Research Proves Kids Can Learn Complex Things On Their Own

I learned about this research from a press release, since the research paper itself is in German. However, I find it striking in several respects, not just because it supports self-directed learning for children.

1) The release opens with this sentence: "Self-directed learning has long been heralded as the key to successful education. Yet until now, there has been little research into this theory." Something that is "long-heralded" must have some basis in reality for people to recognize its efficacy, and there is more than a little research into this theory. A brief perusal of my Research page, the work of Holt, Neill, and alternative schools everywhere, research such as that done by Alfie Kohn, Frank Smith, and Thomas Armstrong, as well as studying history prior to the invention of compulsory schooling about 150 years ago, shows that self-directed learning is not just how every baby learns a most complex thing—how to speak—but also how most children and adults learned until we corralled everyone into classrooms.

2) Professor Kristina Reiss, one of the researchers is quoted:

"We now know that students – also those who are weaker in math – have the skills to master even very complex subject matters at their own pace,” continues Reiss. “Although extended phases of self-directed learning are often advocated, they are still not part of the everyday school curriculum. But they are an important option for teachers as varied lesson formats ensure a lively and interesting learning experience.”

It really bothers me that this research admits that providing time and space for self-directed learning should be advocated for use in schools, but when unschoolers claim they are doing this (GWS has printed their stories since 1977) they are often taken to task by educators for not providing a rigorous, or even adequate, education to their children.

3) Germany, Sweden, and other countries outlaw homeschooling because they claim their public and private schools provide a professional education that no parent can provide. This makes little sense if self-directed learning is in play since the teacher, if there is one, is "the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage" in that situation. It is interesting resources, access to people and places, doing things alone and with people, supportive parents, friends, and mentors that encourage self-directed learning, not necessarily a professional teacher's "varied lesson formats."

I can sense the thrust of where this research will be used in classroom practice from the quote above: it will be used as another technique to get kids to do what teachers want them to do in order to complete the teacher's lessons, rather than as a genuine attempt to build on a child's self-directed learning, as unschoolers have successfully been doing for decades.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE:

The Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning, another academic resource that supports self-directed learning, has a call for papers for their next issue. As an advisor to the Journal, I've been asked to solicit articles for the next issue. If you're interested in doing so, here's the information you need:

I am pleased to invite submissions for the eleventh issue of the online peer-reviewed publication, the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning (JUAL), to be published as papers become accepted. Authors of original research interested in submitting manuscripts to be considered for publication in JUAL should review the JUAL home page, and the Submissions for detailed information on submission requirements.
 
JUAL seeks to bring together an international community of scholars exploring the topic of unschooling and alternative learning, which espouses learner centered democratic approaches to learning. JUAL is also a space to reveal the limitations of mainstream schooling.

JUAL understands learner centered democratic education as individuals deciding their own curriculum, and participating in the governance of their school—if they are in one. Some examples of learner centered democratic possibilities are unschooling, Sudbury Valley, Fairhaven, and the Albany Free School. In terms of unschooling, we view it as a self-directed learning approach to learning outside of the mainstream education rather than homeschooling, which reproduces the learning structures of school in the home.
It will offer readers relevant theoretical discussions and act as a catalyst for expanding existing knowledge in specific areas of practice and/or research on learning relevant to the journals mandate. The journal will be available at http://www.nipissingu.ca/jual/index.asp as a free publication containing material written in French or English. JUAL will initially be published as articles become accepted for publication. When enough articles to make an issue are available, we will publish them as an issue.
 
I invite you to circulate this announcement to colleagues, graduate students, researchers and/or organizations who may be interested in submitting a manuscript to JUAL for consideration.
 
Questions can be addressed to the editors of JUAL by contacting Carlo Ricci at carlor@nipissingu.ca.

Home Education Unites People Around the World

There are two homeschooling events of particular interest to those who speak or are Spanish. One is a scholarly conference to be held in Navarro, Spain on November 25–26, 2011. There is an English version of the site available, too; look for the link on the menu on the left side of your screen.

The National and International Conference on Family Education Homeschooling

The fact that Spain is hosting such a conference while at the same the country is debating whether homeschooling should be permitted is very interesting to me. I look forward to hearing how this event turns out.

The other event is a continuation of the International Home Education conference I addressed in Bogotá, Colombia in 2009. Educación sin Escuela features families as well as academics who reflect on their learning without schooling, as well as learning with flexischooling.

Educación Sin Escuela

Flexischooling is a word invented by Roland Meighan, whose work on behalf of autodidacts everywhere deserves wider recognition. Roland has for many years published The Journal of Personalised Education Now and the latest issue, No. 14, is fascinating. It is a special edition about Edmond Holmes, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools, who wrote several books after he retired, including What Is And What Might Be (London: Constable, 1911). Holmes is a deep critic of standardized curriculum, testing, and emphasizing the role of the teacher over the role of student in the educational process. This is from the article by Michael Foot that opens the issue:

According to Holmes, teachers need to realize that it is not they but the children who “play the leading part in the drama of learning.” Teachers need “to help them to develop all their expansive instincts, so that their growth may be many-sided and therefore as healthy and harmonious as possible.” And that healthy and harmonious growth will be its own reward, thus rendering unnecessary “the false and demoralizing stimulus of external rewards and punishment.”

