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General Articles About Childhood and the State of Affairs
Respectful Parenting
Parenting in Traditional Societies
Sleep
Values
Holidays
- Say Goodbye to the Santa Claus Lie, by David Kyle Johnson
- How (+ Why) I Opt Out of Christmas, by Lindsay Miles
- Santa Claus and Montessori, by Carine Robin
- Why I Don’t Lie to My Children About Santa Claus, by Olga Mecking
- Have a Merry Honest Christmas, by Kate from KateSurfs.com
- Happy Conscious Holidays! Upgrading Santa, by Kelly Brogan
- The ultimate holiday gift giving guide, by Jen Lumanlan
- Armed for the War on Christmas, by Scott F. Aiken
- Holiday Overstimulation: Let Baby Turn Away, by Eliza Parker
- Why You Shouldn’t Go Home for Thanksgiving, by Brad Reedy
Community
Handling Parenting Differences
Discipline (Rewards, Punishments & Praise)
- Rewards and Praise: The Poisoned Carrot, by Robin Grille
- Praising our Children: Manipulation or Celebration?, by Jan Hunt
- 22 Alternatives to Punishment, by Jan Hunt
- How to Help your Child to Behave Out of Consideration Rather than Compliance, by Larissa Dann
- Five Reasons to Stop Saying “Good Job!”, by Alfie Kohn
- When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’, by Alfie Kohn
- Discipline Is The Problem — Not The Solution, by Alfie Kohn
- Toddlers Want to Help and We Should Let Them, by Peter Gray
- 7 Parenting Secrets That Change Lives, by Janet Lansbury
- Raising Successful Children, by Madeline Levine
- How to Raise a Child, by Judith Warner
- Behavior Charts = Poor Adult Behavior, by Heather Shumaker
Independent Play
- How to Ruin Children’s Play: Supervise, Praise, Intervene, by Peter Gray Ph.D.
- Share… Wait Your Turn… Don’t Touch… Playdate Rules That Limit Learning (And What To Try Instead), by Janet Lansbury
- Independent Play: Five Hints to Get the Ball Rolling, by Janet Lansbury
- Why We Force Kids to Share, by Heather Shumaker
- Blue Sky Thinking, by Janet Lansbury
- Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think, by Alison Gopnik
- Why depriving your kids of toys is a great idea, by Madeleine Somerville
- Why Adults Should (Frequently!) Refrain from Directing Children’s Play, by Elizabeth Wilkins
- The Baby Social Scene – 5 Hints For Creating Safe And Joyful Playgroups, by Janet Lansbury
- Helping vs. Co-creation, by Scott Noelle
- Less-structured time in children’s daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning, by many authors
- The Double-edged Sword of Pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery, by many authors
Rethinking Schools and Schooling
- School is Bad for Children, by John Holt
- Why Schools Don’t Educate, by John Taylor Gatto
- Stop Stealing Dreams (What is School For?), by Seth Godin
- Dear Public School: It’s Not Me, It’s You., by Kelly Meier
- School is still ruining your chances to learn, by Seth Godin
- Children, Learning, and the ‘Evaluative Gaze’ of School, by Carol Black
- Why Our Coercive System of Schooling Should Topple, by Peter Gray
- The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher, by John Taylor Gatto
- The Right to Control One’s Learning, by John Holt
- Respectful Learning: The Education Our Children Deserve, by Sara
- Re-Building the K-12 Operating System, by Grant Lichtman
- Progressive Education: Why It’s Hard to Beat, But Also Hard to Find, by Alfie Kohn
- A venture capitalist searches for the purpose of school. Here’s what he found, by Ted Dintersmith
- Beyond Meaningless Curriculum: An Email from a Student, by Marc Prensky
- I Can’t Answer These Texas Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems, by Sara Holbrook
- Confusing Goals and Processes – A Summer Reflection on Lawns and Education, by Susan Blum
- My Struggle With “Education”, by Scott Noelle
- Academic predictors of adult maturity and competence, by Douglas H. Heath
- A Brief History of Education, by Peter Gray
- Summer Slide? There’s No Such Thing, by Kerry McDonald
- Inverse Relationship Between GPA and Innovative Orientation, by Peter Gray
- Teaching Strategies That Work! (Just Don’t Ask “Work to Do What?”), by Alfie Kohn
About Teaching
- A Dozen Essential Guidelines for Educators, by Alfie Kohn
- To High School English Teachers (and All Teachers), by P.L. Thomas
