Talking to ... Peter Gray

If, precisely to the extent that the field of education has
championed lofty principles, a decline in education has set in,
the question arises: Where did this come from? Psychologist Peter
Gray, for whom the question of learning has become his life’s
work (and who, for many years, wrote his widely read Freedom to
Learn column in Psychology Today), recalls his school days in the
1950s, especially the great deal of freedom he had. No homework
in Elementary School, no lugging materials back and forth between
home and classroom—once you were outside, you were outside and
free to play. And in our conversation, this seemingly trivial
detail becomes the litmus test, revealing a fundamental shift:
School is no longer a confined space but a totalizing system
permeating every aspect of children’s lives.


Guided by his own son’s school experience, Peter Gray has spent
decades researching how children learn when they are allowed
to—in Hunter-Gatherer societies, where teaching is taboo, and at
the Sudbury Valley School, where there are no curricula or
grades, only radical autonomy. His thesis: Conventional schools
have degenerated into disciplinary institutions that hit the most
successful students the hardest. The rates of anxiety and
depression do not merely reflect the parental pressure weighing
on students; even more serious is how misguided ideals of
perfection go hand in hand with the loss of free play—and thus
the very sphere where creativity and critical thinking are
fostered.


Peter Gray worked for many years as a research professor at
Boston College. While his research initially focused on the
brains and hormonal balance of mice, the issue of Education and
Learning became a cause close to his heart. Author of a widely
used introductory text on Psychology (now in its 8th edition),
he’s also written numerous texts on how children learn. His
Psychology Today column made him an influential voice for the
Alliance of Self-Directed Education.


Peter Gray has published (selection)


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