Meditation for the New Year: Kahlil Gibran

I think of the unschooling, self- directed pursuit of knowledge and learning along the lines of Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran's piece below:

In this world two processions pass by:one is that of old men bowed down by age, who walk leaning on their sticks which bend beneath their weight, and although the path leads downward, they are breathless and worn out with fatigue.
The other is of the procession of the young who advance with winged steps, who sing as if their throats were fitted with silver strings and who brave the obstacles which are subdued by the majesty of the mountain slopes and won over by the magic of the summits.

And you, in which procession do you take your place?

Ask yourself the question in the silence of the night. And when you finally decide to come down to earth, judge whether you are a slave of yesterday or a free man of tomorrow.

I tell you that the children of yesterday walk in the funerals of history,it has shaped them and they have shaped it themselves. They cling to a cord which has worn thin with time;if it breaks-and this will surely happen soon-they will fall into the depths of forgetfulness.

And I tell you that they lived between crumbling walls;as soon as the storm breaks out-and it will break out soon-their heads will be buried beneath the rubble, and their dwellings will be reduced to tombs.
In truth i tell you that all they think,say, and write, as well as their deeds, are no more than chains, and because they themselves are too weak, they cannot carry them, but on the contrary the chains will carry them away be their weight.

As for the children of tomorrow, they are those who have been summoned by life, they have followed it with a firm step, their heads held high. They are the dawn of a new age. ... They are not very numerous among the crowd. But they stand like a flowering branch in a burnt-out forest, like a grain of wheat in a haystack.

Nobody knows them but they know each other. They are like the mountain tops that can see and hear each other, quite unlike the caverns which are deaf and blind. They are like the seed sown in a field by the hand of God. It will burst forth from its husk with the strength of its flesh, it will say like a radiant plant facing the sun,it will become a majestic tree, who roots take hold in the heart of the earth, who branches aspire to the depths of the firmament.

In a field of flowers; stillness of mind

As the end of the calendar year approaches I am thinking about the wisdom that surrounds me and that could be mine if only I could learn to pause-to stop in my mad rushing around and suspend daily, my mental preoccupations in favour of stillness and quietness of mind.
My friend told me about her unschooled daughter who when she was young would spend afternoons simply contemplating a field of flowers. She could sit motionless hours on end watching a frog's movements, examining it's physicality it's behaviour.
Was this child learning? Of course she was. She was not making a show of it, some might even say she was 'wasting time' but this is the essence of authentic learning. What a gift it is to have that mental capacity for non interference, for observation and concentration.

Socialization not a Problem

Anyone who educates their children without school must come up against the biggest criticism of home-education there is: socialization. Many home-educators refer to it as the big S question-"What about Socialization?"

For those of us who are well seasoned in the field of home-education the question can be hugely tiresome, mostly because we know our kids are civilized, and socialized (to the community at large rather than to a peer group).

So it's a nice break when we hear about studies confirming what we already know. A friend recently sent me a link to an article about one such report study and I have included an excerpt from the article by Michael Smith, president of Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA):

"Until recently, “Homeschooling Grows Up” was the only study that addressed the socialization of home-schooled adults. Now we have a new longitudinal study titled “Fifteen Years Later: Home-Educated Canadian Adults” from the Canadian Centre for Home Education. This study surveyed homeschooled students whose parents participated in a comprehensive study on home education in 1994. The study compared homeschoolers who are now adults with their peers. The results are astounding.

"When measured against the average Canadians ages 15 to 34 years old, home-educated Canadian adults ages 15 to 34 were more socially engaged (69 percent participated in organized activities at least once per week, compared with 48 percent of the comparable population). Average income for homeschoolers also was higher, but perhaps more significantly, while 11 percent of Canadians ages 15 to 34 rely on welfare, there were no cases of government support as the primary source of income for homeschoolers. Homeschoolers also were happier; 67.3 percent described themselves as very happy, compared with 43.8 percent of the comparable population. Almost all of the homeschoolers—96 percent—thought homeschooling had prepared them well for life.

This new study should cause many critics to rethink their position on the issue of socialization. Not only are homeschoolers actively engaged in civic life, they also are succeeding in all walks of life. Many critics believed, and some parents feared, that homeschoolers would not be able to compete in the job market. But the new study shows homeschoolers are found in a wide variety of professions. Being homeschooled has not closed doors on career choices....

Both “Homeschooling Grows Up” and “Fifteen Years Later” amply demonstrate homeschool graduates are active, involved, productive citizens. Homeschool families are leading the way in Canadian and American education, and this new study clearly demonstrates homeschool parents are on the right path."

