Quotations from Unschooling and other related Learning Theorists

"Created as a system of socio-psychological engineering, schule was a brutish, authoritarian indoctrination and fear were its primary conditioning agents. Today's schools are not the Prussian military schule of the 18th century; however, today, schooling is a huge part of the underlying, socio-psychological engineering mechanmis that makes social engineering not only feasible but highly successful."

Mark Beaumont (current) "When enough people around the world are ready to face the truth about school, and take action aimed at reclaiming the lives of our children away from government, then a massive revamping of our educational services will be at hand. When enough people have discovered the truth about where school comes from, why it came, and who was to benefit from it, a more liberating educational paradigm will surely emerge. When the powerful ideas regarding unschooling are embraced by enough people, a moment of critical mass is an inevitability, and with it a liberating transformation away from authoritarian, indoctrination-schooling is likely to follow." Mark Beaumont (current) "I discovered that by providing the children with autonomy regarding how they would be assessed for their final projects, the students would respond enthusiastically. By providing maximum autonomy over their final projects, I observed children exuding levels of motivation unrivaled by the more typical, final exams and other highly prescribed assignments. The more the locus-of-control was placed in the hands of the students over their learning in general, and over their final projects specifically, the more intrinsically motivated they were to engage them." Mark Beaumont (current) "If you wish to increase your child's motivation and zest for life, try providing more freedom for them to learn by playing as well as observing and experiencing adults as they go about their everyday lives. It behooves us as responsible and loving parents to set out children free so that they may direct their own lives. By setting your child free, you'll enable them to take a more central role in deciding their educational experience and future lives." Mark Beaumont (current) "Non-coercive interaction is the fundamental rule of engagement that helps give rise to unschooling. Having the autonomy to live and learn without being forced or coerced is an integral part of the happy family and society. Unschooling offers non-coercive ideas and processes for helping your child to find their own way with life and the world. An autonomous child is a happy and motivated child, and a happy and motivated child learns best. " Mark Beaumont (current)

"Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns alll the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly". John Taylor Gatto (1935 - ) "School that children are forced to endure - in which the subject matter is imposed by others and the "learning" is motivated by extrinsic rewards and punishments rather than by the children's true interests - turns learning from a joyful activity into a chore, to be avoided whenever possible. Coercive schooling, which tragically is the norm in our society, suppresses curiosity and overrides children's natural feelings of helplessness that all too often reach pathological levels." Peter Gray (1944 -) "If freedom, personal responsibility, self-initiative, honesty, integrity, and concern for others rank high in your system of values, and if they represent characteristics you would like to see in your children, then you will want to be a trustful parent. Noen of these can be taught by lecturing, coercion, or coaxing. They are acquired or lost through daily life experiences that reinforce or suppress them. You can help your children build these values by living them yourself and applying them in your relationship with your children. Trust promotes trustworthiness. Self-initiative and all the traits that depend on self-initiative can develop only under conditions of freedom." Peter Gray (1944 -)

"School that children are forced to endure - in which the subject matter is imposed by others and the "learning" is motivated by extrinsic rewards and punishments rather than by the children's true interests - turns learning from a joyful activity into a chore, to be avoided whenever possible. Coercive schooling, which tragically is the norm in our society, suppresses curiosity and overrides children's natural feelings of helplessness that all too often reach pathological levels." Peter Gray (1944 -) "If freedom, personal responsibility, self-initiative, honesty, integrity, and concern for others rank high in your system of values, and if they represent characteristics you would like to see in your children, then you will want to be a trustful parent. Noen of these can be taught by lecturing, coercion, or coaxing. They are acquired or lost through daily life experiences that reinforce or suppress them. You can help your children build these values by living them yourself and applying them in your relationship with your children. Trust promotes trustworthiness. Self-initiative and all the traits that depend on self-initiative can develop only under conditions of freedom." Peter Gray (1944 -) "The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardise education, but to personalise it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions." Ken Robinson (1950 -)

