Resources

Thirty years in New York City’s public schools led John Taylor Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine.

Punished By Rewards - Alfie Kohn

A landmark psychological critique of basic motivational strategy, this book attacks the strategy of dangling incentives in front of people to affect their behavior.

Free At Last: The Sudbury Valley School - Daniel Greenberg

This best-selling description of the school is bursting with the excitement of life at Sudbury Valley. Free at Last is also chock-full of stories that illustrate the many unique features of this highly original model.

Changing Our Minds: How children can take control of their own learning - Naomi Fisher

This essential guide will give you an understanding of why self-directed education makes sense, how it works, and what to do to put it into action yourself.

The Pursuit of Happiness: The Lives of Sudbury Valley Alumni - Daniel Greenburg

Explores the lives of students who spent their formative years at the school, examining in depth their values, their character, and their careers.

Free to Learn - Peter Gray

In order to foster children who will thrive in today’s constantly changing world, we must entrust them to steer their own learning and development.

How Children Fail - John Holt

An enduring million-selling classic, including insights into how children investigate the world, into the perennial problems of classroom learning, grading, testing, and into the trust and authority in every learning situation.

Free-Range Kids - Lenore Skenazy

This book uses statistics and analogies to make a strong case for why it's safer than ever to let your children play independently, and how it will make them stronger, more resilient adults in the long run.

How Children Learn - John Holt

A look into how we learn to talk, to read, to count, and to reason, and how we can nurture and encourage these natural abilities in our children.

Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything - Laura Grace Weldon

With data from neurologists, child development specialists, anthropologists, educators, historians and business innovators, this book turns many current assumptions about school-based education upside down.

Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better - John Holt

Holt’s most direct and radical challenge to the educational status quo and a call to parents to save their children from schools of all kinds, laying out the foundation for unschooling as the vital path to self-directed learning and a creative life.

Learning All The Time - John Holt

This delightful book shows how children learn to read, write, & count in their everyday life at home, and how adults can respect & encourage this wonderful process.

In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness - Chris Mercogliano

Virtually every arena of kids’ experience is now subject to some form of outside control. Lamenting risk-averse parents, overstructured school days, and a lack of playtime and solitude, this book is a clear and compelling plea to save childhood.

Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book Of Homeschooling - John Holt and Pat Farenga

A classic text on teaching children at home, updated in 2003 to reflect new laws, new lifestyles, and the growing new generation of homeschooling parents.

Jump Fall Fly from schooling to homeschooling to unschooling - Lehla Eldridge and Anthony Eldridge Rogers

How one family abandoned traditional education, embraced the freedom of childhood, self directed learning and play to better prepare their children for a rapidly changing future.

Home Grown - Ben Hewitt

Adventures in parenting off the beaten path, unschooling, and reconnecting with the natural world.

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder - Richard Louv

This book explores the many problems associated with children spending too little time outdoors and, by extension, the innumerable benefits of time spent in nature.

Playborhood: Turn Your Neighborhood Into A Place For Play - Mike Lanza

You’ll find inspiring stories of innovative communities throughout the US and Canada that have successfully created vibrant neighborhood play lives for their children.

Sage Homeschooling - Rachel Rainbolt

This book offers a natural learning path for gentle parents who dream of living fully in joy and connection with their children while giving them all they need to be successful, with eight secrets to living a fulfilling unschooling life.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life - Marshall B. Rosenberg

This book offers insightful stories, anecdotes, practical exercises and role-plays that will dramatically change your approach to communication for the better.

Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom - Kerry McDonald

A primer on Unschooling and the origins of the self-directed education movement, with answers to many frequently asked questions and tons of references for further research and reading.

Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work - Akilah S. Richards

Richards examines the ways that her relationships to blackness, decolonization, and healing work all combine to form relationships and enable community-healing strategies rooted in an unschooling practice.

Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School? - Blake Boles

The case for helping children leave school, chart their own paths, and prepare for adulthood at their own pace.

Podcasts

Exploring Unschooling

A deep dive into unschooling and living joyfully from a long-time unschooling mom to three now-adult children.

Sage Family Podcast

Meaningful conversations around Gentle Parenting, Unschooling, and Simple Living.

Fare of the Free Child

A podcast that focuses on BIPOC families who practice unschooling and other forms of Self-directed, decolonized living and learning.

The Life Without School

An unschooling dad on a mission to disrupt education and help build a fresh paradigm for a new generation of young learners.

Off-Trail Learning

Interviews with innovative educators, self-directed young people, and others who think differently about learning, teaching, and schooling.

The Unschooling Life

Episodes cover many frequently asked questions and objections to Self-Directed Education and unschooling.