Changing Our Minds: How children can take control of their own learning

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Fisher, N. (2021). Changing Our Minds: How Children Can Take Control of their Own Learning. Robinson. Neurodivergent children experience and interact with the world differently to many of their peers. Standard educational systems often fail to adapt to their unique strengths and ways of learning. School, and even the act of learning, can become a source of great anxiety and trauma. Self-directed education offers an alternative to traditional schools that can help neurodivergent children develop at their own pace and thrive. So if GCSEs are the final benchmark of education, all that really matters, then perhaps the Education Secretary is right? Perhaps the real issue in education today is how to get those children facing forwards, so they can be filled with knowledge. Changing Our Minds, by Dr Naomi Fisher, is an invitation to all of us to deschool ourselves and think anew about what is best for children. Touching on a range of topics from schooling to parenting to diversity, this clearly argued and compellingly written book is a must read for anyone who wants to conceptualise how schools can better meet children's needs. * Dr Rebecca English (PhD), Senior Lecturer in Education, Queensland University of Technology * Much as I needed the money, I just couldn’t do it. I lasted four weeks. Dave smiled when I handed in my notice.

It’s not clear what benefits there are in reproducing this low-autonomy system at school. Just because some jobs have few choices is no reason to spend twelve years making children practise feeling powerless. The school system works by gradually reducing autonomy as children grow. At pre-school and nursery, children are typically allowed to choose between a range of activities and are not made to continue with something once they have lost interest. However, from the age of five onwards, school becomes increasingly more controlling. Children generally have no meaningful choices about what they do all day. Even when, at age fourteen, they do get to make some decisions, it’s usually between which classroom they sit in and what information they will be tested on, rather than anything more significant. Naomi Fisher seamlessly brings together scientific research, life experience and her own extensive personal and professional observations. She walks us gently through both the psychology and adventure of self-directed education. So the quibble isn’t with the claim that there is evidence. There is evidence that instruction, practice and repetition works, if the aim is to retain large amounts of information, although it’s less clear whether you can successfully impose this on other people without a very strict regime of control. The quibble is more about philosophy of education and whether retaining large amounts of particular types of information is the goal we should have for our children’s education. And there are some difficult questions about exactly what the purpose is of requiring children to learn a lot of information before they are allowed to engage in critical thinking or question what they are learning.

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Williamson is referring to a school of thought which has gained traction in the USA and UK in recent years, that of education based on ‘cognitive science’. Advocates such as Daniel Willingham ( Why Don’t Students Like School?), Daisy Christodoulou ( Seven Myths about Education) and Katharine Birbalsingh ( Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers) argue that the research is in and progressive educational techniques don’t work. By progressive techniques they mean a wide range of methods, including the idea that schools should teach transferable skills (Christodoulou), that teachers should make an effort to make their lessons engaging and interesting to children (Birbalsingh), or that children should be encouraged to think critically and solve problems from early on (Willingham).

A really important book giving a platform to the many SEND families who have been largely unheard in the education debate. As always Naomi offers us a fresh perspective on intersection of neurodiversity, learning and environment. A must read for anyone interested in education, psychology or the wonderful diversity of humanity. Highly recommended. If you are a parent worrying whether self-directed education will work for your child, because you have been told that they have special needs which can only be met in the school system - think again'Autonomy has been related to increased wellbeing in a large number of studies. When people have choice about what they do, and can stop when they want to, they feel better about the world and themselves. Richard Ryan and colleagues found that wellbeing for college students and workers increases at the weekend; the so-called ‘weekend effect’. Even when people work at the weekend, they tend to do it in their own time and in their own way, and therefore have increased autonomy as compared to during the week. An essential guide, informed by educational theory and personal experience, which presents accessibly the evidence and argument for self-directed learning, getting the child to lead where their curiosity and interests should be developed. I worked from nine to six, and I had no control over when my breaks were; Dave would decide. Sometimes I would start at nine, and he would send me on my break at ten, and then my lunch at twelve, leaving me working from 12.45 p.m. – 6 p.m. without a break.

Children are born full of curiosity, eager to participate in the world. They learn as they live, with enthusiasm and joy. Then we send them to school. We stop them from playing and actively exploring their interests, telling them it’s more important to sit still and listen. The result is that for many children, their motivation to learn drops dramatically. The joy of the early years is replaced with apathy and anxiety. It's a very interesting and valuable book, that took many assumptions that I consider correct and somehow managed to make an extreme conclusion. For this model of learning is all about how to get knowledge and skills into children. The science is procedural, mechanistic even. Any difficulties in education are reduced to how can we persuade children to face the front to comply with the regime of instruction, practice and repetition, one which the Education Secretary answers by referring to discipline and behavioural standards. Educational philosophy is completely missing from their approach. The question of why children might learn goes unmentioned, and the question of what they will learn is answered again by ‘the science’.This book ought finally to put paid to the defence of the existing paradigm of modern schooling. Naomi Fisher draws on her extensive psychological knowledge, as well as her experience as a mother of two children, to show that there is an alternative to the damaging effects of current educational practice. Children can - and do - take charge of their own learning and, with the right adult support, experience real education as opposed to narrow, test-driven schooling. Change is necessary and urgent - schooling is not fit for purpose and there are working exemplars of another way. And as Naomi shows, there is no use in patching up the current approaches - only radical, root-and-branch change will do. All parents need to pay attention to this message. * Dr Ian Cunningham, Founder of Self Managed Learning College, Sussex * With Changing Our Minds Naomi Fisher established herself as the voice of reason in a sea of misinformation about an education system in existential crisis. This new book cements her reputation as a champion of young people's rights by giving a voice to those who are most impacted and yet too often silenced. An essential book for anyone with children who reject the confines of the school system, which will leave you exhilarated about the possibilities before you * Heidi Steel, former teacher turned unschooling parent, mentor and coach for unschooling families, www.liveplaylearn.org * Many people assume that the most stressful jobs are the ones at the top, the ones where you have the power to determine the future of thousands of employees, or to steer a company away from bankruptcy. It suits people in these jobs for everyone to think this, because that justifies their high salaries. It’s not uncommon for someone to choose a job where they have few choices and no control, in the belief that this will be less stressful.