Do You Love the Earth? Do Something

You have to know it to love it and fight for it.



posted on
http://www.dosomething.org/

art in motion

Created by Bronwyn

Deep Learning: Letting it Stew

People often wonder how you learn when you don't do school. It always takes me by surprise how deeply the idea that we must go to school to learn is ingrained in our society.
The other thing that we are all guilty of, schoolers and non schoolers alike is that we usually don't allow time for learning to grow; we need the showy stuff to prove to ourselves and to others that learning is taking place.
I was reminded of this while reading 'From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler' by E.L. Konigsburg.
It's a fantastic book about two kids that run away from home and and live at the Metropolitan Museum for a week without being discovered. While they are there they embark on a quest to discover whether a piece called 'Angel' was made by Michelangelo or not.
This leads them to it's original owner, Mrs. Basil. E. Frankweiler.
In one of their conversations with her, Claudia the oldest is surprised when Mrs Frankweiler says she is not interested in seeking out any more experts' advice. She is satisfied with her own research and "not in the mood to learn anything new."
Claudia replies, "But Mrs, Frankweiler, you should want to learn one new thing everyday. We did even at the museum." (Note the 'even at the museum' instead of especially at the museum!!!).
"No," the old lady continues. "I don't agree with that. I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow."
That's kind of where my head is at with unschooling these days. Less accumulation of facts. More of 'let it stew.'

Cakes And Ale

'Tis the season to be jolly.' 'Joy to the world.'
Joy. This is the message of Christmas isn't it? Merriment and good cheer, mirth, festivity and such. And yet to live joyfully, in joy and with enjoyment of life (joie de vivre) the rest of the year is a radical idea. It might even be considered an act of subversion to suggest that one might live one's life actually enjoying it. Delighting in it. Being glad. Living life with gusto.
I realize that I approach my life in a very serious way; in fact I would even venture to say that I approach life 'on the defensive.'
My thoughts centre around 'how can I avoid intrusion?' How can I get my time, time for me, before someone disturbs me? I think in terms of 'getting things done' and this robs me of joyfulness.
Recently, I've been trying to change this kind of thinking. I am trying to remind myself to live as if everyday could be my last- so that I appreciate my life. I've been thinking about giving joy about gladdening? Do I bring joy?
When we put the self first we end up suffering. What a twist of irony that is.

Dost thou think that because thou art virtuous there shall be more no cakes and ale? Twelfth Night

Buy Nothing Christmas?

Every year the question of 'to gift or not to gift' comes up in my family (that is the adults in the family! The kids are all for getting). As the extended family grows with more nieces and nephews, things can get crazy. The extreme pressure this season puts on people to give and receive can often ruin the intent behind said season, with people even going into debt because of this.

We question the over-consumption this season brings and the discrepancy between those who have and those who have not. When you hear that some kids are wishing for socks and canned items in their stockings this year it reminds you that there is real hunger and poverty in our communities. If you are going to give doesn't it make mores sense to give to those who need it most rather than give to those who already have?
After discussing this with my sisters, it is actually a relief to decide not to exchange gifts with one another (of course our own kids are not yet ready to give up presents from we parents). We plan to concentrate on enjoying one another's company instead and of course the good food and cheers that comes with that.

Now I have to tackle the in-law side of things!

Education for today's world

It's 8.49am and my daughter is still in bed. She goes to high school-her choice-were school starts at 8.40am. Why so early? Studies have shown that the juices of brains in this age group don't start flowing until at least noon. Like most things about public schooling, the system doesn't work for kids.
This is why I am in support of Paul Goodman's 'manifesto' below. Take a look and throw some comments our way.

1) Incidental education, taking part in the on-going activities of society, must again be made the chief means of learning and teaching.
2) Most high schools should be eliminated, with other kinds of youth communities taking over their sociable functions.
3) College training should generally follow, rather than precede, entry into the professions
4) The chief occupation of educators should be to see to it that the activities of society provide incidental education, rather than exploitation or neglect. If necessary, we must invent new useful activities that offer educational opportunities
5) The purpose of elementary pedagogy, through age twelve, should be to delay socialization, to protect children's free growth, since our families and community both pressure them too much and do not attend to them enough. Modern times pollute and waste natural human resources, the growing children, just as they do the land, air and water.
Goodman 1971

When unschooled wants to be schooled.

Without a doubt the time between ages 11 to 13 are the toughest for unschoolers. At this point kids start going, "Eh- I'm not learning as much as the kids at school. I'm bored. Nothing much is going on."
Expect to hear your usually happy unschooler complain that they want to go to school.
A little bit of preparation to meet this challenge is a good thing.
In 2005, I interviewed Sandra Dodd a seriously experienced mama and author who knows about this stuff for a radio free school show (To listen go to http://www.hwcn.org/~ap951 /three.html and click on show # 32).
The transcript was also published in Life Learning Magazine July/August 2005.
Here's an excerpt from the the interview:
"There's a learning curve that I see with unschooled kids and that is that they seem to be ahead [of their peers in school] for the first few years and then there's a period of time,roughly from about nine to twelve years of age,when they seem behind. And then after they are 12 and 13, zoom! They look ahead! They seem to be ahead again."

