about the Rethinking Everything conference
Founded 17 years ago as the
Rethinking Education conference and officially morphing in 2009 to Rethinking Everything,
we're setting bright new standards for progressive families. From birth to death, we're living life with maximum freedomon our own terms.
RE is founded and produced by Barb Lundgren, an entrepreneurial unschooling parent with decades of experience questioning everything.
For more about Barb click here.
Rethinking Everything is non-profit, sponsored by Michael Mendizza and his renowned Touch the Future Foundation. Click for more information about Michael or Touch the Future
At the heart of Rethinking Everything
is the awareness that the most important way we can effect positive, enlightened change in the world is by entirely rethinking the nature of childhood and the environments we create to support the THRIVING of children and their families.
RE supports the belief that children are supremely and fundamentally capable of absorbing and using knowledge from our complex world. There is no need for arbitrary structure in parenting or education; the use of coercion, rewards or other behavior modification techniques as motivation are always counterproductive. With freedom, respect and nurturing support, children have a powerful drive to self-direct their own learning; the result being children who direct their own education... indeed, their own futures.
Education, and indeed all of life, viewed in this way, becomes a mutual endeavor, a life-long process of questioning and discovery - a true exploration of self, society and the larger world.
Proponents are widespread and include John Taylor Gatto, A.S. Neill, Brent Cameron, John Holt, Scott Noelle, Alice Miller, Ivan Illich, Dayna Martin, Jan Fortune-Wood, Jan Hunt, Pam Leo, Daniel Greenberg, Jonathan Kozol, and many others.
I can sum up in five to seven words
what I eventually learned as a teacher.
The seven-word version is:
Learning is not the product of teaching.
The five-word version is:
Teaching does not make learning.
Organized education operates on the assumption that children learn only
when and only what and only
because we teach them.
This is not true.
It is very close to
one hundred percent false.
John Holt
Click here for a good starting place
for more information.
...
our conference event supports:
- your freedom to set the course for your own life- supporting you in creating a freedom-based life for your children & teens- gentle & profoundly respectful parenting- unschooling & self design- eliminating psychological roadblocks to self-empowerment- real history & experiential learning- entrepreneuring - strategies for vibrant, alive wellness- spiritual oneness & the law of attraction- enlightened aging & empowered dying
- your freedom to set the course for your own life
- supporting you in creating a freedom-based life
for your children & teens
- gentle & profoundly respectful parenting
- unschooling & self design
- eliminating psychological roadblocks to
self-empowerment
- real history & experiential learning
- entrepreneuring
- strategies for vibrant, alive wellness
- spiritual oneness & the law of attraction
- enlightened aging & empowered dying
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from a 2009 attendee:
Peace, blessings, love and light are yours now and always!.
Thank you so much for freely sharing
so much of your "You-ness" with us.
The experience you facilitated at the conference this year
has profoundly impacted my life. I am deeply grateful to you
for the very large part you played in that.
I am very excited about 2010 and am doing everything
I can to ensure that myself and my family are there.
With infinite love and gratitude.
click here to see
our conference updates
freedom and RE
You're invited to join us for our
Freedom & Responsibility
conference calls!
Click here for details
what is unschooling?
