Summer is officially here, and many parents–after homeschooling their kids for the last three months–are wondering whether they should keep schooling their kids to make up for a potential ”summer slide” or just let them enjoy the summer.  I come down strongly on the side of enjoying summer, but that doesn’t mean learning need not...Read More

The fact that music even exists is one of the marvelous things about being alive.  And Harvard professor Howard Gardner said that music is actually an intelligence.  However, in school, music is the first program to be cut out of the budget if there’s a financial crush, and many kids get to take music only two...Read More

Gerald Heard (1889-1971) was a British historian, science writer, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher, who was one of the early progenitors of the human potential movement in the United States.  A a mentor to Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and other luminaries, he was instrumental in co-leading the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, the film...Read More

With the advent of COVID-19, millions of parents are now confronted with the task of teaching their kids at home.  I’d like to save you a lot of time and frustration trying to badger your child into finishing his school assignment or an assignment from a homeschooling program you’ve just enrolled in.  The fact of...Read More

Let me start by telling a story based on actual classroom research.  A research psychologist gave 27 students in a high school classroom wireless pagers and told them that whenever they received a ”page” they were to write down on a form he’d given them whatever was going on in their minds at that moment. ...Read More