"So these characteristic motivators, these if-then rewards, they’re really good for simple, straightforward, rule-based, what we might think of as algorithmic tasks, where you’re just following a set of instructions. And that’s what a lot of Americans– a lot of people in the industrialized world– did for a living for very long time. I mean, a lot of work was about turning the same screw the same way over and over, and when that kind of work started fading away, a lot of work– a lot of white collar work– was in some ways simply adding up columns of figures over and over again. That is, it was intellectual work, but it was pretty routine, algorithmic kind of work. And the truth is, what the science tells us is that for that kind of work, these carrot and stick, if-then motivators, they’re pretty good. They work pretty well. They don’t exactly ennoble the human spirit, but they’re fairly effective. The trouble is, is that for work that is non-routine, for work that isn’t algorithmic but is more conceptual, that requires big picture thinking, that requires a greater degree of creativity, that requires solving more complicated, complex challenges, the if-then motivators don’t work very well at all. And that’s not even a close call in the science. The behavioral science is very, very clear that– give people those kinds of motivators for creative, conceptual, complex tasks, and they will often underperform. So I think that people have always had this mix of drives, that’s what it is to be human, so I don’t think that their motivations necessarily have changed. I think what’s changed though, is the work that people are doing requires in some ways, a different technology for motivating people to do it."
Daniel Pink (1964- )

"The trouble is, is that if you’re trying to do anything creative, trying to solve a complex, conceptual problem, that kind of narrow, straight-ahead focus doesn’t help, it actually hurts. So in some ways, these if-then motivators work poorly for creative, conceptual tasks, in part because they work so well for the more routine, algorithmic tasks. That is, for those, a concentrated gaze of narrow vision is actually really effective. For creative tasks, they’re less effective"
Daniel Pink (1964 -)

"The other thing, which is a kind of an interesting phenomenon in the literature, is that sometimes adding a reward on top of something– that’s something that people inherently like– can actually make people less interested in the task. And so, for instance, if you think about something like open source. If you suddenly said, to some foundation or something, let’s start paying people who are contributing to open source, I actually think that would diminish participation in open source. Because I think what’s driving that participation is not the reward and punishment drive, but something more like the third drive, it’s about mastery, it’s about contributing, and so forth."
Daniel Pink (1964 - )

"And so I think you got to pay people enough. I would argue, pay people more than enough. In a sense that, it’s a paradox, but one of the best uses of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table, so people aren’t focused on money, they’re focused on the work. Once you do that, it’s really a matter of tapping the things that the science shows lead to enduring performance, particularly for more complex tasks. And that’s a sense of autonomy, self-direction, the desire to get better and better at something that matters, you can call that mastery, and also purpose, that is, doing what we do in the service of something larger than oneself."
Daniel Pink (1964 -)
"..dial back the carrot and stick motivators, and infuse the workplace with a greater sense of autonomy, allow people to make progress, and animate what the people are doing with a greater sense of purpose."
Daniel Pink (1964-)

Woman's Hour on Home Education and Unschooling

From about 15 minutes into this recording.  Well worth a listen.

UK Unschooling Network Guidelines

Below is the welcome post from the Facebook group which we ask all new members to read and to agree to by clicking "like" at the bottom of the post in FB.

WELCOME TO THE UK UNSCHOOLING NETWORK

We ask all new members to read this pinned post.

The purpose of the group is to provide a comfortable place where unschooling parents can experience solidarity and support for their unschooling practices.

Given that conversations often touch upon personal issues, strong emotions may be triggered. Therefore, in order for everyone to feel safe and supported, we ask that people respect our:

POSTING GUIDELINES:

1. You will be muted for the first 24 hours as a new member. This is to provide an opportunity to read and to get to grips with the ethos of the group.

2. Aim to create light rather than heat. Check you've really understood the issue before you post.

3. If you are still unclear, remain open to finding new solutions. Phrase questions so that it is clear that you are receptive to new ideas, eg: I'm struggling to agree with point x in unschooling theory, because ABC, but I would like to see why it might be a good idea?

