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The Father of the Unschooling Movement: John Holt

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“Well how do kids learn? Is the parent the one that teaches the child at home?”, says the interviewer, a young polite woman who seems befuddled by John Holt’s answers as to why schools are failing and homeschooling should be the norm. He gently answers, “Your question is a very important one because it throws a light on one of the most common and mistaken notions about teaching and learning. And that is that a knowledge is sort of a liquid and teaching is the act of pouring it out a full vessel into an empty one.” As someone who had come to be known for speaking so eloquently on  the nature of how children really learn, you would never guess that he entered education much later than most teachers.

Originally born in New York City, he obtained credentials in “industrial administration” (He is quoted as saying “whatever that is”). He then went into the Navy and worked on submarines for three years (He refuses to reveal much on his credentials). After the military, he joined the World Government Movement, a now seemingly forgotten coalition to join the world under one centralized government. He got rather high up the ranks, only to find the goals unattainable and left. His first teaching job came in his 30’s on the recommendation of his sister after he moved to Colorado. There he found his actual passion – watching and analyzing how children learn firsthand. He liked to see what worked, and what didn’t. He claims he didn’t imagine or try in that first job to be visionary and social reformer – he just wanted honest relationships with his students and genuine success for them. But then he was fired for what he believed was his challenging of the authoritarian way of disciplining and raising students. He believed “Convincing people that most of our present schools are bad for learning is not going to do much to change them; learning is not principally what they are for.”

It was then he took to writing books to spread the ideas he wasn’t allowed to in the classroom. His bibliography consists of an impressive eleven books (two seemed to be published posthumously). The first and most notorious one How Children Fail (1964; revised 1982), gets right to his point about how modern schooling needs to be dismantled. Even the better sides of it and better schools only serve to stand in the way of real learning, he challenges in that book. He argues that children, by nature, want to learn. His most provocative point is that children only “accomplish” anything in schools as a means of appeasing adults. These are the main aspects actually taught in schools:

1. Do what you’re told without questioning or resisting, whenever I or any other authority tell[s] you to do something.
2. Go on doing what you’re told for as long as you’re told. Never mind how dull, disagreeable, or pointless the task may seem. It’s not for you to decide.
3. Do whatever we want you to do, willingly. Do it without even having to be told. Do what you’re expected to do.
4. If you don’t do these things you will be punished and you will deserve to be.
5. Accept your life without complaining even if you get very little if any of what you think you want, even if your life has not much joy, meaning, or satisfaction. That’s what life is.
6. Take your medicine, your punishment, whatever the people above you do to you, without complaining or resisting.
7. Living this way is good for your soul and character.

It started (or added a lot of fuel to the fire of) a national debate on the quality of schools.  He also started a bimonthly newsletter, “Growing Without Schooling” on how to teach kids at home (They can all actually still be read here). It is almost jarring to read them. I picked a random issue and just started reading. This one was written in the 80’s, but the events easily read like something you could read in the New York Times or the like now. In this issue, he speaks of how the hand-wringing about how bad the schools are from the The President’s commission on Excellence in Education. In his typical gentle and intelligent snarkiness, Holt says “What did the commission recommend? A longer school year, tougher courses, fewer electives, higher standards (code for “flunk more kids”), better teachers, more money.” He easily could have been talking about Common Core or No Child Left Behind.

Some would argue these seem particularly cynical by today standards (at least in theory). But DeVos rolled back many Obama era regulations about how schools could punish students. I myself went to a charter school that was supposed to be the “humane” alternative to public schools: each of these feels as true as they did in 1964. If you go and look at any review of his books on Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc, you will find many people saying that his books are just as relevant nowadays.

An interesting point about him that does bear translating from that time to this: he did not actually prefer the term “unschooling”. He preferred to refer to it as “living”, as he believed the idea of separating out figuring out yourself in the work was inextricably tied with learning, and schools desire to separate out the two as absurd.

Unfortunately, we lost John Holt rather early  – he died of cancer at 62 in 1985. One can only wonder how much more he could have influenced the current system had he lived longer. Perhaps he could have helped Common Core and No Child left behind from failing or gaining as much traction. Still, we have much of his work to influence future decisions. We can only hope that policymakers, school administrators, and most importantly parents read his books and teachings. Perhaps than school choice and homeschooling would be less about inducting children into cults and and letting them learn how to be social, active learners in their own right. After all, in his second book, How Children Learn, he argues that learning comes to small children “as naturally as breathing”.