"In school,there is a period when children are 11 or 12 when they've just been crammed full of math facts,and geographical facts...and they just seem full to bursting with knowledge, and the kids at home might still be playing with pokemon or coloring books, and they look up and the school kids are naming places and things they don't know, they're reading text books and doing long division or writing cursive-things that you can see from across the room. "What are they doing? I don't know what they are doing. I can't do that!"

"But then what seems to happen with the unschoolers I have met and talked with, is that when their kids got to be 13 or 14, a kind of maturity comes upon them and they say, "Oh! I guess if I want to learn cursive, I'll just practise it, Is this it?" And they do it. They look at something and they say, "Is that all?" And they figure it out on their own how to do math.
They start to develop their own map of the world and history of the universe and stuff;all of the facts are starting to gel in to a model of the universe. They are understanding a lot of things and making a lot of connections. And about that time the kids as school get all burned out and realize that all the facts they are learning are only leading to another year of facts. It's like Rumpelstiltskin: "Oh you turned that straw into gold? Next room. Bigger. More straw. Oh and by the way, you don't get to keep the gold." While the unschoolers are saying,"Oh yeah! This is cool. I'm glad I didn't go to school!"

Another thing I've noticed is that when they get to be 13 or 14, they've either gotten a job, gotten a really cool volunteer position, become involved in a hobby they have so that they are in a position of teaching whether it is karate, or horseback riding, or ice-skating. They've gotten to the point where they know enough that they are a senior student and they are given a position of responsibility. If they are given something real and they are given the kind of responsibility that is given to and adult, in a way it makes them an adult. They feel that shift of not being one of the kids anymore.
And you see a change in their posture and their bearing and the way adults treat them.
..So while school kids are at the point of greatest dismay with public schools the kids their age who are unschooled are saying, "Hah! I wonder if I should go to horse camp of if I should take a college class..... and the kids in school don't have any of these options. So at the same time that they are made small, the unschoolers have been made large."

Learning Math

Why Personalized Learning?

Finding True Work

This is the conclusion to John Holt's 1978 essay Jobs Careers Work, in the #3 issue of Growing Without School (GWS).

He writes,
"To students who used to ask me whether they should go to, or stay in, or go back to college, I used to say, "Look, a college degree isn't a magic passkey that opens all the doors in town. It only opens a few, and before you spend a lot of time and money getting one of these keys, you'd be smart to find out what doors it opens, and what's on the other side of those doors, and whether you want to go through them."

I also used to ask them, "What do you want to do? Suppose you had in your hand whatever college ticket you are thinking of getting, what would you like to do, choose to do, right now?"

Most looked at me with blank faces. They had never considered the question. A few would say that they would like to be some sort of -ician or-ologist. I would reply, "OK, suppose you were one, then what would you like to do?" This stopped them.

They did not know any -icians or-ologists, and had no idea what they did or whether they themselves might want to do it. They saw these 'careers' only as slots that school might enable them to slip into.

Every year the major academic disciplines-History, English, Modern Languages, Economics, etc. have big conferences. Hundreds of people with brand new Ph.D. degrees go to these conferences, hoping to land one of the by now scarce jobs.

They hold their tickets up in the air and say, in effect, "Please hire me, someone, anyone, I'll do anything you tell me to." There is a well know name for these gatherings.

It is "slave markets."

More on John Holt and Real Work

You know I'm always writing and thinking about creating opportunities for young folks to work with adults -out in the community. In the continuation of John Holt's essay in the Growing without School (GWS #3, 1978 issue) he talks about how a great many of the people doing serious work in the world (as opposed to just making money) are very overworked and short of help.
"If a person young or not so young, came to them and said, "I believe in the work you are doing and want to help you do it in any and every way I can, will do any kind of work you ask me to do or that I can find to do, for very little pay or even none at all," I suspect that many or most of them would say, "Sure, come right ahead."
Working with them, the new comer would gradually learn more and more about what they were doing, would find or be given more interesting and important things to do, might before long become so valuable that they would find a way to pay her/him. In any case, s/he would learn far more from working with them and being around them than s/he could have learned in any school or college."

Real Work

John Holt often spoke to high school assemblies mostly in rich suburbs of big cities. He talked about the difference between jobs, careers, and work. In the Growing Without School issue #3 1978 he writes the following:
A job as I defined it was something you did for money, something that someone else told you to do and paid you to do. Probably not something you would have done otherwise, but you need the money so you did it.
A career was a kind of step ladder of jobs. If you did your first job for a while, did what you were told and didn't cause any trouble, whoever gave you that job might give you a new job. This job might be slightly more interesting, or at least no so hard-dirty-dangerous. You might not have to take orders from so many people, might even be able to give orders to a few, You might be able to make a few more choices. Then if you did that job OK for a while your boss might then give you a still better job until you had gone up the job ladder. This adds up to a career.
By 'work' I meant (and mean) something altogether different, what people used to call a 'vocation' or 'calling'-something which seemed so worth doing for its own sake that they would have gladly chosen to do it even if they don't need money and the work didn't pay.
I went on to say that to find our work , in this sense, is one of the most difficult tasks that we have in life, that unless we are very lucky we cannot expect to find it quickly, and indeed, that we may never find it once and for all, since work that is right for us at one stage of our life many not be right for use at the next..I added that the vital question, "What do I really want to do?"

