Articles about unschooling/autonomous education

[notatschool]

Freedom to Learn

Sorry if this has been posted before. It's been fascinating reading about AE on this board and I've been really interested in finding out more about it. Thought maybe these articles might interest some people on here too :)

Alan Thomas' article on informal learning is worth reading as an introduction to his research.

He also did a at HesFes a couple of years ago for us.

The Tizard and Hughes study which is mentioned in that Alan Thomas article is described in a very accessible book: Young Children Learning: Talking and Thinking at Home and at School. I'd recommend it to anyone who wonders whether their young child would learn more at school.

Something which sets that study apart from others is that it contrasts the casual interaction between children and their mothers against the interaction between the same children and their teachers. In some cases it is strikingly apparent that the teachers have no hope of understanding the children's capabilities or what they are talking about. Many factors seem to conspire against the teachers, including a lack of detailed knowledge of the child's life, a shortage of time to have proper individual conversations, and the actual pedagogical approach itself which distracts the teacher from communicating properly with the child.

Interestingly, it seemed that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were particularly prone to "clamming up" and not engaging with teachers in the school environment, which caused teachers to misjudge them dramatically. Also, even the mums who many people might think were poorly equipped to educate their children (very busy, with a low level of educational attainment, did not believe their children learned anything from talking to parents) had incredibly rich, deep, extensive conversations with their children. Those conversations with mum were far superior to the conversations the children had at school.

It's an easy read and is widely available.

Peter Gray has written a number of articles about AE and related subjects on the Psychology Today website.