Natural Born Learners Quotes

“The Gandhian idea of basic education is to observe the child, to help like a gardener helps the acorn, or the seed, an apple seed, or a tomato seed, or a potato seed, or whatever seed it is. A gardener does not tell an oak to be an ash. A gardener does not tell an apple to be a pear. A gardener says, “Apple if you are an apple seed, be an apple, and I will help you: I will water you, I will put some stakes so that you are not blown away in the wind.”
― Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko, Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education.

“Take the American Revolution, for instance. Virtually everybody who made the American Revolution was a teenager! Washington was the Grand Old Man. I think he was 42. But Jefferson and Hamilton and really the whole pack of them were 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. The myth that keeps us small and in our place blows away with that discovery. The US young people, with free minds, were able to overthrow the most powerful military nation on earth, Great Britain.”
― Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko, Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education.

“instead of yelling and arguing with people to change their ways about school, he would find a hole in the school fence and stand next to it and say, “here’s a hole. If you guys want to get out of this rat-race you can go through this hole”
― Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko, Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education.

“I know that in the United States we consume between 25 and 30 percent of the world’s resources, whereas we comprise less than 5 percent of the world’s population. That type of injustice has to be backed up by brute force.”
― Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko, Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education.

“A child does what she does in order to meet her own needs. When we validate her feelings, find out what her needs are, and express our appreciation and love unconditionally, she thrives because she experiences that we care and that she is worthy and loved simply for being herself. In the process, the child learns compassion. She learns to recognize the goodness in herself and in others. She learns to look for the unmet needs instead of pointing what’s wrong. She learns the taste of feeling deep connection and love, unconditionally.”
― Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko, Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education.