What do I think is most worth doing?" is not one that the schools will often urge us or help us to ask of ourselves; on the whole, they feel it is their business only to prepare us for employment-jobs or careers, high or low. So we are going to have to find out for ourselves what work needs to be done and is being done out there and which of that work we most want to take part in.

As I said these things, I looked closely ..at the faces of my listeners...What I saw and what I usually heard in the question periods that followed, made me feel that most of those students were thinking "this guy must have just stepped off the space ship from Mars."

Work for nothing? For most of them it was not just impossible, but unimaginable. They did not know, hardly even knew of any people who felt that way about their work. Work was something you did for external rewards-..
I found myself thinking often about something Paul Goodman had written: Ours is the first civilization in history that has imposed on the elite of its younger generation a morale fit for slaves."
To which I would add soemthing that Hannah Arendt once wrote about slaves in ancient Greece. Slaves could earn money, own property,even get rich. What they could not do was work for anything but themselves;in other words, they could not fight, or vote,or hold office. They were only allowed to be what in our time most people choose to be-what economists call Economic Man, people who work only for their own personal gain.
Of course, in saying this about the young people I talked to, I am to some degree guessing (and therefore perhaps projecting). Of one thing I am certain. There was never, anywhere, a hopeful, positive, enthusiastic response to what I said. I cannot remember even one among all those students, the most favoured young people of the most favoured nation in the world , who said "Mr Holt, here's what I am interested in care about, how can I find a way to work at it?"

To be continued in the next post.

Changing the Way we think about Teens

I'm at the end of my series on adolescence, the book by Robert Epstein called The Case Against Adolescence:Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen. I know, it wasn't all one smooth series but so much else is going on so apologies!
The last idea Epstein leaves us with is the idea that we can change our perspective on how we view the teen-age years- a period of growth that was largely set in motion during the period of massive population growth in the Industrial Revolution.

Epstein explains throughout his book that our views today on teens are determined by messages the media sources and thought leaders serve us daily. You know, the 'reckless, 'lazy', 'violent teen' messages.
"Our views can reasonably be conceived of as a kind of irrational prejudice programmed by our culture-almost precisely the kind that mainstream Americans bore towards women and blacks until very recent times," says Epstein.
We can change this backward way of thinking. We are nothing if not creatures of change.
"Adolescence as we know it in the US should be abolished, and we should stop exporting this dysfunctional period of life to other countries," Epstein continues.

In my opinion, the best place to start would be to abolish compulsory schooling- an outmoded strategy of education. Get the kids in with the adults; let them talk to adults, hang out with them,learn along side them and take their cues from them rather than from their peers.

"The time has come to end the isolation {from adults}. Young and old, we will all benefit by restoring the child-adult continuum that existed through most of human history in industrialized nations and that still exists in preindustrial societies today. The teen years need to be what they used to be: a time not just of learning, but of learning to be responsible adults," concludes Epstein.

What we need then is more avenues, more opportunities for this to take place-for adults and kids to come face to face in meaningful ways. Take your kid to school day won't cut it.
I want to hear your ideas and experiences on what can be done (what is being done) to restore the continuum. Please write in.

Childrens Liberation Front against Graham Badman's report

A protest song and video by the Childrens Liberation Front against Graham Badman's report and the prospect of enforced schooling

these are the lyrics (for the hard of hearing)

We don't need your registration
We don't need your yearly goals
No right of entry to our houses
Badman leave home ed alone
Hey Badman leave us kids alone
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another pawn for Ed Balls

A Response to the Report on the Review of Elective Home Education in England

Created by Education Otherwise

Homeschooling in England; Under Attack

In North America, we enjoy the right to educate our children outside of school with little or no interference from the State. In England, home education has always been seen as an acceptable route to go- up until now.


Kelly Green is a Canadian monitoring the situation closely. She reports that a few days ago the "independent expert" stirring up all the trouble gave evidence before a Parliamentary Select Committee. This individual is the same one wrote the report recommending that all home educators should have to supply a complete educational plan a year in advance for each child, force their children to display "evidence" to Local Authorities that the plan had been followed, and allow their children to be interviewed, alone, with no trusted adult present, to ensure that they were "voluntarily" being home educated.

In her email message Green notes that home educators in England are living a nightmare; they are being accused of child abuse by this man, the Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Children, Schools and Families and many of the nation's biggest newspapers.

Green writes that many home educators are now planning to flee the country, but others intend to stay and fight, or have no choice to leave. They are now working out their next steps, and there may be things we can help with.