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In the Wake of Mass Shootings, Parents Reconsider Mass Schooling

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In the wake of recent tragic school shootings, anxious parents are contemplating homeschooling to protect their children. After February’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the Miami Herald reported that more parents were considering the homeschooling option. And after Friday’s disturbing school shooting in Sante Fe, Texas, a local ABC news affiliate in Alabama reported the increasing appeal of homeschooling.

“If I had the time, I would teach my kids myself, and I would know that they’re safe,” a father of four told ABC station, WAAY31. A public school teacher interviewed by the channel disagreed with the idea of homeschooling. According to the news story, the teacher “says resorting to homeschooling is teaching your children to run from reality.”

But that raises the question: Is compulsory mass schooling “reality”?

Public Schools Are Consuming More and More of Kids’ Time

Segregating children by age into increasingly restrictive, test-driven classrooms where they are forced by law to be unless a parent or caregiver liberates them is hardly “reality.” What’s worse is that young people are spending increasingly more time in this coercive “reality” than ever before.

In the case of teens, spending more time in school and school-like activities may be further separating them from the actual real world.

For young children ages six to eight, schooling increased from an average of five hours a day in 1981-82 to an average of seven hours a day in 2002-03. And for today’s teens, schooling consumes much more of their time than it did for previous generations, seeping into summertime and other historically school-free periods. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 42 percent of teens were enrolled in school during July 2016, compared to only 10 percent enrolled in July 1985.

In the case of teens, spending more time in school and school-like activities may be further separating them from the actual real world in which they previously came of age. As Business Insider reports: “Almost 60% of teens in 1979 had a job, compared to 34% in 2015.” Spending more time in the contrived reality of forced schooling and less time in authentic, multi-age, productive communities may be taking its toll on today’s youth.

Compulsory Mass Schooling Is Hurting Our Kids

New findings from researchers at Vanderbilt University show a disturbing correlation between time in school and suicidal thoughts and attempts by young people, which have been increasing over the past decade. Whereas most adults see suicide spikes in July and August, most kids see suicide dips in summer. Children’s suicidal tendencies appear strongest during the school year.

Boston College psychology professor Dr. Peter Gray believes that increasingly oppressive schooling is leading to serious psychological damage in some children. He writes on his blog at Psychology Today:

Children now often spend more time at school and at homework than their parents spend at their full-time jobs, and the work of schooling is often more burdensome and stress-inducing than that of a typical adult job. A century ago we came to the conclusion that full-time child labor was child abuse, so we outlawed it; but now school is the equivalent of full-time child labor. The increased time, tedium, and stress of schooling is bringing many kids to the breaking point or beyond, and more and more people are becoming aware of that. It can no longer be believed that schooling is a benign experience for children. The evidence that it induces pathology is overwhelming.”

Recent school shootings may be extreme examples of this rising school-induced pathology.

Choosing to Homeschool Isn’t “Running from Reality”

Instead of overreacting, parents who decide to remove their children from school to homeschool them may be acknowledging the disconnect between the inherent coercion of compulsory mass schooling and the freedom to live in the genuine world around us. Rather than sheltering their children, parents who select the homeschooling option may be endeavoring to widen their child’s community, broaden their experiences, and restore their emotional well-being.

Former New York State Teacher of the Year, John Taylor Gatto, writes in his book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling about his growing disillusionment with mass schooling:

I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”  

Parents who remove their children from the confines of the conventional classroom are not running away from reality. They are running towards it.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

homeschool kids working together

Our Homeschooling Freedoms Must Be Protected

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Homeschoolers today have it easy. Many of us were in diapers when, in 1977, educator John Holt created Growing Without Schooling, the first newsletter to connect and encourage homeschooling families. Holt and other social reformers provided the support and facilitated the networks that would ultimately lead to homeschooling becoming legally recognized in all U.S. states by 1993.

I sometimes wonder about the courage it took those earlier homeschooling parents to remove their children from school before it was fully legal, to chart an alternative education path for their children when they were often the only ones on that road. I sometimes wonder if I would have had the same courage.

Homeschooling Is Going Mainstream

Most of us no longer worry about truancy officers knocking on our doors or wonder where we will need to move next to find a community more accepting of us.