Not only does Holmes sound like a precursor to John Holt, in this quote, also from What Is And What Might Be, he almost sounds exactly like Holt:

In nine schools out of ten, on nine days out of ten, in nine lessons out of ten, the teacher is engaged in laying thin films of information on the surface of the child’s mind, and then, after a brief interval, he is skimming these off in order to satisfy himself that they have been duly laid.

It is always refreshing to me to find like-minded people from other cultures, times, and societies who not only question conventional education but who also do something about it. Though homeschooling does not have well-paid lobbyists, consultants, research programs, and business interests to support it as conventional education does, we do have people-power. Right now, in the United States, there are more children being taught at home (2 million plus) than there are in publicly funded charter schools (1.4 million), which have had far more money, publicity, and institutional support than homeschooling has over the years. Homeschooling is gaining adherents around the world, primarily through word-of-mouth and example; compulsory schooling needs laws, officers, special buildings, television shows, advertisements, and all sorts of social enticements to gain and keep adherents. Somewhere between the words of Edmond Holmes (and others like him) and the actions of home educators around the world, a new form of education is being created around the entrenched institution of conventional schooling.

Learning Foreign Languages or Just Learning to Play the School Game?

One of my current projects is to redo the HoltGWS.com website and to scan all the issues of Growing Without Schooling magazine and put them online; I'm about halfway through this project as I write this. It is now ten years since we stopped publishing GWS and I'm only now able to look at all these papers, audio and video recordings, books, and back issues with fresh eyes. I've had to organize these materials several times since 2001 as we downsized the company, put many of Holt's papers in a research archive at the Boston Public Library, and sorted and moved boxes from different colleagues' homes to mine. To be honest, it was often emotionally difficult for me to go through these materials in the past—so many memories, friends who've died, children who've grown up—but recently I've been invigorated by engaging with this material. I'm struck by how relevant all the writing in GWS remains—so many issues are the same for homeschoolers in 2011 compared to 1977: Are my kids really learning if I'm not teaching? How will they get into college if they want to go? How do I deal with skeptical school officials and relatives? Further, many of the comments John Holt made about learning at home seem even more important today, and I'll be highlighting some of those in later entries. But what really excited me this week is the discovery of a cassette of John being interviewed on a Boston radio station about the "A Nation At Risk" report in 1983. John spends nearly an hour talking about school and school reform, with just a few mentions of homeschooling. I'm in the process of digitizing this interview but I discovered this transcription of a section from that interview that ran in Growing Without Schooling 51. Donna Richoux, the editor of GWS then, followed John's radio comments with earlier writing by John about learning foreign languages in school.

First, from the WBOS interview in 1983:

Q. Does it alarm you that the report ("A Nation At Risk) described that not one state has any kind of requirements for foreign language?

JH: Not at all. The whole foreign language thing in schools is a big shuck from the word go. If you want kids to learn foreign languages, send them to places where they speak those Languages. I taught for a while at a private school here in Boston, a private secondary school, very good one, small, lots of money, very, very bright kids, very capable teachers. We had a French teacher there, a native-born Frenchwoman, an extremely competent woman. She liked the kids, the kids liked her, she had all the latest jazz: language labs, audio-visual materials, all the latest techniques. She wrote a report to the head of the school. She said. "Children take French in this school for four years, and these are very bright kids with all the best, and they don't learn as much French as they’d learn if they spent three months in the country.”

Q: How are they going to do that? I mean, in a rich private school I can understand. But what about in a public school in the United States?

JH: What's the point of teaching it? If you're living in a part of the country where there are—this is true in many parts of the country—let us say Spanish-speaking groups, or here Italian, you know you've got Iots of people in Boston who speak Italian - if you want kids to learn Italian, send them down to the North End and let them talk to people who speak Italian. But generally speaking, human beings learn what they have a need for, what they feel a need for. We‘re not good at learning stuff because somebody says, "Hey, someday you may need it, someday it may come in handy.” When we see a connection between real life and this stuff that we need to learn, then we're good at learning. 

And from a 1968 paper based on questions asked by teachers:

Q. If learning is best when one needs it, why has foreign language learning been emphasized at the early primary stage for total contact with the foreign tongue?

JH: For two reasons. The first is the assumption that since children learn their own language best when young, they will learn foreign languages in school best when young. The assumption is false. The child learning his own language has a hundred practical reasons for learning; a child learning a foreign language in school has no practical reason for learning it. The second reason is, quite frankly, that the modern language lobby is powerful in education these days. It has been able to create a situation in which schools and teachers feel they have to teach foreign languages early, whether they want to or not, and whether or not this leads to any useful or lasting results . . .

The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same

I recently transferred this video interview with me about homeschooling and unschooling that I did for Christian Science Monitor television in 1991. It is almost exactly 20 years ago to the day (2/16/1991) when I filmed it, but since so much of the information is still relevant I thought it would be of interest. I'm struck by how in those 20 years we went from the estimated 500,000 homeschooled children in 1991 to nearly 2 million today, and yet we are still being asked the same questions, particularly "How will homeschooled children be socialized?" What I like about this interview is how thoughtful and prepared John Parrott, the interviewer, was. He handled the socialization question differently than I expected and I was pleasantly surprised.

More free online learning resources for adults and children

I just learned about this great list of links to over 100 places where you can learn everything from college-level math and science to foriegn languages, business courses and high school math. The blog writers note that "All education is self-education.  Period.  It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting in a college classroom or a coffee shop.  We don’t learn anything we don’t want to learn." With that spirt in mind, I hope you enjoy this incredible list.

12 Dozen Places to Educate Yourself Online for Free