Quit School...
And enter ... LIFE
Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead to better and more 'respectful' teaching, if we thought of adults as atrophied children.
Many 'well-adjusted' adults are bitter, uncreative, frightened, unimaginative, and rather hostile people.
Instead of assuming they were born that way, or that that's what being an adult entails, we might consider them as people damaged by their education and upbringing.
Modern Public Schooling
An excerpt from the book Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
In 1806 the Prussians suffered a shattering military defeat at the hands of Napoleon. After their beaten soldiers fled from certain death, the Prussian military decided to turn their attention to the children, realizing they had to start young if they wanted to instill the kind of obedience that would override the fear of death itself.
The government decided that if it could force people to remain as children for a few extra years, then it could retard social, emotional, and intellectual development and control them more easily. This was the point in history that 'adolescence' was invented - a method of slowing down the transition from childhood to adulthood, so that it would take years rather than, for example, the months it takes in Indigenous rites of passage.
This delayed transition, intended to create a permanent state of child-like compliance in adults, was developed from farming techniques and used to break horses and to domesticate animals. Bear in mind that the original domestication of animals involved the mutation of wild species into an infantilized form with a smaller brain and an inability to adapt or solve problems. To domesticate an animal in this way you must:
- Separate the young from their parents in the daylight hours.
- Confine them in an enclosed space with limited stimulation or access to natural habitat.
- Use rewards and punishments to force them to comply with purposeless tasks.
Effectively, the Prussians created a system using the same techniques to manufacture adolescence and thus domesticate their people.
The system they invented in the early nineteenth century to administer this change was public education: the radical innovation of universal primary schooling, followed by streaming into trade, professional and leadership education. It was all arbitrated by a rigorous examination system (on top of the usual considerations of money and class). The vast majority of Prussian students (over ninety per cent) attended the Volksschule, where they learned a simple version of history, religion, manners and obedience, and were drilled endlessly in basic literacy and numeracy. Discipline was paramount: boredom was weaponized and deployed to lobotomize the population.
The system worked so well that Prussia became one of the most powerful countries in the world, at a time when the idea of 'nations' (rather than regions, kingdoms, tribes, or city-states) was first being promoted as the dominant form of social organization on the planet. The Prussians began to make plans to spread the institution of schooling as a tool for social control throughout the world, as it facilitated the kind of uniformity and compliance that was needed to make the model of 'nationhood' work. The US could testify to the effectiveness of Prussian education as a tool for domination and power, as American educators had been making pilgrimages to Germany for more than half a century. Excitingly, test schools across America proved that the artificially induced phenomenon of adolescence was achievable outside of Prussia, too.
In 1870, Prussia got revenge on France by annihilating the French military in the Franco-Prussian War, and immediately established Germany as a unified nation state. After that, the Prussian education system (and the new institution of extended childhood) became all the rage around the western world. It was modified to some extent, probably because the Prussian model seemed a bit weird, even to the power-hungry ultra-rich of Europe - it was so all encompassing that women were required to register each month with the police when their menstruation started. Prussia was described jokingly as an 'army with a country' or a 'gigantic penal institution'. Towns and cities were built like prison blocks, grey grids of rigid cubes and plain surfaces. The government worked hard to 'cleanse' the society of homeless people, gypsies, Jews, and homosexuals as they expanded and enforced their embryonic doctrine of eugenics. (Their motto for education was Arbeit mact frei, work sets you free, a slogan that the Nazis adopted and later placed above the gates of concentration camps, including Auschwitz, used for Jewish slave labor and extermination. There are many schools in Australia today with a similar motto in Latin: Labor Omnia Vincit, work conquers all. Now, as ever, the creation of a workforce to serve the national economy is the openly stated main goal of public education. And, as ever, the inmates of this system are told that their enthusiastic compliance with forced labor will be in their best interests at some future point.)
Germany's [still] compulsory education system expressed six outcomes in its original syllabus documents:
- Obedient soldiers to the army.
- Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms.
- Well-subordinated civil servants.
- Well-subordinated clerks for industry.
- Citizens who thought alike on most issues.
- National uniformity in thought, word, and deed.
And it spread like wildfire: to Hungary in 1868, Austria in 1869, Switzerland in 1874, Italy in 1877, Holland in 1879, Britain in 1880, and France in 1882. From there it quickly expanded further to European colonies, including Australia.
The U.S.A. had been involved much earlier; with even Benjamin Franklin advocating the Prussian system. In 1913 Woodrow Wilson established the Federal Reserve, copying Germany in its centralized banking system too: this way, the state would control both learning and money, just like Germany did.
Videos
Good people talking straight about school and other possibilities...
Ken Robinson - Do Schools Kill Creativity?
Carol Black - Schooling The World
Derrick Jensen - Free Play
Clinton Callahan - Take Your Kids Out Of School?
Seth Godin - Stop Stealing Dreams
Logan LaPlante - Hackschooling Makes Me Happy
Ken Robinson - Changing Education Paradigms diagrammed by RSA Animate
Ken Robinson - How To Change Education
Learning / Doing
a blog by Seth Godin
The Learning/Doing Gap by Seth GodinOur society separates them. Somewhere along the way, we decided that one interfered with the other.
Go to school for 8 years to become a doctor–most of that time, you’re learning about doctoring, not actually doing doctoring.
Go to work as a copywriter. Most of the time, you’re doing writing, not learning about new ways to write.
