Many of you will be familiar with my fondness for Ken Robinson’s TED talks. I’m very grateful for the pioneer in him that dares to speak from the point of view of children who are crying out for radical change in how they engage with education. Whether that happens through compulsory mass schooling or more [...]
Perhaps some of you are familiar with Sir Ken Robinson’s video from 2006 where he talked, very memorably, about how schools kill creativity. In this, his latest TED talk, he urges us, in his characteristically funny and touching style, to shift from our current standardised learning system to one that is more personalised, creating learning [...]
From talking about growth in the last blog, my mind has turned to children and the subject of alternative education. Some of you, I know, are home educating parents and many of you who send your children to school question the methods that are used to teach your children and to interact with them. For [...]
It was during a family camping trip several years ago that the idea hit me that downshifting might be a positive and beneficial thing to do. I realised, when preparing for our holiday, that the questions I was repeatedly asking myself were: “What’s the absolute minimum we need to take with us?” “What can we [...]
The teenage years can be quite a challenge, however you decide to educate your child. If your child has been home educated for at least a few years before reaching adolescence, then they will probably be accustomed to the lifestyle. If you are lucky, your teenager will also have learnt how to educate themselves with [...]
From my experiences of helping to run a local home educators’ support group, I know that the school summer holidays can be a decision time for those families who are facing problems with their children’s education. Sometimes it is the act of going away together that gives parents and children the opportunity to talk about [...]
As lifestyle challenges go, combining earning a living whilst at the same time home educating your children, has to be one of the toughest. I’m assuming, for the purposes of this article, that you’re not one of the few home educating families where the parents can afford to go out to work and employ someone [...]
I’d like to invite you to think for a moment about those activities that you enjoy doing most now, as an adult, and see if you can remember how you learnt to do them. Were you taught in a formal way? Did you teach yourself? Did you learn through performing tasks, reading about it or [...]
This site seeks to explore the heart and soul of downshifting to a more sustainable, ethical and holistic way of living and working, in keeping with the needs of the planet, humanity as a whole and ourselves as individuals. (read more)
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