Schooling: A Highly Questionable Practice.

On March 9, 2003, the admissions officer at Harvard, Marilyn McGrath, on the front page of the New York Times, told readers Harvard only accepts students who show evidence of distinction. Many people skipped that article because they assumed they already knew that high grades get you in. But McGrath said test scores and grades are not evidence of distinction—you can’t get into Harvard that way!
I thought that was a stunning revelation. Not that I didn’t know it, but to actually admit it on the front page of the New York Times. Wow!
I wrote her immediately and asked, “What would an evidence of distinction be?” although I already knew the answer. The Harvard lady quickly covered up: her reply was an exercise in dissimulation, backing off her New York Times statement.
By the time someone reaches eighteen, there are tens of thousands of such people—but not millions—tens of thousands who have records of distinction. They have sailed around the world alone; they have walked from the South Pole to the North Pole; they’ve started a charity; they’ve earned a million dollars—not because they are such superior geniuses, but because a number of families preserve traditions of effectiveness and ways to reach real goals. The methods aren’t difficult and they aren’t expensive.
If you read Ben Franklin’s autobiography, you’ll see they were used among many ordinary people in the 18th Century United States. Franklin was thrown out of two schools before he was 11-years-old. He started a business selling beer to printers, through which he amassed capital to buy into a printing company later on. He was 12-years-old.
Once I was on that trail I looked into intimate details of colonial life here in the Americas. The minute you do that, detailed evidence appears about the different ways young people were reared back then.
Take the American Revolution, for instance. Virtually everybody who made the American Revolution was a teenager! Washington was the Grand Old Man. I think he was 42. But Jefferson and Hamilton and really the whole pack of them were 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. The myth that keeps us small and in our place blows away with that discovery. The US young people, with free minds, were able to overthrow the most powerful military nation on earth, Great Britain.

Schooling: A Highly Questionable Practice. John Taylor Gatto.

This is an excerpt from Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education.

Unschooled violinist, Madeleine Kay plays Chelsea Hotel

Madeleine Kay (17) was unschooled up until grade 6. Listen to her rendition of Leonard Cohen's Chelsea Hotel, arranged and played by her.

Unschooler and author Kate Cayley: How you were born

Years ago,  our Radio Free School program had the honour of not only interviewing author Kate Cayley for our show, but we also created a youtube video based on the interview where Kate describes growing up unschooled. Now she's got the Trillium Prize for her recent book How you were Born.
Read about it in Now Magazine. Check out Kate's video here:

You want change? Change your questions.

If you have ever tried putting a duvet into its cover, you know how hard it can be if you don’t first set the thing up correctly. What you do is you turn the cover inside out, stick your hands through while holding onto two corners, and grab the duvet corners and pull it through so that the cover now sits the right side up, with the duvet neat inside, then you have to put its opposite corners into the corners of the cover, and finally give it a shake to even it all out (Phew! That was hard to explain).

The point is, it’s the same thing when it comes to approaching problems: if we don’t frame the problem correctly, if we don’t set it up right, we end up frustrated, much like we feel with the duvet all bunched up in one corner of the cover.

I was helping my kid with a research project. The assignment was to explore if teens that view violent media and play dehumanizing video games are more prone to violent behaviour and likely to become desensitized to violence in real life.
My daughter had to formulate five guiding questions. As she researched questions, it became obvious to us that there were no right answers to the questions she was asking.  The true lesson that she learned from this exercise is that maybe her questions weren’t good ones: she needed to ask better questions.

She needed to look at how the conversation is being framed, who is asking the questions, how the problem has been tackled historically, whose voice is missing from the discussion, who has the most stake in the answer, who benefits etc.

For questions to be of any use they have to challenge assumptions.

Of course there was very little time to delve into new questions—which is the problem with the way we do things. We don’t give ourselves enough time to get to the questions that might inspire real change.

Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

We want solutions but we keep asking the questions we already know the answers to.  And the answers bring no revelation; they cannot surprise us, they are predictable.
But what if we asked this question instead of that one?  For instance, instead of asking how many windowpanes were broken, or how many counters were upturned in the recent Baltimore upheaval, the right question to ask is “why are young black men in the US being systematically murdered by police?”

