Category: Articles

Introduction This essay is for people who steadfastly believe that healthy democracies are dependent upon public education being everybody’s first choice. It is written for those who strive for the open-mindedness John Dewey[1]  describes as follows: “Openminded is the active desire to listen to more sides than one; to give heed to the facts from whatever […]

Just a week before writing this piece, the CEO of a major company and I were discussing what the educational world needs to provide for his leading edge business. After discussion, he emailed me the list that follows. These are his words. “Building the right mindsets, critical reasoning, understanding of biases, creative thinking and problem […]

Authors: Max Hope & Sophie Christophy Max Hope, Director of Rewilding Education and advocate of freedom is passionate about rewilding and is excited about how concepts of rewilding can be used to ignite radical educational change. Sophie Christophy, Founder of The Cabin and unschooling parent, is a feminist and children’s rights activist and originator of the concept of consent-based education. […]

The desire to play is fundamental to the human condition and is impossible to suppress.  Even in the most challenging situations, it will find a way to exist.  Children played in the bomb craters of the Second World War,  Continue to play in the devastation of Syria and will play in the wasteland of our broken […]

How can we recover respect for human rights in education? There’s a reason for the ambiguity of my title. Too many people seem to ignore, through ignorance or negligence, the true meaning and purpose of the right to education. So it is essential first to recall the purpose—and then to question its implementation in practice, […]

Watching our oldest child’s interest in learning slowly disappear and their curiosity and creativity dwindle became the motivator to us choosing to take all three of our kids out of the state system. It was not that their school was bad, or that the teachers were poor, or that the leadership team were without vision […]

In UNESCO’s Progress Update on the Futures of Education, published in March 2021, UNESCO denied the value of Self-Directed Education and autonomous learning, despite much significant scientific evidence to support its efficacy. Considering such a stance could seriously jeopardise the UN agenda 2030 to lead to a regenerative education by 2050 for more just and sustainable futures. Gabriel Groiss, […]

Dan’s personality had begun to change after he’d started school. He had often been tired and down-hearted when I’d collected him. I had to take into account that he not only had to deal with the new demands of full-time schooling but also had to adjust to a new baby in the home and the […]

Transcript from Derry Hannam’s talk at the online Summerhill Festival of Childhood, October 3rd 2021: My 1999 IDEC [International Democratic Education Conference] talk was given at Summerhill when the school was under threat from Ofsted inspectors. There had been a hostile hatchet job inspection earlier in the year and the school had been told to […]

Learning that’s lost in school can be found in many ways, if it needs to be found at all. As a homeschooler and author, I field many questions about the lost educational and social opportunities children face by being out of school, but the COVID-19 pandemic has made the issue of lost learning a deep […]

When I first went up to Cambridge University, I didn’t find Europe’s largest library for over six weeks. I never went to a single History lecture, despite being told that some of the country’s finest minds would be sharing their theories with me. When I did find the library, it was like a cathedral of […]

[A link to the audio version of this article is found at the end.] If you follow the mainstream education debate as avidly as I do, and really here I’m talking about the debate as it plays out largely on the internet – social media and blogs, predominantly, as well as at conferences and in […]

Lisa Carne shares with us a flavour of her book, Natural Curiosity, which is a warm and contemplative insight into her family’s experience of moving from mainstream schooling to home education, and learning through the lens of nature and natural history: “People say to me, ‘How did you first become interested in animals?‘ and I […]

Context: Since July 2020, Diverse Educators have held a quarterly Diversity Roundtable with national stakeholders invested in, and committed to, a system-wide strategy for collaborating on a DEI strategy in our schools. They collectively wrote to the DfE, the SoS, the NSC and the Equalities Team on March 1st 2021. They are yet to receive […]

…None appear for ages, then they all come at once! Does this mean that we are looking at a Post-Pandemic Overton Window for our ideas? And how do we feel about ‘for-profit’ democratic schools? I grew up in South London and my dad was a bus driver. There was supposed to be a number 47 […]

This article describes my doctoral research into shared decision-making in the classroom and offers hope and encouragement to teachers and school leaders who seek greater collaboration with their pupils. In my mid-fifties, having worked as an Educational Psychologist for over 30 years, I decided that I needed to find a way to reinvigorate my professional […]

“Why are those teachers screaming at those kids?” my son James asked me, with a look of true shock and concern on his face. He was observing some teachers across the cafeteria as they were berating a group of students sitting at lunchroom tables. It was James’ first time attending a public school class. The […]

Following the establishment of a state-controlled education system in England and Wales through the Education Act 1902, most people in Britain have become used to the belief that education is the responsibility of the government. That, however, is far from the truth. The Act’s provisions on Elementary Education (s.9) charged the new Boards of Education […]

When I start talking about self-directed education, one of the first questions which comes up is, but what about exposure? Surely children don’t know all the things which are out there, and it’s our responsibility to make sure that they do? Isn’t that what an education is all about? How can we leave Maths ‘up […]

A Statement from Zoë Readhead-Neill, Principal at Summerhill School: Today the UK government is launching an enquiry into sexual harassment, physical violence and even rape between students in UK schools. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is launching a special helpline to learn more about its prevalence and offer support […]

Children’s long term well-being depends on being given the time to make sense of their experiences. What will we want to do when finally this pandemic is over, and restrictions are lifted? See people we love, go to places we’ve missed, buy non-essential items in shops, find a crowd and just marvel at how many […]