The War on Kids to Air May 6 on the Documentary Channel

Cevin Soling's documentary about schools and the repression of children has been shown around the world for over a year, but only recently has a cable channel in the United States decided to air it. John Gatto, Alfie Kohn, myself, and many other critics of conventional schooling are interviewed in it. You can watch The War on Kids on the Documentary Channel May 6 at 8 and 11pm ET/PT.

Fox News.com ran a story about the film yesterday, focusing on how Soling compares public schools to prisons. This is just one aspect of the film, but certainly one of its most telling sections.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/05/03/documentary-war-on-kids-compares-us-public-schools-to-prison-system/#ixzz1tuJWanhP

The War on Kids: A Free Screening at Harvard University

I'll be hosting a free screening of Cevin Soling's documentary The War on Kids this coming Tuesday, March 6, 2012 at 7PM. 

The free screening is at the Harvard Science Center - Hall D, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA.

There will be Q&A with the director after the screening.

If you're in the area, drop in, enjoy the show, and join in the discussion. It is sure to be lively!

The Moral Argument Against Compulsory Education

Cevin Soling is a guest columnist on Forbes magazine's education blog today, and his essay is timely and provocative. The title of the piece is "Santorum and Harvard Anarchist Agree: Public Schools Must Be Abolished." Cevin is the director of the movie The War on Kids, and he pulls no punches in his moral stance against forcing children to attend a place that denies them their civil rights.

Mr. Crotty's introduction to Cevin's piece explains the headline Crotty gave to the piece:

A homophobic, global-warming-denying, Intelligent Design-believing conservative calling public schools “factories”? Santorum’s semi-Marxist rant is proof of my adage that if you push hard enough in one ideological direction you end up in the other camp. In the above quote and in other recent instances, Santorum has unwittingly outlined a case for creative, customized, progressive education.

John Holt often observed that the way to move past the school reform impasse is to create mixed allies, and homeschooling was the movement he worked with to embody this idea. I think this is the reality that is embedded in the paradox above.

Further, while working with Holt's unpublished writing I came across sections of a discarded manuscript of his from the early seventies entitled, "Living Free Among the Slaves: A Handbook for the Young." I am working to piece it together and Cevin's article inspires me to move even faster on it!