"We have a cultural notion that if children were not engineered, if we did not manipulate them, they would grow up as beasts in the field. This is the wildest fallacy in the world"
Joseph Chilton Pearce |
A Teacher Questions Compulsory Schooling
Jim Strickland
Natural Life Magazine
"Compulsory attendance laws undermine learning by creating an atmosphere of coercion, mistrust and manipulation. They do this by their very existence as the faint (or not-so faint) hum in the background of each potentially joyful moment in every classroom. We all know the best way to make anyone hate doing something is to force their compliance under threat of punishment. Learning that is meaningful, lasting and real can only take place with the consent and willing participation of the learner. One cannot teach the values of freedom and democracy using a totalitarian pedagogy. The medium is the message."
Why high school must go: an interview with Leon Botstein
Robert Epstein | Phi Delta Kappan | May 2007
"Does our culture protect teens from themselves, or does it create the very irresponsibility we are trying to protect them from?"
Totally Wasted
Sallie Tisdale | Salon | 1998
"High school devalues teenagers' idealism, saps their creativity and is just plain boring. So why don't students want it to change?"
The Student as Nigger
Jerry Farber (1969)
"School is where you let the dying society put its trip on you. Our schools may seem useful: to make children into doctors, sociologists, engineers--to discover things. But they're poisonous as well. They exploit and enslave students; they petrify society; they make democracy unlikely. And it's not what you're taught that does the harm but how you're taught. Our schools teach you by pushing you around, by stealing your will and your sense of power, by making timid square apathetic slaves out of you--authority addicts."
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Bureaucrash
International network of guerrilla activists dedicated to the idea of free expression, free enterprise and free thought.
College Without High School: A Teenage Guidebook
College Without High School is a guidebook for teens who are bored, frustrated, or otherwise unsatisfied with the high school experience. In it you’ll learn how to define your dreams, replace school with adventure, and and still go to a top-choice college.
DraftResistance.org
Encourages resistance to the registration laws of the United States.
Freedom to Learn Blog
Peter Gray | Psychology Today
The roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning
HEYC: Home Educated Youth Council
An independent voice for home educated youth in the UK. HEYC seeks to defend the rights of home educated children and young adults in the UK.
Homeschool Leadership Retreats
Homeschool Leadership Retreats offers 2-week sleep-away programs for homeschoolers, unschoolers, and other self-directed students, ages 14-17.
High School Students' Rights
(PDF file - opens in new window)
Briefly summarizes some of the First Amendment and other important rights of high school students.
Home Schooling: A Happy Exit from High School
Megan Moss | AlterNet.org
How Free is Your School? A Visit to the Portland Freeskool
Cody Sisco | AlterNet.org
International Freedom in Education Day
The aim of IFED is to promote the importance of free choice concerning the type of education that your family chooses and to spread information about alternative ways of learning that are available or are being fought for in various countries.
Izzy's Guide to Starting & Running and Underground Newspaper
Made from 100% Recycled Pimply Teenager Angst.
Misled Youth
This is a place for squatters, skaters, graffiti writers, teen mothers, and kids who hide poetry under their mattresses; for comic book nerds, ghetto geniuses, suicidal guitarists, and queer video producers; for incarcerated visionaries, runaway breakdancers, and honest criminals; for dropouts with straight A’s in survival.
National Youth Rights Association
NYRA is a youth-led national non-profit organization dedicated to fighting for the civil rights and liberties of young people.
Not Back to School Camp
Not Back to School Camp aspires to create a sanctuary that affirms, inspires, and mentors unschoolers; where campers and staff transform spiritually, emotionally, physically, creatively, intellectually; where profound friendships begin and grow; and where adventure, mystery, music, wild spontaneous fun, and magic prevail.
The Philosophy of Liberty
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Animated introduction to the philosophy of liberty.
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Rise Against Terrible Schools
People from all over the world who are either trying to do something to change schools for the better, or helping people to start unschooling/homeschooling.
Rise Out: Defining Our Own Education
Deschooling, youth activism, and related issues concerning the rights of youth in the U.S. Supports a young person’s choice in dropping out of school, free of social stereotypes and biases, along with a diversity of alternatives to education that are self-directed and decentralized from standardized schooling.
Schooling Yourself
Elizabeth Milne Kahn | AlterNet.org
An unschooler writes about a growing movement of teens interested in learning outside a classroom, all the while looking closer at assumptions about learning and the politics of education.
School Survival
It's okay to hate school: There is nothing wrong with you.
Loads of links here.
The Teaching Company
The Teaching Company brings engaging professors into your home or car through courses on DVD, audio CD, and other formats. Since 1990, great teachers from the Ivy League, Stanford, Georgetown, and other leading colleges and universities have crafted over 250 courses for lifelong learners like you. It's the adventure of learning without the homework or exams.
The Teenage Liberation Handbook:
How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education
Grace Llewellyn
"Your life, time, and brain should belong to you, not an institution. This Handbook is for everyone who has ever gone to school, but it is especially a book for teenagers and people with teenagers in their lives. You'll read:
- good reasons to think about quitting school
- how to reclaim your natural ability to learn and teach yourself
- how to get your parents' support, keep your friends, and stay out of legal trouble
-how to design a personalized education you can get excited about
- how to go to college without going to high school
- how to find volunteer positions, apprenticeships, and other work opportunities - how other unschooled teenagers live and learn." More...
Unschool Adventures
Unschool Adventures designs and leads innovative trips, both domestic and international, for independent teenagers.
Unschooling Rules
Clark Aldrich
50 observations from homeschoolers and unschoolers that can be used to simplify all childhood learning and evolve the Industrial Education Complex
Why Nerds Are Unpopular
Paul Graham
Youth & Militarism
American Friends Service Committee
Includes information on school-based ASVAB Testing and how and why to avoid it.
Youth Rights Network
An encyclopedic resource detailing various aspects of youth rights, including core issues, history, publications, organizations, and prominent figures within the movement.
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