Category: Whole Family Learning

There are mounting concerns over profound learning loss due to prolonged school closures and remote learning. New data released last week by the US Department of Education reveal that fourth-grade reading and math scores dropped sharply over the past two years.  Fingers are waving regarding who is to blame, but the alleged “learning loss” now being exposed is more reflective of the nature of forced schooling rather than how children actually learn. 

While the past two years have been characterized in many ways by top-down policy approaches and greater centralization of power, there have also been positive signs of decentralization and bottom-up solutions. This has been particularly true in education, as parents seek new learning options for their kids and entrepreneurial educators create a variety of new models.

The new academic year hasn’t even begun and public school enrollment is already not looking good in some parts of the country. 

“It seems obvious to me from my own education that one learns things mostly when you’re interested in learning them and not mostly when somebody sits you down and makes you learn them,” said David D. Friedman in our conversation on unschooling in the latest episode of the LiberatED Podcast.

Over the past two years of social and economic disruption, U.S. education has experienced an extraordinary transformation that can best be defined by 3 “Es”: Empowerment, Exit and Entrepreneurship.

More families may be flocking to homeschooling and other schooling alternatives over the past two years, but Peter Gray has been urging families to flee coercive schooling since long before the pandemic began.

Last week, CNN published an opinion piece arguing that the “right-wing children’s entertainment complex is upon us.” Prominently featured as a case in point were the Tuttle Twins children’s books, created by Connor Boyack to offset the progressive propaganda that many children now confront in classrooms across the country. 

New Hampshire ranks #1 for personal and economic freedom in the US, and it is gaining ground in education freedom as well.  

Parents are recognizing that they have many more options for their children’s education and are continuing to abandon government-assigned district schools.

Emily Burns had every intention of staying in Massachusetts. A longtime Boston resident, she and her husband left the city to settle in the upscale suburb of Newton in January 2020 so her three children could attend highly-rated public schools. What followed were two years of ongoing disruption and frustration.