The thing we usually seek to label as ‘learning’ is actually more about ‘education’. It revolves around compliance, rankings and “Will this be on the test?”
Being good at school is not the same as learning something.
One reason that we don’t incorporate doing into education is that it takes the authority away from those that would seek to lecture and instruct.
There are 56 million people in K-12 (compulsory education) in the US right now. Most of them do nothing all day but school, failing to bring real-life activity, experimentation and interaction into the things that they are being taught.
And there are more than a hundred million people going to their jobs every day in the US, but few of them read books or take lessons regularly about how to do their work better. That’s considered a distraction or, at best, inconvenient or simply wasted time.
The gap is real.
It often takes a decade or more for a profession to accept and learn a new approach. It took gastroenterologists a generation before they fully accepted that most ulcers were caused by bacteria and changed their approach. It has taken our justice system more than thirty years to take a hard look at sentencing and corrections.
It could be because we’re confusing learning with education. That education (someone else is in charge and I might fail) is a power shift from doing, so I’d rather be doing, thank you very much.
What happens if the learning we do is accomplished by always engaging in it in conjunction with our doing?
And what happens if we take a hard look at our doing and spend the time to actually learn something from it?
When police departments invest time in studying their numbers and investigating new approaches, they discover that efficacy and productivity goes up, safety improves and so does job satisfaction.
When science students devise and operate their own lab tests, their understanding of the work dramatically improves.
Education (the compliance-based system that all of us went through) is undergoing a massive shift, as big as the ones that have hit the other industries that have been rebuilt by the connection and leverage the internet brings. And yet, too much of the new work is simply coming up with a slightly more efficient way to deliver lectures plus tests.
The alternative? Learning. Learning that embraces doing.
The doing of speaking up, reviewing and be reviewed. The learning of relevant projects and peer engagement.
Learning and doing together, at the same time, each producing the other.
That same symmetric property applies to just about everything we care about.
To quote the ancient rockers, “We don’t need no… education.” But we could probably benefit from some learning.
In the middle of all this doing, this constant doing, we might benefit from learning to do it better.
Do not handicap your childrenby making their lives easy.
- Lazarus Long
Doubts? Read These Books!
If you have any doubts about immediately unschooling your children, any doubts at all... read the books below.
You do not have to read all of them. Reading 8 or 10 of these books listed below is sufficient to build the matrix in you to open the door for you to release your children from prison so they can do whatever they need to do to learn to live.
By the time you read 8 or 10 of these books, your doubts, which come from your fear... (Do you experientially know that? I don't know what you know or don't know. Doubts come from your fears. Adult initiated fear is not bad or wrong or stupid. Fear is one of your 4 Feelings or one of your 4 Emotions which are your authentic adulthood resources for handling things and healing things in your life. Do you experientially know that?
Ahhh... not experientially being able to Inner Navigate your feelings and emotions forces you into behaving as a crippled, subverted, adolescent who is easily forced into following the patriarchal plan for your economic slavery... no wonder you have doubts about making a choice that is not offered on the menu.
No wonder you have doubts about taking your kids our of school and never forcing them to go back there.
Your mind may well know that each day your child spends in school is one day less they have to prepare themselves for what is coming... but your heart and soul are not initiated into adulthood and so they quiver in uncertainty and follow the flock of Zombies.
Sorry about your doubts... they would be gone after reading 8 or 10 of these books.
Your doubts would be replaced by your certainty... which is your anger... Do you experientially know that? Your clarity comes from stellating your anger... stellating is one of the beginning adulthood initiatory processes...
Ho... there is a lot to learn...
Fortunately you can learn anything you want to learn. Your mind is yours to play with and make into whatever you want.
It is not too late.
You are designed to grow up.
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NOTE: The General Memetics team - those courageous edgeworkers creating the nearly 400 StartOver.xyz websites - decided to change our book links away from Amazon.com and over to Bookshop.org, an online platform that radically supports local bookstores. Bookshop.org offers great prices and super service, plus it is locally owned, socially conscious, and author friendly . If you are willing to buy your books through the links we provide below, then a small percentage of what you pay will go into a fund for General Memetics. Our promise to you is that we will use whatever money we receive from Bookshop.org to continue expanding and deepening StartOver.xyz, the free-to-play online-and-offline matrix-building thoughtware-upgrade personal-transformation adventure-game, open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to everyone around the world. Harbigarrr!
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
...an adventure of the mind and spirit. The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man in search of truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils only to find himself alone in an abandonded office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. "you are the teacher?" he asks, incredulously. "I am the teacher, " the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story to tell.... As readers everywhere seek out books that offer answers to their burning questions about spirituality, the popularity of this remarkable novel continues to grow at an astounding pace.
The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff
...in search of happiness lost.
"If the world could be saved by one book, this might just be the book."Jean Liedloff, an American writer, spent two and a half years in the South American jungle living with Stone Age Indians. The experience demolished her Western preconceptions of how we should live and led her to a radically different view of what human nature really is. She offers a new understanding of how we have lost much of our natural well-being and shows us practical ways to regain it for our children and for ourselves.
