Why I am here

I came to the states for the cause of education/learning. I have identified the education as the most important thing for China, as the thing that will make the real change. I recognized that for the macro-environment, it is better to do it in America. I believe what I am doing here will eventually benefit [...]

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Open response to Tim O’reilly

Open response to Tim O’reilly’s keynote speech at Web2.0 Expo New York.
The keynote speaking today given by Tim O’reilly is very inspiring. Thank him for giving that kind of speech. In response to him, I want to talk about my thinking on these issues. I don’t have all the answers. I have some, which hopefully [...]

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Play

Play
When the world is still, the whole world is just one. When it starts to move faster, forces are applied to its body and split out many small parts. For each small part to follow the flow of the whole world, greater emphasis needs to be put on the parts that are involved in the [...]

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I have never let my schooling interfere with my education

Read of Mark Twain said this from this wikipedia entry of Autodiadic, which has an entry to John Taylor Gatto.

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Future organizations’ education responsibilities

Note: I was talking with a friend about the future of education tonight. During the conversation, I mentioned a little what I think of future organization’s education responsibilities.  I thought it would be helpful to post these thoughts here.
In my view, we are in the transformation into an open society that is largely based on [...]

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In defense of Sudbury graduates: life is about simple things

A common criticism of  Sudbury Valley schools (SVS) is that if it is so good why it hasn’t produced many great people. To this criticism, SVS’ counter argument is that life is about simple things. Being a happy person who enjoys life is the most important thing. Recently I understand more of this. Life is [...]

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No Chinese food anymore–continuous exploration of space

I decided not to go eat Chinese food anymore except when I am going with some friends and they want to go to eat Chinese food. For myself, I am going to stay away from Chinese food. Initially I was frightened by this decision. So from now on I have to eat American food (or [...]

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Language, Culture, Human Brain, and Consciousness

Language, Culture, Human Brain, and Consciousness
Human being are social creatures. A large part of brain/mind is for social functions. In a foreign land, because of the language barrier, those functions are rarely carried out, thus those parts of brain rarely exercised, and might go into hibernation for a long time.
Even foreigners/immigrants choose to stay within [...]

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Natural Learning in Compulsory Schools

Note: below is a response to a friend who asked how to apply Space and Learning to conventional schools.
It is a very good question. It is also a very difficult question. I don’t have a definite answer. Here are some of my thinking of how we can approach such an issue.
John Taylor Gatto, who [...]

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My YouTube Channel

http://youtube.com/user/beyondliu
I will see if I can build a good channel (so far by collecting other people’s videos) with similar focus as topics on my blog.
The channel below is one Sudbury Valley School’s videos. I’ve know the stories there for a while so the videos didn’t give me many new things (For me, it is really [...]

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Parents United for Children’s Learning

The basic idea is to have a large group of parents organized together. They take turns. So every week, one parent will spend one day to either teach the kids some class such as music, or taking the kids to their company such as an accounting firm, a law firm or a news publishing company, [...]

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Dumbing Us Down for Mr. Bush and Politicians in the Congress

I read articles of the No Child Left Behind bill on NY Time, and their efforts to renew it. I strongly recommended them to read Mr. John Tayor Gatto’s book Dumbing Us Down. No one can do a good job on education without reading Mr. Gatto’s books or sharing the same understanding on education.
Compulsory [...]

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Dumbing Us Down for Teach for America and Wendy Kopp

Read Wendy Kopp’s book One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach for America and What I Learned Along the Way several years ago.
Wendy recently came to Columbia to give a speech, and on NY Times Teach for America was said to be like the peace corp in the 70s.
I would strongly [...]

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Walking in Greenwich Village

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking in Greenwich Village, wandering around aimlessly. Looking at people and stores, suddenly I felt free. A feeling of a long time ago came back to me. When I was in high school or college, I like to go to a new city, or go to the mountains, [...]

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Reflection on My Schooling

Note: this is a paragraph I just added to my article: the Art of My Life. (http://freestone.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/the-art-of-my-life/). I think it might be good to separate it out as a single article as well.
As I reflect on my schooling experience, I did well at school. Except for some short periods of time, generally I kept to [...]

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The Art of My Life

I am going to talk about the art of my life and how I came to it. It is going to be a long article since it spans my whole life. I cut many things off, but it is still quite long. So please bear with me.
As a kid, I enjoyed playing very much (http://freestone.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/the-meaning-of-life/). [...]

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Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto

Thinking after reading Dumbing us down.
No one can do a good job on education without reading Mr. Gatto’s books. Reading his book, you will have a feeling that education is the root of nearly all problems of our society. The education is to understand other social issues on a very deep level.
Brief recap [...]

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Community VS. Network

Thinking after reading http://www.spinninglobe.net/lesschool.htm

Reading John Taylor Gatto’s speech “WE NEED LESS SCHOOL, NOT MORE”, it is a different feeling from reading his other essays in the past. When reading those essays, my reaction was usually: yes, right, I agree. But reading this essay, my response is: seriously, I need to think about this.
It is very [...]

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The Sudbury Valley School, “School For a Post-Industrial Society” by Dan Greenberg

The link is here:
http://www.spinninglobe.net/carnegiesvs.htm
I agree with him totally on his analysis of our era of post-industry and what it demands of individual. Unlike many liberal or progressive folks who just blindly critisize mass production, we think it is historically an improment for mankind (see my blog http://freestone.wordpress.com/2004/05/18/why-itsoftware-makes-our-world-more-human/).
Our era is transiting from mass production to enpowering [...]

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The school system

The school system
The school system is a very delicately designed system. There are many forces behind its coming into being. Some are conscious efforts, some are not. Some are good intentions. Some are really not. A lot are due to historical limitations.
In the early America, there is no formal schooling. Americans visited [...]

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