I am inspired and excited after speaking with a group of moms in Ojai last night. A friend of mine, Stephanie DeRosier, founder of The Love Project, hosted a meeting to introduce SelfDesign to her friends. Eight women gathered together in a living room to explore schooling options for our children. It was a diverse group – women in their early twenties to early forties, with their children in Montessori, homeschool, and in public school. 

My friend started our discussion by asking everyone to share their experience in school (focusing on the K-12 years). The conversation became quite emotional as woman after woman shared their school experience. “I learned to play the game, stay out of the teachers’ red zones, and take the tests. But, I didn’t figure out who I was and what I wanted to do until I was 28 years old.” “I was so bored in school. I don’t want my children to experience the same thing. I am still trying to figure out what my passions are.” “School was about driving the right car, wearing the right clothes. It wasn’t about learning.” “I love art class, but slept through the other classes. They didn’t seem relevant to my life.” 

Tears were shed. Hugs exchanged. How could such a diverse group of women, from several different countries, experience the same pain and suffering? It’s hard to fathom that all eight women are dysfunctional learners – after all, we are functioning quite well as adults outside of the school system. 

The fantastic truth revealed to me again that night is that school doesn’t work for most children. It never has. It wasn’t designed to work for children.

We then explore our associations with the word “education”. Without exception, all of the associations were negative: “prison”, “school bells”, “tests”, “competition”. Then we asked these women to share their associations with the word “learning”. This brought forth a different energy in all of the women. “Curiosity”, “fun”, “open”, “invention”, “growth” all came to mind.

Why the disconnect between education and learning? How can we possibly work together to design different experiences for our precious children? 

I invite us to forget about finding the best “school” or “education” for our children. Let’s forget about “alternative schools” which are often a milder, kinder version of what doesn’t work. Let’s focus on creating the best learning environments for our children. Let’s look for alternatives to school.

Each child learns differently. Each child has unique gifts and abilities. Each child is a unique gift to this world. 

SelfDesign is the only learning model that I have discovered that supports children as they learn at their own pace, following their unique interests and abilities. SelfDesign-ing children don’t need to wait until a mid-life crisis to discover who they are and what they love. They are discovering their passions and purpose every day of their lives. 

Join me on this unique learning experience with this amazing global learning community. I invite you to enroll in SelfDesign’s K-8 and High School distance learning programs – award-winning programs based upon self-directed, enthusiasm based learning. 

Caprice Pitcher
SelfDesign Mom and Director
SelfDesign.com 

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As a SelfDesign Mom of two girls, ages 6 and 2, I am a keen observer of their development. I have observed that, while their bodies may be small, their imaginations, zest for life, and capacity for self-love is amazing! 

I would like to challenge our current cultural meme that informs us our children are “less than” because they are small. I meet so many parents who are trying to raise their children in a conscious and respectful manner, yet are struggling to break free of societal notions of children that are based upon prejudice and fear.

In the past 6 years, I have learned to view my children as amazing mentors while I reclaim my passion for life and learn to love myself just as I am. My daughters are my little zen masters.

Young children may not have the functional capabilities of adults, yet in many ways, they are closer to the state of happiness, peace, and contentment that adults are seeking. I watch my daughters as they dance through life, confident that they are loved and supported, free to explore this fascinating world. They are not plagued with self-doubt and negative judgments of themselves and the world.

They are moving forward as if everything is possible. Failure is ok. They have stumbled and tripped while learning to walk and don’t beat themselves up for failures. They pick themselves up and keep going. They are natural learning beings. 

How many adults do I know who dance through life with a smile on their face and a bright light beaming from their eyes? Not enough! Most adults I know are plagued by inner demons that block their enjoyment of life. This widespread hunger for self-love and acceptance has created a $10 billion self-help market.

My husband told me this morning that he got excited about SelfDesign when he realized that the way he was raised and educated led to years of suffering. He sees SelfDesign as a way to raise and educate our children in a loving, respectful, empowering way. Few of us are encouraged to develop awareness of our self and our learning process from birth. It is the rare genius who is given the permission and space to explore natural gifts. Too often, we are forced to fit into a system that may not work for us at all.

In “SelfDesign: Nurturing Genius Through Natural Learning”, Brent Cameron and River Meyer write:

…happiness comes to us naturally. We associate happiness with well-being, love, and balance. It is our fundamental condition and our indicator of essential fulfillment. Unhappiness arises when someone or something moves us out of this balance, which happens most often in relationship with others. Some relationships support and sustain our happiness while others limit us and reduce our freedom. A feeling of unhappiness, like the feeling of hunger, gives us the clue that something is missing and that a change needs to occur. In the politics of relationship, when our rights are diminished we feel frustrated and controlled. We succumb to apathy, or we fight for change.

As you reflect upon your life (and your child’s), ask yourself which relationships and situations support happiness and which limit happiness?  Do you or your children ever feel like your rights are being diminished? Do your work relationships support or limit happiness? If your child attends school – does this school support or limit happiness? Does school recognize your children’s natural right to choose what they think about? 

It is a destructive myth in our society that we need to be unhappy to make money or learn something. In fact the opposite is true. As Humberto Maturana, evolutionary biologist says:

Learning is a transformation in living together. We tend to think of learning in terms of acquisition of information–this is not what it is. It is a transformation in living together, a transformation of doings in a process of doing things together with others.

