Education that derives from the self-chosen activities and life experiences of the person being educated... Let’s start with the term education. In everyday language people tend to equate education with schooling, which leads one to think of education as something that is done to students by teachers. Teachers educate, and ...
Education that derives from the self-chosen activities and life experiences of the person being educated...
Let’s start with the term education. In everyday language people tend to equate education with schooling, which leads one to think of education as something that is done to students by teachers. Teachers educate, and students become educated. Teachers give an education and students receive this gift. But any real discussion of education requires us to think of it as something much broader than schooling.
Education is the sum of everything a person learns that enables that person to live a satisfying and meaningful life. Education can be defined broadly in a number of ways. A useful definition for our purposes is this:
Education is the sum of everything a person learns that enables that person to live a satisfying and meaningful life. This includes the kinds of things that people everywhere more or less need to learn, such as how to walk upright, how to speak their native language, how to get along with others, how to regulate their emotions, how to make plans and follow through on them, and how to think critically and make good decisions.
It also includes some culture-specific skills, such as, in our culture, how to read, how to calculate with numbers, how to use computers, maybe how to drive a car—the things that most people feel they need to know in order to live the kind of life they want to live in the culture in which they are growing up.
But much of education, for any individual, entails sets of skills and knowledge that may differ sharply from person to person, even within a given culture. As each person’s concept of “a satisfying and meaningful life” is unique, each person’s education is unique. Society benefits from such diversity.
Given this definition of education, Self-Directed Education is education that derives from the self-chosen activities and life experiences of the person becoming educated, whether or not those activities were chosen deliberately for the purpose of education.
Self-Directed Education can include organized classes or lessons, if freely chosen by the learner; but most Self-Directed Education does not occur that way. Most Self-Directed Education comes from everyday life, as people pursue their own interests and learn along the way. The motivating forces include curiosity, playfulness, and sociability — which promote all sorts of endeavours from which people learn. Self-Directed Education necessarily leads different individuals along different paths, though the paths may often overlap, as each person’s interests and goals in life are in some ways unique and in some ways shared by others.
Self-Directed Education can be contrasted to imposed schooling, which is forced upon individuals, regardless of their desire for it, and is motivated by systems of rewards and punishments, as occurs in conventional schools. Imposed schooling is generally aimed at enhancing conformity rather than uniqueness, and it operates by suppressing, rather than nurturing, the natural drives of curiosity, playfulness, and sociability.
The Four Educative Drives
Humans evolved to educate themselves — not sit in rows... All normal children are intensely curious, playful, and sociable, beginning at birth or shortly after. A fourth drive, which we might call planfulness — the drive to think about and make plans for the future–emerges and strengthens as children grow older. It is reasonable to refer to these drives as the educative drives. The biological foundations of these drives, encoded in DNA, have been shaped by natural selection, over our evolutionary history, to serve the purpose of education.
Our standard schools quite deliberately suppress these drives, especially the first three of them, in the interest of promoting conformity and keeping children fixed to the school’s curriculum. Self-Directed Education, in contrast, operates by allowing these natural drives to flourish. Here is a bit of elaboration on each of these drives and how they interact with one another to promote education:
CURIOSITY
Aristotle began his great work on the origin of knowledge (Metaphysica) with the words, “Human beings are naturally curious about things.” Nothing could be truer. We are intensely curious, from the moment of our birth to, in many cases, the moment of our death. Within hours of birth, infants begin to look longer at novel objects than at those they have already seen.
As they gain mobility, first with their arms and hands and then their legs, they use that mobility to explore ever-larger realms of their environment. They want to understand the objects in their environment, and they particularly want to know what they can do with those objects. That’s why they are continuously getting into things, always exploring. That’s why, once they have language, they ask so many questions. Such curiosity does not diminish as children grow older, unless schooling quashes it, but continues to motivate ever more sophisticated modes of exploration and experimentation. Children are, by nature, scientists.