The trouble is, we learn to ask questions that reflect our personal convictions and believes. We believe what we see and our interpretation of it, taking this as reality. But there are many realities: we have exhausted nothing.
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We want change? Then we need to take it outside of our comfort zone.
In her book, ‘The Art of the Question,’ Marilee Goldberg said: “A paradigm shift occurs when a question is asked inside the current paradigm that can only be answered from outside it.”

Small children and scientists are good and doing this.
“If you meet a scientist, don't ask her what she knows, ask her what she wants to know. It's a much better conversation for both of you.” That's the concluding sentence to Stuart Firestein's Forum piece, in Scientific American (April 2012).

In 'What Science Wants to Know,' Firestein agrees that you have to know a lot to be a scientist. But that's not enough. "Knowing a lot is not what makes a scientist. What makes a scientist is ignorance," he writes. For scientists, the facts are just a starting place.
Every new scientific discovery raise new questions, so ignorance will always grow faster than knowledge. Firestein observes that one crucial outcome of scientific knowledge is to generate new and better ways of being ignorant: "not the kind of ignorance that is associated with a lack of curiosity or education but rather a cultivated, high-quality ignorance."
It’s the questions we are asking that we need to talk about if we are hoping to make the changes we want; trite, lazy thinking produces quick shallow responses—and that’s not going to get us very far.

Published in the spec.com  (The art of asking).

How talking to your child can improve development

A mother sits folding laundry, her baby in the high chair beside her. “Here are mummy’s striped pajamas. They're red and blue and warm and fuzzy,” she says in a singsong voice. The baby gurgles at his mother, responds enthusiastically by waving his arms and kicking his little legs. Look at me, the mother thinks. I'm so silly. She carries on anyway, describing the frilly pillowcase she’s about to fold next. But she need not feel silly.

Parents, What You Say Matters

What many of us need to appreciate is the extent to which words impact children’s learning – not only in developing their vocabulary but especially, the spatial world and their later ability to problem solve. University of Chicago psychologist Dr. Susan Levine and her colleagues found children’s spatial abilities are in large part driven by what their parents say. In her study published in the journal Developmental Science, she says that the amount of talking parents do with very young children that describe features and properties of objects (i.e. heavy, big, little, round) predicts children’s problem solving success as they near kindergarten age.

Oriane Landry, psychology professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, works with preschoolers and children with autism. He says “There’s a strong link between emergent language skills and how that leads into their abilities in other areas.”

Oriane expands on the work of the early 20th century Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, known best in education circles for his theory on scaffolding children (younger children learning skills from slightly older children). Vygotsky’s work supports the idea that language fosters all of our other thinking skills, and that for the most part, when we are problem solving, we are doing so with language. “The language of thought is in fact language,” Oriane says. “We tend to draw heavily on our language skills in order to complete other thought processes (using inner dialogue) even well into adulthood.”

There is some controversy about how the relationship between thought and language emerges and what comes first – the language in order to have the concept versus the concept, then applying the language – but especially in the preschool period, as children are gaining more and more complex conceptual ideas, they are also gaining the language to go with it.

“If you've got a word then you can build a concept around it,” Oriane says. “If you don't have a word, a concept can be flighty – like a dream you can't hold onto – you can't describe it to someone. If you talk about that dream, you can hold onto it. If parents are encouraging language growth by being highly verbal themselves and describing the things around them, then the child is going to have a more complex vocabulary earlier on and also the tools to think with more sophistication and in greater complexity about the world around them.”

The kids are all right:

Disengaged? Hardly. Today’s youth just might be the saviours of us all

Thank you for feeding us years of lies.
Thank you for the wars you left us to fight.
Thank you for the world you ruined overnight.
But we'll be fine; yeah we'll be fine.
MKTO Lyrics

Babies are brighter these days, am I right? Two month olds are staring intently into my face and cooing. Four month olds are rolling over and crawling.

Then there are these pint-sized three and four year olds on YouTube, being sassy and precocious and saying all kinds of startling things. Eight year olds are articulate and funny and teens are "calling us out," exposing our hypocrisy so that we squirm under the glaring scrutiny of fairness. By the time they are young adults … watch out. They are snappier, faster and cognizant of the issues — their issues.

I've heard quite a bit about the sense of entitlement that is used to describe young people today: Generation Y (people born after 1980) is "selfish" and perpetually dissatisfied. Generation Z (people born after 1995) is disengaged.

But this outlook is being challenged; it doesn't seem to be reflective of what is going on around the planet.

