UNSCHOOLING 101

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Unschooling Quotations

Homeschool mom Mary Hood explains her concept of relaxed homeschooling: "I started out fairly structured, but I was very busy at the time, working on a master's degree, and then a Ph.D. Every once in awhile, I'd get so busy, I felt like I was neglecting my 'schooling.' At that point, all the textbooks would be put away, and my kids would be sort of on their own for awhile. Gradually, it dawned on me that they were actually being more productive and were happier when I gave them a little space than when I structured everything for them and became a 'teacher.'… To me, the heart of relaxed homeschooling is the following: You are a mom, not a teacher. You have a family, not a school. Your husband is the head of the household, but he's not the principal of a school. You have individual relationships with your children, not a classroom."

"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook." ~Henry David Thoreau

"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of, before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experience." ~Anne Sullivan

"There's not one replicated study in the United States today that suggests that little children should be in school at 5 or 6. Not even one! There's not one replicated study today in the United States that even suggests that a normal child should be in kindergarten. The home is the best garden for the child, the average home, and the time has come when we should be strengthening the home instead of taking children out earlier." ~Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore

"When a baby is picked up, spoken to, and loved, he is starting his education as God planned it. For all our lives we are human beings, in an active state of learning, responding, understanding. Education extends to all of life. In fact, an educational system that says, one bright summer's day in the dawn of my youth, "There. Now you are educated. This piece of paper says so," is doing me a gross disfavor. The truly educated person has only had many doors of interest opened. He knows that life will not be long enough to follow everything through fully." ~Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

"A sense of curiosity is nature's original school of education." ~Smiley Blanton

"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom….It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty." ~Albert Einstein

"My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself." ~George Bernard Shaw

"The only education worth anything is self-education." ~Robert Frost

An excellent reference book for quotations related to unschooling and self-education is Learning for Life: Educational Words of Wisdom. It contains almost 3,000 quotations by more than 1,000 people on teaching, learning, and the pursuit of knowledge. Learning for Life is suitable for readers of all faiths and philosophies, as it contains quotes from a diverse spectrum of religious and secular authors, philosophers, scientists, political leaders, psychologists and educators. Many famous homeschoolers from the past, as well as contemporary advocates of homeschooling and educational reform, are included. Learn and be inspired from the remarkable words of Albert Einstein, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Holt, John Taylor Gatto, Raymond and Dorothy Moore, Charlotte Mason, Maria Montessori, Friedrich Frobel, Jean Piaget, Howard Gardner, Thomas Armstrong, and many more. Click here to order.

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