Only love expands intelligence, because love as the domain of those behaviors through which the other arises as a legitimate other in coexistence with oneself, opens us to see and to enter in collaboration. 

I delight in watching my children dance through life with their eyes sparkling and a big smile on their faces.

Caprice Pitcher
SelfDesign mom and Director of Strategic Planning

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As I reflect upon why I chose SelfDesign as the learning program and learning community for my family, I am inspired by a piece that Brent Cameron, founder of SelfDesign, wrote while at the University of British Columbia:

“SelfDesign has been working with children and adults for the past 25 years in an innovative learning community beyond the paradigm of schooling. Our program emerges from the enthusiasm and curiosity of all learners, and we practice consensus and wellness as fundamental aspects of the work. We have grown from a group of twelve to a learning community of over seven hundred. We hope to share the nature of our work with lifelong learners around the world as an offering of peace within…

Peace is not the illusion of something that we will achieve in the future, nor is fulfillment a goal that we can obtain. Peace and fulfillment are the qualities that we bring forth to others from our essential selves in each present moment. SelfDesign is about living from this essence as a spiritual practice within our complex of spirit, mind, heart and body learning.

SelfDesign is a new paradigm of learning, a new way of thinking about learning beyond schooling. It is a modern educational methodology in alignment with ancient insights and perennial truths. It blends together the masculine and the feminine, the east and the west, allowing the infinite wisdom within to play a role in healing our universe. A new world view is possible when each one of us is allowed to be free — free to choose to work within nature and natural systems, and free to live as an expression of our heart. 

SelfDesign is about living in enthusiasm, en theos – the experience of god within.

thanksgiving by alicepopkorn

As my family prepares to celebrate Thanksgiving this week, I place the SelfDesign Learning Community at the top of my gratitude list. I give thanks to Brent Cameron and all the people who have worked tirelessly over the past 25 years to develop and grow the SelfDesign learning model and community. I give thanks to the peace that I feel in my heart as I watch my daughters and myself unfold our natural genius in a community of love and affirmation.

Debra Thorsen
SelfDesign Mom and
Director, Strategic Planning

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SelfDesign is a pioneer in redefining learning and envisioning a new way of educating our children and ourselves. Underlying our work at SelfDesign are some core concepts and values that I would like to share here. 

What are the core concepts of SelfDesign?

• We believe all beings are born into goodness and happiness. 
• Our cornerstone is respect for self and for the other, regardless of age or stage.
• The specific languaging techniques we offer create the most conducive environment for learning and personal growth.  
• We believe that life is an enthusiastic exploration for depth, excellence, and interconnectedness. Life itself provides the curriculum for learning.
• We support an ongoing process toward a balanced, ecological, sustainable environment for self, for others, and for the natural world.

We invite you to join us on this amazing learning journey called life. Believe in your goodness. Celebrate your innate capacity to learn with joy and enthusiasm. Work to make your home and community in balance with nature. And don’t forget – have lots of fun!

Debra Thorsen
SelfDesign Mom and 
Director of Strategic Planning 

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As a conscious parent, I am doing my best to raise my children so that they are the authors of their own dreams and destinies. I don’t want them to make choices to appease an outside, arbitrary authority and I don’t want them to learn to move forward on autopilot – suppressing their inner desires in order to avoid rocking the boat. I want my daughters’ eyes to keep shining with joy and enthusiasm as they playfully pursue their passions.

I am excited when I connect with organizations and families that affirm my choices and my path. SelfDesign has been a positive, affirming, and empowering choice for my family. My intention in my blog entries is to help other SelfDesign-ing and self authoring families find resources that affirm their choices.

I recently read an interesting article in The Guardian, where they review a new book, “How Children Learn at Home” published by Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison of the Institute of Education, University of London. Here are some excerpts from the article: (The authors)…

conclude that informal learning at home is an “astonishingly efficient way to learn”, as good if not better than school for many children.

“The ease, naturalness and immense intellectual potential of informal learning up to the age of middle secondary school means they can learn certainly as much if not more,” they say in How Children Learn at Home.

The authors discovered that these children absorbed information mainly by “doing nothing, observing, having conversations, exploring, and through self-directed learning”. They liken the “chaotic nature” of informal learning to the process that leads to scientific breakthroughs, the early stages of crafting a novel, coming up with a solution to a technical problem, or the act of composing music.

“Its products are often intangible, its processes obscure, its progress piecemeal,” they say. “There are false starts, unrelated bits and pieces picked up, interests followed and discarded, sometimes to be taken up again, sometimes not… Yet the chaotic nature of the informal curriculum does not appear to be a barrier to children organising it into a coherent body of knowledge.”

Yet the lack of information quality-control does not appear to lead to muddled, confused children,” they say.

“In some ways, it may be an advantage because, rather than presenting knowledge in neat packages, the informal curriculum forces learners to become actively engaged with their information – to work with it, move it around, juggle ideas and resolve contradictions… It is not a static thing contained in a series of educational folders. It is alive and dynamic.”

You can read the whole article here.

This book seems to affirm my family’s choices as I watch my daughter pursue her learning choices in a chaotic and joyful way. How are your self-directed children doing? Lots of joyful chaos in your family as well? Better this than endless homework battles!

Debra Thorsen
SelfDesign Mom and 
Director of Strategic Planning

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