Self-directed learning with Peter Gray and Bria Bloom

Children come into the world with an instinctive drive to play, explore, and learn. These drives are shaped by our evolutionary past to make us who we are. Schooling, in contrast, suppresses these drives through one-size fits all curricula and a predetermined age-constrained progression. This begs the question, what would learning look like if the emphasis were on students driving the learning, setting their own goals, and working towards achieving them? This is the idea of self-directed learning. A self-directed education encourages students to play and explore, allowing their natural instincts, curiosity, and drives to flourish.

In this episode, we will speak with Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College as well as contributor to Psychology Today  blog Freedom to Learn, and Bria Bloom, a born and raised unschooler as well as the Executive Director of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education to explore the theories of human nature and evolution that drive this approach, whether self-directed learning can work for all learners, and understand  what unschooling looks like and how it can function in the world we live in today.