“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…”

• 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…”

•  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 centers 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…”

• 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 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)…”

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