by Anthony Eldridge-Rogers in

HOLD THE BIGGER PICTURE

Anthony We all get focused on those small important things in our lives. We become focused and attached to behaviours and things that we have decided are either important and that feel compelling, or that are in some way addictive. We can get stuck in our thinking and beliefs, our attitudes and emotions. How easy it seems for us to start believing that the world that we see close-up around us is the only world there is. How much do we expand our view beyond the current crisis? Why is

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by Anthony Eldridge-Rogers in

SELF DIRECTED LEARNING & LIVING

What does it mean to be self directed? Most people consider that they are self directed. They will believe they make decisions freely for themselves and their families and that they are autonomous in their lives to a large extent. This confidence in the idea of being self directed extends to beliefs. Most of us argue that our beliefs are our beliefs because we chose them. It seems that way I know but it is not hard to understand that we are highly influenced by family background and social conditioning.

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by Lehla Eldridge in

A Free Ebook on Learning to Read as a Self Directed Learner

I stopped worrying about making my daughter learn to read, at aged 10, once I listened to her words. She said 'Please can you stop worrying about me reading and just leave me alone' and this was unheard of for me, as I hadn't quite got the unschooling thing. I was chasing her around, trying to get her to sit down with me, the stress levels were high, I was being annoying. She knew it, I knew it.She told me to stop! I did and it was amazing. It was

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by Lehla Eldridge in

Outside the Classroom: How Unschooling Redefines Learning

I am sitting here at my desk, it is grey outside and I am thinking back to my schooling, it was a long time ago. I struggled at school. That is where I used to think all learning happened. But as this unschooling journey has unfolded I have realised that schooling is not the only way.Kids just keep learning whether they are in school or not, they are designed to learn, they learn to walk, talk, eat, go to the toilet. They learn all these things naturally and when outside

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by Lehla Eldridge in

No Such Thing as a “Late” Reader: The Power of Self-Directed Learning

A story about reading from when our kids were younger. We pack the car to go on a family trip, our girls need to go back to the library to renew books. The library is a new thing we haven’t been in English speaking countries for a while, now we are, the library is exciting. Our son says ‘I don’t have a book for the journey’ we say ‘Use the library’ he chooses three books, he marvels that it is a free service. ‘What, for free? A book? Really? Amazing!’

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by Lehla Eldridge in

Stop Forcing It: How to Make Your Kids Fall in Love with Reading (Without the Struggle)

The first thing I would say is don’t make children love reading, you can’t. Support their natural inspiration and drive to learn to read because they are curious and they want to. Some ideas on how to inspire children to read Read them stories, if they want you to. Let them as far as possible choose what you are going to read. Even if they seem ‘too old’ to be read to, read to them. I noticed that our children followed every word I said whilst being read to. I

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by Anthony Eldridge-Rogers in

What is learning anyway?

An excerpt from ‘Jump, Fall, Fly’ written by Anthony Eldridge Rogers One of the main focuses of unschooling is related to learning. And out of this come many of the insecurities about alternative learning lifestyles like unschooling. It revolves around our beliefs and experiences of learning ourselves. So first of all let us get clear about learning. I love dictionaries and for this section I decided to look again at how the Collins dictionary defines learning. It is worth reproducing here as you will see. So first Learning is defined

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by Anthony Eldridge-Rogers in

Freedom and the Free Mind

The book is coming out soon and my thoughts have turned to a key question about raising kids and what might we mean when we say we want them to be ‘free’? This led me to ask what is a ‘free’ mind? The debate about conditioning ties into the wider issue of freedom. What is freedom? Does it exist, or is it a myth? It is defined by many different people and cultures in many different ways.  My definition is focused on freedom of the mind as opposed to freedom

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by Lehla Eldridge in

How Do Kids Learn To Read if you don’t teach them?

A short story about when my on was learning to read. ‘I will read when I can read’ were my sons words. At aged ten he is on the edge of flying in to the world of words. The ‘not being able’ to read bit is soon to be a sweet memory. I sit with him as he speaks the words out, I see a big complex word on the page and part of me hopes he will stumble, which is a funny thing to admit as it is counter

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by Anthony Eldridge-Rogers in

What on Earth is a Good Education?

  I came across a Buddhist educational blog this week. One thread on the blog was about education so I had a look around. What jumped out straight away was the proposition that children should be given a “good” education. It’s a phrase I have heard much in my life and what is clear to me is that a “good” education means many different things to many different people. Michael Gove, when UK Education Secretary said when he was mucking around with UK education that it involved all sorts of

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