Now, homeschooling is a legitimate education option with the number of homeschoolers hovering around two million nationwide. With expanding numbers come increased diversity as families of all races, classes, religions, ethnicities, ideologies, and academic philosophies tailor homeschooling to their distinct needs and lifestyles. For example, the number of African Americans choosing to homeschool continues to accelerate, often propelled by concerns of institutional racism in schools, and Muslim Americans are reported to be one of the fastest-growing homeschooling demographics.

As homeschooling has become widely accepted and more reflective of our pluralistic society, it is easy to become complacent. Most of us no longer worry about truancy officers knocking on our doors or wonder where we will need to move next to find a community more accepting of family-centered education. We happily play outside on a spring weekday morning without fear that passersby will worry why our children aren’t in school. We choose from a vast assortment of pedagogical approaches, selecting styles that best suit the needs of our children—not school personnel.

We may forget what a recent privilege all of this is. Our freedom to homeschool as we choose is owed in large part to those courageous parents who came before us. Their choice, and their activism, made our homeschooling choice possible and pleasant.

But the Freedom Is Precarious

Our modern homeschooling freedoms also come with the responsibility to protect those freedoms. While we may not have had to fight to secure our homeschooling rights, we should certainly fight to keep them. As homeschooling moves from the marginal to the mainstream, it can trigger state efforts to curb freedoms, heighten regulations, and increase oversight.

Whether or not we would have had the courage to create these homeschooling freedoms we now enjoy, we must have the courage to keep them.

We are seeing this effort mount in California, as the egregious case of alleged abuse by the Turpin family has led to recent legislative efforts to crack-down on homeschooling in the state. Current proposed legislation aims to rein in homeschooling families and require government monitoring, including forming an advisory committee to investigate, and potentially “reform,” homeschooling. As NPR reports: “That could be anything from home inspections to credentialing teachers to setting specific curriculums.”

Now is the time for those of us homeschooling today to show our gratitude to those who came before us by continuing their fight. It is up to us to preserve our homeschooling freedoms from government encroachment so that we may continue to a live a life free of school and school-like thinking.

Whether or not we would have had the courage to create these homeschooling freedoms we now enjoy, we must have the courage to keep them.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Schooling Was for the Industrial Era, Self-Directed Education is for the Future

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Our current compulsory schooling model was created at the dawn of the Industrial Age. As factories replaced farm work and production moved swiftly outside of homes and into the larger marketplace, 19th century American schooling mirrored the factories that most students would ultimately join.

The bells and buzzers signaling when students could come and go, the tedium of the work, the straight lines and emphasis on conformity and compliance, the rows of young people sitting passively at desks while obeying their teachers, the teachers obeying the principal, and so on—all of this was designed for factory-style efficiency and order.

The Imagination Age

The trouble is that we have left the Industrial Era for the Imagination Age, but our mass education system remains fully entrenched in factory-style schooling. By many accounts, mass schooling has become even more restrictive than it was a century ago, consuming more of childhood and adolescence than at any time in our history. The first compulsory schooling statute, passed in Massachusetts in 1852, required eight to 14-year-olds to attend school a mere 12 weeks a year, six of which were to be consecutive. This seems almost laughable compared to the childhood behemoth that mass schooling has now become.

Enclosing children in increasingly restrictive schooling environments for most of their formative years, and drilling them with a standardized, test-driven curriculum is woefully inadequate for the Imagination Age. In her book, Now You See It, Cathy Davidson says that 65 percent of children now entering elementary school will work at jobs in the future that have not yet been invented. She writes: “In this time of massive change, we’re giving our kids the tests and lesson plans designed for their great-great-grandparents.”

While the past belonged to assembly line workers, the future belongs to creative thinkers, experimental doers, and inventive makers. The past relied on passivity; the future will be built on passion. In a recent article on the future of work, author and strategist John Hagel III writes about the need to nurture passion to be successful and fulfilled in the jobs to come. He says:

One of my key messages to individuals in this changing world is to find your passion and integrate your passion with your work. One of the challenges today is that most people are products of the schools and society we’ve had, which encourage you to go to work to get a paycheck, and if it pays well, that’s a good job, versus encouraging you to find your passion and find a way to make a living from it.