4. Remember your ideas may be challenged as a way of helping you and other readers to understand and enact the principles of unschooling. Criticism is a gift.

5. Assume that members want to read replies that fit with the unschooling principles outlined below, especially, that anything that you say does not involve coercion or imposing an unwanted limit.

6. Please stick to the subject of unschooling. Do not post meta discussion, eg: inflammatory remarks about people or discussion about the rules of the group. If posts veer too far off-topic, admins might close the thread and delete irrelevant posts.

7. Please respect your family’s privacy. Ask their permission to post personal information. If you do not have their permission, post anonymously by contacting one of the admin team who will post for you, or you could frame the question hypothetically.

8. Please respect the privacy of the group. Do not copy or repeat personal information from the group elsewhere and do not take screen shots. Members who do this may be removed from the group.

9. Do not delete threads: the discussion is likely to be of interest to others and people will have spent time providing answers. Contact an admin if you are unhappy about anything posted.

10. Please don’t post links to personal blogs, websites, businesses, projects etc unless they are directly relevant to a discussion. Personal promotion will be deleted and persistent posters of personal information will be removed. Please post local events in local groups only. If you find it hard to connect with unschooling families in your local area, feel free to add a post to the thread on ‘Connecting with Other Unschoolers,’ which is in the files section.

11. If you find information in other places that you feel is interesting or inspiring, do post links with an explanation about how it is relevant.

12. In order to make the moderation of the group possible, you need to ensure the group admins can always see your posts, or you will be removed from the group. Please respond to PMs from admin.

13. Moderators reserve the right to use their judgement if they feel that a member or a thread is causing problems, even if there is not a particular guideline in place. The moderators of this group aim to be fair, so members are always given plenty of opportunity to resolve issues.

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WHO THE GROUP IS FOR:

This group is for parents who are home educating or thinking of becoming home educators. Sometimes previous unschooling parents may remain members when their children have left home.

Parents with children of any age are welcome since unschooling is relevant from birth.

Please also note this is a UK based page, and information will be from a UK perspective.

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WHAT IS UNSCHOOLING?

Over the years, unschooling has been defined in a variety of ways. Other terms such as "autonomous education" and "consensual living" have been used. We seek to constantly improve the theories and so welcome critique. But for now, for the purposes of the conversation in this group, our understanding of unschooling is as follows:

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UK Unschooling Network's PRINCIPLES OF UNSCHOOLING:
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1. RESPECT:
We focus on understanding and connection: a child’s viewpoint, however it is expressed, is to be valued and considered important.

2. FREELY CHOSEN, SUPPORTED LEARNING:
We strive to create a safe, nourishing and supportive environment where the child's freely chosen learning can flourish. We are our children’s partners in learning and supporters of their interests and passions. We seek to offer choices that will meet the needs and desires of our children but we understand if a child does not want to take up these opportunities. We recognise that children learn best when they can learn at the pace that suits them.

3. LEARNING and UNSCHOOLING:
Individuals learn using a wide range of methods, implicit and explicit, intuitive and rational. Learning happens in many ways: through everyday living, through a created, rich learning environment, by demonstration, or by the offer of new information. The key features of learning in unschooling are that the learner is self-motivated and the information relevant to the learner.

4. A VARIETY OF LEARNING SETTINGS and TYPES OF INFORMATION:
 We recognise that should the learner be interested, learning can be found anywhere, from a trip to the shops, to a video game, to a text book. We also recognise that people learn best when in company they enjoy, irrespective of age, and in locations they have freely chosen. Learning can be either co-operative or competitive. As long as learning is freely chosen by the learner, it is unschooling, whether it be informal, incidental, inferred from inexplicit example, social, private, conversational or responsively structured.

