Fuck Yeah Radical Education

A Tumblog about all things radical education! Unschooling, home education, freeschooling, democratic schools, learning centers and co-ops, children's and youth rights, youth empowerment, anti-oppression education... A place to celebrate and explore all the wonderful radical education available outside of the compulsory institution known as school. I welcome submissions! (This blog is run by Idzie, author of I'm Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write.)

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Are you one of the many people leaving Tumblr in the wake of upcoming changes?

I know I’m barely active here already, but just wanted to let you folks know that you can find me other places! On Facebook at I’m Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write.

On Twitter @idzie 

Hope to see you there...

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The History in Historicals: Learning Wherever Interest Takes You

I spend a lot of time talking about how ever present learning is, and how learning doesn’t have to look like schooling in order to be valuab...

"Constant curiosity, the drive to look things up, discuss and consider, is in large part an innate human quality… Though it can, of course, be discouraged and suppressed. Even when that’s the case, cultivating a practice and lifestyle of curiosity can be done, by paying attention to those sparks, the ideas or comments or facts that our brains get snagged on, and seeing where it goes. It helps not to put pressure on yourself to make a passing interest into something it’s not: a passion. There’s no need to force it, just follow it for as long as you’re eager to do so, and veer off down a different path when the mood takes you."

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As much awful as there is on social media, there’s more goodness and connection. Social media is NOT the enemy. Feeling unseen and misunderstood and dismissed might be, though. I see kids every day who use social media to support their friends and to give themselves a voice in a culture which treats kids and teens as commodities. I see kids every day who use social media to create next to people who listen to and understand them when they live in families who don’t. Yes, I know it can be awful. Try looking for the positives and you might just be amazed.

Clarissa Harwell

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Laziness Does Not Exist – E Price – Medium

Psychological research is clear: when people procrastinate, there's usually a good reason

"I’ve been a psychology professor since 2012. In the past six years, I’ve witnessed students of all ages procrastinate on papers, skip presentation days, miss assignments, and let due dates fly by. I’ve seen promising prospective grad students fail to get applications in on time; I’ve watched PhD candidates take months or years revising a single dissertation draft; I once had a student who enrolled in the same class of mine two semesters in a row, and never turned in anything either time.

I don’t think laziness was ever at fault.

Ever.

In fact, I don’t believe that laziness exists."

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Cultivating liberated and unbiased spaces for youth to grow through Self-Directed Education

"Our present day public education system and post-secondary education is inherently oppressive. It’s anti-Black. It’s anti-poor. It’s anti-woman. It is not meant to empower. It is not meant to liberate. It pathologizes and confines. It’s a pyramid scheme that guards against widespread access to resources, knowledge, power, and wealth."

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17 LGBTQ-Friendly Books To Read To Your Kid In Honor Of Pride

Because little ones can celebrate this month, too.

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A list of things that we don’t really want to talk about in education.

"We know that deep, lasting learning requires conditions that schools and classrooms simply were not built for. When we look at the things that each of us has learned most deeply in our lives, the same certain conditions almost always apply: Among other things, we had an interest and a passion for the topic, we had a real, authentic purpose in learning it, we had agency and choice, deciding what, when, where, and with whom we learned it, and we had fun learning it even if some of it was “hard fun.” We know this. But in the vast majority of curriculum driven schools, however, students sit and wait to be told what to learn, when to learn it, how to learn it, and how they’ll be assessed on it. Rarely do they get to choose, and just as rarely does the learning they do in class have any impact beyond the classroom walls."

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The Power of Curiosity | Alliance for Self-Directed Education

Self-Directed Education gives curiosity space to do its magic

"Our motivation to learn is an undeniable force that continues throughout our lives. It does not begin in earnest at school age and it does not stop once a diploma is received."

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One of the tragedies of our system of schooling is that it teaches students that life is a series of hoops that one must get through, by one means or another, and that success lies in others' judgments rather than in real, self-satisfying accomplishments.

Peter Gray

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If we look at children only to see whether they are doing what we want or don't want them to do, we are likely to miss all the things about them that are the most interesting and important.

John Holt

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School stress is not inevitable

Whenever I watch a movie, if something surprising happens I literally jump out of my seat. Heavy-handed foreshadowing has no effect on my startle response. Telling myself it’s just a movie or any o…

"If research shows that stress is literally toxic to the human body, and for so many kids school creates stress, why aren’t we talking about that? I’m not equating school with child abuse (although in some school situations that equation unfortunately applies). I am saying that as long as we’re segregating our children into buildings every day, dictating their every move, evaluating their intelligence and abilities based on their performance of tasks we assign, and throwing them into spaces where they too often face name calling, humiliation, sexual harassment and sometimes sexual or physical assault, we ought to also think about the consequences."