Wounded By School by Kirsten Olson
...recapturing the joy in learning and standing up to old school culture. While reformers and policymakers focus on achievement gaps, testing, and accountability, millions of students mentally and emotionally disengage from learning and many gifted teachers leave the field. Ironically, today's schooling is damaging the single most essential component to education--the joy of learning
How do we recognize the "wounds" caused by outdated schooling policies? How do we heal them? In her controversial new book, education writer and critic Kirsten Olson brings to light the devastating consequences of an educational approach that values conformity over creativity, flattens students' interests, and dampens down differences among learners. Drawing on deeply emotional stories, Olson shows that current institutional structures do not produce the kinds of minds and thinking that society really needs. Instead, the system tends to shame, disable, and bore many learners. Most importantly, she presents the experiences of wounded learners who have healed and shows what teachers, parents, and students can do right now to help themselves stay healthy.
Education and Ecstasy by George B. Leonard
...reframing what happened in school. Education and Ecstasy, by George Leonard, was originally written as a call for reform in America's school systems. Published in the Sixties, and then revised in the Eighties, this book reveals the deep-rooted structural problems in American schools-problems which still plague us. Leonard proposes that long school days and tedious homework are not ways to encourage learning; that teachers are overworked and underpaid. He proposes ways to integrate new methods of teaching that are still valuable and applicable today.
Teaching As A Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
...a no-holds-barred assault on outdated teaching methods with dramatic and practical proposals on how education can be made relevant to today's world...
“It will take courage to read this book . . . but those who are asking honest questions—what’s wrong with the worlds in which we live, how do we build communication bridges cross the Generation Gap, what do they want from us?—these people will squirm in the discovery that the answers are really within themselves.”—Saturday Review
“Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner go beyond the now-familiar indictments of American education to propose basic ways of liberating both teachers and students from becoming personnel rather than people . . . the authors have created what may become a primer of ‘the new education’ Their book is intended for anyone, teacher or not, who is concerned with sanity and survival in a world of precipitously rapid change, and it’s worth your reading.”—Playboy
The Soft Revolution by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
...a student handbook for turning schools around.
The Disppearance of Childhood by Neil Postman
...media turning the adult secrets of sex and violence into popular entertainment and pitching both news and advertising at the intellectual level of ten-year-olds threatens the understanding of adulthood.
Also see: https://whitewidow.mystrikingly.com
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
...the real and present dangers of handing over politics, education, religion, and journalism to show business. Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), a historical narrative which warns of a decline in the ability of our mass communications media to share serious ideas. Since television images replace the written word, Postman argues that television confounds serious issues by demeaning and undermining political discourse and by turning real, complex issues into superficial images, less about ideas and thoughts and more about entertainment. He also argues that television is not an effective way of providing education, as it provides only top-down information transfer, rather than the interaction that he believes is necessary to maximize learning. He refers to the relationship between information and human response as the Information-action ratio.
Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce
Magical Child, a classic work, profoundly questions the current thinking on childbirth practices, parenting, and educating our children. Its daring ideas about how Western society is damaging our children, and how we can better nurture them and ourselves, ring truer than ever. From the very instant of birth, says Joseph Chilton Pearce, the human child has only one concern: to learn all that there is to learn about the world. This planet is the child's playground, and nothing should interfere with a child's play. Raised this way, the Magical Child is a happy genius, capable of anything, equipped to fulfill his amazing potential.
Expanding on the ideas of internationally acclaimed child psychologist Jean Piaget, Pearce traces the growth of the mind-brain from birth to adulthood. He connects the alarming rise in autism, hyperkinetic behavior, childhood schizophrenia, and adolescent suicide to the all too common errors we make in raising and educating our children. Then he shows how we can restore the astonishing wealth of creative intelligence that is the birthright of every human being. Pearce challenged all our notions about child rearing, and in the process challenges us to re-examine ourselves. Pearce's message is simple: it is never too late to play, for we are all Magical Children.
Magical Child Matures by Joseph Chilton Pearce
Arguing that current birthing and child-rearing practices oppose Nature's plan for human development, the author reviews the stages of human development and suggests that Nature's plan includes, at maturation, a spiritual stage of development.
From Magical Child To Magical Teen by Joseph Chilton Pearce
A groundbreaking perspective on Nature's plan for full human creativity and intelligence during the teen years
- Shows what is at the core of today's serious social and psychological problems
- Explores the sexual and spiritual stage of adolescent development
- Details the connection between adolescent brain and heart development and the issue of nature vs. nurture
- By the author of Magical Child (250,000 copies sold)
Something is supposed to happen during the adolescent years--something greater than MTV, video games, and the Internet. Joseph Chilton Pearce describes this something as the natural mandate for post-biological development--the development of the sexual and spiritual senses and expansion of our growth process outside of our bodies and into the physical world that surrounds us.
Free Range Learning by Laura Grace Welden
...how homeschooling changes everything. Free Range Learning will encourage and excite those who want their children to reap important benefits from this period of "sheltering in place," learning at home. This is a book for anyone simply wanting some fresh ideas at this time, or those who wonder if a commitment to ongoing homeschooling might actually result in longer term benefits! The material in this book is backed by scientific and educational studies, along with the testimonies of scores of parents and kids from around the world. The work here is applicable for young people from pre-school through high school. Studies indicate that adults who were homeschooled are:
- More likely to vote, volunteer and be involved in their communities than graduates of conventional schools.
- Read more books than average.
- More likely to have taken college level courses than the population as a whole.
- Tend to be independent and self-reliant.
Children are naturally "free range" learners. They build knowledge and skills naturally, within the full spectrum of their daily lives, while observing, exploring and pursuing their interests. This book guides any parent or educator in assisting that process.
