Self-Directed Education (from the Alliance for Self-Directed Education)
Play
They play at the full range of skills that are crucial to their long-term survival and wellbeing.
The Six Optimizing Conditions of Learning
- Education is the sum of everything a person learns that enables that person to live a satisfying and meaningful life.
- Self-Directed Education is education that derives from the self-chosen activities and life experiences of the person becoming educated, whether or not those activities were chosen deliberately for the purpose of education. (https://www.self-directed.org/sde/)
- 4 (Innate) Educative Drives: curiosity, playfulness, sociability, planfulness (self-directed executive functioning)
Play
They play at the full range of skills that are crucial to their long-term survival and wellbeing.
- They play in physical ways, as they climb, chase, and rough-and-tumble, and that is how they develop strong bodies and graceful movement.
- They play in risky ways, and that is how they learn to manage fear and develop courage.
- They play with language, and that is how they become competent with language.
- They play socially, with other children, and that is how they learn to negotiate, compromise, and get along with peers.
- They play games with implicit or explicit rules, and that is how they learn to follow rules.
- They play imaginative games, and that is how they learn to think hypothetically and creatively.
- They play with logic, and that is how they become logical.
- They play at building things, and that is how they learn to build.
- They play with the tools of their culture, and that is how they become skilled at using those tools.
The Six Optimizing Conditions of Learning
- Social expectation (and reality) that education is children’s responsibility.
- Unlimited time to play, explore, and pursue one’s own interests
- Opportunity to play with the tools of the culture
- Access to a variety of caring adults, who are helpers, not judges
- Free age mixing among children and adolescents
- Immersion in a stable, supportive, respectful community
Learning & Play Researchers
- Peter Gray PhD, research professor at Boston College, author of Free to Learn and Psychology Today's blog Freedom to Learn
- Stuart Brown, PhD, founder of the National Institute for Play