THIS ISN’T NEW!

People identify many different starting points for radical thinking in education, depending on which movement they are referring to. In the USA one still often hears names like John Dewey: Maria Montessori, John Holt.

During my graduate years, when I studied educational philosophy, I realized that practically since the beginning of schooling educational thinkers have been pointing to the fundamental conflict between learning institutions and the bodies, minds and spirits of young people. 

In time I’ll be populating this page with some of the voices from the recent past, and earlier.

For now I’d like to share a piece I wrote many years ago about the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. While identified primarily as a member of the cannon of “classical” literature, Tolstoy was a fiery radical in his social and pedagogical thought. There is still barely an idea in the unschooling movement that I didn’t find articulated in his works. Here is an excerpt of a paper I wrote about him many years ago.

I’ll also share the link to a book I wrote many years ago called Educational Philosophy in The French Enlightenment: From Nature to Second Nature

(Although the book is very academic and detailed will mostly help you if you have insomnia…)

In my early years investigating the history of educational theory I wrote a book about 18th century French thinkers. On the surface, and compared to our current views, these very dead very European very white men were conventional and conservative thinkers. But they nevertheless articulated many of the ideas around pedagogy that later became popular and are still sometimes put forward as new: from the idea of reintroducing apprenticeship to children so their learning is not all academic, disembodied and separated from their communities; to the idea that learning is everywhere and all the time rather than something that happens in one building or institution at particular times of day; to the importance of recognizing the emotional and psychological impact of negative or oppressive learning experiences on children. 

Stay tuned for more on educational thinkers from the past….