Tipping Points
October,  2026

Learning How to Celebrate Their “No”

Why self-directed education works for PDA kids, and a sneak preview of what my research found

Neurodivergence and Unschooling: Self-Directed Education for Children with Disabilities

As the number of neurodivergent learners increases, more families are turning to Self-Directed Education.

Was It All Worth It?

Reflections on Raising a School

Agency, The Only Vaccine for Big Tech

How can fostering agency help safeguard our kids?

Raising Hell

An excerpt from Raising Change Agents: Practicing Social Justice in Everyday Parenting by Nat Nadha Vikitsreth, LCSW. This excerpt is about a Black mom practicing liberation with her Black 13-year-old co-learner.
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Previous Stories

Bria Bloom Leaves ASDE for Public School Superintendent Role

ASDE Organizational Manager cites burnout; Dr. Peter Gray to wrestle for her replacement.

Unschoolers Are Dirtbags

Formed from his years of experience in the field, Blake Boles shares a theory that unschoolers and dirtbags are the same species: people who step outside institutions, question inherited “musts,” and build meaningful, high-freedom lives off the beaten path.

Redefining the Right to Education as the Right to Self-Determination

The Alliance for Self-Directed Education responds to the Call for Inputs of the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Conventions on the Rights of Children in order to acknowledge the possibilities of seeing education as far greater than what happens within the standardized school model of institutional authoritarian instruction.

Deschooling as a Portal to Healing

When a life-changing medical diagnosis upended our family’s routines overnight, I was grateful for the landing space our unschooling life already provided for us. I also came to lean harder on the deschooling practices I found through ASDE in order to be able to show up in my family, and the greater world, as a more capable and healed version of myself.

When Children Lead

What I’ve learned from letting go in education

honest college mail

if college marketing mail said what it really means for many of those approaching from a less conventional background

Dyslexic Kids Wrote This Article in a School that Forces No One to Read or Write

In this article you can find out what dyslexic kids, who have grown up together in a self-directed setting, have to say about reading, reading instruction, community, and dyslexia. Spoiler alert: Consent and listening to kids are prime in our story even when they rub against what adult voices in SDE and adult voices in literacy education have to say.

Letter from the Editor

An invitation to share your experience with Self-Directed Education

Finding the Joy Beyond the Discomfort

What deschooling really asks of us

Wild and Poor

The reality of unschooling as a poor single parent facing serious health issues, and the community we’re building in spite of it.

Stockholm Syndrome: The Left is Missing the Moment for Real Educational Equity

Why does “The Left” continue to defend Public Schooling while the expanding ecosystem of alternatives – fueled by School Choice legislation – is producing fertile ground for liberal values and their pedagogical roots?

Big Tech’s New Moves to Dismantle Public Schooling: An Attack on Autonomy

In 2018, I wrote an article for Tipping Points called, “Update Available: Why Big Tech is in the Business of Education Reform.” At the time, […]

An Introduction to Family Frames and Decision Making, for Consent-Based, Self-Directed Families

Sophie Christophy shares her Family Frame approach to consent-based, self-directed decision making and activity planning that addresses the needs and wants of all.

The Earth is Our Teacher: Resisting Educational Oppression

They say education has a single path, A paved road with fences and gates, Rules marked by bells and registers, Grades like shackles — Pass, […]

Naming Conventions for Rights-Centric Educational Models

A young working group identified new names for the formerly self-directed model of education.

From the Archive

Why are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?

A review of Blake Boles’ new book that is being released today.
Voice of the Children

Sexuality, Gender, and Childhood, Part II

How perception of sexuality and gender is transformed by education, and what that means in Self-Directed Education.

My Faith Led Me to Unschooling

By digging deeper into my faith, I learned what it means to be a family that learns together
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Tipping Points Press

Books for Sale

Profit from these books goes to support ASDE and Tipping Points Press.

book cover Rigged
by Hazel Smack

Purchase

The first $8,000 of profits from these books by Peter Gray will be used as advances to publish the writing of Women of Color. Half of all proceeds there after will also be used as advances for Women of Color authors.