Self-Directed Education
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This paper is a narrative analysis of how the author’s six-year-old daughter learned how to write her name, recognize numbers, read some words and draw. By doing so, Ricci offers an alternative to a schooling-centered curriculum that would have us believe that the only way to learn these things is to have an expert train young people to do them. It is meant to engage the reader in a dialogue about, on the one hand, trusting and respecting young people’s right to learn what they want, when they want, how they want and, on the other hand, imposing an externally directed curriculum on them.