PLAYFULNESS
The drive to play serves educative purposes complementary to those of curiosity. While curiosity motivates children to seek new knowledge and understanding, playfulness motivates them to practice new skills and use those skills creatively. Children everywhere, when they are free to do so and have plenty of playmates, spend enormous amounts of time playing. They play to have fun, not deliberately to educate themselves, but education is the side effect for which the strong drive to play came about in the course of evolution. They play at the full range of skills that are crucial to their long-term survival and wellbeing. They play in physical ways, as they climb, chase, and rough-and-tumble, and that is how they develop strong bodies and graceful movement. They play in risky ways, and that is how they learn to manage fear and develop courage. They play with language, and that is how they become competent with language. They play socially, with other children, and that is how they learn to negotiate, compromise, and get along with peers. They play games with implicit or explicit rule, and that is how they learn to follow rules. They play imaginative games, and that is how they learn to think hypothetically and creatively. They play with logic, and that is how they become logical. They play at building things, and that is how they learn to build. They play with the tools of their culture, and that is how they become skilled at using those tools. Play is not recess from education; it IS education. Children learn far more in play, and with far more joy, than they could possibly learn in a classroom.
SOCIABILITY
We humans are not only the most curious and playful of mammals, but also the most social. Our children come into the world with an instinctive understanding that their survival and wellbeing depend on their ability to connect with and learn from other people. All humans, but especially young humans, want to know what those around them know and share their own thoughts and knowledge with others. Anthropologists report that children everywhere learn more by watching and listening to the people around them than through any other means.[1] Our most unique adaptation for social life, which enhances tremendously our ability to learn from one another, is language. Almost as soon as they can talk at all, children start to ask questions. They don’t want to be told about things that don’t interest them, but they almost demand to be told about things that do. Language allows us to share all sorts of information with one another. It allows us to tell one another not just about the here and now, but also about the past, future, and hypothetical.
As the philosopher Daniel Dennett put it in a chapter on language and intelligence, “Comparing our brains with bird brains or dolphin brains is almost beside the point, because our brains are in effect joined together into a single cognitive system that dwarfs all others. They are joined by an innovation that has invaded our brain and no others: language.”[2] Self-directed learners, eagerly and naturally, hook themselves into that network. Today, because of the Internet, that cognitive system is bigger than ever before. Young people with access to the Internet have access to the whole world of hypotheses, ideas, and information. Self-Directed Education has never been easier.
PLANFULNESS
We, far more than any other species, have the capacity to think ahead. In fact, we are driven to do so. We don’t just react to immediate conditions; we make plans and follow through on those plans. This is the most consciously cognitive of our basic educative drives, and it develops more slowly than the others. As children grow older, they become increasingly able and motivated to plan ahead, and ever farther ahead. This is the drive that leads self-directed learners to think about their life goals, big and small, and to deliberately seek out the knowledge and practice the skills needed to achieve those goals. Cognitive scientists refer to this capacity to make plans and carry them out as self-directed executive functioning. Research by such scientists has shown that children who have ample free time to play and explore on their own and with other children, independent of adults, develop this capacity more fully than do children who spend more time in adult-structured activities.[3] That is not surprising. When children create their own activities, without adult control, they are continuously practicing the ability to make plans and carry them out. They make mistakes, but they learn from those mistakes.
[1] Lancy, D. F., Bock, J., & Gaskins, S. (2010). Putting learning into context. In D. F. Lancy, J. Bock, & S. Gaskins (Eds.), The anthropology of learning in childhood, 3–10. AltaMira Press.
[2] Dennett, D. C. (1994). Language and intelligence. In J. Khalfa (Ed.), What is intelligence? Cambridge University Press.
[3] Barker, J. et al (2014). Less-structured time in children’s lives predicts self-directed executive functioning. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1-16.
The Six Optimizing Conditions
Self-Directed Education works best when the following conditions are present... If adults do not direct children’s education, then what role do they play in children’s education? A major role of adults is to provide the environmental conditions that maximize children’s abilities to assert and learn from their natural educative drives. Research suggests that the following conditions are key.[4]
SOCIAL EXPECTATION (AND REALITY) THAT EDUCATION IS CHILDREN’S RESPONSIBILITY
Children come into the world believing that they are responsible for their own education. That’s why they begin exploring and learning about their world as soon as they can see, hear, and move; and it’s why they begin asking questions as soon as they can talk. But, if we adults act as if we educate children, as happens in conventional schools, we take that responsibility away from children. We convince them that their own curiosity and questions don’t count, that play is trivial, and that their education depends on doing what they are told rather than their own initiative. Staff members at schools designed for Self-Directed Education, and parents in successful home-based Self-Directed Education, do nothing to diminish children’s natural assumptions that they are in charge of their own education.