She urges us to read the following blogs to find out more about what is happening to them;
http://threedegreesoffreedom.blogspot.com/2009/10/childrens-right-to-speak.html?showComment=1255447798276#c5185852642476695258


http://www.renegadeparent.net/post/Wave-goodbye-to-home-education.aspx#top


http://www.patchofpuddles.co.uk/archives/2886/again-with-the-numeracy-lessons-for-people-who-should-know-better

This organization is one of the ones leading the fight:

http://ahed.pbworks.com/

A blog about what kids themselves have to say:

https://heyc.org.uk/

Meanwhile, an email to Ed Balls, the Minister of the Department for Children, Schools and Families, letting him know that this is becoming an international issue of civil and human rights, would be a worthy act of support and solidarity. info@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk Also, you can email the Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee, Barry Sheerman, through his web site: http://www.barrysheerman.org.uk/

Check back at Freedom and Choice in Education--BC for updates. http://facebc.pbworks.com/

350 Hamilton: World Climate Change Day of Action

John Holt on Alternative Schools

Periodically, I like to refer to John Holt's writing to keep me on track as to what authentic learning is really about. In an essay he wrote for Growing Without School (#17) he said he wanted to do away with the idea of compulsory learning, and the idea that learning should be separate from the rest of life. "Above all, I want to break down the barriers that separate children from adults and their work and concerns."
"It's okay to have special places for kids, since they have certain needs that in some respect are different from the needs of adults....But they should not have to spend all their time in those special places. The adult world should be as far as possible open to them,and they should not have to go to special places unless they want to.

"People say to me quite often,"I want to work with kids." What they really mean is that they want to work on kids, to do things to them or for them, usually without their consent,which they think will do them good. I often say to these well meaning people,"Why not find some work worth doing and then try to find ways to make it possible for young people to join you in this work?"

"This is very different from starting an alternative school. Children (and youth especially -my words) should be able to have contact with many adults who are outside their families, and whose work is not taking care of them. They should be able,if they wish, to make friends with adults who may or may not be friends of or even known to their parents. They should be able to see adults at work and to share in that work according to their energy and skill.
If we want to call the place where this work is done a 'school," I suppose we can. But I would prefer something new, and in our time this is new, I'd rather think of a new name for it than bend an old name out of shape to fit it."

Holt felt uneasy about the relationship between adults and children in alternative schools claiming that in regular school the "relationship is stark and clear."
Wrote Holt, "School is the Army for kids. Adults make them go there..tell them what to do, bribe and threaten them.. When the teachers in an alternative school try to give up this bad relationship, it is very unclear what they put in its place. If they are not there to tell the children what to do, what are they there for? To "help" the children? Did the children ask for this help? Can they get away from it?...Are they the students' servants or their bosses, or if neither, then what? Is the task of adults in alternative schools to think up interesting things for the students to do and then try to seduce or cajole them into doing them? Is their task to be available if students want their help, but otherwise to stay out of the way? Neither of these seems to me like good life-work for serious adults.
"I personally would hate to be in the position of having to think up things for children to do and to find ways to get them to do them. If and when they ask me, I often show them how to do things i like to do, so that we can do them together. But I am not going to do thins that bore me in the hope that they many interest or be good for them. Thus I am glad to play my cello with the children around,and to offer them a chance to play if they want. But if they don't want, that's fine with me; I am not trying it "get them interested" in playing cello. I am not going to take up painting in the hope that, seeing me, children will get interested in painting. Let people who already like to paint, paint where children can see them.
"When adults come into our office with children, if we are doing anything which children can do, we ask them if they want to help, and they almost always say Yes. They work hard and well, and are a real help. I think children could and would like to help adults much sooner and in more ways than most adults give them a chance to."

Raffi: Kids for Saving the Earth -Promise Song

A poem

Something new is upon us, and yet nothing is ever new. ... We are alive in a fearsome time, and we have been given new things to fear. We've been delivered huge blows but also huge opportunities to reinforce or reinvent our will, depending on where we look for honor and how we name our enemies. The easiest thing is to think of returning the blows. But there are other things we must think about as well, other dangers we face. A careless way of sauntering across the earth and breaking open its treasures, a terrible dependency on sucking out the world's best juices for ourselves—these may also be our enemies. The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

small wonder - barbara kingsolver - 2002

One of the favourite things I've always loved about being a parent is reading to my kids. Sadly as they grow older there are fewer opportunities to do so-and the kids prefer to go off and read their own books by then. Still, i am lucky to have the attention of my youngest kid yet and I just finished reading a most wonderful book called Skellig by David Almond. How surprising it was and exciting to discover a girl (Mina) living the unschooled life; who moves in the world and learns following her natural curiosity so thoroughly and whose experience, contrasted against the schooled life really brings forth the 'rightness' of what authentic learning is about. It is now school that is portrayed as un-natural, a curiosity to wonder about (rather than self directed learning). When Michael (the protagonist) is working on his school work (after missing school due to the distress he is in because of his very sick baby sister), Mina looks at the worksheets; It is thought that Man is d-----------------from the apes. This is the Theory of E--------------This theory was developed by Charles D--------------. There was sentence after sentence like that. Mina read the sentences out loud. She said, "Blank blank blank," in a singsong voice when she came to the dashes. She stopped after the first three sentences and just looked at me.
"Is this really the kind of thing you do all day?" she said.
When she flicks through the book that Michael and his class are reading she asks about the red sticker.
"It's for confident readers," I said. "It's to do with reading age."
And what if other readers want to read it?"
"And where would William Blake fit in?" said Mina. "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/In the forests of the night." Is that for the best reader of the worst readers? Does that need a good reading age?"..."and if it were for the worst readers would the best readers not bother with it because it would be too stupid for them?"she said.
If you're looking to get inspired about life, beauty, the extraordinariness of things get ye a copy of this book!