Passion-Driven Learning

Cultivating passion is nearly impossible within a coercive schooling structure that values conformity over creativity, compliance over-exuberance. This could help explain why the unschooling, or Self-Directed Education, movement is taking off, with more parents migrating from a schooling model of education for their children to a learning one. With Self-Directed Education, passion is at the center of all learning. Young people follow their interests and pursue their passions, while adults act as facilitators, connecting children and teens to the vast resources of both real and digital communities. In this model, learning is natural, non-coercive, and designed to be directed by the individual herself, rather than by someone else.

Self-Directed Education and unschooling often take place in homes and throughout communities, but increasingly individuals and organizations are launching self-directed learning centers geared toward homeschoolers with both full- and part-time options. These centers make Self-Directed Education more accessible to more families in more places, and each has a unique philosophy or focus. Some are geared toward teens and value real-world apprenticeships and immersion; others are makerspaces that emphasize tinkering and technology, and so on. In Boston, for instance, the JP Green School in the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood serves as a part-time self-directed learning space for homeschoolers and unschoolers with a focus on sustainability and nature connection.  Co-founder Andrée Zaleska says:

People educated in coercive models will be damaged for life (most of us are). The lack of respect shown to their autonomous selves as children translates into a lifelong tendency to “get what they need” by any means necessary…We are part of a growing counterculture which finds traditional schooling damaging in ways that are intertwined with the general brokenness of our culture.

Instead of complaining about the education status quo, entrepreneurial individuals are building alternatives to school that challenge it. Centered around passion and an overarching belief in individual self-determination, these entrepreneurs — who are often parents, former school teachers, and others who have become disillusioned by coercive schooling — are freeing young people from an outdated and harmful mass schooling system. Enlightened parents and innovative entrepreneurs may be the key players in constructing a new education model focused on freedom and designed for the Imagination Age.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Dear Homeschool Curious Parent…

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I have been getting emails like the one below more frequently lately, so I thought I would share my general response.

“Dear, Kerry: I ran across your website while doing research on homeschooling. I am a mother of 3 children ages 6,4 and 2. We moved to the suburbs when my children were smaller to take advantage of the top-rated public schools in our town. We had a wonderful pre-school experience due to the choice of school focused on play, outdoor exploration and emotional development.

However, as my 6 year old embarks on her education in the public school system, I find myself becoming more and more disappointed. More importantly, I find her becoming bored and disinterested in learning as a 1st grader.

All of this said, I am contacting you because I am thinking of homeschooling and I’m scared to death! What are the resources? What curriculum should I use? Where do I begin? So many questions! Help!”

Hello!

Welcome to the exciting world of learning without schooling! You have already taken the important first step in redefining your child’s education by acknowledging the limitations of mass schooling, recognizing the ways it can dull a child’s curiosity and exuberance, and seeking alternatives to school. Now it’s time to take a deep breath, exhale, and explore.

1. First things first: Connect with your local homeschooling network. This network could be a message board through a Yahoo or MeetUp group, or a Facebook group, or a state homeschooling advocacy group (like AHEM for Massachusetts homeschoolers). Maybe you have already joined the Alliance for Self-Directed Education and have connected with the local SDE groups that may be forming in your area. Tapping into your local homeschooling community, posting your questions and introducing yourself, can be incredibly valuable. You may be surprised at just how many homeschooling families are nearby and the many activities and resources available to you. You may also find families on a similar path as yours. This can alleviate much of the anxiety you are experiencing as you take a peek into this new world of learning. These local networks can help you to navigate your local homeschooling regulations and guide you through the process of pulling your child from school.

2. Second: start reading! Obviously, you are already doing this or you wouldn’t have found my blog, but there is much more to learn. Homeschooling and education blogs and websites are great resources. Here is my short list of favorite books/articles/films to get you started:

3. Third: What about curriculum? Personally, I am an advocate for Self-Directed Education (SDE). Sometimes referred to as “unschooling,” SDE shifts our view of education from schooling (something someone does to someone else, often by force) toward learning (something humans naturally do). With Self-Directed Education, young people are in charge of their own learning and doing, following their own interests and passions, with grown-ups available to help connect them to the vast resources of both real and digital communities. Children direct their education, adults facilitate. 

I am a realist though. (Or at least I try to be!) So I know that it is often challenging for families to go directly from a schooled mindset to an unschooled one. Whenever parents ask me what curriculum they should choose, I say *if* you are going to use a curriculum, I recommend Oak Meadow. A Vermont-based company that incorporates a lot of Waldorf-inspired educational ideas, Oak Meadow is a gentle, rich curriculum with a stellar reputation. 