Magical Parent Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce and Michael Mendizza
This parenting guide presents seven principles for guiding and teaching children in today's turbulent learning environment. It replaces traditional adult-child formulas, rewards, and punishments with playful interaction, creative intelligence, and insight. With the goal of raising happy, healthy, intelligent young people, the book adopts proven strategies that allow top athletes and others to perform at high levels, called variously "zone," "flow," and "play." Using these concepts, parents and other caregivers will learn how to create and maintain "Optimum Learning Relationships" with children of any age.
Guerilla Learning by Grace Llewellyn
If you've ever felt that your child wasn't flourishing in school or simply needs something the professionals aren't supplying, you're ready to become a 'guerrilla educator'. Revolutionary and inspiring, Guerrilla Learning explains what's wrong (and what's useful) about our traditional schools and shows you how to take charge of your family's education to raise thinking, creative young people despite the constraints of traditional schooling.
Filled with fun and exciting exercises and projects to do with children of all ages, this remarkable approach to childhood, education, and life will help you release your child's innate abilities and empower him or her in the wider world that awaits beyond the school walls.
Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn
...how to quit school and get a real life and education. The inspiring, funny, and information-packed underground classic is back-in a completely revised and updated thirtieth anniversary edition!
The Teenage Liberation Handbook is (still) the only complete guide to unschooling written for youth. It tackles everything.
- Why to consider self-directed education.
- Communicating with reluctant parents.
- "Getting a social life without proms".
- Designing a "tailor-made intellectual extravaganza" and getting into college.
- Finding great mentors, apprenticeships, and volunteer positions.
Devoted fans of the Handbook include not only teenagers and college students but also thousands of parents, teachers, young adult librarians, school counselors, and college professors. The new edition is loaded with updated resource sections, a thoughtful new introduction, and refreshed text throughout.
Real Lives by Grace Llewellyn
...eleven teenagers who don't go to school tell their own stories. In 1993, eleven homeschooled teenagers described their lives in rich detail, and Real Lives quickly became a homeschooling classic. Erin’s favorite teacher was her horse Nick, blind in one eye. Kyla flew to South America in September of what would have been her senior year—alone, except for her mountain bike. Jeremiah and his sister Serena published a newsletter on peace issues. Patrick, who hoped someday to design video games, had spent the past few years compiling portfolios of his writing and artwork. Rebecca worked at homeless shelters and, through Habitat for Humanity, built houses for people in need. Anne tended honeybees and plucked a bluegrass banjo. Ayanna kept pace with 50 pen-pals—mostly in Africa—while Kevin talked with people all over the world on his ham radio. Amanda performed with a violin quintet and worked through the mail with her writing mentor. Vallie answered questions at a marine science center; Tabitha answered the phone at a crisis line, and helped midwives at births.... ....Now those eleven homeschoolers have grown up and engaged the territory of adulthood, college, and career—and the new edition of Real Lives includes updates from all of them. From gaining admission to an Ivy League institution without taking the SAT to crafting a simple life centered on writing and gardening, they tell where life has taken them and where they have taken life, and offer hindsight and advice for others choosing to learn outside of school.
Growing Up Global by Homa Sabet Tavangar
...raising children to be at home in the world. In today's increasingly interconnected world, how do we prepare our children to succeed and to become happy, informed global citizens? A mother of three, Homa Sabet Tavangar has spent her career helping governments develop globally oriented programs and advising businesses on how to thrive abroad. In Growing Up Global, Tavangar shares with all of us her "parenting toolbox" to help give our children a vital global perspective.
Whether you're mastering a greeting in ten different languages, throwing an internationally themed birthday party, or celebrating a newfound holiday, Growing Up Global provides parents and children with a rich, exciting background for exploring and connecting with far-flung nations they may have only heard about on television. Inside you'll discover
- Fun activities, games, and suggestions for movies, music, books, magazines, service activities, and websites for expanding your family's worldview.
- Simple explanations that will help your children grasp the diversity of world faiths.
- Creative ways to gain geography literacy.
- Handy lists of celebrations and customs that offer a fascinating look at how people from different cultures around the world live everyday life.
Teach Your Own by John Holt
The classic guide to teaching children at home for a new generation of homeschooling parents. In 2019, there were more than two million children being homeschooled. That number doubled during the pandemic and is now likely to continue increasing as more parents worry that school might not be the best place for their children to learn and grow.
Teach Your Own helped launch the homeschooling movement; now, its timeless and revolutionary message of recognizing the ways children come to understand the world has been updated for today's environment. Parents and caregivers will discover how to navigate:
- Learning in a classroom versus learning in the world
- The difference between a learning difficulty (which we all experience every time we try to learn anything) and a learning disability.
- Schedules that achieve the homeschooling-work-life balance that you want as a family
- The relationship between learning and play
- Homeschooling and technology
And much more. John Holt's warm understanding of children and his passionate belief in every child's ability to learn have made this book an essential resource for over forty years to homeschooling families.
Instead Of Education by John Holt
...ways to help people do things better. Instead of Education is Holt's most direct and radical challenge to the educational status quo and a clarion call to parents to save their children from schools of all kinds. In this breakthrough work Holt lays out the foundation for un-schooling as the vital path to self-directed learning and a creative life.
Summerhill School by A. S. Neill
...a new view of childhood. Originally published in 1960, Summerhill became an instant bestseller and a classic volume of education for an entire generation. Now, this thoroughly expanded and revised version of the original Summerhill reinstates the revolutionary 'free school' traditions begun by Summerhill's founder A.S. Neill.