UNLIMITED TIME TO PLAY, EXPLORE, AND PURSUE ONE’S OWN INTERESTS
To educate themselves well, children need great amounts of free time—to make friends, explore, play, get bored and overcome boredom. They need time for fleeting interests and to immerse themselves deeply in activities that engage their passions. They also need space—to roam, explore, get away, and experience the sense of independence and power that can only occur for children when no adult is watching.
Adults in our culture often assume that it is their job to keep children more or less constantly busy. But the crucial lesson that children must learn is how to take control of their own life, and for that to happen we must back off. Our greatest gift to children, concerning their education, is free time to discover and pursue their own interests.
OPPORTUNITY TO PLAY WITH THE TOOLS OF THE CULTURE
Much of education has to do with learning to use the culture’s tools. The way to master any tool fully is to play with it, that is, to be creative with it, impose your will on it, make it do what you want it to do. In most traditional cultures the adults recognize this, and so the adults allow even little children to play with the real tools of the culture, even those that can cause injury, such as fire, knives, and bows and arrows.
Schools and learning centers for Self-Directed Education, and families involved in Self-Directed Education, allow children to play with the tools of our modern culture, such as computers, books, woodworking equipment, cooking utensils, and sporting equipment, though for some tools there may be an initial requirement of safety instruction.
ACCESS TO A VARIETY OF CARING ADULTS, WHO ARE HELPERS, NOT JUDGES
In traditional, pre-industrial societies, children were not segregated from adults. Children could see what adults did and incorporate that into their play. They could also hear the adults’ stories, discussions, and debates, and learn from what they heard. When they needed adult help, they might go to any of the adults in their community. At schools and learning centers designed for Self-Directed Education, adults and children mingle freely. There is no place where staff members can go but students cannot. Students can listen to any adult discussions, observe whatever the adults are doing, and join in if they wish. Students who want help from an adult can go to whichever staff member they think can best help them. Home-based Self-Directed Education, too, appears to work best when children have regular access to multiple adults, not just their own parents.
Adults can help best when they are not judges of the children, and parents and staff-members involved with Self-Directed Education avoid the role of judge. None of us, regardless of age, can be fully honest with–fully willing to show our vulnerability to and ask for help from–people whose business it is to evaluate us. When we think we are being evaluated, we go into impression-management mode, in which we show off what we know and can do well and avoid what we don’t know or can’t do well. Evaluation also induces anxiety, which interferes with learning. Impression management and anxiety are antithetical to education, yet they are characteristics that our standard schools are well designed to promote.
FREE AGE MIXING AMONG CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS
Prior to the emergence of age-graded schools, children were never segregated into separate groups by age. Children, including teenagers, almost always played and explored in age-mixed groups. Research indicates that age-mixed play has many benefits beyond that of play among those who are all similar in age.[5]
In age-mixed play, the younger children are continuously learning new skills, and more advanced ways of thinking, through their observations of and interactions with those older and more capable than they. At the same time, the older children acquire leadership and nurturing skills, and a sense of their own maturity, through interaction with the younger ones. Daniel Greenberg, a founder of one of the most famous and long-lasting schools for Self-Directed Education (the Sudbury Valley School), has long contended that age mixing is the key to the school’s educative success. In a survey of graduates of home-based self-directed learning, many commented that much of their learning came from their ability, throughout the day, to interact with others who were considerably older or younger than themselves.[6]
IMMERSION IN A STABLE, SUPPORTIVE, RESPECTFUL COMMUNITY
Children attending a school or learning center for Self-Directed Education are integral, full members of the school community. They learn to care for one another within the community and for the community itself. They are involved, democratically, in making and upholding the community rules. In that process they hear all sides of every disagreement and the moral and logical arguments related to it. Their own views are taken seriously by others and influence the community’s decisions, which motivates them to think more deeply about those views than they otherwise might.
Families, in successful home-based Self-Directed Education, likewise respect and value their children’s ideas and concerns and allow those to play a role in family decisions. Such families are also commonly involved, along with their children, in civic activities with others outside the home. In such environments, children learn to be responsible not just for themselves, but also for others, a lesson that may help them become especially valuable citizens in the larger community as they become adults.
Why Choose Self-Directed Education?
Because it’s fun, it works, it’s easier than it used to be, and standard schools are increasingly toxic...