5. COERCION LIMITS LEARNING:
We understand that learning does not happen effectively when one person attempts to impose it upon another person against their will. All learning is initiated by the learner since any growth of knowledge will first require activity in the mind of the learner. Information cannot simply be forced into the mind of the other. We define coercion as "being forced to enact a theory that is not active in the mind, thereby limiting the capacity for rationality and creativity". Coercion inhibits learning, so we strive to avoid it. Unschooling parents also seek to help their children to resolve any internal conflicts (self coercion) that may arise in the child by seeking creative solutions that will reduce such conflicts.

6. PARTNERSHIPS:
We seek solutions to problems so that family members do not have an outcome imposed upon them against their wishes. In other words, we strive to find solutions that suit everyone.

7. THE BALANCE OF SUPPORT and FREEDOM:
Respecting the desires and rights of a child involves being attentive to the child’s needs and desires and prepared to answer questions and offer information. Unschooling is not laissez-faire parenting, a lack of involvement or neglect. It also does not mean that the adult should sacrifice their freedom and happiness to support the child’s, but rather should be about seeking to maximise freedom and happiness for all. We are also aware that partnering a child in a sensitive and responsive way does not mean being intrusive or overly involved.

8. HUMILITY ABOUT OUR IDEAS:
We realise we need to be alert for mistakes in our thinking and in particular to be aware of the possibility of false assumptions that we may have acquired from our own childhoods, the prevailing culture or simply as a result of human nature. We seek to remain open minded and to constantly test the validity of our ideas against reality, as far as we can know it.

9. LOVE, TRUST, HONESTY, OPTIMISM AND CHALLENGE:
We seek to build honest, trusting, loving relationships in the family through all of the above. Families should be places where ideas can be challenged, mistakes easily admitted and where errors are seen as a natural part of learning and a useful way forwards.

10. ADVOCACY ON BEHALF OF CHILDREN:
We acknowledge that many of the societies that we live in have a very different view of parent-child relationships from the principles expressed above. We seek to promote and normalize within our societies, the idea that children are full, complete and equal human beings, deserving of the same level of respect and as many as possible of the same freedoms that are afforded to adults. We see the concept of Adultism as being as important as Feminism.

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This group doesn't adhere to the writing of any particular 'expert’. Writers who inspire members here include: Pam Larrichia, Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison, Jan Fortune-Wood, and blogs: Racheous and Happiness is Here.

And in case you are in need of a little confidence inspiring note, please see here for what unschoolers do as adults: https://tinyurl.com/ybbfej9x

Privacy and Posting about our Families in Public Places

This can, and indeed should, be a problem for parents - not just unschoolers.  Most parents who use social media, will, at one time or another, feel the urge to post about their children for any number of reasons: from connecting with others, to sharing news, to seeking solutions to problems. In the UK Unschooling Network, unschooling parents will often need to ask questions which are unique to the child and it often seems almost impossible to do this without revealing a lot of detail about the child.

However this means parents are publishing often very intimate details about their children to a large audience.  Even if people post privately, the FB policy makes it clear that information may become public. And information, even when deleted, never goes away.  Memories abide, there are almost always other backup copies, screen shots may have been taken, and depending on how a system is run, there may be archives or other types of copies. This information is highly likely to be there forever.

And it isn't just a problem of permanence.  It is also a problem of respecting the privacy of others. This is where unschooling parents may be well placed to be thinking about and dealing the issue, and this because in every other part of life, unschooling parents strive to take heed of their children's opinions and to enable their children to live in a way that makes everyone in the family happy.  If an unschooled child says that they don't feel like going to the climbing wall, an unschooling parent won't force them to do it. And yet, it may be that the parent has just posted something about their child that the child would proscribe if only they knew about it.

Parents (unschooling or otherwise) should therefore seek the consent of the child when they want to post about the child.   This is the respectful thing to do and a reliable way to maintain a trusting relationship.  

And it must be informed consent too.  The parent must help the child understand the pros and cons of the information being out there.  For example, the parent should help the child consider how the child as an adult could one day feel about the information being shared now, how this may impact on their future selves, job applications, (employers nowadays do FB searches on potential employees), future relationships, etc.