- What’s the Real Purpose of Classroom Management?, by Alfie Kohn
- Challenging Students…And How to Have More of Them, by Alfie Kohn
- The Baby Is Not “Getting Ready”, by John Holt
- Another Example of Less Teaching Leading to More Learning, by Peter Gray
- The Joy and Sorrow of Rereading Holt’s “How Children Learn”, by Peter Gray
- Skills, Big Ideas, and Getting Grades Out of the Way, by Patrick Henry Winston
Teaching Reading
Teaching Math
- Why Do Americans Stink at Math?, by Elizabeth Green
- And ‘Rithmetic, by Daniel Greenberg
- Kids Learn Math Easily When They Control Their Own Learning, by Peter Gray
- Math Instruction versus Natural Math: Benezet’s Example, by Laura Grace Weldon
- What Works Better than Traditional Math Instruction: Why the Basics Just Don’t Add Up, by Alfie Kohn
- The Benefits of Natural Math, by Laura Grace Weldon
- Should we stop making kids memorize times tables?, by Jill Barshay
- Fluency Without Fear: Research Evidence on the Best Ways to Learn Math Facts, by Jo Boaler
- Learn math without fear, Stanford expert says, by Clifton B. Parker
- A Mathematician’s Lament, by Paul Lockhart
- Changing the Way we Teach Math – an Interview with Paul Lockhart of “A Mathematician’s Lament”, by Tracy Stevens
- When Less Is More: The Case for Teaching Less Math in School, by Peter Gray
- “How old is the shepherd?” — The problem that shook school mathematics, by Junaid Mubeen
- Math in the Real World: Things That Don’t Look Like Math But Really Are, by Rebecca McClure
- Most Math Problems Do Not Have a Unique Right Answer, by Keith Devlin
- Natural Math: 100+ Activities & Resources, by Laura Grace Weldon
- 5-Year-Olds Can Learn Calculus, by Luba Vangelova
Early Education
Alternatives to Traditional Schools
- How do Unschoolers Turn Out?, by Luba Vangelova
- Harnessing Children’s Natural Ways of Learning, by Luba Vangelova
- The Six Optimizing Conditions: Self-Directed Education works best when the following conditions are present…, by The Alliance for Self-Directed Learning
- Everyone’s A Student, Everyone’s A Teacher, by Rachel Munzig
- School Is War, Prison, Factory, Machine, Business, Game, Life….And Other Metaphors: recommending Permaculture, by Susan Blum
- The Natural Environment for Children’s Self-Education, by Peter Gray
Rethinking the “Word Gap”
- Is the 30 Million Word Gap a stat we should be using?, by Lisa Nowlain
- Selling the Language Gap, by Susan D. Blum and Kathleen C. Riley
- ‘The Language Gap’ — Liberal Guilt Creates Another Not-So-Magic Bullet, by Susan D. Blum
- Invited Forum: Bridging the “Language Gap”, many authors through the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
- Back-and-forth exchanges boost children’s brain response to language, by Anne Trafton
- Quality of Words, Not Quantity, Is Crucial to Language Skills, Study Finds, by Douglas Quenqua, The New York Times
- Stop blaming poor parents for their children’s vocabulary, by Paul Thomas
- Making Millions off of the 30-Million-Word Gap, by Educational Linguist
- Ten Best Ways To Encourage Toddlers To Talk, by Janet Lansbury
- Debunking the “language gap”, by Eric J. Johnson
- The “Word Gap”: A Reader, by P.L. Thomas
- This Is Not My Opinion, by P.L. Thomas
Social Class & Race Issues
Technology in Schools
Narcissism in Education
Polymaths, Renaissance Thinkers, Generalists, Scanners, Multipotentialites…
Child Abuse
- Spanking is counterproductive and dangerous, by Alice Miller
- Every Smack is a Humiliation – A Manifesto, by Alice Mille
- “It is Never Right to Hit a Child”: Interview by Noreen Taylor
- Alice Miller Interview: The Roots of Violence, by Alice Mille
- Adolf Hitler: How Could a Monster Succeed in Blinding a Nation?, by Alice Miller
- Preface to From Rage to Courage, by Alice Miller
- How Adults Can Survive A Childhood of Violence and Untruth, by Michael Pastore
- The Wellsprings of Horror in the Cradle, by Alice Miller
- Mary and Joseph – Parents to Emulate, by Alice Miller
- Brief Thoughts on Reading the Works of Alice Miller, by Lucien X. Lombardo
- How to Intervene:The Safety of Kids is Everybody’s Business, by Irene van der Zande
- There is no debate about hitting children – it’s just wrong, by P.L. Thomas
- Spare the Rod, Respect the Child: Abuse Is Not Discipline, by P. L. Thomas
Childhood Trauma
Diagnosing Children
Autism & Abuse