very active while our bodies are at rest. Oh, and that fear of growing up lazy? Kids who are able to pursue the results of their own interests and passions work harder than those who are made to do meaningless work. That just makes people aimless and unproductive. Posted: 4/20/2004 1:56 PM Learning and Forgetting – April 19, 2004 I’ve been reading a wonderful little book by Frank Smith, entitled The Book of Learning and Forgetting (Teachers College Press, 1998), which, by the way, is reviewed in the  May/June issue of Life Learning. Smith, who was a reporter, editor and novelist before beginning his formal research into language, thinking and learning as a Harvard Ph.D. and subsequent education professor in Canada and South Africa, has a knack for cogent description of what helps and hinders learning. He believes that learning is a social process that can occur for people of all ages naturally and continually through collaborative activities (no news to most of the people reading this blog!). In this book, which is one of many he has written, Smith writes at length about short- and long-term memory. He explains that the effort to memorize interferes with memorization because it destroys understanding. Rote memorization, he says, puts things in the wrong place (i.e. in short-term memory, where you can only hold onto something for as long as you rehearse it). When something goes into long-term memory, on the other hand, information is organized and retrieved on the basis of the sense they make to us. The way to hold something in long-term memory is – as anyone knows who has tried to remember a new acquaintance’s name at a cocktail party – to relate it to something you already know. But, writes Smith, when you are trying to learn something there is no need to worry about finding something you can relate the new knowledge to, “because that will take place automatically if you understand what you are doing.” So, he recommends, don’t even think about it. “Get on with enjoying what you are reading – or look around for something else that is [more]  interesting and does makes sense to you.” In short, the more absorbed we are in an activity, the more we learn about it. Posted: 4/19/2004 10:41 AM Radical Holt Book Back in Print – April 4, 2004 Kudos to Sentient Publications for reviving – intact – what I think is John Holt’s best book, Instead of Education – Ways to Help People do Things Better. Holt, of course, believed in learning by doing and coined the term “unschooling”. But in addition to being an educational reformer, he was also a social reformer. And this book, while not as well known as How Children Learn, How Children Fail, and Teach Your Own, may be his most radical. Originally published in 1976, Instead of Education lays the framework for unschooling as the path to self-directed learning and a creative life. It is both an indictment of state-run schools (what he calls “S-chools”) and a description of a variety of learning opportunities outside of conventional schools, including personal learning schedules, independent study programs, community learning exchanges and co-ops, and resources like museums and libraries. But more radically, it includes strategies for helping kids escape compulsory schooling, both legally and in defiance of truancy laws – including the creation of an “underground railroad” for school leavers. While the homeschooling movement has matured in 30 years, unfortunately, Holt’s indictment of S-chools rings as true as ever.  Posted: 4/4/2004  5:26 PM Education as a Meandering Brook – April 2, 2004 I just came across a neat quote by Henry David Thoreau: “What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch out of a free, meandering brook.” The “meandering brook” style of learning is what Life Learning is all about...children learning because they are trusted with the freedom to muddle...opportunities to explore, to interact with the real world, to investigate their questions and ideas, to figure things out, to make connections, to get ideas and test them, to take risks, to make mistakes and try again. School and school-type styles of education (yes, even home-based ones!) could be called the “straight-cut ditch” style of learning. Also, I think, in that category goes the careless and too-early use of electronic media. Yes, the straight-cut ditch might seem to end up in the same place as the free, meandering brook. But how much richer, in so many ways, is the path of the brook!         Posted: 4/2/2004  9:05 PM