The world is vibrating with the voices of the young who will not tolerate its destruction, and who are confronting injustices and the indifference of the wealthy and privileged.

I was surprised at the sudden swell of emotion that overcame me, reading words in a 2014 Maclean's article from Toronto business executive Don Tapscott saying that Gen Z doesn't have a choice: "My generation is leaving them with a mess. These kids are going to have to save the world literally."

I think the young know this. Yes, there is the "live fast, die young" message that prevails in popular culture, but youth grow up hearing about the global issues and I imagine it is part of their consciousness.

And while the growing concern for extremism among certain disenfranchised youth populations is legitimate, I can't help feeling a sense of optimism: young people are shaking things up, seeking to create a more equitable, safer — just better society for everyone.

For example, everywhere, youth are saying "don't funk with my future" and getting down and dirty on the streets, calling on universities, colleges, faith communities, businesses and local governments to divest from fossil fuels (even the UN recently came out in support of divesting from fossil fuel companies).

In India, young people are relentlessly protesting rape culture. In Africa, LGBTQ rights are a major focus. All over North American youth of colour are demonstrating that black lives matter. Here in Canada, First Nations young adults are taking the lead and confronting neo-colonialism with the campaigns such as Idle no More.

Anti-Racism Education

Poo face.” “Dirty skin.” “Black chicken.”
It begins early. When her daughter was in Junior Kindergarten, Stoney Creek, Ont., mom Christabel Pinto says she would come home from school every day in tears. The kids were calling her names; they wouldn't play with her because, “brown people get diseases.”
I’d go into the basement and cry,” says Christabel, an accompanist and music director. The teacher’s response was almost worse. “She told the other kids ‘she’s just different from them,’” says Christabel, who withdrew her daughter from the school.

At this point you might be asking, what year was this – 1968? 1975? No. This was five years ago. Christabel’s other children Kambria, 10, and Krispin, 8, still regularly sit alone at lunch.

Kiera Silverglen, 14, of Hamilton, says she’s grown used to racist comments such as “How was the slave ship?” “How was it when you were a maid?” She copes by writing poetry and short stories (she received first place for poetry in this year’s Hamilton Public Library’s Power of the Pen – a prestigious writing contest).

Name-calling is bad enough. Far more insidious and harmful are the negative perceptions and derogatory stereotypes too often associated with people of colour.

“I was almost arrested in Walmart for looking at a DVD,” Kiera says. A salesperson came up to her and asked, “Were you going to steal that?” She had to call for her mom (who is white) to get the manager.

Kiera’s adoptive mom, Catherine Silverglen, is a teacher and anti-racism educator. Catherine shares an example of the sort of attitude her family frequently gets from teachers: “We met with the teacher because Kiera was having some challenges in a particular subject,” she says. “The teacher made a joke that went (with accent), ‘She is just a little bit slow. I don’t want to use the word lazy but I was in Jamaica once mon, and they are all so laid back, maybe it’s cultural.’” (Kiera was adopted from Chicago).

To combat negative perceptions in her classroom, Catherine introduces positive images of non-white cultural groups. “I’ll talk about the incredible histories and contributions of the African continent; Egypt, Benin, ‘the city of Gold.’ Why don’t kids learn any of this?” Too often, we only hear about these cultures in a piteous light – which is an unfair and biased view.

“I think as white people, we really need to challenge ourselves to get to know non-white people,” says Catherine. She suggests also reading a few books by authors from different cultures about their own experiences. Books like The Help and To Kill a Mockingbird are about racism in the U.S. south, for example, but they are about how a white person stood up for a black person. They shouldn’t be the only books on our reading list.

Closing digital gap empowers students

Technology can transform learning into real life, relevant experiences.

Not too long ago, it was absurd to say that every Tom, Rashid and Baba should have access to the Internet. For what? Now, since 2011, the United Nations considers it a human right, "underscoring its unique and transformative nature not only to enable individuals to exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression, but also a range of other human rights, and to promote the progress of society as a whole."

And while access to technology is not "the great equalizer," that Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals proclaims will level the playing field for all students, it does close the digital gap and empowers students from low-income families in learning.

Take, for example, educator Sugata Mitra's experiment in an Indian village. In 2000, this professor of education technology at Newcastle University installed a computer in a wall and documented illiterate, slum children (with zero English) figuring out how to use it, and then actually using it to learn and share knowledge.

