Unsolicited Evaluation Is the Enemy of Creativity

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The newest post by Peter Gray who is a research professor of psychology at Boston College, a specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology, and an author. This original piece can be found at Peter's blog Freedom to Learn at Psychology Today Here. 

In my last post I wrote of evidence that children’s creativity has declined over the past two or three decades, a period during which children’s lives, both in and out of school, have become increasingly controlled and regulated by adult authorities. Here, now, is some further evidence that freedom—including freedom from unasked-for evaluation—is an essential element to the blooming of creativity.

Non-directive, Non-Judgmental Parenting Predicts Subsequent Creativity in Children Longitudinal research has shown that children raised by parents who are relatively non-directive and non-judgmental exhibit more creativity later on than do those raised by relatively directive, judgmental parents.

The Real Damage Done By Testing in the Schools: A Conversation With Milo

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Roger Schank is an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur. He has worked at faculty positions at Stanford University and Yale University. He is the author of, Coloring Outside the Lines, and his website is here. Milo is his six-year old grandson.

I had a long conversation with Milo, my six year old grandson, the other day. Milo is very smart. (Yes, I know. What grandfather wouldn’t say that? But trust me, he is.) 

I asked him what he had done that was fun recently and he told me about a game he had been playing with a friend, which was good to hear about since Milo went through a long obsession with chess that I am happy to hear is waning.

I then asked him about school. I asked him if he liked taking the tests (which are everywhere these days - even in first grade) and I also asked him if he had learned anything interesting lately.

Deschooling Yourself – How to Recover from Traditional Schooling

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For those who have been to traditional school and need help deschooling. Also, some great links for any unschoolers. Written by Jamie over at Self Made Scholar, a blog all about self-education.

Shred your textbooks! Burn your report cards! Before you embark on an independent learning journey, you’re going to need to take some time to un-learn the negative lessons you picked up in traditional schools. Chances are you’ve spent a good thirteen years of your life sitting behind a desk. Maybe more if you attended college.

Perhaps your school years taught you how to read, how to solve mathematical equations, and how to come up with good excuses when you forget an assignment. You probably don’t remember many of the facts you learned – I know I don’t. In one upper-division course, I spent three tortured weeks memorizing twenty minutes of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” in Old English. Today, I remember three words of it. Don’t get me started on logarithms and quadratic equations.

Should We Connect School Life to Real Life?

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Excerpted from Will Richardson’s new TED Book Why School:  How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere. Richardson offers provocative alternatives to the existing education system, questioning everything from standardized assessments to the role of the teacher. In this chapter, “Real Work for Real Audiences,” Richardson envisions students creating work that is relevant and useful in the world outside school. The original article can be found here.

So what if we were to say that, starting this year, even with our children in K– 5, at least half of the time they spend on schoolwork must be on stuff that can’t end up in a folder we put away? That the reason they’re doing their schoolwork isn’t just for a grade or for it to be pinned up in the hallway? It should be because their work is something they create on their own, or with others, that has real value in the real world.

I’m not even necessarily talking about doing something with technology. (Let’s face it, though: Paper is a 20th-century staple that has severely limited potential, compared to digital spaces.) There’s lots of creating our kids can do with traditional tools that can serve a real audience. Publishing books, putting on plays, and doing community service are just a few examples.

NO to subjects and NO to requirements

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Roger Schank is an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur. He has worked at faculty positions at Stanford University and Yale University. He is the author of, Coloring Outside the Lines, and his website is here.

I have been spending a great deal of time in Europe lately, where the talk is about what to do about the awful governments that countries like Italy, Greece and Spain seem to be saddled with. (I am not saying the U.S. Is any better, maybe it is even worse -- I am simply reporting what I am hearing.)

In the course of one of these conversations, the talk turned to education, as it tends to do when I am around. The suggestion was made that schools should require students to learn about how government works, or maybe how it should work, in order to help citizens make better choices about who governs them and to be better at it when they are actually part of the government.

