How do you raise a child? My answer: you don’t. Have a look at how a child learns to crawl, stand and walk. The child does that on its own. The adult might support with various devices like walkers and strollers, or through encouragingly inviting the child to stumble into their embrace, but it is the child alone that instinctively on a visceral level figures out how to manage its muscles and bones to eventually raise itself from the ground and onto two feet. It is not like th

If I were to illustrate what it is like to be a child in an adult world, it would be an image of being surrounded by lots and lots of legs, the legs of adults that stand and move around you, seemingly without giving any regard to your existence. Theirs is the ‘real world’, up there in the clouds, among their important heads and animated arms and talking mouths, and you are like a little bug that buzzes around them, an annoying little bug that is easily pushed aside and squash

“If you observe children learning in their first few years of life, you can see that they can and do learn on their own – we leave them alone to crawl, walk, talk, and gain control over their bodies. It happens without much help from parents. You can’t make someone learn something – you really can’t teach someone something – they have to want to learn it. And if they want to learn, they will.” – Daniel Greenberg, Co-founder of the Sudbury Valley school A couple of weeks ago I

As teachers, parents and adults in general we have become accustomed to categorizing the people we meet into neat little boxes of judgment and preconceived prejudice based on first hand impressions dictated by our biased minds. Sounds brutal, unfair? Well it is, especially for the children, who too fall victim to these snap judgments made by adults, adults who are supposed to be their guardians and champions and role models. We sit and wonder how terrorists or school shooters

“We stand upon the precipice of change. The world fears the inevitable plummet into the abyss. Watch for that moment…and when it comes, do not hesitate to leap.“ – Flemeth, Dragon Age Throughout the course of human history there have been certain periods in which the advancement of new technologies took quantum leaps. This is no more true than in the times we live in right now, where the very foundation upon which our societies are built are changing in rapid speed, especiall