Mitra has since designed a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other — no teachers present — using resources and mentoring from the cloud.

Access to the Internet offers children from all backgrounds opportunities to work together and communicate and do research in areas that interest them. It's a platform for developing personalized education and even individual networks that go beyond a classroom setting, offering possibilities only dreamed of before.

Still, "Back in my day, we used paper and pencil!" is a common reaction to the idea of iPads, tablets or other technologies in the classroom.

Reality is, "back in your day" has vanished into the swirling mists of time.

It's a new era, baby. The times require that students be drivers of their own learning.

10 Unschooling Mistakes to Avoid

1.Comparing.

I believe that the root of all evil is comparison. When you find yourself about to do the "is my child keeping up?" or "her child is better at piano then mine, and they're the same age," just stop. Don't do it.
When you look at another unschooling mum and back at yourself and feel that you fall short, don't go there. Rather, allow her to inspire you; don't feel down.

2.Believing that everyone should agree with you.

This is the attitude of any newbie. I remember how militant  I was when I first became a vegetarian (I no longer am-a vegetarian).  I couldn't tolerate people who weren't. I must have been an insufferable 'know it all.' I know I certainly annoyed people.

3. Getting offended/feeling hurt when people don't agree with you.

The world owes you nothing. If someone tosses you a dubious look or expresses doubt in what you are doing, deal with it in a mature way.  Learn not to take yourself so seriously. Laugh.

4.If there really is a problem, being afraid of admitting it.

Your kids are unruly, or they really don't seem to be 'getting it.' There might actually be an underlying cause for it. Or they don't seem to have any interests. Don't panic.You can still  raise a child that is learning naturally. Get the support you need.

5. Expecting your kids to be best buddies and get along all the time (well most of the time) just because they're unschooled.

They fight. They say they hate one another. That's okay. We can't choose our family but we sure as heck have to learn to get along. That's one advantage of unschooling. They HAVE to work it out because they spend so much time together.

6.Expecting your kids to become educated by osmosis.

This is magical thinking. They won't. You have to engage them. You have to make sure they get exposure to a wide range of activity.

7. Thinking that you are their one and all.

You are not. Share them.

8. Over-protectiveness.

Let them venture forth according to their strengths, age and ability.
Be sensitive to the needs of the changing and growing child.

9.Having to prove that unschooling works-especially in BIG ways.

Funnily enough, BIG gets redefined over and over and you realize that they are doing BIG things but not in the way you and others might have envisioned it. And remember, behind a shining star, there might be an even brighter star shining so be careful not to block that light because of your belief in the first.

10. Immediate evidence of 'learning' taking place.

Relax. You will be amazed at how what you angst over last year is all but a distant memory this year. Learning unfolds, often with out us noticing.

Note: This post was originally written and posted here.

7 conditions for 7 things kids need to succeed

Thank you CBC for the article entitled ‘The 7 things kids need to succeed: Character traits include grit, self-control and social intelligence.’
This piece is based on the work of journalist and author Paul Tough, ‘How Children Succeed—Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character.’

There were a few thoughts that immediately popped in my mind when I read the article. The first thought was ‘how do we define success?’  I appreciated the mention of what ‘becoming successful adults’ means, according to Tough and that is ‘being successful in achieving their goals.’
Great! We are on the same path here. But where our paths separate is in how to achieve their goals.


Don't expect school to teach the 7 personality traits for success, as outlined by Tough: grit, curiosity, self-control, social intelligence, zest, optimism and gratitude.

Failure is the new winning: Discovery, innovation and growth come from learning from our mistakes

Happy New Year! I have to be honest, I have neglected my blog, but I promise, I will post weekly from now on, even if that means reposting (it likely will until things slow down in a few months).
In the mean time, check out my latest article in the Hamilton Spectator on failure; a reflection for the new year.

Jan 12. 2015
http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/5251292-failure-is-the-new-winning/

Hamilton Spectator
By Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko

A running joke in our family goes that growing up, we were supposed to be born knowing how to do things well. At the family's "haute couture" tailoring establishment, mom would throw something random at us, like embroidering an elaborate design on an African boubou and expect it to come out perfectly, beautiful stitches evenly distributed.

"I can't" was not option. You learned, and quick about it. Sounds tough, but I believe mom's 'can-do' attitude, helped foster resiliency to cope with life's challenges and failures, keeping us trying and not giving up easily.

