Gever Tulley is an American writer, speaker, educator, entrepreneur, and computer scientist. He is the founder of the Brightworks School, Tinkering School, the non-profit Institute for Applied Tinkering, and educational kit maker Tinkering Labs. His more recent work centers around the concept of students learning through building projects. He has delivered multiple TED talks on his work, published the book 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), and has contributed articles for many online media outlets.
A self-taught software engineer, Tulley created the summer program called Tinkering School in 2005. The Tinkering School's program provides children with a week-long overnight experience at a ranch outside of San Francisco, California, United States. Participants spend the week building large projects such as a working roller coaster, a rope bridge made out of plastic bags, and a 3-story tree house. [1]
Tulley delivered a talk at the TED2007 conference entitled "50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do". In this talk, Tulley makes the argument that a growing trend towards over-protection of children is harming their ability to learn and think. Thus, Tulley advocates for parents to allow their children to do supervised activities that are considered to be dangerous.
Tulley advises that children should:
By doing so, Tulley believes children will learn concepts that they may not learn in more structured and conventional activities. [2] Tulley has since given further TED conference talks at TED2009 and various TEDx conferences. [3]
In 2011, Tulley opened the Brightworks School in San Francisco. The school expands upon the premise of his summer program, and students from grades K-12 learn through hands-on activities facilitated by adult "collaborators". The school opened in September 2011 with an initial enrollment of 18 students. The school follows a curriculum called the "Brightworks Arc" which has three phases: exploration, expression, and exposition. [4]
Tulley's philosophy on allowing children to participate in more dangerous activities has attracted the criticism of some parents and child psychologists. Child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg has called Tulley's book an overreaction to "cotton-wool" parenting, and has called for sales of the book to be banned in Australia (despite Carr-Gregg never having read the book [5] ). Amanda Cox, founder of the parent organization Real Mums, has also criticized the book, claiming that the book crosses a fine line between learning and being dangerous. [6]
Unschooling is an informal learning method that prioritizes learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschoolers learn through their natural life experiences including play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction. Often considered a lesson- and curriculum-free implementation of homeschooling, unschooling encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves, under the belief that the more personal learning is, the more meaningful, well-understood, and therefore useful it is to the child. While unschooled students may occasionally take courses, unschooling questions the usefulness of standard curricula, fixed times at which learning should take place, conventional grading methods and standardized tests, forced contact with children in their own age group, the compulsion to do homework regardless of whether it helps the learner in their individual situation, the effectiveness of listening to and obeying the orders of one authority figure for several hours each day, and other features of traditional schooling.
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Amy Krouse Rosenthal was an American author of both adult and children's books, a short film maker, and radio show host. She is best known for her memoir Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, her children's picture books, and the film project The Beckoning of Lovely. She was a prolific writer, publishing more than 30 children's books between 2005 and her death in 2017. She is the only author to have three children's books make the Best Children's Books for Family Literacy list in the same year. She was a contributor to Chicago's NPR affiliate WBEZ, and to the TED conference.
Tinkering School is an educational program created by Gever Tulley in California and is a registered trademark of Tinkering Unlimited.
Susan Horowitz Cain is an American writer and lecturer.
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