In this episode I want to help you build your de-schooling muscle. The process of taking everything you know about education, wiping your mental slate as clean as possible, and coming at the whole idea of how children learn as fresh as you can.

To do that, I want to take you through five commonly held beliefs about education and childhood. Through this conversation, you will grow progressively more aware of ideas you’ve probably held since you were a child. Ideas that have far less substance than you think.  And you will grow progressively more empowered to take hold of your own children’s education in a way that works for you as a family. Whether that’s by shedding the beliefs we talk through today, or the many others we often find ourselves holding onto.

My hope is that the way we talk through these things helps you apply it to any other worries that ever trouble you. This list is far from exhaustive, and there are many angles you can and should examine your own beliefs from. Today, I'll give you the spark to go deeper.

Articles mentioned throughout the episode (also linked from the show notes below):

• Literacy in the United States (Wikipedia)
• How do the skills of U.S. adults compare to their international peers? (National Center for Education Statistics)
• Testing Companies Mine for Gold (Rethinking Schools)
• The Business of Standardised Testing (Huffington Post)
• Do ACT and SAT scores really matter? New study says they shouldn’t (PBS News Hour)