SELF-DIRECTED EDUCATION IS THE MOST NATURAL AND JOYFUL FORM OF EDUCATION
Children come into the world biologically designed to educate themselves. Their natural curiosity, playfulness, sociability, and planfulness were shaped by natural selection to serve the purpose of their education. Joy lies in the manifestation of these drives and in the discoveries and increased skills that result from them. Here, as illustration, is a sample of the typical kinds of comments made by parents in a large-scale survey of unschooling families (homeschooling families where the children directed their own education):
“The most obvious benefits are children who are full of joy, full of love of learning, creative, self-directed, passionate, enthusiastic, playful, thoughtful, questioning, and curious.”
“Watching our daughter relax and enjoy her days is immensely satisfying, especially against the background of her past few schooled years. The freedom from school and its expectations, the freedom to be, to live, has been liberating for all of us.”
“The biggest benefits have been witnessing our daughters’ creativity blossom full force, their ability to think outside the box, their resourcefulness and their genuine desire to ask questions and learn as much as they can about the world around them.”
“[Removing my children from school] led to a huge reduction in stress for them and for me.. ... My children got to live as free people and blossomed as individuals! They had time to figure out who they are and what they enjoy and are interested in.”
[A full report of this survey can be found in the "Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning", Vol., 7, Issue 14.]
SELF-DIRECTED EDUCATION WORKS
OK, Self-Directed Education creates a happy childhood and adolescence, but does it lead to a happy, satisfying, productive adulthood? Can these people go on to higher education, if they wish, and do they get good jobs? The answer to all these questions is yes.
The most compelling evidence that Self-Directed Education works, in the sense of preparing people well for adult life, comes from follow-up studies of adults who were in charge of their own education, outside of traditional schools, during what would have been their K-12 school years.
A survey of graduates of the Sudbury Valley School (one of the most well known schools for Self-Directed Education), led to the following conclusion:
“Although these individuals educated themselves in ways that are enormously different from what occurs at traditional schools, they have had no apparent difficulty being admitted to or adjusting to the demands of traditional higher education and have been successful in a wide variety of careers. Graduates reported that for higher education and careers, the school benefitted them by allowing them to develop their own interests and by fostering such traits as personal responsibility, initiative, curiosity, ability to communicate well with people regardless of status, and continued appreciation and practice of democratic values.”
[The full report of this study can be found in the "American Journal of Education", Vol. 94, pp182-213.]
Other, more recent surveys of graduates of the same school, published as books, have came to similar conclusions.
[The books are Greenberg, D., & Sadofsky, M., Legacy of Trust: Life after the Sudbury Valley School Experience; and Greenberg, D., Sadofsky, M., & Lempka, J., The Pursuit of Happiness: The Lives of Sudbury Valley Alumni.]
A survey of adults who had been unschooled led to the following conclusion:
“A sample of 75 adults, who had been unschooled for at least the years that would have been their last two years of high school, answered questions about their subsequent pursuits of higher education and careers. Eighty-three percent of them had gone on to some form of formal higher education and 44 percent had either completed or were currently in a bachelor’s degree program. Overall, they reported little difficulty getting into colleges and universities of their choice and adapting to the academic requirements there, despite not having the usual admissions credentials. Those who had been unschooled throughout what would have been their K-12 years were more likely to go on to a bachelor’s program than were those who had some schooling or curriculum-based homeschooling during those years. Concerning careers, despite their young median age, most were gainfully employed and financially independent. A high proportion of them—especially of those in the always-unschooled group—had chosen careers in the creative arts; a high proportion were self-employed entrepreneurs; and a relatively high proportion, especially of the men, were in STEM careers. Most felt that their unschooling benefited them for higher education and careers by promoting their sense of personal responsibility, self-motivation, and desire to learn.”
[The full report of this study is in "Other Education: The Journal of Educational Alternatives", 4, 33-53.]
Because of changes in the economy, Self-Directed Education is even more valuable today than in the past. We no longer need many people to do the kinds of tasks that our schools are designed to teach. We don’t need people who can memorize and regurgitate lots of information; we have Google for that. We don’t need many people to do routine, tedious tasks; we have robots for that. What we do need, and will continue to need, are people who think critically and creatively, innovate, ask and answer questions that nobody else has thought of, and bring moral values and a passionate sense of purpose into the workplace. These are precisely the kinds of skills that are continuously honed in Self-Directed Education.
