NHEG-July-August2022

July August 2022
NHEG EDGUIDE July - August 2022
THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2022
BY KERRY MCDONALD
Boston College Psychology Professor: “School Has
Become a Toxic Place for Children”
More families may be flocking to homeschooling and
other schooling alternatives over the past two years,
but Peter Gray has been urging families to flee coercive
schooling since long before the pandemic began. The
Boston College psychology professor wrote in his 2013
book Free To Learn: “The more oppressive the school
system becomes, the more it is driving people away, and
that is good.”
Gray joins me on this week’s episode of the LiberatED
Podcast to talk about the harms of forced schooling and
why self-directed education, grounded in play, is most
beneficial for youth learning and development.
In our conversation, Gray explains that standard
schooling today is a key factor in the continuous
rise in rates of childhood and adolescent anxiety,
depression, and suicide. Its imposed, one-size-fits all
curriculum, reliance on reward and punishment as
external motivators, and dismissal of natural childhood
curiosity and creativity erode learners’ powerful drives
for learning and discovery. Stripped of these drives, and
increasingly deprived of opportunities to play, explore,
and pursue individual interests outside of school without
the constant hovering of adults, children and adolescents
become more melancholic and morose.
“We adults are constraining children’s lives, in school
and out of school,” says Gray in our podcast discussion.
“School has become a toxic place for children, and we
Self-directed education, grounded in play, is most beneficial for youth learning and development.
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refuse to say that publicly. The research can show it but
it almost never gets picked up in the popular press,” he
adds.
Our discussion digs deeper into Gray’s research on the
link between standard schooling and skyrocketing rates
of diagnoses of ADHD, which Gray asserts is essentially “a
failure to adapt to the conditions of standard schooling.”
He talks about the disappearance of childhood play
and the corresponding rise in childhood mental health
disorders, as well as why parents shouldn’t be too
concerned about their children’s screen time use.
Gray believes that parents should remove their children
from standard schooling and embrace schooling
alternatives that are centered on self-directed
education. “I’m cheered by the ever-growing stream of
people who are leaving coercive schooling for relaxed
homeschooling, unschooling, Sudbury schooling, and
other forms of education that allow children to control
their own learning,” he wrote in Free To Learn.
The current exodus of families away from standard
schooling and toward other, often freer, learning models,
may have positive, long-term effects on young people’s
intellectual development and emotional well-being.
Listen to the weekly LiberatED Podcast on Apple,
Spotify, Google, and Stitcher, and sign up for Kerry’s
weekly LiberatED email newsletter to stay up-to-date
on educational news and trends from a free-market
perspective.
FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2022
BY KERRY MCDONALD
From Pandemic Playgroups to a Thriving Microschool:
How One “Edupreneur” Met Rising Parent Demand for
Schooling Alternatives
Ada Salie heard a lot of complaints. Parents were upset
about what was happening in their children’s schools
last fall, and were reluctant to send their children back.
Many of the parents she heard from had pulled their
children out of a district school for homeschooling during
the 2020/2021 academic year—something that millions
of parents did that year, according to US Census Bureau
data. They wanted a place to send their children in fall
2021, but many didn’t want their kids masked all day or
contending with various other school policies.
Ada decided to turn those complaints into an opportunity.
The Massachusetts mother of three had been
running playgroups and offering gatherings and activities
for homeschooled children throughout the pandemic
response. She decided to make these offerings more
formal. So, last August she leased a building in central
Massachusetts and launched Life Rediscovered, a homeschool
learning center that attracted dozens of children,
ages 5 to 13. The children can attend part-time or fulltime,
and engage in Montessori-inspired learning activities
and plenty of play.
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
Now is an ideal time for more parents, educators, and innovators to build new K-12 learning
models.
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On this week’s LiberatED podcast, Ada Salie shares how
she launched her program, including the ups and downs
of education entrepreneurship and her advice for aspiring
entrepreneurs who are dreaming of launching a
similar microschool or schooling alternative.
Ada’s story is familiar. Other parents and educators who
created informal “pandemic pods” and co-ops during
school shutdowns evolved those programs into brickand-mortar
businesses as well. Ada thinks the parent
demand for such programs is enormous.
“I don’t think there’s going to be any shortage of kids
and families looking for services, but right now I do see
a shortage of services,” says Ada. “We have families that
drive up to an hour to get to us because there’s nothing
in their area.”
With the Associated Press recently reporting that homeschooling
rates remain at record high levels this academic
year despite school reopenings, and public school enrollment
declines continuing, now is an ideal time for more
parents, educators, and innovators to build new K-12
learning models.
Listen to the weekly LiberatED Podcast on Apple, Spotify,
Google, and Stitcher, and sign up for Kerry’s weekly LiberatED
email newsletter to stay up-to-date on educational
news and trends from a free-market perspective.
https://fee.org/