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Welcome

In a world increasingly committed to change, this project was founded to share a bolder, brighter vision for the future of childhood education, of a more personal, more enjoyable and more complete offering and an end to educational inequality and needless failure.


Our Vision:

Picture education as a tree, whose leaves represent individual pieces of learning which children are free to simply pluck down...


If this campaign is successful, children will have access to a world of learning opportunities, from all levels of study and in a manner which is fully supported by the school system. They will have the opportunity to explore and discover, they will know the level at which they are studying, territory explored/unexplored and challenges related to those already undertaken. They, and all those involved in their care, will have an accurate overview of their experience, facilitating family involvement and reducing or eliminating obstacles children face in communicating their experiences, their successes and their needs to the outside world.



Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now." ~Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe


Children Must Now Have:

  1. Content

    Open access to a body of high-quality, integrated and easily navigable educational content which is expansive enough to meet their highest aspirations.


  2. Context

    The opportunity, throughout school, to look outwards beyond schooling to higher/further education and the professions, in order to better understand their subjects and their opportunities for fulfilment and contribution throughout working life.


That's it. Already convinced? Then please support this campaign. If we continue to do nothing, many more generations of children will be failed by States who simply fail to observe the rights children have in law. There's absolutely no reason why children should be denied that which they need to develop to their fullest potential.



Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual." ~Albert Einstein



If AoE is Successful



Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy - these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent." ~John Taylor Gatto


Traditional Schooling

Despite enormous shifts in both our culture and our laws, our schools remain largely unchanged since their 19th century origins. More and more educationalists today are delivering the message that schooling cannot be allowed to continue in the traditional mode. The very best amongst us, individuals such as Sir Ken Robinson, argue that our schools not only fail, but they fail the majority of children. As alarming as this possibility may be, we can go further and question if the minority who are supposed to benefit can truly benefit from an environment which sacrifices the welfare of the many in their name. That, afterall, is elitism.



Schools have not necessarily much to do with education... they are mainly institutions of control, where basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school." ~Winston Churchill


We are capable of better. We are advanced enough now, both technically and socially, to ensure far better provision for children. Much of this progress is reflected in our Human Rights laws; laws which set out the rights and freedoms children have which must be protected by the State. Modern laws offer children truly excellent protections, but, sadly, this remains only on paper. Children's educational rights are not observed by schools today and neither can they be under the traditional approach to education.


The traditional model fails the child through two principal means:


  1. Children are rendered entirely dependent on their teachers for their every learning opportunity; they have no option other than to accept what they are given when they are given it, by what they are led to believe is an unfailing authority. This is an unnecessary barrier to access, it exposes children to the limits of their teachers' capacity, it indoctrinates a manner of obedience over the natural learning cycle and it institutes the idea of society as a bureaucratic hierarchy. Children have no other routes to educational success and no way to develop beyond this dependence. It is for these reasons, not for any failing within children, families or society more widely, that pupil-teacher relations or classroom conditions are as poor as they are today.


  2. Children are also denied any meaningful opportunity to look outwards beyond schooling and to align themselves to the professional roles of which they are capable. They are essentially being prevented from developing goals of their own. This is an extraordinary and unjustifiable omission, contributing as much as any other factor to the fact that children's education/life path is determined more by their background than by their innate capacities. When we consider the importance of the roles we choose to take up in life, this omission, at best, is professionally negligent, at worst it could be seen as a willful attempt to limit social progress. Education in the US and UK, where it is the most unequal in the developed world, is widely accused of reinforcing, rather than challenging, social divisions. Not only does this omission undermine children's development throughout and beyond schooling, no school can claim to be acting in a child's best interests when it has no knowledge of a child's hopes/aspirations or, therefore, their expectations of schooling.



It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry." ~Albert Einstein


The traditional model must go. It is incompatible with children's modern rights and presents insurmountable barriers to progress, stifling diversity, creativity and social integration. Many children, perhaps the majority of them, face sacrificing their ideals, their aspirations and their potential in order to 'fit' within the structure and nature of traditional schooling. We cannot continue to subject children to this kind of violence.


Irrespective of wider views about social organisation, a 'decent' society would 1. allow children to learn to their potential in those areas they wish to, and 2. would support their progress from schooling into adult life. Given that our families contribute around two-thirds of their incomes to the State in taxes, anything short of that standard is an inexcusable betrayal of the social contract.


Remember, these are our childhood memories; education failure is more than just a statistic or the lot of a forgettable few; it pervades every aspect of our social and professional environment, it's an engine for inequality and injustice, it devastates lives and families and prevents many contributions from ever being made. Inequality and injustice, especially in our schools, also says something about us.



Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it." ~Mark Twain


Have Your Say

Please share your thoughts, experiences, criticisms and all else. Use our contact page to get in touch.