SELF-DIRECTED EDUCATION IS EASIER TO PURSUE NOW THAN IT WAS IN THE PAST
Self-Directed Education is becoming ever easier to pursue. One reason for this lies in the increased numbers of families taking this route and, consequently, in the increased acceptability of Self-Directed Education in the culture at large. The availability of schools and learning centres designed for Self-Directed Education has been increasing, and the number of homeschoolers engaged in Self-Directed Education has likewise been increasing. Today, in the United States, approximately 3.5% of school-aged children are officially listed as homeschoolers, and an ever-growing percentage of that group appear to have adopted the “unschooling” (home-based Self-Directed Education) route.[1]
As Self-Directed Education becomes more common, as more and more people, including education authorities, know young people taking this route and see their success, the social barriers to it are decreasing. One of the purposes of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education is to help people who are pursuing Self-Directed Education find one another and find or develop learning centres in their geographical area, so they can support one another in their pursuits.
Another reason for the increased ease of Self-Directed Education lies in technology. Today, anyone with a computer and Internet browser can access essentially all the world’s information. Self-directed learners who want to pursue almost any subject can find articles, videos, discussion groups, and even online courses devoted to it. They can gain information and share thoughts with experts and novices alike, throughout the world, who have interests akin to theirs. Students in standard schools must study just what the school dictates, in just the ways that the school decides; but self-directed learners can find subjects and means of study that match their own particular interests and styles of learning.
Self-directed learners are not held back by the slow pace of a school course, nor are they rushed ahead when they want more time to think about and delve deeply into any given aspect of the interest they are pursuing.
OUR STANDARD SCHOOLS HAVE BECOME INCREASINGLY TOXIC
The schools that we call “standard” or “traditional” are not a product of scientific understanding of how children learn and become educated. Indeed, their methods run counter to everything we know about how children best learn. Our standard, coercive system of schooling is a product NOT of science and reason, but of history. It emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries for the explicit purpose of obedience training and indoctrination (see https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/200808/brief-history-education) and was well designed for that. Over time, progressive educators have tried to expand the purposes of schooling to include such goals as the promotion of curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking, but this has never worked because the basic design of schools has never changed and is incapable of being put to these ends. As long as students are all expected to learn the same curriculum, at the same time, in the same ways, schools remain primarily places for indoctrination (memorizing spoon-fed information) and obedience training (the only way you can fail, really, is to refuse to do what the teacher tells you to do).
Decades ago, schools were tolerable primarily because they didn’t take too much of young people’s time. Children and teens had much time after school, on weekends, and all summer for self-directed pursuits. But over the years the power of the school system has dramatically increased. It has intruded increasingly into family life and taken more and more of young people’s time. The length of the school year has increased (in the U.S. it now averages 5 weeks longer than in the 1950s). The number of years of required attendance has increased. The amount of homework has increased immensely, especially in elementary schools.
Recesses have decreased or even been abandoned. Teachers have been given less freedom to depart from the standard curriculum, and ever greater pressure has been placed on children to score high on standardized tests.
Children now often spend more time at school and at homework than their parents spend at their jobs, and the work of schooling is often more burdensome and stress-inducing than a typical adult job. Schooling today is not only a massive waste of children’s time, which children could be using to pursue their own interests and truly educate themselves, but is also a major source of psychological damage. Here is just some of the documented evidence for such damage:
A large-scale study involving hundreds of students from many school districts, using an experience sampling method, revealed that students were less happy in school than in any other setting in which they regularly found themselves.[2] Verbal abuse from teachers is a common occurrence. In one survey, for example, 64% of middle school students reported experiencing stress symptoms because of verbal abuse from teachers.[3] Another study revealed that nearly 30% of boys are verbally abused by teachers in kindergarten, and the abuse increased in years after that.[4] Surveys of adults indicate that between 50% and 60% recall school-related experiences that, in their view, were psychologically traumatic.[5]
In a study in which 150 college students were asked to described the two most negative experiences in their lives — experiences that negatively affected their development — by far the most common reports (28% of the total) were of traumatic interactions with school teachers.[6] In a study in which adults were interviewed to find out about positive, peak learning experiences occurring in their schooling, few could recall such experiences, but many recalled negative experiences, which interfered with rather than supported their development.[7]
Hair cortisol levels in young children were found to be significantly higher in samples taken two months after starting elementary school than in samples taken two months prior to starting elementary school.[8] Hair cortisol level is reflective of chronic stress, the sort of stress that can seriously impair physical growth and health.
