How to Raise Innovative, Creative Thinkers

In his critique of the traditional school system, titled Weapons of Mass Instruction, a former "Teacher of the Year", John Taylor Gatto declared:

"The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done."

His book focuses on how traditional education cripple imaginations, discourages critical thinking, and creates a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorisation drills. That's a model that many homeschoolers replicate at home too, as its the form of education we received and which programmed the way we think of learning.

Escaping this trap requires a strategy Gatto calls “open source learning” which imposes no artificial divisions between learning and life. Home educators often feel frustrated when the daily challenges of life starts to “interfere” with schooling, instead of recognising that all of life is learning. There should be no divisions. The lessons from daily life are as vital as the lessons in books.

It is only when we shift our thinking that we can begin to encourage our children to pursue a different kind of education – one in which they have the freedom to tackle those “new things” that Gatto suggests.