Unschooling Doesn’t Look Like School At All

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The author, Pam Laricchia, is "living joyfully and unschooling (since 2002) alongside my wonderful family. Hubby and I have three terrific kids and home is a five acre plot of protected wetland and cedar forest in Ontario, Canada that we have dubbed Alternate Universe. You can contact me at pam@livingjoyfully.ca." Read the original article at Pam's website, Living Joyfully.

Unschooling looks like life.

Like an endlessly unfolding summer vacation, minus the warm weather (unless you live a lot closer to the equator than I do!), but with one big difference: the kids don’t spend it decompressing, burning off steam from months of strict schedules and the stress to perform. And they don’t end up complaining they are bored because someone isn’t telling them what to do. Instead, they are busily pursuing the things that interest them.

In contrast, what does learning look like at school? The vast majority of us parents went to school, so we understand that process quite well: there’s a curriculum that dictates what we learn; a teacher that tries to help us understand it; and a test that determines if we remember it. Repeat that loop over different subjects and many years. It is an exacting process designed to meet its goal: teaching large numbers of students a defined collection of information and skills, within a set number of years.

Why Long Lectures Are Ineffective

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If students can only focus for 15-minute intervals, shouldn't we devote precious class time to something more engaging? Khan is the founder of the Khan Academy, a nonprofit with the mission of providing free, high-quality education for “anyone anywhere” in the world, and the author of The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined.

Each school day, millions of students move in unison from classroom to classroom where they listen to 50- to 90-minute lectures. Despite there being anywhere from 20 to 300 humans in the room, there is little actual interaction. This model of education is so commonplace that we have accepted it as a given. For centuries, it has been the most economical way to “educate” a large number of students. Today, however, we know about the limitations of the class lecture, so why does it remain the most common format?

Dayna Martin interviewed by Stefan Molyneux

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"Dayna Martin shoots a grappling hook over the wall of your prison school, and revs the engine of the getaway car! For more: http://www.daynamartin.com http://www.liferocks.com

Freedomain Radio is the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web - http://www.freedomainradio.com"

Our Unschooling Journey: Seeing Value in What Children Want to Learn

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The author of this piece, Rashmie, unschools her daughter Pari. Rashmie says, "my greatest passion in life is to make ‘learning’ fun, passionate, playful and creative for her – and – for me. For ‘me’, I say, because if the mother or the teacher stops learning, she will never be able to nurture learning in its true spirit." Rashmie's website is here.

I know I have taken some time to write about this most significant aspect of our life – homeschooling Pari. Well, to be honest – it’s not just an ‘aspect’ of our lives but life itself.
For homeschooling (actually ‘unschooling’ and I’ll explain that in a bit) for us is not limited to Pari’s learning, but involves living life in a way that involves making choices every day, every minute.

From learning to chores to food, bed time, interactions, conversations – unschooling begins with examining our parental and other attitudes even in the seemingly mundane aspects of everyday life. It begins with reflecting on our behavior that seeks to control, discipline and train.

Unschooling is letting go of our tendency to control our children (even spouses and other relations). It begins by trusting our children’s natural ability to learn and giving them the freedom to pursue their own ideas and passions. It lays utmost importance on building a loving, trusting bond with our children.

Do Right-Brained Learners Gravitate to Unschooling?

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Cindy Gaddis is a stay-at-home mother of seven children (son/25, daughter/22/married, son/21, son/19, son/17, son/13, son/11), five by birth and two by adoption. They've been a home educating family since 1992, so all her children have learned at home from the beginning. She has a book out, The Right Side of Normal, and her website is here.

I’ve had a theory for a while now that I believe most people who end up unschooling do so because the parent choosing to unschool is a right-brained learner, or the child in question is a right-brained learner. In my case, my first-born son is a strong right-brained learner, and he would end up teaching me how he best learned, which led straight to unschooling.

Basically, the reason I see this to be true is that right-brained learners tend to be mirror/opposites of left-brained learners. Their developmental learning process has a completely different order. Since school, and thus, most school-at-home approaches teaches in a left-brained manner, a right-brained child has to carve out a different path in order to achieve their optimal learning path. This causes a gravitational pull toward unschooling or eclectic homeschooling that allows, or even encourages, these differences to exist.