Failure. Everybody is talking about how failure is not a bad thing, it's the new winning: discovery emerges from failing, innovation comes from failing, growth develops from making errors. In business, failure can be a stepping-stone toward fortune. In education, we're hearing how kids ought to be encouraged to explore and make mistakes.

In fact it's got to the point that admitting to mistakes, especially as a public figure has been twisted into one cheeky way of letting yourself off the hook: "I'm sorry. I'm human." (I like to make a distinction between making mistakes and wrongdoing. Mistakes are made unintentionally; they are errors of judgment. Wrongdoing is intentional — like cheating on your taxes or having an affair).

At a Toronto conference last month, the keynote of a very successful British Columbia nonprofit shared his failure story, complete with the yearly "failure report."

"Canadians don't like to admit failure," he commented in passing, he himself a born- and-raised American.

Whether or not we take offence, it's worth looking at: what is the cost of focusing solely on good points? At all levels, be it personal, at work, in the community or in the country, by not examining when or where we fail, we give up opportunities to figure out how we can improve and be better. Hiding or ignoring our shortcomings, hoping they'll go unnoticed is self-deception. We end up stunting ourselves.

In our high-speed world of constant change, that price is too high.

We are still acting and thinking in a way that doesn't correspond to the reality of today — whether than means social justice, economy and work, environment, education. The two aren't jiving.

School is still largely about getting the right answer, business carries on mostly seeking to make maximum profit (screw future generations) and being right is better than doing right.

But now more than ever, with the global-size problems we face, remaining uncomfortable with failure is not an option; we need to practice "smart failure," trying over and over again, striving for the changes that need to happen.

For change to occur, we have to risk failure — which of course is at the heart of the matter. The feeling of shame that failure can bring and the desire to avoid shame at any cost keeps people from risking failure.

16 Cs of Open Source Learning

I had the pleasure of presenting at Hamilton's Function Keys 2 Conference last month. My presentation was entitled 'Open-source learning: education from a wider community perspective, technology, and culture.' For the occasion, I developed 16 Cs of Open Source learning and here they are:

karlsson on the roof

Characteristics

• Curiosity 
• Creativity
• Coolness  
• Challenge
• Complexity
• Context
• Conversation
• Collaboration
• Connection 
• Contribution 

Examples of Open Source Learning:

• Community and Communities of Practice
• Crowd accelerated Innovation (‘cycles of improvement’ driven by people watching web videos TED- Chris Anderson: How YouTube is driving innovation).
• Collectives and Cooperatives
• Clubs and Circles and Cafe
• Culture
• Commons

I won't put up the whole presentation here but if you are interested contact me.

The child's need for complexity.

My mum gave my 4-year-old nephew a stuffed toy snake—cute for his baby sister but certainly not for a sophisticated “builder” like he considers himself to be. Without a backward glance, he tossed it over his shoulder and asked me, “Where is that other snake? The one with moving parts?”

Complexity. Something with a bit of a challenge; something that will stretch the mind, get you into the zone, require a change in perspective even.
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I recall when my teens were little. With the oldest, I was reading the Lord of the Rings when she was..7. And she loved it. It became the defining book of her life for years. She memorized entire passages out of that book!
Gosh, even before that, she was 6 and her sisters 3 and 4 and they were all reciting from a beautiful children's Shakespeare film series, Macbeth (“Is this a dagger which I see before me?.....I have thee not...Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation!” I recall my then 3 year old lisping away).

It was fun and exciting for them, and I am pretty sure they understood very little of it. But they felt the grandeur, the rhythm, the depth therein, and this was enough; this was what they needed to suck on and grow a little more.

Literature was never basic. Winnie the Pooh was the original material, with all the nuances, reflections, humour and unadulterated language intact. Nothing predictable and trite--material we parents could enjoy as well.
This is what they could grasp--that there was something bigger than they, something to aspire to, some knowledge that they would get to by and by, and eventually understand.

The world was delivered to them in its entirety; there were no bit-sized pieces offered up. They bit of what they could chew—how ever they could manage it, no pressure, just their own personal interest and curiosity. They could ruminate over what they took in, they could find meaning and apply it within the context of their lives.