Creativity and Conformity Don't Mix

Is it possible to be socialized and creative at the same time? Unlikely, according to Robert Epstein (The Case against Adolescence) who argues that in order to make people 'civil,' "we need them to learn to conform to a wide variety of rules and practices, a practise scientists call 'socialization.' The process starts at birth and it shifts into high gear when we start school."
I intuitively knew this since before my daughters were born and so I didn't put them in school. I wanted to preserve their creativity and I am delighted to say that it worked. My oldest girl recently complained about how with drawing she was "a terrible artist because she had no guidelines, she had no one to copy from, no one showed me how. I just muddled along." When she started school in grade 8 she says she her work was so different from everyone else's; that now with learning techniques at school she is "actually really good" and is contemplating a career in the arts. I had to point out to her that it is because she was not influenced by rules and how to dos all those years of not going to school that she preserved her creativity and so that now that she is older she is able to make use of technique without compromising creativity.
As Epstein writes,"children are constantly imagining and playing and sculpting and building and drawing, and they seldom 'copy'; copying in fact is a skill they need to be taught...no one needs to teach a young child to think outside boxes. By first grade however, when elementary schools-now competing nationwide to get high 'academic performance indices'-dramatically increase the academic load, the frequency of creative expression declines."
Epstein goes on to ask the question,"with powerful social forces bearing down, how to any of us end up being 'creative?'
"Generally speaking, the children and adults who continue to express creativity at a high rate are the misfits-the risk takers and the authority-defyers who resist socialization."
Which brings us to teens again (remember-this series of posts was supposed to focus on youth). Since teens as a group are made misfits in todays society-"teens should express more creativity on the average than adults do, because the less one conforms to society's rules, the more likely one is to live up to one's creative potential. When we look at teen creativity, that's exactly what we find."

Unschooling 101

My friend, Betsy Agar teaches a course at McMaster University and invited me to speak to her 'Engineering in Society' class of third year students. What a great bunch of kids! They were really interested in the topic-Unschooling/Open source learning and asked good questions, and gave thoughtful comments.
I introduced the idea of unschooling by reading a chapter from Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking. What a hoot! 'Pippi goes to school' was the chapter I read to the class. Why did I choose Pippi? Well, she is really the quintessential unschooler. Yes,she displays great ignorance and even rudeness.But she is also truthful; "Well now, really my dear little woman," said Pippi,"that is carrying things too far. You just said that seven and five are twelve. There should be some rhyme and reason to things even in school. Furthermore, if you are so childishly interested in that foolishness, why don't you sit down in a corner by yourself and do arithmetic and leave us alone so we can play tag?"
So the spirit behind what she says and does is what an honest experience of unschooling would entail.
She tries to create meaning in the questions the teacher asks the students, attempting to contextualize an otherwise vague inquiry;"If Lisa has seven apples and Axel has nine apples, how many apples do they have together?"
"Yes, you tell Tommy," Pippi interrupted."And tell me too, if Lisa gets a stomach ache and Axel gets more stomach ache, whose fault is it...?"
This is not a smart alec talking but someone who is actually reflecting on the question as well as the outcome!
When it comes to drawing the "snip of paper" that the teacher gives the kids is far too small for her and she has already filled it up and is moving onto the floor to complete her picture of a horse;"Just now I'm working on his front legs,but when I get to this tail I guess I'll have to go out in the hall."
The non confirming, exuberant, joyful child is open to the world and refuses a type of 'learning' that takes space in the confines of a school room; "There's altogether too many apples and ibexes and snakes and things like that. It makes me dizzy in the head. I hope that you, Teacher won't be sorry." And not too long after, she gaily leaves on her horse. With a 'ringing laugh Pippi rode out through the gate so wildly that the pebbles whirled around the horse's hoofs and the windowpanes rattled in the schoolhouse.' Awesome!

"I didn't vote for you..."

Youth Can and Do!

Here is an excerpt from an article in Life Learning Magazine, Jan/Feb 2005 issue. The article,"Nurturing Everyday Genius" is written by John Taylor Gatto.

