Can You Measure an Education? Can You Define Life’s Meaning?
First "education" (as occurs in schools) was about obedience training; then it was about learning a bunch of subjects; now it's about passing standardized tests. These are all measurable. But what...
View ArticleThe Educative Value of Teasing
Teasing gets a bad rap, especially in educational circles, because of its association with bullying. But not all teasing is bullying. In fact, in most settings (maybe not in our typical schools),...
View Article$100m to Know Why NFLers Die Young? Here’s Why, For Free
Just days before Super Bowl XLVII, the NFL announced it is giving Harvard University a hundred million dollars to find out why professional football players die about 20 years younger than other men....
View ArticleSeeking Unschooled Adults to Tell Us About Their Experiences
Do you know anyone, age 18 or older, who was “unschooled” for a period that covered, at least, what would have been their last two years of high school? If so, please invite them into this survey.read...
View ArticleMy Hope for “Free to Learn”
We have made great strides in recognizing the competence and rights of people regardless of race, gender, and sexual orientation. I hope now to see real progress in recognizing the competence and...
View ArticleThe Most Basic Freedom Is Freedom to Quit
Freedom to quit is essential to peaceful societies, happy marriages, and satisfying employment. It could also turn schools into places where children learn joyfully.read more
View ArticleBe Glad for Our Failure to Catch Up with China in Education
Education professor Yong Zhao suggests that the American school system is like a sausage machine that isn’t very good at producing sausages, and that’s why it’s better than the Chinese school system,...
View ArticleEducation Revolution: Help Us Reach the Tipping Point
When everyone knows several families who have left coercive schooling and chosen a path of educational self-determination, so it no longer seems like an odd thing to do, we will reach a tipping point....
View ArticleBeyond Attachment to Parents: Children Need Community
In hunter-gatherer cultures, such as that of the Efe, infants and children develop close relationships with, and are cared for by, the entire band, not just parents. Today, too, both children and...
View ArticleThe Human Rights Struggle in Europe: Educational Choice
The struggle for educational freedom in Europe is a human rights struggle, on a par with other such struggles throughout the ages. Parents in the Netherlands have been fined, threatened with...
View ArticleSchools Are Good for Showing Off, Not for Learning
High pressure testing and evaluation inhibits learning and drives a wedge between those who already know and those who don't. That is one explanation of the education gap between children from...
View ArticleWhy Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment Isn’t in My Textbook
One of the questions I'm often asked by professors who teach from my introductory psychology textbook is this: "Why don't you include Zimbardo's classic Stanford Prison Experiment in your book, like...
View ArticleThe Reading Wars: Why Natural Learning Fails in Classrooms
The "Reading Wars," the battles between those who favor phonics and those who favor whole-word or whole-language instruction of reading, have been declared to be over. The data clearly favor the early...
View ArticleLanguage, Measures, and the US Handicap in Math
Children in China, Japan, and Korea may have a head start in learning mathematics because they enter school already understanding the base-ten number system. Here's why.read more
View ArticleWhy Is Narcissism Increasing Among Young Americans?
Clinical assessment questionnaires indicate that narcissism has been rising and empathy has been declining in young people over the past 30 years or more. Why? Here are several reasonable...
View ArticleFive Myths About Young People and Social Media
Many adults are puzzled, and some are appalled, by the amount of time teens spend online and by what they seem to do there. In her new book,"It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens,"...
View ArticleA Playful Path, and DeKoven's Advice for Getting Back on It
We are born to be playful. We are, as Johan Huizinga put it long ago, Homo Ludens (the playful human) even more than we are Homo Sapiens (the wise human). But many of lose our playfulness. Why do we...
View ArticleRisky Play: Why Children Love It and Need It
Children love to play with great heights, rapid speeds, dangerous tools, dangerous elements (e.g. fire), chasing and fighting, and getting lost (or nearly so). Why has the drive for such play evolved?...
View ArticleCan Lego Help Return Play to Children’s Lives and Education?
I was invited recently to speak at a worldwide conference on play and learning, sponsored by the Lego Foundation. Not surprisingly, I was pleased by some aspects of the conference, displeased by other...
View ArticleA Survey of Grown Unschoolers I: Overview of Findings
How do people who didn't go to school or do curriculum-based homeschooling as children and teenagers fare in adult life? Can they go to college and do well there without previous schooling? What kinds...
View ArticleSurvey of Grown Unschoolers II: Going on to College
Most people in our culture believe that college admission requires 13 years of hard work in school, maybe accompanied by frequent tears. To some of them it may be disturbing to learn that it is...
View ArticleSurvey of Grown Unschoolers III: Pursuing Careers
Our survey of grown unchoolers—who had skipped all or much of K-12—revealed, not surprisingly, that many went on to careers in the creative arts. But that is not all. Many also pursued STEM careers and...
View ArticleWhat Do Grown Unschoolers Think of Unschooling? IV in Series
Most of the grown unschoolers in our survey were very happy with their unschooling and said they would unschool their own children. A few, however, were unhappy, and their descriptions of their...
View ArticleThe Danger of Back to School
The joy of school letting out is not just superficial and fleeting. Data from one children's mental health center indicate that children are far more likely to experience psychological breakdowns...
View ArticlePlaying with Children: Should You, and If So, How?
Parent-child play is ruined when either the parent or the child dominates. Fun occurs when there is no domination in either direction. Parent-child play is not as natural, nor as crucial for the...
View ArticleOne More Really Big Reason to Read Stories to Children
Many people urge parents to read stories to children because it helps children become smarter and more verbal. An even better reason, I think, is that stories may help children become nicer.read more
View ArticleMalala’s Nobel Prize and the Question of Children’s Rights
Lack of respect for children is revealed in the language used by the Nobel Committee in their award of this year's Peace Prize. It's also revealed in the United Nation's Declaration of the Rights of...
View ArticleSonnet to a Playful God
One of my secret pleasures (well, it was secret up until now) is writing sonnets. I love to play within the boundaries of the classic Shakespearian sonnet. Here's one I wrote about the value of...
View ArticleManifesto 15: Triggering the Education Revolution
On January 1, 2015, John Moravec, a philosopher of education and world traveler, sent out a manifesto about the future of education. It has caught on and spread far more rapidly than he could have...
View ArticleSpread the Word: Feb 4 is Global School Play Day
The Bedley brothers (Tim and Scott), who are both teachers in California, have started a movement, and it seems to be taking off. They have declared Feb. 4, 2015, to be the first annual Global School...
View Article