To my delight, I read in the Telegraph about research conducted by the University of Liverpool (Centre for Research into Reading, Information and Linguistic Systems) that shows how brain activity is increased by exposure to poetry or language such as Shakespeare’s.
For example volunteers read a line from King Lear: “A father and a gracious aged man: him have you madded”. They then read a simpler version: “A father and a gracious aged man: him you have enraged.”
The researchers report that Shakespeare’s use of the adjective “mad” as a verb sparked a higher level of brain activity than the straightforward prose. The study tested how long the effect lasted. It found that the “peak” triggered by the unfamiliar word was sustained onto the following phrases, suggesting the striking word had hooked the reader, with their mind “primed for more attention.”
Philip Davis, an English professor and research on the study explains, "The research shows the power of literature to shift mental pathways, to create new thoughts, shapes and connections in the young and the staid alike.”
The study also mentions that self-reflection is enhanced  and what is education without self-knowledge?
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And now when I hear about parents fretting that their 4 year old doesn’t know her letters, I cringe!
“She doesn’t know the basics!” the parent wails. “Everyone else her age does! She will be left behind,” wahhhh!
There is a reason why the basics are called basic—because they are just that. They are quickly learnable.
I try to reassure parents with young children that they are exactly where they should be--playing, being read to, been taken out into nature to observe first hand the complexity of their natural world, every leaf, every rock, every cloud, a miracle unto itself.

Challenge children with ideas to mull over; have discussions with them.  Many well known people have been raised this way; young Leonardo da Vinci hung out with his uncle, who spent hours with him, examining nature and discussing their findings.  Louisa Alcott's childhood home life was filled with evenings of Concord's most stimulating minds, and walks and talks with Henry David Thoreau.  Einstein's parents encouraged his questions (once he finally decided to start talking).

Seeking out and embracing complexity with children can be a powerful experience for the both of you.

Technology, Education and Poverty

In Ontario, there's a plan to provide every kid from grade 4 to 12 with access to technology (iPad, tablet etc). There's this idea that with technology in the classroom, school is going to be the "great equalizer" at last.
We are not so naive as to believe that access to technology in education will level the playing field and poor kids will miraculously have the same opportunities their wealthier peers have.

But while handing out ipads will not overcome poverty, access to technology will empower poor students in learning. Access to technology via ipads will offer opportunities for children to work together, research, and collaborate in areas that interest them.

Take for example Sugata Mitra’s experiment in Indian villages. Mitra installed a computer in a wall and documented illiterate slum children figuring out how to use it, and then actually using it to learn and share knowledge.
Mitra has since designed ‘School in the Cloud,’ a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other —no teachers present—using resources and mentoring from the cloud. Mitra proposes Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE), which he defines as “broadband, collaboration and encouragement put together.”

Fact is, school, as we know it is history. School is obsolete (especially relevant for poor kids). Done. Terminated.  Can I say it any more succinctly?
Today, students are called on to be the drivers of their own learning.

The internet offers an unprecedented opportunity to do so. We can find out what we want to know in seconds. We can connect in groups and across the world, with others who share similar interests and concerns.

Open Source Learning

Another way to understand where education is heading, what’s stirring in the Zeitgeist and taking hold of the imagination can be understood as ‘open-source learning.’
We have heard of the concept 'open-source' in internet circles; anything can be learned over the internet. There is a new openness to educational resources. Institutions of higher learning are offering free online course materials. MIT (Open CourseWare) has over 2000 gratuitous course materials, their motto being "Unlocking knowledge, empowering minds."
Open source learning is based on extending this idea to all learning, to everyone. It's a term that I believe was coined by none other than John Taylor Gatto.
Technology is lowering the costs of education: expensive textbooks will no longer be a barrier to education.

Joint Collective Agencies and Communities of Practice

It is happening everywhere; learning in communities, work groups and collaborations. ‘Communities of practice’—a term coined by John Seely Brown—is the new learning spaces and places representative of this new culture of learning.
Kids getting together and pursuing their passions in joint collective agency, is the revolutionary wave in education. Learning in community, engaging one another, practicing 'deep tinkering' 'marinating in the experience' are some of the ideas for a new culture of learning that Seely-Brown is popularizing.

My teen has been participating in virtual communities for years now, first following her interests in the arts and now focusing on anti-oppression, social justice activism. Exchanging conversation, picking up ideas, reciprocating with her fellow bloggers, the amount of learning she is doing through social media like tumblr is astounding.