4. Next: think about your family values, needs, and rhythms. Shifting from schooling to learning may involve some big changes to your family life, your routines, and your schedules. It may lead to reassessing priorities and to carefully juggling multiple work and family responsibilities. It also means you need some help to avoid burning out! Consider your support network of family, friends, and community and get the help you need to make this work for the long-term. If there is a self-directed learning center or homeschooling co-op near you, these resources can also be incredibly helpful in enabling you to find balance and connection.

5. Finally: talk with your kids! Learning without schooling is a collaborative endeavor that is mostly focused on your child’s distinct interests, learning styles, and needs. Talk with your child and find out what she wants to do. If you are coming directly out of a school environment, you may need some time to “deschool”– to fully embrace living and learning without being tied to the expectations and accouterments of a schooled lifestyle. Go to the library, the museum, the park, or the beach. Take a walk in the woods. Spend long, slow mornings reading books together on the couch. Bake cookies. Ride bikes. Write a letter to a friend. Watch a movie. Play Scrabble. Go to the grocery store, the bank, the post office. Live life. Soon you will see that living and learning are the same thing.   

Best wishes to you as you embark on this exciting life journey! Remember: schooling is a relatively recent societal construct; learning is a natural condition of being human. Happy learning!

Warmly,

Kerry

Reprinted from Whole Family Learning

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Homeschool is Booming, New Study Shows

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A report issued this week by The Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based public policy think tank, sheds light on the rapid growth and diversity of the U.S. homeschooling population.

Co-authored by William Heuer and William Donovan, the comprehensive white paper explains that despite a paucity of support from government officials – and outright opposition by the nation’s largest teachers’ union – homeschooling has gained in both popularity and reach over the past several decades.

Alt Ed

According to the latest 2012 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, there are over 1.8 million homeschoolers nationwide, representing 3.4 percent of the overall US K-12 school-age population. More recent data place the number of homeschoolers at well over 2 million children, placing it on par with the number of children currently enrolled in US public charter schools.

The report highlights that “there is no typical homeschooler or homeschooling family,” as the “one size fits all” prototype of conventional public schools does not apply to homeschooling families who tailor their educational approach to the needs and values of their family and their children. The report states:

Homeschooling is a viable alternative for the many students and their families who wish to opt out of traditional public schools. Regardless of a family’s rationale for homeschooling, the universal tenet of homeschoolers is the importance of parental choice and the conviction that parents are best equipped to make the educational decisions that affect their children.”

In tracing the history of 19th century compulsory schooling laws to the modern education choice movement, the report reminds us that Horace Mann, the proclaimed “father of American public education” who passed the nation’s first compulsory schooling statute in Massachusetts in 1852, homeschooled his own three children with no intention of sending them to the common schools he mandated for others.

The report says about Mann:

This hypocrisy of maintaining parental choice for himself while advocating a system of public education for others seems eerily similar to the mindset that is so common today: Many people of means who can choose to live in districts with better schools or opt for private schools resist giving educational choices to those less fortunate.”

Demographics and Costs

As the fastest-growing alternative educational option, increasing at a rate of 3 percent per year, homeschooling continues its ascent into the mainstream with families choosing to homeschool for a variety of reasons, from a clear lifestyle choice to a lack of quality alternative education options.

Despite their disparate philosophies on how and why they homeschool,” the report finds that homeschooling families “have been united in their belief that parental choice in deciding to homeschool and the manner in which their children are educated is an intrinsic right, one which should not be usurped by the state…They also hold to the belief that the overall environment of traditional public school systems is not conducive to the educational goals they have for their offspring.

Legal in all 50 states since 1993, homeschooling represents a diverse cross-section of the American population. Demographically, Hispanics now comprise 15 percent of the homeschooling population, and black homeschooling families represent 8 percent – a number the report cites as doubling in the 2007-2011 timeframe.

Highlighting NCES data, the report reveals that 16 percent of homeschooling parents are educating a child with a physical or mental health issue, and more than 15 percent have a child with “other special needs.”

Homeschooling parents assume all educational costs for their children, but homeschooling vouchers and tax credits are hotly contested within the homeschooling community, with many parents and advocates unwilling to accept the additional regulatory oversight that would likely come with public funding.