And in the likely situation that the child does not want the parent to post about them, what then?  Well, there are solutions:

Either the parent could one of the admin team or another member who is known to them to put up an anonymous post. This is probably the easiest solution.

Or the parent could try to frame the question hypothetically, since the principle behind solving one problem may well solve another.  However, this may be difficult when there is a very particular problem that requires a unique solution. 

It may also be possible to try to post the question directly, but in a way that means that the child is happy to consent to it.   The parent must try to find a way to post as respectfully as possible, treating the child as a worthy human being and not referring to or about them as if they are one of their needs or characteristics, but instead using these concepts and labels only if relevant to the conversation and on the presumption that any labels are simply descriptors of the child's challenges and characteristics.

Whatever way you and your children choose, please do think about it.  Your children will thank you for it!

Differing Lifestyle Preferences within an Unschooling Family

An issue that comes up periodically in the Unschooling Network is one of lifestyle. More particularly, should unschooling parents be responsible for deciding how the whole family live? By way of some examples, should unschooling parents be able to insist that the entire family are vegan or live off-grid?

It could be argued that since parents have the money, the knowledge, as well as lots of other resources, and will be bringing a child into a world in large part of their choosing, they will inevitably determine the child's lifestyle and range of choices.  This is undoubtedly the case. 

However, a huge part of the unschooling process involves unschooling parents striving to create a rich learning environment for their children, and doing this will involve offering all kinds of information on all manner of different subjects and making the world widely available to a child.  Unschooling parents should do their best to offer best possible information about anything they think their child could possibly want and need to know. And as our children grow in confidence through having a solid base of love within the family, they will go out into the world and encounter new ideas that conflict with ideas that they have imbibed from their families.

If, one day, an unschooled child who has been raised in a vegan household, decides that he would like to try a bacon sandwich, a vegan unschooling parent with a good, trusting, no-strings attached relationship to the child may well offer their best arguments about why they think meat is problematic, but then say "Hey, it is up to you to decide and I won't love you any the less for making this decision.  It is your body and I could understand how a bacon sandwich could seem like a lovely idea.  It could be that you really do need a bacon sarnie right now."

OK, this might seem (vegan) pie in the sky impossible just now!  How many vegans do you know who could say this!  The thing is, that isn't only possible, but it IS what an unschooling parent would need to do and honestly, it has been done!  I know a reasonable number of unschooling families who are predominantly vegan but who live with and adore their meat eating members.

Managing the shift from "All meat eaters are cruel, hateful and misguided" to "I love my child so much and it is their body and their decision" is often not an easy thing, but it can be done. It involves realising that forcing a child to do something (eg: be vegan) when they don't want to be a vegan and aren't convinced that is the right thing to do is not going to get anyone anywhere very far.  It is not only going to cause a rift between parent and child, (with all the unhelpful possible ramifications that that might entail), but it is also not going to help the child with his perception of veganism.  He doesn't see the point of it right now, the parent's explanations have failed to convince him, he might be forced to eat a vegan diet for a bit longer, but come the day when he goes to his friend's party, and mother is out the room, he most likely will be making a bee-line for the sausage rolls, and his mother will be none the wiser. 

Unschooling is about partnering the child, treating the child's needs, interests and passions with respect and love and trying to find ways of enabling the child to make good choices in a safe space.  Far better that a child make their own free decisions about what they want to eat from a range of choices, with a load of good explanations and arguments at their fingertips, maintain a trusting relationship with their parents, and be helped to evaluate explanations for their truth seeking value.

If an argument is good, most likely eventually, with this kind of support, unschooled children will end up making the best decision themselves. (And yes, I can't help noting that there ARE a lot of vegan unschooled young people!:D)

Of course, the principles in the above argument can be applied to any lifestyle question, for example to the situation where the parent wants to live an off-grid, low impact, low carbon, low tech lifestyle but the children want Ipads.  Unschooling parents will find a way to respect and facilitate
these choices since not to do so would mean that they aren't unschooling.

What's the difference between "Unschooling" and "Radical Unschooling"?

The short answer to this question is: They are the same thing.

