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Today we’re speaking Peter Gray. Peter is a professor of psychology, has a regular column for psychology today, and is the author of the popular book Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, about which we’ll be speaking today.
In this episode Peter and I delve into this book that prompted me to think quite differently about several facets of education. We speak about how the experience of Peter’s son in school forced Peter to seek alternate education routes and finally come across the idea of unschooling. What Peter thinks we can learn from hunter-gatherer societies about the optimum way to educate young people. The seven sins that Peter suggests conventional schools commit, and what Peter sees as a model for education worldwide.
Patreon supporters this month will receive a pdf copy of Ollie's summary of Peter Gray's book ‘Free to Learn' as well as some of Ollie's additional reflections on the book and interview. If you’d like to support the Education Research Reading Room podcast, please check out the ERRR Patreon page to explore this option. The average listener donation is $5 per month.
This is not a podcast for the faint hearted dear listeners. Peter hurls a lot of critiques against conventional schooling and some of them are pretty hard to hear. But I found that Peters ideas, which are eloquently laid out in his book Free to Learn, stretched my thinking about education in ways that I hadn’t anticipated. I hope you find it to be a stimulating conversation too.
Links/resources mentioned in the show
- Peter's Organisations and posts
- Alliance for Self-Directed Education: Helping people to leave school
- Let grow: Working with public schools to increase students' freedom and play
- Blog: In this article Peter makes reference to the research on the importance of school climate
- Article: African American homeschooling, article by Lisa Puga (who also did a PhD on this topic)
- Blog: Kindergarten teachers are quitting, and here's why
- Schools and Edu-institutions mentioned in the podcast
- Featured Not-for-profit: 100 Story Building
- 100 SB's website, book them for a workshop, or contribute your time or resources.
- Early Harvest, 100 SB's project supporting upper primary students to be editors and publishers of their own book! Their 2019 book was Sound of the Dark which you can purchase here.
- This episode's sponsor, Nodalab: For the Emerging Podcasters of the World
Listen to all past episodes of the ERRR podcast here.