Still, homeschoolers pay taxes for schools they don’t use and reduce overall taxpayer burden:

Just like private and parochial school students (but unlike charter school students), homeschoolers not only bear the brunt of their own educational costs but also pay the same taxes to fund their district schools which they generally do not utilize to any large degree. Using the latest NCES figures reflecting the national average expenditure of $11,011 per public school student, the two million homeschoolers essentially reduce public education costs by some $22 billion per year.”

National Impact

The geographic, demographic, and ideological diversity of the expanding homeschooling population is leading to many pathways of educational and pedagogical innovation:

As learning, rather than schooling, becomes more the norm there may be much that traditional schools can learn from homeschoolers. Some characteristics that are inherent in homeschooling, such as parental involvement, flexible scheduling, individualized learning plans, and looping have long been essential elements in homeschooling families. Homeschoolers have essentially paved the way in self-directed learning, multi-age grouping, project-based learning, adapting to individual learning styles, and content mastery vs. seat-time. They continue to expand their use of alternative assessments, anywhere-anytime learning, and the use of apprenticeships.”

For homeschooling families, education choice starts at home; but as incubators of new methods and approaches to teaching and learning, their choice can have a widespread, positive impact on education innovation nationwide.

Reprinted from Intellectual Takeout.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The Benefits of Delayed Schooling

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If you are one of those parents who decided to delay your child’s schooling, or forgo it altogether, you have plenty of company.

According to Education Week, in the years 2008-2010 fewer than half of U.S. children under age five attended preschool, and the number of stay-at-home-parents has been rising over the past decade. Additionally, there are more than 2 million homeschoolers in this country and those numbers are increasing dramatically. A 2013 report by Education News found that the number of children being homeschooled in the United States has increased by 75 percent over 14 years. The report noted that “the number of primary school kids whose parents choose to forgo traditional education is growing seven times faster than the number of kids enrolling in K-12 every year.”

Many of these parents who choose to delay or forgo schooling for their children may be influenced by mounting research showing that early schooling is not beneficial to most children, and in fact may be harmful to many. Most significantly, a 2008 longitudinal study by psychology professor, Dr. Howard Friedman, of the University of California, Riverside, concluded that “early school entry was associated with less educational attainment, worse midlife adjustment, and most importantly, increased mortality risk.” In an article in the United Kingdom’s Telegraph, Professor Friedman asserts:

“Most children under age six need lots of time to play, and to develop social skills, and to learn to control their impulses. An over-emphasis on formal classroom instruction– that is, studies instead of buddies, or staying in instead of playing out–can have serious effects that might not be apparent until years later.”

In fact, the UK seems to be taking Dr. Friedman’s research, and that of others, to heart in an attempt to halt the expansion of formal schooling to earlier ages. In 2013, a respected group of more than 130 researchers and practitioners in the early childhood education field argued that formal schooling should be delayed until age six or seven, citing the “profound damage” that early schooling is causing children.

Here in the U.S., a 2015 research paper by Stanford University professor, Thomas Dee, found that delaying school entry led to less hyperactivity and more attentiveness. Children who entered formal schooling closer to age 7 were able to exhibit more self-regulation and had better mental health markers than children who entered school at age 6 or earlier. Even more remarkable is that this effect was sustained until at least age 11.

But what about the poor and disadvantaged children who purportedly benefit from earlier, more formal schooling? Dr. Richard House, a senior lecturer at the University of Roehamptom in London, argues:

“There are of course some children from very deprived backgrounds who on balance would, and certainly do, gain a net benefit from such early interventions. But the evidence is now quite overwhelming that such an early introduction to institutional learning is not only quite unnecessary for the vast majority of children, but can actually cause major developmental harm, and at worst a shortened life-span.”

As efforts mount both domestically and abroad to push academics and expand government schooling to increasingly younger children, it is important for parents to look at the data and implications of such early education policy. While the relatively small percentage of children from “very deprived backgrounds,” as Dr. House states, may benefit from more rigorous early schooling, the vast majority of young children are not helped–and may in fact be harmed–by accelerated institutional learning.

It is no wonder that more and more parents are recognizing the serious effects that play-deprivation and forced academics can have on young children. In growing numbers, these parents are choosing to delay formal schooling–or avoid it altogether–and cultivate a nurturing, play-filled, family-centered childhood in their homes and throughout their communities.

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[Image Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Joseph A. Pagán Jr.)

This post The Benefits of Delayed Schooling was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Kerry McDonald.