Dearest reader, You know me, but I probably don’t know you. Maybe you follow my Facebook posts or email newsletters. Maybe you enjoy my books, articles, or podcasts. Maybe you’ve considered sending one of your kids on a trip with me. Maybe you came to one of my talks, yet you and I never talked. I […]
Books
The Art of Self-Directed Learning
Tells Peak Press, 2014
Learn more & purchase:
College Without High School
Learn more & purchase:
Published Articles
Alliance for Self-Directed Education
Agile Learning Centers, Liberated Learners, and Sudbury Schools: What’s the Difference? (Dec 6, 2018)
Give Kids Control (Oct 17, 2018)
How to Quit Parenting (June 29, 2018)
Teens and Screens (May 24, 2018)
You Can’t Ruin Your Kids (April 26, 2018)
Hail the Almighty Diploma (March 15, 2018)
What Does it Mean to Be Educated? (May 15, 2017)
Gap Year Association
What Matters More Than Talent: Meta-Learning (Jan 4, 2017)
How to Bootstrap a Solo Gap Year (Nov 30, 2016)
Gifted Homeschoolers Forum
Discovering New Paths with Unschool Adventures – (March 1, 2015)
Matador Network
How to crowdfund your next travel adventure (October 24, 2012)
5 reasons to replace college with travel and self-directed learning (October 23, 2012)
Medium
Don’t Like High School? Then Quit. (Oct 17, 2018)
Huffington Post
20 Non-Awkward Ways to Meet People While Traveling Solo (September 8, 2015)
Give High School Students the Same Freedom as College Students (December 19, 2014)
To Fix School, Make it Consensual (November 16, 2014)
How Summer Camp Taught Me to Never Say “I Can’t” (November 13, 2014)
Okay, You’ve Graduated from Homeschool. Now What? (July 15, 2014)
Four Reasons to Quit School and Become a Teenage Homeschooler (May 15, 2013)
Rethinking the Promise of a College Degree (August 20, 2012)
12 Ways to Educate Yourself Without College (July 10, 2012)
How to Build a Successful Life Without a Four-Year Degree (July 2, 2012)
Recent Blog Posts
Click here to browse all previous posts.
2018 in Review
Welcome to my annual year-in-review post, where I answer the question: “Where exactly have you been, Blake?” It was another whirlwind year. Are you ready? I’m ready. Here’s the story. Germany & West Coast USA In January I found myself in Deutschland for love. This was an intense and magical period, filled with wintery bike rides, inscrutable […]
In Praise of the Low-Income, High-Purpose, High-Freedom Career
While considering where to take my career at age 36, I consistently find myself balancing three factors: Income, Purpose, and Freedom. In this blog post I share the notes I’ve written to myself on this subject. The Three Scourges of Modernity In developed western countries, I think many of us suffer from: Owning too much […]
Select Appearances
“Getting rejected led to starting my own business”: One Man’s Journey to Year-Round Summer Camp (Aug 17, 2016)
Psychology Today: The Golden Age of Autodidacts (July 6, 2016)
Christian Science Monitor cover story on unschooling (Feb 14, 2016)
Interview for Everyday Creative blog (May 7, 2015)
Interview for Praxis blog (May 6, 2015)
Patrick Farenga reviews The Art of Self-Directed Learning (April 16, 2015)
Discovering New Paths with Unschool Adventures on Gifted Homeschoolers Forum (March 1, 2015)
Interview with The Surf Office (December 9, 2014)
Review of Better Than College on GoLocalProv (October 29, 2014)
Sacramento Bee (July 25, 2013)
Review of Better Than College on Uncollege.com (April 28, 2013)
BBC Travel (April 25, 2013)
USA Today (April 21, 2013)
Interview with JobMonkey (February 15, 2013)
Interview with Patrick Farenga part 1 / part 2 / part 3 (January 9, 2013)
Life Learning Magazine (Nov/Dec 2012 issue)
New York Times mention of Zero Tuition College (November 30, 2012)
Daily Edventures (November 9, 2012)
Wired.com GeekMom (July 3, 2012)
Living the Unschooling Life interview (March 10, 2012)
No Beaten Path (February 9, 2012)
Unschool Examiner (April 7, 2010)
MacLean’s (October 15, 2009)
Converge Magazine (Sep 21, 2009)
Everyday Learning Magazine (Sep 3, 2009)
Self Made Scholar (Jul 20, 2009)
Email Newsletter
Join my newsletter to receive one thoughtfully crafted email per month filled with links and updates. You’ll also receive a free audiobook edition of The Art of Self-Directed Learning.
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Newsletter Archive
2019
2018
- Sudbury, ALCs, and Liberated Learners, oh my!
- Swinging Axes, Playing with Fire, and Riding Bikes in Traffic
- Don’t Like High School? Then Quit.
- Unschooling = Love + Structure
- Yes, You Can Quit School and Everything Will Be Okay
- Is There Evidence for Self-Directed Education?
- To Fix Education, Make it Consensual
- How to Be a Badass Teen Homeschooler
- Hail the Almighty Diploma
- The Power of Signaling
- Spying on Children
2017
- The Value of College
- Gap Years and Anti-Helicopter-Parenting Missiles
- Anxiety, Giftedness, and Troublemaking
- Less Teaching, More Learning
- Smartphones: Friend or Foe?
- When Teachers Need Fidget Spinners
- The Summer Slide
- What Does It Mean to Be Educated?
- Those Crazy College Students
- Bridging the Darien Gap
- The Way of Adventure
- Boredom, Agency, and Empowerment
- Sharpening the Edge of Life
2016
- “They dislike abstraction; they dislike being sedentary; they dislike authoritarian control.”
- The Pursuit of Truth
- The Wildness of Children
- The Fortress of Tedium
- A Rare Interview with Grace Llewellyn
- Off-Trail Learning & How to Live Nowhere
- College Debt is Bad, But is Unemployment Worse?
- Elephants, Child Labor, and Intersectionality
- Adolescent Brains, Doing the Dishes, and Indebted Coyotes
- Creeping Concepts and Unschool Adventures Vegas
- Is Following Your Passion a Bad Idea?
- The $1000 Bachelor’s Degree + What to Do Instead of School
- Anyone Who Is Interested in a Tiny House is Interested in Unschooling
- “Why Do We Need to Learn This?”, Productivity, and How to Live Nowhere
- Walking Alone, Googling Everything, and The Cost of College
- Summer Camps for Self-Directed Learners
2015
- Radicalized Homeschoolers, (Un)safe Spaces, and Minimally Invasive Education
- In Which I Perform a Scene from High School Musical 2
- Mindset, Video Games, and New Unschool Adventures
- Open Master’s, MicroMaster’s, and The Martian
- Micro-schools, powerful books, and SpaceX
- Obama on College Coddling
- Join the Helicopter Tiger Parents
- Do We Coddle College Students?
- Most Parenting Advice is Worthless
- What If Everything We Think About Discipline is Wrong?
- If You Don’t Get a Diploma, You Will Go to Hell
- Good Reasons to Take a Crappy Job
- In Defense of Doing Nothing This Summer
- Minecraft & Duct Tape
- The Double Blade of Ambition
- Ask Me Anything
- Does Homeschooling Open or Close Doors?
- The Dark Side of “Finding Your Passion”
- Insert Witty Newsletter Title Here
- I Started a Podcast!
- An Interview with John Taylor Gatto
- What Makes a Self-Directed Learner?
- Teachers Who Don’t Cooperate and America’s Worst Mom
- One Step Closer to a Hogwarts for Unschoolers
- How a 16-Year-Old Homeschooler Got Herself Into a Yale Class