A few important articles to get you started.

Why you should think twice before praising a particular LEA (local education authority).

More discussion with a radical unschooler on the subject of education and coercion.

Parents often fear that a child might make the wrong decisions about what to learn.

A charming story for everyone who has a bed-making issue.

Misunderstandings and miscommunication are common occurrences, so it is wise not to jump to negative conclusions.

This piece by Elliot may help some understand TCS ideas about coercion and solving problems.

The implication of saying that there are things children must learn to study is that the children may not want to learn them, because they won't know that they are valuable until later. But if you can't enumerate them all, then how do you know, when you are forcing your children to do one of them, that you are not preventing your children from doing another? Also, if you can't enumerate them all, how do you think the children are going to learn the ones you are unable to enumerate? In fact, I believe that not only can you not enumerate them all, but you can't KNOW them all, that you can't even know a millionth part of them.

The criticism sometimes levelled at TCS parents, that they must be doormats, is in terms of education actually more appropriate when applied to conventional parents.

What Karl Popper has to say that is relevant to education.

How to help a child to try school safely.

To ensure that your child loves visiting the dentist, read this!

Are schools inherently coercive, or is that just a property of all (or nearly all?) existing schools, and come the revolution, could there be TCS schools?

Despite having been influenced by our very own David Deutsch, John Holt was not as close to TCS as we might have hoped.

Mary Ann points out that if a friend knocked over a cup, we would help clean it up, so why not do so for our children too?

How close is the thing we TCS folk call “coercion” to “coercion” in everyday usage?

Sue Cvach has some advice for parents whose young children seem to be lashing out against their siblings.

Do not assume that a child is acting irrationally just because he or she wants to go to school.

Sometimes it helps to step back and get things in perspective.

The history of TCS.

Did you hate being bossed about by your parents and teachers? Have you developed a life strategy of “my way is the only way” to prevent others coercing you? The problem is that in applying this to your children, you do to them the very thing you hated as a child – and you cause them to grow up to do the very same thing to their own children.

An argument about children's legal rights, addressing the issue of how children might be protected under the law even if their legal rights were the same as adults'.

If so, this might help.

TCS parents do not force their children to study. They do not try to manipulate them into it. They do not push them. They do pay attention to what seems to interest their children and facilitate their exploration in that sphere, and in any related spheres the parent thinks the children might find interesting. But if children are not pushed, how could they ever become, say, a mathematician? What would this process look like? David Deutsch paints a word picture that may help.

Why I always shudder when I hear such questions.

Unschoolers have an aphorism, “Never offer, never refuse”, and think of that as being at one end of a continuum, and school or “school at home” being at the other. In this 1995 post, I explained why this continuum misses the point. I was rather delighted to be told that TCS education is somewhere other than at the extreme end, though. ;-)

Many parents worry that eating a lot of junk food might lead to ill-health. Elliot's post may set some minds at rest.

It is often asserted (usually by school teachers) that if children are not forced to go to school or, at the very least, to study an externally-imposed curriculum, there will be big gaps in their knowledge at the end of their education. Is this true? Is it any less true of children subjected to a standard curriculum? Is it a problem? And if so, which children will be better able to fill any gaps later: those who have been subject to a curriculum, or those who haven't? Mike Fortune-Wood has the answers.

Don't be misled by the title. This discussion is not just about what to do in a case where a child heates wearing an eyepatch, it is about how to think about problems in such a way that you can solve them.

Correcting a few common misconceptions about TCS.