This may be an unpopular view in unschooling circles, but we have things we won’t sacrifice for the sake of freedom. There’s a lot of focus on free children in unschooling – have you noticed? A lot. At first glance, it may even seem like freedom is the main thing. And I think it was initially, and still is for many. John Holt and others who were writing last century certainly advocated that children be free, as their over-arching principle, although often freedom isn’t really defined, and sometimes comes from a libertarian perspective where the human right to individual freedom trumps […]
For a period of time after beginning to home educate I settled on consent-based education as a description of what I was aiming for and what I believed education and parenting should ideally be, for us. Since then, and sliding closer and closer to unschooling (the slipperiest slope of all!), I’ve had more thoughts about this. I still believe that consent-based as a general principle is an absolute necessity in all education settings, and all settings for that matter (children AND adults!). Consent is important because every one of us, children included, is a person with the right to be […]