Here’s where she goes to dialogue, critic, share, challenge and be challenged. Her virtual community supports the work she does and she in turn supports the work of its members. I never realized how powerful this tool for learning is until I saw the comments and feedback she gets from fellow ‘social justice warriors’—spurring her on to further work.
Online communities can provide the support that a kid might not otherwise be able to access (for example, children questioning gender). Shared experiences all factor into building the self-esteem that is critical in order to overcome abuse and injustices and yes, the trauma of poverty itself.

Not what you know but who you know.

Do you have a linkedin account? I do. We all know that developing personal networks is invaluable for professional growth. Who knows? We might get discovered or at least, land a job.
There’s the concept of personal learning network’ (PLN) to describe the cultivating of personal networks for learning opportunities. PLNs are those connections individual learners make to suit their specific learning needs.

Connections are being made on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Blogs, Google Hangouts and more. Ahead of the adults, young people connect online in a social context as well as a more strategic, intentional way in order to share, grow opportunities and stay involved and connected

For younger children, it is important to have the guidance and support of caring, knowledgeable, and trusted adults.

To wrap this up, I’d like to offer a quote from Mitra who says, “we need to look at learning as the product of educational self-organization. If you allow the educational process to self-organize, then learning emerges. It's not about making learning happen. It's about letting it happen. The teacher sets the process in motion and then she stands back in awe and watches as learning happens.”

Hand kids the technology, guide and counsel them, support their interests, facilitate their networking opportunities, and poverty will become less of a barrier to being educated.
Education is something that you have to want to pursue; no one can do it for you. But educators can pave the way.

Book Talk about Unschooling and Autonomy in Education: September 4th.

Book talk on Unschooling and Autonomy in Education today, September 4th at 6.30pm, Westdale library.
Listen to a first hand experience of unschooling then hear excerpts from the book.

Humans are natural learners. This collection of essays challenges much of mainstream beliefs about how people learn, encouraging the reader to consider deeply the need for learners to be trusted and listened to. Many of the authors in the book begin from a learner-centered, democratic perspective. Divided into three sections, the first part of the book deals with what constitutes a learner-centered approach to education. The second section addresses how some have implemented this approach. In the last section, learners who have lived learner-centred learning share narratives about their experiences.

To read more about the book, follow this link:

http://radiofreeschool.blogspot.ca/p/natural-born-learners-unschooling-and.html

https://www.facebook.com/events/257692654428523/

The internet is the new battleground for fighting oppression.

Have you checked your privilege today?

It's getting a whole lot harder to avoid the inevitable 'calling out' of privilege.

In response to the rise of internet culture, social justice analysis and action has migrated to the internet, where it counteracts the culture of misogyny, racism, homophobia, trans*phobia, ableism, and general bigotry.

This internet culture is examining and challenging privilege starting of course with white skin privilege to the intersectionality of all forms of oppression.

The results of all this is that social justice internet culture is helping to shape contemporary discourse and influencing popular culture.

“The internet is the new battleground for fighting oppression,” my daughter insists.

Many young people utilize the social medium of Tumblr as a platform to promote and explore social justice issues. My 18 year old daughter is a huge tumblr blogger and from her experience it seems to be young women who are predominantly what they are calling 'Tumblr Social Justice Warriors' (TSJW—a derogatory label that people who blog about these issues are called by their critics, but who are reclaiming the name).

At last, non-privileged perspectives are beginning to present in mainstream culture—I think because of the speed at which everything happens faster via the internet; and examining one’s privilege is a starting point on the road to overcoming oppression in our societies.

My daughter’s community discusses, analyses, critiques popular culture in the context of oppression. It is a community that pushes her to stretch her thinking. It's an online space that for some participants is the only place where they can openly discuss their views, their very lives—away from the omnipresent lens of white culture.

They blog, reblog, quotes, images, essays and generally get and offer others an ongoing education on oppression and getting beyond it.

John Seely Brown writes about 'communities of practice' and 'joint collective agencies' based on passions and interests and how this is the future of education. Tumblr social justice is one such example where engaging one another, the participants practice what Seely Brown describes as  'deep tinkering' and 'marinating in the experience.'
What an education they are creating for themselves!

Book discussion and reading: Natural Born Learners. Learn about Unschooling!

Book reading/discussion
Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education
Thursday, August 7th, at 2:00 pm.
Hamilton Public Library
Locke St. Branch.
All welcome!