A large-scale national survey conducted by the American Psychological Association (see https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2013/stress-report.pdf) revealed that U.S. teenagers feel more stressed-out than do adults and that school is by far the main cause of their stress (noted by 83% of the sample). In the same study, 27% of teens reported experiencing “extreme stress” during the school year, compared to 13% reporting that during the summer.
The rate of emergency mental health visits leading to at least one overnight stay (the sort of visits that derive from serious breakdowns or attempted suicide) at a children’s medical centre was found to be more than twice as high during school months as compared to summer vacation months (see https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/201408/the-danger-back-school).
It is not unreasonable to say that standard schooling is a state-sanctioned, and in some cases state-mandated, form of child abuse. More and more people are coming to that realization and that is why more and more people are looking for ways to remove their children from the schools. For more about the harm done by standard schooling, see (https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/200909/seven-sins-our-system-forced-education).
[1] National Center for Education Statistics. (2013). Parent and family involvement in education, from the national household education surveys program of 2012. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.
[2] Csíkszentmihályi, M., & Hunter, J. (2003). Happiness in everyday life: The uses of experience sampling. Journal of Happiness Studies, 4, 185–199.
[3] Irwin A. Hyman & Donna C. Perone (1998). The Other Side of Student Violence: Educator Policies and Practices That May Contribute to Student Misbehavior. Journal of School Psychology, 36, 7-27.
[4]Brengden, M., Wanner, B., & Vitaro, F. (2006). Verbal abuse by the teacher and child adjustment from kindergarten through grade 6. Pediatrics, 117, 1585-1598.
[5] A. G. McEachern, O. Aluede & M. C. Kenny (2008). Emotional abuse in the classroom: Implications and interventions for counselors. Journal of Counseling and Development 86, 3-10.
[6] J. M. Branan (1972). Negative human interactions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 19, 81-82.
[7] K. Olson. Wounded by School. Teachers’ College Press, 2009.
[8] Children’s hair cortisol as a biomarker of stress at school entry Groeneveld et al (2013). Stress: The International Journal on the Biology of Stress, 16, 711-715.
How Do People Practice Self-Directed Education?
Learning all the time — at home, in the community, and in places designed to support Self-Directed Education...
In order to fully engage in Self-Directed Education, school-aged children must be freed from standard, top-down, curriculum-based, compulsory schooling. The legalities vary from one country, state, or province to another, but in the United States there are generally two ways to avoid such schooling without breaking the law.
One is to enroll the children in a legally recognized school that’s designed to support Self-Directed Education, the other is to opt for homeschooling and then allow them to direct their own education from home. We refer to these two approaches, respectively, as school-based Self-Directed Education and home-based Self-Directed Education. The latter is often referred to as unschooling, a term coined in the 1970s by author and educational theorist John Holt.
Many self-directed learners participate in organized learning communities that are technically not schools but may be similar to SDE-aligned schools in certain ways. Often called learning centers, learning co-ops, or homeschooling resource centers, these organizations provide easy access to a greater variety of learning opportunities and social connections.
Whether it is home-based, school-based, or center-based, it’s important to remember that Self-Directed Education is a whole-life, freedom-based process. When children are free to learn on their own terms, they learn everywhere and all the time — not only in places and at times set aside for “educational purposes.”
Self-Directed Education is a whole-life, freedom-based process.
Being self-directed doesn’t mean going it alone: parents and other adult helpers facilitate Self-Directed Education by providing access to resources, creating SDE-friendly environments and engaging in authentic conversations prompted by the learners’ curiosities. Self-Directed Education facilitators must shed the obsolete notion that children need to learn a standard set of skills and subjects by a certain time. Successful facilitation requires a deep appreciation for informal, spontaneous, emergent learning processes that are as natural as learning to walk and talk.
The Alliance for Self-Directed Education is dedicated to helping parents and educators understand this natural process, learn to trust it, and get the support they need to find their own unique ways of facilitating SDE for the young people in their lives.
For more information, watch "How We See Self-Directed Education": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbKQGNE1nUo
Jane Arisi
is a writer, artist, and high school student.