However, there is a common misunderstanding of these two terms, that is being repeated with an increasing frequency - meaning that a longer answer to this question is necessary.

In various pages online, we see the idea presented that there are two separate branches of unschooling philosophy: “Unschooling” (understood to consist of giving children freedom and autonomy in their academic learning), and “Radical Unschooling” (which extends freedoms to other areas of life such as food, bedtimes, TV and video games etc.).

This presentation of the difference between “Unschooling” and “Radical Unschooling” is a recent creation (by Dayna Martin, in around 2011).  It does not reflect either term as they were originally introduced and used for decades before.  It is also problematic, in ways that I will explore below.

Let’s start by looking at where these two terms came from.

Unschooling

The term “unschooling” was originally coined by John Holt in the 1970s, and referred primarily to a non-coercive approach to education.  While he began by looking at the sort of learning that happens in schools, Holt clearly saw that learning opportunities exist throughout life, and that in order to offer children freedom in their learning, we should offer them as much freedom across their lives as we can.

For example, when he visited Summerhill school in the UK, one of his criticisms was of the fact that children were not free to leave the campus, and walk into town; and his later writings such as “Escape from Childhood” are full of concern for the rights and freedoms of children, going far beyond what is traditionally thought of as “education”.

In other words, John Holt’s original vision of “unschooling” was about far more than simply academic freedom.

Radical Unschooling

As the homeschooling movement grew, John Holt’s concept of unschooling was gradually diluted by parents who adopted some of his ideas around academic freedom, but could not see the value in offering broader freedoms.  By the 1990s, the term “unschooling” was being used to refer to such a diverse range of approaches to home education, including some that were semi-structured or project-based, that the term was becoming virtually meaningless.

Writing on AOL message boards at this time, Sandra Dodd, Joyce Fetteroll, and others, started to use the term “Radical Unschooling” to distinguish their undiluted approach to unschooling from some of these other, more diluted, approaches.  They have kept the term to this day, and others have adopted it too.

But “Radical Unschooling” isn’t, and never was, something fundamentally different from the plain, vanilla “unschooling” that John Holt advocated.  It consists of the same broad ideas, applied to the same areas.  If you read Sandra Dodd or Joyce Fetteroll, you will see that they often use the term “unschooling” without the radical modifier, and they do so in many contexts, including those that concern aspects of “life” as opposed to “learning”.

For them, as for John Holt, plain, vanilla “unschooling” is about all aspects of a child’s life.

A shift in terminology

In the last few years, Dayna Martin has started using the term “Radical Unschooling” to describe her approach to education and parenting, and succeeded in generating considerable publicity around it.  Again, there are individual differences from other unschooling writers, but there are many similarities between her ideas, and those of John Holt and Sandra Dodd, so it’s reasonable that she uses the term “Radical Unschooling”.

What is novel, however, is her understanding of the relationship between “Radical Unschooling”, and plain old vanilla “Unschooling”.  In a major break from previous writers, she presents a position in which “Unschooling” and “Radical Unschooling” are two distinct philosophies, the first concerned only with academic learning, the second with broader lifestyle choices, including TV, food, bedtimes etc.

Dayna Martin’s profile mean that her definitions now feature prominently in google searches for the term “Radical Unschooling”.  As a result, her idea that “Unschooling” and “Radical Unschooling” represent distinct philosophies is starting to gain ground, and to be repeated elsewhere.  It is noticeable that many people who have learned about unschooling within the last few years understand the “radical” modifier to indicate a shift in scope from “just learning” to “all of life”, whereas those who have been unschooling for years are often quite unfamiliar with the terms being used in this way.

Why is this a problem?

This shift in terminology is unfortunate.  It creates the impression that there is a separate form of unschooling, consisting of “Un-Radical Unschooling” or “Education-only Unschooling”, under which parents could give children academic freedom, but continue to impose strict controls on their children in other aspects of life.  Indeed some may imagine that this was what John Holt’s ideas amounted to, and that the extension of these ideas of freedom to the rest of life was the invention of Sandra Dodd, Dayna Martin, or some other recent author.