New Book Promotion

***BOOK PROMOTION of Natural Born Learners***
Kindle count down deal starts AUGUST 01 at 0.99 cents (48 hours in duration).
3 increments takes us to August 7th at the original price of 3.99.
Stay tuned!!

Self-Determined Education, Unschooling and Activism

I sometimes think about self-directed learning, unschooling and autonomy in education in terms of ‘quiet’ activism. It’s about advocating for our children's freedom to learn as they want to and helping them to take responsibility for being in the world, right from the beginning of their life and on. Unschoolers and practitioners of autonomous education are actively demonstrating another way to attain education. We are redefining the way education is understood, what it means to be educated, what learning in an atmosphere of freedom looks like; that it can be done.
This can feel uncomfortable; especially when we ourselves are still deschooling our minds, trying got rid ourselves of doubts, mistrust in our children's ability to learn, uncertainty about if we are doing it right, if it will work....
Not surprisingly, many unschoolers are living lives under the radar, by no means attempting to influence others or trying to prove ourselves. But there are also a significant number of us who continuously seek to 'up' the noise level; writing about, documenting and advocating for unschooling lifestyles and philosophies. The results of these activities are seeping into the mainstream conscience, both indirectly and directly.
It might be a little ambitious to say that it is a movement as yet, but there is certainly an enormous interest in the concepts and ideas of unschooling (I had over 10,000 downloads of my book in the 5 day free book promotion).
Parents are catching on that there is this thing happening, and it sounds pretty intriguing and it makes sense and how do I get some for my kid? Educators are frustrated at the exploratory and creative limitations set for their students by the powers on high, and crave more freedom in learning within the classroom--and outside of it. They know that their charges are getting shortchanged.
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When it comes to the traditional understanding of activism (being engaged and about engaging in social and environmental issues), unschoolers have a fantastic opportunity to be get involved and participate in creating change. It is fitting because unschooling is the epitome of justice and respect towards some of the most vulnerable in our society, children. Why not extend that concern to include other vulnerable and oppressed groups? Unschoolers can become strong, world citizens at any age. It is never too late to discuss justice issues, local politics, environmental concerns, and to bring your children along to events, meetings and activities.
I am very interested in hearing from readers about their experiences with social justice, environmentalism, and anti-oppression work/awareness in their unschooling practices. Do you think that you are stronger citizens because of your unschooling lifestyle and believes? Do you think unschooling has opened areas of inquiry into justice issues? Tell me!

On TV!

I think both unschooling and deschooling are about creating and reclaiming places and events for adults and children of all ages to live and learn together.
- Susannah Sheffer and Pat Farenga,“Reflecting on Growing Without Schooling” Vimukt Shiksha 2002

Skellig: A book with an unschooled kid.

One of the favourite things I've always loved about being a parent is reading to my kids. Sadly as they grow older there are fewer opportunities to do so-and the kids prefer to go off and read their own books by then. Still, I am lucky to have the attention of my youngest kid yet and I just finished reading a most wonderful book called Skellig by David Almond.

How surprising it was and exciting to discover a girl (Mina) living the unschooled life; who moves in the world and learns following her natural curiosity so thoroughly and whose experience, contrasted against the schooled life really brings forth the 'rightness' of what authentic learning is about.

It is now school that is portrayed as un-natural, a curiosity to wonder about (rather than self-directed learning). When Michael (the protagonist) is working on his school work (after missing school due to the distress he is in because of his very sick baby sister), Mina looks at the worksheets; It is thought that Man is d-----------------from the apes. This is the Theory of E--------------This theory was developed by Charles D--------------. There was sentence after sentence like that. Mina read the sentences out loud. She said, "Blank blank blank," in a singsong voice when she came to the dashes. She stopped after the first three sentences and just looked at me.
"Is this really the kind of thing you do all day?" she said.

When she flicks through the book that Michael and his class are reading she asks about the red sticker.
"It's for confident readers," I said. "It's to do with reading age."
And what if other readers want to read it?"
"And where would William Blake fit in?" said Mina. "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/In the forests of the night." Is that for the best reader of the worst readers? Does that need a good reading age?"..."and if it were for the worst readers would the best readers not bother with it because it would be too stupid for them?"she said.

If you're looking to get inspired about life, beauty, the extraordinariness of things get ye a copy of this book!