As American education lags behind the rest of the world, this new edition is more timely than ever. The children of today face struggles far greater than any previous generation and we, as parents and teachers, must teach them now to make choices for themselves and to learn from the outcome of their decisions.
This classic work yet again invites a new view of childhood and presents an essential treatise that challenges us to rethink our approach to education.
Homeschooling Our Children - Unschooling Ourselves by Alison McKee
A compelling story about one family's journey into the unknown territory of homeschooling, told with skill by Alison McKee, a gifted teacher with a wide experience in traditional education and a special sensitivity to the individual needs of children. Trusting her own children to "show me the way" was a difficult challenge - but one that gave unexpected and rich rewards. Anyone familiar with the writings of John Holt will be interested to learn how things worked out for a family that decided to test his belief that children are the best directors of their own education. McKee offers the reader insights on how children learn, plenty of illustrations and practical advice about how "unschooling" works, and thoughtful commentary on the state of education today. This book will reassure parents considering homeschooling that nurturing children's natural desire to learn can empower their children to become enthusiastic life-long learners.
Homeschooling The Teen Years by Cafi Cohen
...your complete guide to successfully homeschooling the 13- to 18-year-old. Discover the Rewards of Homeschooling Your Teen
- Create unlimited learning on a limited budget.
- Discover teaching methods for teens with different learning styles.
- Utilize the best resources and technology.
- Prepare your teen for college, career, and adult life.
The teen years can be the most exciting time in your child's life. He or she is becoming an independent young adult and beginning to make decisions for the future. Yet growing concern about the negative social pressures, safety, and efficiency of our traditional high schools has prompted many parents just like you to teach their teenagers at home. With Homeschooling: The Teen Years as your guide, you'll discover it's not as daunting a task as you've been led to believe. Using real-life stories from dozens of families, this book reveals the secrets of making homeschooling work for you and your teen. You'll discover how to:
- Work with your teen to create a unique, individual learning experience.
- Make coursework interesting, challenging, and fun.
- Allow your teen to discover the best vocational path, including selecting a college.
- Know when your teen has "completed" high school.
Contains three of the most helpful sentences I've ever read on the question of homeschooling: 'Just start.' 'You will make mistakes.' 'No big deal.' What excellent advice! One of the most thoroughly helpful books I've read in years.
...a revolution has begun. Unschooling includes trusting your child in what they choose to learn. Radical Unschooling, which expands unschooling philosophy to parenting, means you extend that same trust to other areas of your child’s life, like foods, media, television… (It) requires thinking outside the box and a huge dose of courage.
Parenting is supposed to be joyful, and it can be when we learn to connect with, rather than control, our children. We were raised in a different era, where the majority of the parenting focused on obedience and doing what we were told…Once you understand that there is a more respectful, fulfilling way to live in harmony with not only our children, but also with others, you are well on your way. Just learning that a new parenting paradigm exists is often the first step in someone’s journey to a new awakening.
Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
Schools have failed our individual needs, supporting false and misleading notions of 'progress' and development fostered by the belief that ever-increasing production, consumption and profit are proper yardsticks for measuring the quality of human life. Our universities have become recruiting centers for the personnel of the consumer society, certifying citizens for service, while at the same time disposing of those judged unfit for the competitive rat race. In this bold and provocative book, Illich suggest some radical and exciting reforms for the education system.
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
...the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling. Throw off the shackles of formal schooling and embark upon a rich journey of self-directed, life-long learning
After over 100 years of mandatory schooling in the U.S., literacy rates have dropped, families are fragmented, learning 'disabilities' are skyrocketing, and children and youth are increasingly disaffected. Thirty years of teaching in the public school system led John Taylor Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling is to blame, accomplishing little but to teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine.
He became a fierce advocate of families and young people taking back education and learning, arguing that, "Genius is as common as dirt," but conventional schooling drives out the natural curiosity and problem-solving skills we're born with, replacing it with rule-following, fragmented time, and disillusionment.
Gatto's radical treatise on public education, a bestseller for 25 years, continues to bang the drum for an unshackling of children and learning from formal schooling. Now, in an ever-more-rapidly changing world with an explosion of alternative routes to learning, it's poised to continue to shake the world of institutional education for many more years.
Featuring a new foreword from Zachary Slayback, an Ivy League dropout and cofounder of tech start-up career foundry Praxis, this 25th anniversary edition will inspire new generations of parents and students to take control of learning and kickstart an empowered society of self-directed lifetime-learners.
Weapons Of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto
...a schoolteachers journey through the dark world of compulsory schooling
The Unschooling Unmanual by Nanda Von Gestel
Unschooling isn't a technique - it's living and learning naturally, lovingly, and respectfully together. The Unschooling Unmanual features 11 essays by 8 writers: Nanda Van Gestel, Jan Hunt, Daniel Quinn, Rue Kream, Kim Houssenloge, Earl Stevens, and Mary Van Doren.
Through engaging personal stories, examples, and essays, the writers offer inspiration and encouragement for seasoned and prospective unschoolers alike.
This 2nd edition now includes Jan Hunt's Ten Tips for New Unschooling Parents.
The New Global Student by Maya Frost
...skip the SAT, save thousands on tuition, and get a truly international education. Good-bye, Old School. Hello, Bold School!