The problem with “Education-only Unschooling” is not that such an approach to raising children is wrong in itself (that could be debated, but it’s a different topic) - but rather that it fails to incorporate some of John Holt’s most fundamental insights about children’s learning, and as such really cannot be described as a form of “unschooling”.  For unschoolers, learning is inextricably linked with life, and this means that it is not possible to give a child freedom in their education, without also giving them substantial freedom in terms of what TV they watch, what games they play, what they eat, and how and when they sleep: to restrict or control these things is inherently restricting and controlling their learning.

Parents do not have to accept these ideas - many do not - but if they do not, they are rejecting a major part of John Holt’s thinking, and would therefore be wrong to describe their approach to education as “unschooling”.

Unschooling is - and always has been - about the whole of a child’s life.  There are no boundaries within which learning happens: learning happens all the time, and out of myriad different influences.

The UK Unschooling Network believes in the value of giving children choice and freedom in all aspects of their lives.  Everyone who identifies with these ideas is welcome.

Unschooling Ideas through History

Many ideas about learning and education that are similar to unschooling date back thousands of years, and have been shared by thinkers, writers, artists, scientists, parents and business leaders alike.  Here are some examples:

“Do not train children in learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”

Plato (428 - 348 BCE)

“While bodily labours performed under constraint do not harm the body, nothing that is learned with compulsion stays with the mind”

Plato (428 - 348 BCE)

“I hear, I forget; I see, I remember. I do, I understand.”

Old Chinese proverb

“Just as eating contrary to the inclination is injurious to the health, so study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

“To develop a complete mind: study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else."

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) And there be also some things both pleasant to be known, and as it were peace to children's wits, which to learn is rather a play than a labour. Howbeit childhood is not so weak which even for htis is the more meet to take pains and labour because they feel not what labour is. Erasmus (1466 - 1535)

“Bring not up your children in learning by compulsion and feare, but by playing and pleasure.”

Roger Ascham (1515 - 1568) (tutor of Elizabeth I)

"You cannot teach a person anything; you can only help him find it within himself."

Galileo (1564 - 1642)

“Nothing should be taught to the young… unless it is not only permitted, but actually demanded by their age and mental strength.”

Comenius (1592 - 1670)

(on learning to read)

“Great care is to be taken that it never be made a business to him, nor he look on it as a task. We naturally… even from our cradles, love liberty and have therefore an aversion to many things for no  reason but because they are enjoined to us.”

John Locke (1632 - 1704)

"Every boy learns more in his hours of play, than in his hours of labour"

William Godwin (1736 - 1856)

"Communicate knowledge, without infringing, or with as little as possible violence to, the volition and individual judgement of the person to be instructed."

William Godwin (1736 - 1856)

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

Frederick Douglass (1818 - 1895)

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education”

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

"What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real."

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

“From a very early age, I’ve had to interrupt my education to go to school.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

W.B. Yeats (1865 - 1939)

“Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.”

Beatrix Potter (1866 - 1943)

“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.”

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought”

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

“The only time my education was interrupted was while I was at school.”

Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) "It is ...nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreak and ruin. It is a very grave mistake to think that he enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. " Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

“I never teach my pupils, I only provide the conditions in which they can learn”

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education”

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

(on children)

“You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”

Khalil Ghibran (1883 - 1931)

“Neither comprehension nor learning can take place in an atmosphere of anxiety”

Rose Kennedy (1890 - 1995)

“When a subject becomes totally obsolete, we make it a required course.”

Peter Drucker (1909 - 2005)

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”

Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

“Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”

Stanley Kubrik (1928 - 1999)

“I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students”

Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)
“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over”

Richard Branson (1950 - )

With thanks to the following sources, from which some of the above quotes have been taken:

https://www.diygenius.com/unschooling-quotes/

http://www.lifelearningmagazine.com/quotes-about-unschoolin…

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Education-Very-Short-I…/…/0199643261