"Some say kids need to face adversity to develop toughness. I think it’s just the opposite. Strength comes when children feel safe and secure. In the absence of stressors, kids are more free to explore, learn, and develop. Of course, human beings are resilient creatures and even those of us with residual effects from childhood adversity can lead joyful, fulfilling lives. That doesn’t mean the stressors were good, and it doesn’t take away their long term physical and emotional consequences."

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[Easy Chair] | Abolish High School, by Rebecca Solnit | Harper's Magazine

I didn’t go to high school. This I think of as one of my proudest accomplishments and one of my greatest escapes, because everyone who grows up in the United States goes to high school. It’s such an inevitable experience that people often mishear me and think I dropped out.

"Talk of abolishing high school is just my way of wondering whether so many teenagers have to suffer so much. How much of that suffering is built into a system that is, however ubiquitous, not inevitable? “Every time I drive past a high school, I can feel the oppression. I can feel all those trapped souls who just want to be outside,” a woman recalling her own experience wrote to me recently. “I always say aloud, ‘You poor souls.’ ”

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Why I Think All Schools Should Abolish Homework

It should be the exception, not the rule

“I feel like I’m working towards my death. The constant demands on my time since 5th grade are just going to continue through graduation, into college, and then into my job. It’s like I’m on an endless treadmill with no time for living.”

"How long is your child’s workweek? Thirty hours? Forty? Would it surprise you to learn that some elementary school kids have workweeks comparable to adults’ schedules? For most children, mandatory homework assignments push their workweek far beyond the school day and deep into what any other laborers would consider overtime. Even without sports or music or other school-sponsored extracurriculars, the daily homework slog keeps many students on the clock as long as lawyers, teachers, medical residents, truck drivers and other overworked adults. Is it any wonder that,deprived of the labor protections that we provide adults, our kids are suffering an epidemic of disengagement, anxiety and depression?"

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Supportive parents of transgender kids are sparking a ‘gender revolution,’ research says | The Star

However, many trans kids are still ‘invisible’ because they don’t live in communities or families where it’s safe to be out, according to author Ann Travers

“When we chose to support our daughter, she completely blossomed,” Michelle recalled. “To know that it was safe for her to be herself, she was able to really open up and embrace who she was.”

"A starting point for supporting the still-invisible trans kids is to stop dividing kids for activities based on sex and gender, Travers said. “You don’t know it, but it puts them in crisis.”

Mixed-gender sports teams, gender-neutral bathrooms, and a culture that supports kids dressing however they want, makes the kids who are unsure about their gender, or who are non-binary, feel accepted and included."

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Children, Learning, and the Evaluative Gaze of School

How a watched pot loses the desire to boil.

Another absolutely fantastic piece from Carol Black. A must read! And as usual with anything by her, there are so many terrific quotes from this piece I had a lot of trouble picking.

"There is something profoundly deadening to a curious, engaged child about the feeling of being watched and measured, or even, some studies suggest, the anticipation of being measured. Sure, some kids seem to dig it. They preen and pose for it, they compete with their friends for it, they want to be better than everybody else. But everybody can’t be better than everybody else, and this business of being constantly scrutinized and compared to others does something insidious to the life of a child. I've seen kids drop what they're doing in an instant when they realize they're being observed in an appraising way. A wall goes up. The lights go out."

"But the power of the gaze goes beyond the numbers and letters used to quantify it. It exists in looks and tones and body language, in words and in the spaces between words. It is a way of looking at another human being, of confronting another human life; it is a philosophical stance, an emotional stance, a political stance, an exercise of power. As philosopher Martin Buber might have put it, the stance of true relationship says to the other, "I–Thou;" the evaluative gaze says "I–It." It says, "I am the subject; you are the object. I know what you are, I know what you should be, I know what 'standards' you must meet." It is a god-like stance, which is actually a big deal even if you think you are a fair and friendly god."

"The evaluative gaze of school is so constant a presence, so all-pervasive an eye, that many people have come to believe that children would actually not grow and develop without it. They believe that without their "feedback," without their constant "assessment," a child's development would literally slow or even stop. They believe that children would not learn from the things they experience and do and see and hear and make and read and imagine unless they have an adult to "assess" them (or unless the adult teaches them to "self-assess," which generally means teaching them to internalize the adult gaze.) For people whose experience is with children inside the school system, it may seem self-evident that this is true. For people whose experience is with children outside the school system, it may seem like believing that an acorn would not grow into an oak tree unless you measure it and give it your opinion. Because an oak tree does not actually require your opinion, and believe it or not, 90% of the time, neither does a child.

A pot boils whether you watch it or not. It just needs water and fire."

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Thread by @ecomentario

Fascinating and illuminating thread on decolonization/education/anti-capitalism.

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Here’s How You Can Help Fight Family Separation at the Border

Lawyers, translators, donations, protest.

When you hear about horrifying things happening, it can be easy to feel paralyzed, not knowing what you can do. Here are some ideas to get you started.