In 2005, Maya Frost and her husband sold everything and left their suburban American lifestyle behind in order to have an adventure abroad. The tricky part: they had to shepherd their four teenage daughters through high school and into college. This hilarious and conspiratorial how-to handbook describes the affordable, accessible, and stunningly advantageous options they stumbled upon that any American student can leverage to get an outrageously relevant global education.
Ready to ditch the drama of the traditional hypercompetitive SAT/AP/GPA path? Meet the bold American students who are catapulting into the global economy at twenty with a red-hot college diploma, sizzling 21st-century skills, a blazing sense of direction-and no debt.
You'll discover:
- The one thing preventing your student from blasting forward.
- Why Advanced Placement isn't so advanced.
- Why international programs fail to provide a truly global education.
- The most critical time for your student to study abroad.
- The best exchange program in the world ($3,000 or less per year).
- The strategic way to fast-forward through high school
- How to maximize a family sabbatical.
- How to live the life of your dreams abroad-and save thousands for college.
Packed with myth-busting facts, laughable loopholes, insider insights, astonishing success stories, and poignant tales from the Frost daughters themselves, this inspiring romp is guaranteed to get you cheering.
The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffeth
...how to use the whole world as your child's classroom. Unschooling, a by-product of the widespread homeschooling movement, is a unique approach to education--one that uses children's natural curiosity to propel them into a world of learning. This practical guides reveals the secrets of unschooling success even as it addresses the misconceptions and criticism unschoolers may encounter.
...how to use the whole world as your child's classroom
Homeschooling The Early Years by Linda Dobson
...your complete guide to getting off to the right start. Discover the Rewards of Homeschooling Your Young Child. Young children are full of curiosity, imagination, and a sense of wonder. They're willing to try new things and possess a natural joy of discovery. Yet in a traditional school, these natural behavior traits are too often squelched. That's why more and more parents just like you are choosing to teach their children at home during these critical years--the years that lay the foundation for developing learning skills that last a lifetime. Inside, respected homeschooling author Linda Dobson shows you how homeschooling can work for you and your young child. You'll discover how to:
- Tailor homeschooling to fit your family's unique needs.
- Know when your child is ready to learn to read.
- Teach your child arithmetic without fear--even if you're math-challenged.
- Give your child unlimited learning on a limited budget.
Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin
The original Spiritual Midwifery, published in 1976, introduced an entire generation of young women to the possibility of home birth and breast feeding. It also breathed new life into the all-but-vanished field of midwifery. This classic book on home birth is now in its fourth edition, with updated information on the safety of natural childbirth, new birthing stories, and the most recent statistics on births managed by The Farm Midwives. Ina May also provides new information about potentially dangerous techniques routinely used in hospitals during and after birth, as well as the latest findings about VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean). Improved instructions for handling breech births are also given. Included are stories of working with Amish women, showing a different culture with a similar appreciation for natural childbirth. Photos, illustrations Over 540,000 copies sold!
Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson
The friendly John Percival Hackworth is a nanotechnician who just finished developing a 'book', A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, which is actually an interactive-supercomputer designed to teach a young girl to take her authority back and think for herself in a stifling society. It performs its functions perfectly. Unfortunately Hackworth loses the book, and it falls into the hands of a street urchin whose Box is expanded by the book to the point that she changes the culture of Shanghai.
If you want a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer for yourself (or Young Gentleman's Illustrated Primer... for that matter...) you might find it alive and waiting for you for free online at StartOver.xyz.
Making An Unschooling Family Is Making Love
unschooling calls all 5-Bodies to life, giving them the space and time to skill up
Excerpted from the book Building Love That Lasts by Clinton Callahan.
Hold Space for the 'Center of Being' of Your Family.
It is possible (even ordinary!) to hold space for an extraordinary daily family experience. The way to hold space for extraordinary daily family experience starts with you (in particular the man) keeping the center of your family.
Each family has a center of being, just like each person has a center of being. Keeping the center of the family is Archetypally the man’s job, but actually the woman and man work together keeping the family center. Keeping the center of your family is similar to keeping your own personal center, and involves three components:- KEEPING THE CENTER OF YOUR FAMILY
- Put your attention on the center of your family.
- Find where the center of your family is right now. In many modern families the center of being of a family is the television, the Internet or computer games. The center of your family could also be with the children’s schooling, with in-laws, job problems, the bank account, an alcoholic father, a secretly raging mother, etc.
- Bring the center of your family in and place the center of your family on the purpose of your family.
To keep the center of your family you must know the purpose of your family. What is the purpose of your family? Is the purpose of your family Ordinary Human Relationship, Extraordinary Human Relationship, or Archetypal Relationship? It is not a common practice to consciously remember and live into the purpose of your family.
A breakthrough in family satisfaction can occur through realizing that the purpose of your family may differ from the purpose of other families. There is no 'normal' family. It is not required that your family’s style of being together imitates any previously known or recognizable family pattern. Bringing this idea to a few family discussions can suddenly free both children and adults to unleash creativity for discovering what your family could be for you. In a short while you could find yourselves thriving in a dynamic, harmonious mini-society experimenting to express individual desires and personalities.
Without intentionally exploring the purpose of your family the purpose is controlled by whoever makes the loudest shouts. Since the way children develop responsibility is through testing parental boundaries it is often the children who shout the loudest. Or the shouting may come from the father or mother who are not aware that clarity is more powerful than making boundaries, and clarity does not require shouting. Clarity only requires statement.
