| I assert that school can never provide the kind of stimulating environment needed by a growing human mind. It can never offer the kind of nurturing that is needed to support a unique individual in finding and developing the passionate interests that can provide life-long happiness and success. School, grading and enforced curriculum is causing this mass rejection: Showing up as ADD, ODD, depression, anxiety (in both children and teachers), bullying, and at the extremes of desperation; suicides, and shootings.
For decades – nay more!! FOR AS LONG AS THE INSTITUTION OF FORMALIZED SCHOOLING HAS EXISTED there have been great minds who have warned us of the downfall of the system of education found in the western world.
Albert Einstein said:
 “The greatest detriment to my intelligence was my education”
-Albert Einstein
No wonder! Read on…
Current brain research, decades of anecdotal findings, and even earlier research have found that traditional schooling is not the optimal environment for learning. I argue that it is the optimal environment to create the results that we are seeing; the violence, boredom, dropouts, teacher burnout, student rebelliousness, high failure rate, and as mentioned, even the suicides and shootings.
 “Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.” – Beatrix Potter
You should do the research necessary to corroborate what I am claiming. Perhaps start with a simple exercise: Imagine spending a day in your child’s school. Pretend you are them and ask yourself throughout the day how you feel, is this how you learn best, is this environment safe, and is it nurturing of your humanity? Ask yourself as well if it is developing the habits, skills, and values that will serve your life and your community well. Speak to your child about all this as well; you may be surprised that they have a sound opinion.
“We are, most of us, much less than we have the demonstrated capacity to be”.
-Jean Huston.
Your child is capable of much more than what school can develop. School not only ignores our basic human needs, it works against them inevitably producing the results we are getting. This includes learning disabilities: Outside the classroom setting, these are not disabilities and are part of your child’s perfect make-up; harnessed and nurtured correctly, these qualities will actually contribute to your child’s unique path to success.
There are alternatives. There is much you need to learn about. These pages can only be a beginning to your understanding, to undoing the limited and mis-guided beliefs passed on to us about schooling. I understand that we believe strongly in it, and I understand that there does not seem to be any way around it; I am inviting you to open to the possibilities.
What is the alternative? It is a crap shoot at best whether your child will be one of the small percent of children who will do well in school; remember, after the 30 plus percent drop out, the rest are not all honor students! Then consider that those who do best in school are often challenged by life in the real world; where we pretend it works the same way when actually it does not play by the same rules.
Why not give your child a better chance? Embark on your own learning experience; discover what I and others have to offer and then you can decide which is best for your child. Not being willing to investigate leaves you and your child no alternative. I assert that a whole community of people who have been doing things differently can attest that – yes – you can achieve success and happiness without school. Also, that there is no such thing as a learning disability, just a different path to learning.
I believe that you and your child’s challenges are meant to make you wake up, and drop out of, the unnatural, unimaginative, depressing environment of schooling. It is my fundamental belief that we can no longer continue to school our children without taking into account their humanity, their individuality and like every human, their deep driving desire to be loved, nurtured, and respected.
We are all born with voracious minds that thirst for knowledge and for interaction with our surroundings. You know this when you watch a child growing, observing, and learning–before the onset of this enforced schooling.
A few choice insights to start you on your journey to new discoveries and joy:
Did you know that research has shown that if you never bothered to teach your child a thing before the age of 8 or 9, he or she could learn in a couple of weeks what they have been “schooled” since kindergarten? Un-schoolers, which is defined as “home-schoolers without curriculums who believe that learning comes naturally and therefore use their everyday environment as the foundation for learning” have found something even more astounding: If you never do anything but read to your child, your child will learn to read (and by natural extension–spell)! They’ve also successfully demonstrated that all learning can be done anytime; when there is an interest or a tangible need for that information.
What urgency is worth depriving our children of their childhoods? In fact, it appears to be detrimental to a child’s development to introduce a particular learning before the child is interested. Interest precedes the brain’s readiness; and this is highly individual.
 “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
- Albert Einstein
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