I really like unschooling, because it meshes with my experience that kids are natural learners. But it can really throw people off; they say things like how will kids learn if they don't go to school? The unschooling approach is to first take the brakes off that are preventing learning. Things like forcing kids to learn topics on the school's schedule, grading, and limiting movement for good chunks of the day. These things can seem necessary and effective, but tend to limit self-motivated learning. And they are no fun! The more these pressures are lifted, kids have time to explore their own interests, which leads to rich learning.

With unschooling, there is still plenty for adults to do to help support kids with learning. We can express interest in whatever they find cool. We can help when they get stuck or something is more difficult than expected. And we can explore our own interests and share them with the kids. The kids will want to see what you're up to.

#unschooling
#selfDirectedEducation

I wrote a post about small, self-directed groups for supporting each other with learning. I've spoken to others who find it hard to make progress on personal projects. I know it is a challenge for me. I think we may have a better shot if we band together. Given the various crises happening now, I think it is more important than ever to learn and to do creative work. https://davidbruffner.com/2025/04/11/self-directed-small-groups-for-learning/

#smallGroup
#learning
#selfDirectedEducation

"How people behave under one set of circumstances does not predict how they will behave under a very different set of circumstances."

This is from The Learning Cooperatives website, https://learningcooperatives.org/guiding-principles/, in the context of kids who struggle in school. In a different environment those same kids can thrive.

I find this encouraging. If I am struggling with something, it's probably not because I'm deficient. Maybe it would help to change my environment.
#selfDirectedEducation
#unschooling

I often see adults claiming that kids are "resisting learning" or "wouldn't learn unless forced to" and what they ACTUALLY mean by that is that kids are not learning or would not learn exactly what the adults demand that they do.

This is an expression of frustration with children's noncompliance, because even a lot of "progressive" and "radical" folks think that, as long as they insist that its for their own good, children should obey them.

This is not only subjugation and thus completely unacceptable as a way to treat other people (children are people), it's also completely counterproductive.

People naturally resist compulsion. It actually feels like shit to have someone with far greater power than you attempt to control almost all aspects of your life, including what you think about, focus on, and do. We KNOW that. YOU know that.

If you make what you call "learning" into something forced, you introduce it as something to be resisted.

If adults are to stop attempting to coerce kids into "learning" (sometimes better termed "memorizing") what they want them too, that necessitates coming to terms with the fact that children (being people and all) have their own unique interests, passions, and goals, their own familial, cultural, and geographic contexts... In short? They're going to want to learn wildly different things, the same way you and I, as adults, choose to focus on very different topics and build very different skills.

The ethical necessity to stop perpetuating adult supremacy means confronting a whole lot of harmful beliefs about what "education" is supposed to be and what it's supposed to look like. It also means actually creating anti-authoritarian, anti-hierarchical places for kids to spend time in, because limiting their options to either the authoritarianism of State schooling or nuclear families, regardless of what those families are like, is such a miserably constrained set of options.

#youthliberation #selfdirectededucation #schoolabolition

Had no idea about the liberal arts definition. Love this - meshes what I love about #selfdirectededucation, what I don't like about coercive schools in an article and from someone not in my bubble...

https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/110390739226017146

I'm interested in connections between how humans learn and how machine learning/AI systems learn. In particular, I've been fascinated by unschooling and how people can thrive when they are give autonomy in a loving environment. What would giving a machine learning system autonomy in a loving environment look like?

#machinelearning
#unschooling
#learning
#autonomy
#selfdirectededucation

Imaginings for 2023: What if they could choose to be there? #consentbasededucation #selfdirectededucation

https://naomicfisher.substack.com/p/a-thought-experiment

Love this collaboration between Naomi Fischer, clinical psychologist and writer on #selfdirectededucation with Missing the Mark Eliza Fricker's illustrations (who illustrates about being #autistic in the education system:

https://naomicfisher.substack.com/