Having the center of your family located someplace other than the purpose of your family typically fills the 'relationship creation zone' that your family represents with Ordinary Human Relationship. Then the chances for Extraordinary Human or Archetypal Relationship happening in the family are lost.- DEVOLVING INTO ORDINARY FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
Here are twenty sure-fire ways to undermine the Archetypal center of your family and thereby create Ordinary Family Relationship: - Keep the television or radio on while you eat meals. This makes the television or the radio the center of your family. Make the television the center of your family life together.
- Bring the newspaper to the meal table, or let the children bring toys. This makes the (mostly horrifying) news or the (corporation-marketed) toys the center of your family.
- Do not eat meals together. This makes the Box’s stomach (in each person) more important than the family purpose.
- When you want something from your mate or the children, just shout for them in the house. This destroys respect and shatters spaces.
- Do not hold boundaries for the children. Let them scream their way out of the boundaries that you do set. This drives children crazy because then they have no boundaries on which they can structure their world and their intelligence.
- Serve sugar-sweetened foods at all your meals. This makes sugar the center of your family.
- Do not tell the children what will happen next. Instead, shock them and order them around out of the blue to keep them subservient and to stay in control. This terrorizes the children and makes them slow to develop trust in human connections and communications. They must then stay isolated and centered on themselves for mere survival.
- Let the children interrupt adult conversation and adult spaces with their teasing each other, their questions, their getting hurt, anything to get your attention. This shows children that adults have weak attention and that the space is not held and they are not safe.
- Do not have fun as an adult. This proves to the children that adult responsibility is horrible and they should never grow up. By being bored and tire you prove that adults cannot be passionate about life and obviously do not have fun.
- Do not have physical or emotional intimacy with your partner in front of the children. This shows children that physical or emotional intimacies are bad, or at least not included in the image of 'the civilized adult', 'the nice man' or 'the good girl.' Children to not do what you say, they become what you are.
- When a child gets hurt, tell them that nothing happened. Do not listen to their feelings. This psychologically abuses the children into distrusting their own experience, and suppressing their feelings.
- Expect your children to take responsibilities before they are truly capable of being responsible (around sixteen years old). Expect your children to brush their teeth, go to bed, clean up their room, do their homework, etc., without you holding the space for it. This expectation destroys their innocence. When your children fail to meet your expectations this gives you reason to resent and hate your own children. Your fat little Gremlin smiles in satisfaction about destroying something so precious.
- Do not read, sing, dance, or play musical instruments to or with your children, or let them see you loving to do these things. This starves their spirit.
- Never apologize to your children. Never admit to being wrong. This makes children think they are supposed to be serious, dead, and perfect like you.
- Never let your children know that they hurt you. Then they think they are powerless and do not have to learn to manage the power power of their Gremlins until it destroys their adult life.
- Do not teach children to be sensitive to various kinds of spaces (e.g. adult meetings, churches, ceremonies, prayer or meditation spaces). This way nothing is sacred to them because they think nothing is sacred to you.
- Only give your children your partial attention for a minimum amount of time. This keeps your children starving for attention so they keep coming back to you and trying to manipulate you to give them more of your attention. Then children learn that getting negative attention is better than getting no attention at all, and they wrap you around their finger with the problems they cause using their uncivilized little Gremlins.
- Use your financial resources to buy new appliances, cars, clothing and computers. This shows children that possessing objects is more important than being together. Worry about not having enough money to buy all the 'things' society says that you need. Then your children learn materialistic survival patterns that keep the economy rolling!
- Praise or blame your children for their behavior instead of appreciating them or being-with them. Then children think that praise and blame is how to manipulate the other people in their lives.
- Send your children to public school and expect the teachers to raise them. At school your children learn to become like their friends whose parents also sent them away. This shows children the weakness and confusion of their father and mother about creating a bonded family and a community, and takes away their hope of having authentic parents who provide support with family bonding and family love. This shows your children how to try to give away the responsibility for their own family if they ever have one.
Something different occurs in a family only when the adults hold and navigate the center of the family into Extraordinary Human or Archetypal Relationship. The practice for navigating the center of the family into Extraordinary Human or Archetypal Relationship is to consistently ask and answer this question: “In the name of which purpose are we as a family gathered in this moment?”
Aim to keep the center of the family in the Adult context, the responsible context, and the extraordinary context. Make this your purpose, and make your purpose top priority, no matter what else is happening.Do not forget your priority. Strive to keep 10 percent of your attention focused on navigating the family space to consistently answer the question of purpose. Nobody can do this for you. Nobody can stop you from doing it.
Unschooling Resources
"I've spent over a quarter century now watching some magnificent human beings growing up in and out, but mostly out, of school, mostly according to a philosophy variably known as unschooling, deschooling, life learning, or self-directed learning. All of which pretty much just mean life. Without school. They have taught me a lot, been witness to and recipients of some of my greatest blunders (as my daughter said to me one day when she was about nine, I try to remind myself that you're just a young inexperienced mother), and sources of a joy more boundless than I had thought possible."
AN UNSCHOOLING PRIMER
Please contact Clinton Callahan or Anne-Chloe Destremau
if you are ready to work your butt off creating an unschooling primer for next culture communities.
