The Farming Metaphor

The language of education frequently references the language of farming: sowing the seeds, cultivating, the latest crop of students. And why not? The fertile ground of children’s minds makes some sense as a frame for how we see learning.

The Emergent Syllabus

For a while I’ve been meaning to write something about the emergent syllabus of unschooling. In other words I’ve started to think about what themes we keep revisiting as my children explore their own interests.

An Imaginary Conversation With My Children About What Google Wants Them To Do With Their Future

Pointless Fun

The recent launch of Pokemon Go has spawned the inevitable rash of articles about how how we can harness the game’s popularity for all sorts of alternative outcomes, but most irritating of all perhaps is the way the formal education community has sought to use it as a way of (and there’s no nicer way I…

Unschooling School

The more articles I read about the future of schools, the more it seems to me that what everyone thinks would be good for children is what unschoolers are already doing and in fact have been doing for several decades.

Needs and Contexts

A year and a half ago we made the decision to move to another country; we relocated for all sorts of reasons but chief among them was the intention of providing our children with a new context: a different culture, language, place to learn.

Learning Loops

Yesterday my youngest daughter showed me the latest blog post she was working on (it’s about poisonous animals). She’s been writing it on the iPad and my initial suggestion was that she should try writing it on a laptop so that the keyboard was easier to use. Her response was that she preferred the…