Boston College psychology professor, and Alliance for Self-Directed Education founder, Dr. Peter Gray, writes that the freedom to quit is the most basic human freedom. He asserts: “In general, children are the most brutalized of people, not because they are small and weak, but because they don’t have the same freedoms to quit that adults have.”
Tag: family
School Should Be More Like Summer Camp
Perhaps we should look more to summer for the solutions to our school-year woes, and challenge a system that puts more emphasis on containment than freedom.
Let’s Get Back to Having Peace Officers, and Away from Law Enforcers
Believe it or not, I want to respect cops. Sticking to these 5 roles, they’d deserve our love, respect, and admiration. They’d rightfully be considered heros. But unfortunately, 90% of what cops do today is utterly without merit.
The Quiet Exodus from Mass Schooling
Parents are fed up. As mass schooling becomes more restrictive, more standardized and more far-reaching into a child’s young life, many parents are choosing alternatives. Increasingly, these parents are reclaiming their child’s education and are refocusing learning around children, family, and community in several different ways.
Episode 079 – Unschooled Faber Brothers’ Journey (1h37m)
Episode 079 welcomes Justin and Joshua Faber to the podcast to chat with Skyler and Morgan. The Faber Brothers, and several other siblings, grew up as de facto unschoolers, without ever knowing that term. Topics include: their large family, their Facebook video series titled All This with Aldous created with Morgan, growing up unschooling, their experience learning to read, being free range on several acres of forest, going to high school and the surreality of schooling, why school is prison, the origins of their voluntaryist political beliefs, the US Constitution, and much, much more.
The Guilt Lurking Behind ‘Work-Life Balance’ Questions
I don’t like dividing up my life into work/family/fun etc. I prefer to think of my overarching purpose or goal in life as the thing I’m always up to. For me, it’s to live as free as possible, help others do the same, and enjoy the process. Then I consider all my activities in light of how they help do this.
What’s Wrong with the Thrive/Survive Theory of Left and Right
Many people in my circles now seem to take Thrive/Survive Theory as the default position; if it’s not true, it’s still the story to beat. But to be blunt, I find essentially no value in it. It’s not always wrong, but it’s about as right as you’d expect from chance.
5 Ways Mothers Give Away their Power
This isn’t about convincing anyone to do things my way (how boring a world that would be!). But if you don’t know that you have choices beyond the mainstream world, then you aren’t actually making decisions from a place of truth and desire. You are living on autopilot and not considering the impact of living a life in accordance to the status quo, whose only agenda is to keep you relying on it. So what do I mean by giving away power?
Tying Yourself to Identity is Foolish
I think it is natural to tie your ego into your characteristics in a wholistic way. It is also good to like aspects about your being that you think are productive to your goals and values. That being said, i think it an absolute disaster to tie your ego into individual or small groups of characteristics you hold. This is why I am so against “identity.”
Families and Groups
I do not believe that there are “happy” or “unhappy” families. There are families that undergo constant change, and there is an infinite supply of adjectives that apply to families. Everything that is true of families is also true of any other multi-individual group.