Still an older way of coming to maturity, of taking an education for oneself,managed to survive and perpetuate itself without fanfare. In 1989 a school dropout from Brooklyn, a teenage girl named Tania Aebi, with no nautical experience than I have, sailed around the world alone-first women know to do so in history.
A few years ago, an elementary school dropout--George Meeghan,took the longest walk in human history, entirely on his own hook, un-sponsored, to prove to himself he could do it.--the man who gave us popcorn in movie theaters,an idea which made him a billionaire, was selling flags on the street at the age of nine.. and filling vending machines at 12. Lew Wasserman, recently deceased head of the largest entertainment conglomerate on earth, cut school to be a movie usher at age 12;by age 18 he had figured out how to sign a string of movie stars like Fred Astaire to his contracts. Michelle Wie, Hawaiian golfing sensation, multimillionaire by age 14 reached the enviable pinnacle because her father and mother understood what really mattered;the tennis playing Williams sisters, daughters fo a black mailman who couldn't afford tennis lessons, were worth 1000 million each at age 21 because their non-tennis playing parents taught them the game from books and videos when they were five. The head of the most prestigious scientific project on the earth (Francis S. Collins),the human genome project was homeschooled on a remote sheep ranch in Virginia by his mother using this intriguing methodology:he studied whatever interested him for exactly as long as it held his interest!
Gatto goes on to ask,"Shouldn't every body passed through a forced schooling meat grinder be made intensely ware of these models of the possible, and many more bedsides?..And if a college degree is wanted, shouldn't kids understand that hundreds of first class universities will allow candidates to earn one inexpensively through correspondence-same degree as sit-down students get, except much, much,cheaper and much more convenient?"

Take Back the Night Hamilton

"Can we go to 'Take Back the Night?' Please?" asks my daughter getting off the phone with her dad whose just announced the event's taking place this evening. I'm tired and not wanting to go but it's important to her,so we go. And I'm glad we do.

The energy is high; women of all ages wave their arms, singing in preparation for the march. Take back the night. There is excitement in the air as we begin walking down Main Street. Women we pass smile and wave. We are sensitive to the male on-lookers- be they honking their support from out of car windows or drumming their fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. Some stand by the side of the road in groups; small groups of men looking humbled and subdued-maybe considering the struggle women still have,maybe reflecting for a moment on the respect they deserve. We hope. Others clap with us, cheer loudly. Larger groups of males take photos of the parade of women going by-they are enjoying the free entertainment.

We continue up the road through intersections manned by motorcycle police who with a command of their hand wave us through;impersonal, burly men wearing tall,black leather boots stopping traffic, controlling the situation. I pause to consider the strange juxtaposition of this maleness in a sea of femaleness.
We go by a woman wearing a scarf around her head and face; she encourages a little boy in her arms to clap with us. We pass women at a bar who stand up and raise their beer glasses to us.
We pause to watch a group of young males breaking dancing, hip hopping, back flipping , somersaulting at the side of the road, their muscles strong and popping, slim, confident and agile; beautiful in their movements. We see all this as we sing and hold our banners high; educating our husbands and lovers, our fathers, our sons. Behind me a male (where did he come from?) begins the chant, "No means no," and a few people take it up but it dies away almost immediately. Who wants to chant when you can sing and dance and laugh? We are here to celebrate ourselves and our presence tonight is a testimony to the strength and joy that women are.

Teen Culture

I gotta be honest. After my experience today I couldn't help but have my doubts in the human species. I admit that I faltered and temporarily lost my faith in Robert Epstein's work: The Case Against Adolescence. Waiting for the bus (that came late) I was engulfed by the most disgusting presentation of maleness egged on by the worst kind of female stupidity. The young males of our kind cleared their throats loudly and spat on the ground continuously in between crude language and cussing, 'talking' about the worst kind of rubbish, the giddy females giggling and encouraging them.

"Epstein's cracked!" I said to myself. How can we treat these people like they're adults? Kids handling responsibility? Not likely.

But this is exactly Epstein's point: kids live up to our (adults) expectations. If we expect shitty behaviour then that is what we get! If our expectations are high the results will correspond. But we need to give them the opportunities first. So yes, yes, yes. Expect more. Give more responsibility and trust.

Here's a question to Epstein and his reply found on p202 of his book:
Q:Isn't it true that the brains of teens aren't fully developed? Isn't that why they behave so poorly? Doesn't current brain research refute your theory?
A: No brain is fully developed. Brains change throughout
the life span. Teen brains aren't all that different from adult brains, but where there are some differences, those differences don't explain their misbehavior or distress. Brains are reflections of our behavioral, cognitive, and emotional states:they don't cause the states...

