Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life | 
pickThis is a must read for every parent, caregiver, and educator in the western world.
If you do not believe the planet is older than 4K years, you don‘t believe in evolution, or you genuinely believe your children were born bad and have to be taught to be good, this book is NOT for you.
👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
Think of how much better we could pay our teachers if we only needed HALF the budget to educate the children in schools, and the kids ended up way better prepared for life than they are now.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
I wish more parents understood this. I no so many educators that would jump at the chance to work with kids in this capacity instead of the stressful, coercive capacity they currently work. I don‘t know a single person who got into education to coerce children, but they have all found themselves there anyway.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #freethechildren ##freetheteachers
We seriously need to stop segregating children by age. It‘s hurting all of the kids. I‘m not sure it‘s helping in any way.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #agemixedgroups #agenixedlearning
This seriously just made me tear up. I think Darren is going to be okay.
💙💙💙
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #agemixedgroups #compassion
I think I talk about what I read way more. I feel like what I have to say has value, and I know I‘ll find someone who likes similar books or the topic to discuss with. Prior to Litsy, the people I‘m around IRL don‘t read what I read, so they would sort of roll their eyes and ignore me if I talked about what I was reading.
#changes @Megabooks
Through out this book, I‘ve thought about the adage that to teach is to learn again. Now, I‘m also thinking it‘s easier for a student to say “I don‘t know” to a younger student than to an adult, which also opens up the next part of the answer, “let‘s find out” or “let‘s look it up.” My older cousins did this with me all the time when I was growing up, and I frequently did it with the younger kids in my neighbourhood.
Outside of school, I was generally with much older kids or significantly younger kids. At one point, my 4th grade teacher complained to my mother that I wasn‘t content to just be with other 4th graders. I wanted to play with everyone and she thought something was wrong with me. Too bad for her it was actually making me smarter.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #agemixedgroups #agemixedlearning
It‘s amazing the number of people who say it‘s cruel to do this to animals, but necessary to do to children. Nope.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #play #freethechildren
Love this. The golden rule is oddly selfish...not to mention most people treat themselves horribly (and they learn to do so in childhood).
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
Could someone please pass this message on to all government officials, especially at the national level? Thank you.
I told you they freakin failed kindergarten. I guess, in a way, kindergarten also failed them.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
Kids, are amazingly young age, think creatively, hypothetically and critically in play. As young as 4 years old they can do this, but by that age we‘ve got them in play free preschools, listening to lectures and writing in workbooks, then we wonder why we have 17 year olds who can only think literally.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #play #weallneedtoplay
Educational Disneyland!!!
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
Sin 6 has lead directly to Trump in the Whitehouse and Brexit. Just a thought.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #criticalthinking
WTF?!
“Stop experimenting, this is science class!” Does this teacher even know what science is? Clearly the school system is screwed up if science class is not for experiments. Then again, I did tons of science experiments in grade school in the 90‘s in MN where we had no standardised tests, but in the early 2000s when I was in high school in TX with a long history of standardised tests...
I can vouch for this. In school, I absolutely HATED history classes. They were my least favourite classes throughout school. My love of history came from reading books over the summer, asking adults (especially my grandmother‘s friends) about their lives as kids, and later, looking things up on the internet. I was interested and I educated myself.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
This is the greatest school story I‘ve ever heard. This school is awesome.
“I want to build a still, just to see how it works.”
“Okay, go for it.”
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #schoolstories #buildastill
A wonderful, simultaneously outdated and new fangled, education system where NO BODY WINS!!! Isn‘t it great?! 🙄
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
And the powers that be don‘t care, because education does exactly what they want, namely keep them in power.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
This isn‘t creepy in the extreme or anything!!!
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
Because clearly, children are just wild beasts like the rest of nature and we must beat that wildness out of them and put them to work immediately. Lazy sods.
It‘s amazing the number of children whose parents genuinely see them as free labour or servants. The mentality is “why do something I can more easily have my children do, and then beat them for doing it wrong or not wanting to do it.”
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
The more violent and unequal a society is, the more likely that society is to hit their children. Hm. No wonder America is leading the charge to keep beating children. That certainly explains a lot. That does make me wonder why people who fight for equality still beat their kids. Part of me thinks it must be because they spent their childhood just waiting for their turn to do the hitting and they‘re not about to give up their turn.
I find it amusing that so many people feel that hunter-gatherers are less civilised, and the way we show our advanced civilisation is by hitting the weakest members of our society and calling it “good for them.” 🙄 Clearly it‘s not necessary to keep children alive or respectful or decent people. It seems with “greater” civilisation, we‘ve gotten less logical, less humane, and less decent. Funny how that works out.
Interesting concept. If we don‘t jump in for our children all the time and solve their disputes for them, they learn to do this peacefully and just keep playing, which leads them to be calm, self controlled, self reliant adults.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
@Weaponxgirl this made me think of learning to spell without creating childhood trauma or an anxiety disorder in children. 🤣😂🤣 It‘s only funny because it‘s so logical.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #naturaleducation #logicaleducation
But as a society we keep taking away their play, then blaming them for feeling like they have no control over their lives. We tell them to “take some initiative” and when they do, we punish them.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #freethechildren
This is what taking away recess and free play, and adding in standardised tests has done to our children. Yet most of society will blame the students themselves.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #freethechildren
Really shocked by the small town rural parents concerns about crime keeping their children indoors. Seriously? Cut the bloody umbilical chord.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #freethechildren
Actually, school wife cheating happens more often than you think. One local school got busted for having all the kids test in the cafeteria and each corner of the room was labelled A, B, C, or D and the principal would point to a corner for each question. This was seen as okay because it kept their funding high.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #childrenarepawns
And yet somehow, as adults, we are blamed for this. Sorry middle aged people, millennials were moulded into exactly what they are today. God help us all.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
Childhood is having the joy removed as painfully and ridiculously as possible. Anything that lets children still feel the joys of childhood I‘m all about. If you look at the right kids, childhood seems downright painful now.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education #joyofchildhood
I like this description of the education system. Especially now, it‘s coercive and beyond ineffective.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
I‘m really excited to dig into this book. It‘s part of the reading list I‘ve created to help we in my next writing project (part 2 of what I wrote for NaNo in November) and also for my foray into EdD studies.
#PeterGray #FreeToLearn #Education
“By segregating children by age, by caging them in so they can‘t avoid those who harass them, by indoctrinating them in a setting where competition and winning—being better than others—are the highest values, and by denying them any meaningful voice in school governance, we establish the breeding grounds for bullying.”
Today‘s schedule:
Read a chapter of tagged book
Pack lunches & breakfast
Take kiddos to cooperative school
Haircut
Pick up CSA share
Pop by schoolhouse to watch daughter facilitate a cooking class for her fellow students
Bring kids home
Laundry, dishes, gardening
Make dinner
Crochet chainmail costume for kid‘s Joan of Arc presentation
Read some more
Bedtime
It‘s going to be a good day.
I'm reading this book because I #homeschool my two kids, and have doing a great deal of thinking about child-interest led learning, also known as #unschooling. This passage is literally on the second page of the prologue, and resonates so strongly with me. What if all children were able to learn what and how they felt best for their needs and interests? What world it would be!
pickCan't help but read up on education now that I've got a little one... Even though she only just turned one. Heh. Interesting thoughts on learning and education. Motivation to look into all learning options; traditional school might not be right for all ways of learning.