HACKSCHOOLING
Per the TEDx Talk by Logan LaPlante
https://tedxuniversityofnevada.org/speakers/logan-laplante/
https://culturallyconfident.com/blog/456
http://thesearchforfreedom.com/cast/logan-laplante/
https://redefineschool.com/logan-laplante-hacking-school/
https://karalayne.com/family-life/hackschooling-left-public-school-part-one/
DVD Class Dismissed! 2015 http://classdismissedmovie.com/
Academia Edu www.academia.edu
Alternatives To School www.alternativestoschool.com
Arch www.arch-ed.org
Bambino Tours for Children http://www.bambino-tours.de/stellen.php
Center for Planetary Culture Wiki http://planetaryculture.com/wiki/index.php?title=Consciousness#INITIATION_AND_INDOCTRINATION
Centre for Self Managed Learning www.selfmanagedlearning.org
Chaos Pilots (Berne, Switzerland) http://www.kaospilots.ch/kaospilots/partners.html
Choice In Education www.choiceineducation.co.uk
Collective Evolution http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/01/07/this-is-what-happens-when-a-kid-leaves-traditional-education/
Creating Learning Communities www.creatinglearningcommunities.org
Cultural Creatives http://culturalcreatives.org
Education Otherwise www.education-otherwise.org
Educational Heretics Press http://edheretics.gn.apc.org
Educator Labs http://educatorlabs.org/request-a-resource/
EdX free online education www.edx.org/how-it-works
Flock Society (designing a free and open online commons economy) http://en.wiki.floksociety.org
Flying University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_University
GEN Database of Best Practices http://db.ecovillage.org/en
Global Issues Network http://global-issues-network.org/ourstory/
Gunnar and Family a year on Jakobsweg http://wanderleben.wordpress.com/
Green School – Bali www.greenschool.org
Home Education www.home-education.org.uk
Home Education Advisory Service www.heas.org.uk
Home Education Research www.homeeducationresearch.org
Human Scale Education www.hse.org.uk
Informal Education www.infed.org
Inspired Learning Project http://www.inspiredlearningproject.com/
Invisible College (historical) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_College
Ithaca Project www.ithaca.org
Khan Academy free online math videos www.khanacademy.org
Laura Grace Weldon – Free Range Learning http://lauragraceweldon.com
Liberation Unleashed: http://liberationunleashed.com/
Linn Kristin and 144 Schools http://www.144.no/Project-144-.html
Living School www.livingschool.org
Magical Childhood www.magicalchildhood.com
Movement Generation www.movementgeneration.org/resources/curriculum
Network for the Freedom of Education – legal advocacy group
Otherwise Club www.choiceineducation.co.uk/oc
Outernet www.outernet.is/en/
Outernet Whiteboard https://whiteboard.outernet.is/en/
P2PU (Person 2 Person University) https://p2pu.org/en
Personalized Education Now (CPE) www.gn.apc.org/c.person.ed
Präsenz in der Schule http://praesenzinderschule.wordpress.com
Project Gutenberg – 100,000 free books online www.gutenberg.org
Red Gypsy Lauren with 3 daughters in Australia www.sparklingadventures.com/index.php?id=2002
Redefine School – Philippé Greier http://redefineschool.com/philippe-greier/
Robert Gilman – New Tools for the Journey: The Human Side of Sustainability (talk from Systems Thinking In Action STIA) http://conference.stiatemenos.com/wp-content/themes/stiapl.us/media.php?eventid=&mediasrc=https://soundcloud.com/stiatemenos/stia-now-robert-gilman-interview-part-1?auto_play=true
Schoolhouse Home Education Association www.welcome.to/schoolhouse
School of All Relations, Aegina Island, Greece for 18-25 year olds www.schoolofallrelations.com
School of Everything www.schoolofeverything.com
School of Life www.youtube.com/channel/UC7IcJI8PUf5Z3zKxnZvTBog, http://www.theschooloflife.com/london/
Schools of Trust www.schoolsoftrust.com
Singularity University www.singularityu.org
StartOver.xyz: free-to-play massively-multiplayer online-and-offline matrix-building thoughtware-upgrade personal-transformation adventure-game http://startover.xyz
Tools for Implementing Initiatives by Youth http://issuu.com/urbanrecipes
Ubiquity University http://www.ubiquityuniversity.org/
Unseen University (in the Terry Pratchett books) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unseen_University
Wikiversity https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page
Wilderness Awareness wildernessawareness.org
Wisdom University (Paul H. Ray, Sherry Ruth Anderson et. al.) www.wisdomuniversity.org/faculty.htm
NOTE: This website is a Bubble in the Bubble Map of the free-to-play, massively-multiplayer, online-and-offline, thoughtware-upgrade, matrix-building, personal-transformation, adventure-game called StartOver.xyz. It is a doorway to experiments that upgrade your thoughtware so you can relocate your point of origin and create more possibility. Your knowledge is what you think about. Your thoughtware is what you use to think with. When you change your thoughtware, you go through a liquid state as your mind reorganizes itself. Liquid states can bring up transformational feelings and emotions. By upgrading your thoughtware you build matrix to hold more consciousness and leave behind a low drama life of reactivity. No one can upgrade your thoughtware for you. More interestingly, no one can stop you from upgrading your thoughtware. Our theory is that when we collectively build 1,000,000 new Matrix Points we will change the morphogenetic field of the human race for the better. Please choose responsibly to read this website. Reading this whole website is worth 1 Matrix Point. Doing any of the experiments earns you additional Matrix Points. Please use Matrix Code QUITSCHO.00 to log your Matrix Point for reading this website on StartOver.xyz. Thank you for playing full out!