Education Revolution | Alternative Education Resource Organization

“You must be so patient.” If I have heard that once, I’ve heard it a hundred times. I must be so patient. Patient to homeschool my kids. What is patience anyway? According to Wikipedia patience is “the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on [...]

There is a strong connection between the business world and the modern institution of schooling. Historians of education have explained how schools as we know them were profoundly shaped by the influence of business leaders and by educators who adopted theories and techniques from the economic realm of society. Many major turning points, new initiatives, [...]

Do you really want a dead cat on your desk?” When a teacher took a parent’s phone call at the end of another busy school day, she was taken aback by the question. She couldn’t figure out why a first grader in her class came home telling his mother that their recently deceased family pet [...]

It was a cloudy day in April, 2004. It was cloudy in my mind. And storm clouds were brewing over my son as he refused to write his name on his painting. I knew the path we were traveling was getting weedy and we needed to find another way. We are now extremely happy with [...]

As I pursued research for my book on the 1960s-era free school movement, I came across numerous references to the notion of “participatory democracy” as an alternative to modern political ideologies and practices. (1) Many of the young activists who formed SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and other radical groups during that period of [...]

If you’re an American teen or young adult, you’re a pioneer. You may not think of yourself as a pioneer, and you may not relish the idea of being a pioneer, but that seems to be the role that history has in mind for you. Many Americans sense that America is in deep trouble. People [...]

Alexa began creating a village when she was seven years old. She liked to build tiny houses out of sticks and leaves in the backyard, something she particularly enjoyed doing when her friends came over. Together they made up stories about the tiny people who would move in. Alexa was frustrated when wind and rain [...]

My husband Phil and I were both educated in the public school system. He came from a very impoverished family and decided at a young age that getting himself into a good college was going to be the key for him to get out of that difficult life. My family was solidly working class and [...]

Early in my career, I attempted to define the place of spirituality in holistic education: A basic premise of holistic education is the belief that our lives have a meaning and purpose greater than the mechanistic laws described by science, and greater than the ‘consensus consciousness’ of any one culture. This transcendent purpose is a [...]

If you haven’t heard about the 10,000 Hour Rule, you’re probably busy doing what people do. Living life on your own terms. Malcolm Gladwell identified this 10,000 hour maxim in his book, Outliers. The rule has to do with attaining Big Time Success. Based on Anders Ericsson’s analysis of people who reached the top of [...]