Albert Einstein once said that it is a miracle curiosity survives formal education. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t. When my husband Rolf and I decided almost 40 years ago that we wouldn’t send our then-unborn daughters to school, we knew that curiosity was one of the precious traits we didn’t want to risk them losing. In [...]
wendy priesnitz
Challenging the purpose of schools
“The wish to preserve the past rather than the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.” Bertrand Russell Not only is it ineffective to try and force children to learn, it is also unjust. But if you ask most people why we need a strong [...]
Benefits of boredom
Over the centuries, many religions and philosophers (not to mention mothers!) have feared and even damned boredom. My mother, prompted perhaps by Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who said it first, called boredom “the root of all evil”. The poet Wordsworth described it as a “savage torpor”. Early Christians classified it as one of the seven [...]
Unschooling as a feminist act
When I was a young mother, I wore a t-shirt with the words: “The hand that rocks the cradle rocks the boat.” The phrase put a spin on a 19th century poem entitled “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Rules the World” by American poet William Ross Wallace. I understood at the time that becoming [...]
A life of learning
For the past 40 years, I have had a vision of a world where children and young people are equal members of society, where they are liked, respected, trusted and empowered to control their own lives and to make their decisions about learning and life. And, for the past 35 years, it has been both [...]
Interference
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 [...]
Not yet a learning society
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 [...]
Lazy learning
Few things seem to trouble parents more than the possibility our kids might be lazy. I guess it’s the legacy of that old Puritan Work Ethic – and you don’t have subscribe to any particular religion to suffer from it! Like our current style of public education, which is based on it, the belief that [...]
Understanding life learning
Life learning (sometimes called “radical unschooling,” “natural learning” or “self-directed learning”…or even “homeschooling”) is one of those concepts that is almost easier to define by saying what it isn’t, than what it is. And that’s probably because our own schooled backgrounds have convinced us that learning happens only in a dedicated building on certain days, [...]
Learning in the real world
A retired school teacher acquaintance recently acquired her first computer. After plugging it in and connecting the components according to the instructions, she called me to ask if I could recommend a course that she could take to learn how to use her new toy. I said I couldn’t recommend a course because I’ve never [...]