In summary, is there a teen brain? Epstein's reply is, "Only in the trivial sense that unique behavioural characteristics that some teens might have-anger, impulsivity, depression-must be encoded in their brains...it's the genes and experiences of angry people that made them angry and gave them angry brains;their brains aren't the cause of their anger... The teen brain is by necessity every bit as much of a cultural creation as adolescence itself."

chomsky on role of education

ice images and climate change

More laments about Math

Lockhart's Lament - The Sequel

A while back, I posted a link called Lockhart's lament-all about the dismal state of affairs in how math is taught in schools. The best way to teach math, according to mathematician Paul Lockhart, is by 'doing' and by that he means 'owning' one's mathematics-mathematics that has meaning for the learner. It's an unschooling approach-one that aims at drawing upon the interest and motivation of the child. A way that is not divorced from life!
www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html

Well it seems that this strange and radical idea sparked a controversy and you can read about it at
www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_08.html

I thought Lockhart's response is worth quoting here:

I would like to begin by reminding readers that what I have written is a Lament, not a Proposal. I am not advocating any particular plan of action; I am merely describing the extremely sad and painful (and probably hopeless) state of affairs as I see it: mathematicians are not interested in teaching children, and teachers are not interested in doing mathematics.

If I am advocating anything, it is only the obvious (and time-tested) idea of "learning by doing." If I have a method, it is only to convey my love for my subject honestly, and to help inspire my students to engage in a delightful and fascinating adventure - to actually do mathematics, and to thereby gain an appreciation for the depth, subtlety, and yes, utility, of this quintessentially human activity. Is that really such a strange and radical idea? Have we really reached a point where one has to argue for teaching that "awakens and stimulates students' natural curiosity?" As opposed to what? I thought that was the definition of teaching!

I find it a bit frustrating that I am put in the position of having to defend such a simple and natural idea as having students engage in the actual practice of mathematics. Shouldn't it rather be the proponents of the current regime who should have to defend their bizarre system, and explain why they have chosen to eliminate from the classroom the actual ideas of the subject? You say I take a hedonistic approach to mathematics education? I call it a mathematical approach to mathematics education!

What I find so pathetic about our math education system is that it reduces a lively, creative, and messy human art form to a sterile set of notations and procedures, then attempts to train students to master them and become "technically skilled." Of course it fails even on its own terms because there is no coherent narrative - the teacher doesn't know where the natural logarithm came from, what its problem history is, what it means within the context of modern mathematics, only that it's on the test and the students need to "know" it. So the students cram some formulas into their heads for a day or two, pass a test, and promptly forget them. Of course most people can't retain dry, meaningless hieroglyphic information that they had no role in creating or contextualizing, so they get classified by the teacher (and by themselves) as "bad at math." (I worry that the most talented mathematician of our time may be a waitress in Tulsa, Oklahoma who considers herself bad at math.)

What are the goals of K-12 mathematics education?
One theme that seems to recur in discussions of my essay is this idea of training the 21st century workforce to be responsive to the needs of industry and to be "competitive in the global economy." I am no economist, but this seems to be more a matter concerning college and graduate level education, not the K-12 setting with which my essay is nominally concerned. Of course (as you may easily imagine) I have quite a bit to say about the disastrous state of affairs at the university level, but perhaps this deserves a separate discussion. (I have, however, received numerous emails from graduate students and researchers in mathematics and the physical sciences who feel that my essay hit the nail on the head for them as well.) So let's save the economic discussion for another time.

So the question is, what should be the goals of K-12 mathematics education? Or, to put it in somewhat more inflammatory terms, what whole categories of human experience do you want hidden from your child? Any other "enjoyable and challenging intellectual pursuits" you wish to prevent your youngster from engaging in? Painting and music certainly don't seem very practical, and neither does all this literature and poetry. Why should society expend resources to impart knowledge of any form of beauty? My god, there's so much unprofitable, non-industrial fluff our young economic units are being wastefully exposed to!

But seriously, are we really saying that introducing children to mathematics and helping them to develop a mathematical aesthetic is a bad thing? Inspiration, wonder and excitement can only lead to positive results. And it is especially valuable to have this kind of energy and enthusiasm when learning to master a new technical skill. Practicing a new scale is a lot easier when it occurs as part of an interesting, challenging, and beautiful piece of music.

Look. A child will have only one real teacher in her life: herself! I see my role as not to train, but to inspire and to expose my students to a wide range of ideas and possibilities; to open up new windows. It is up to each of us to be students - to have zeal and interest, to practice, and to set and reach our own personal artistic and scientific goals. Children already know how to learn: you play around and have fun and struggle and figure it out for yourself. Grownups don't need to hold infants up and move their legs for them to teach them to walk; kids walk when there is something interesting in the room that they want to get to. So a good teacher is someone who "puts interesting things in the room," so to speak.

No? Alright, fine. I propose a curriculum for reading which has students first learn all the words that begin with the letter 'A' and then proceeds through the alphabet. The course of study would be divided into 26 Units, and naturally one could not 'skip' to the advanced 'Q' class without having taken the 'P' prerequisite. (Reading actual books would come much, much later of course.) I wonder why we don't currently do this? Could it be because parents and teachers actually do read from time to time, so they know what matters and what does not? But the only source of information about what mathematics actually is comes from school itself: the 37th-generation photocopy of the same blinkered misconceptions, the perpetual feedback loop of School Math.

Suppose the devil were to offer you this deal: your child will get a perfect score on the English section of the SAT, but will never again read a book for pleasure. I would like to believe that no parent would make that deal. But how many would gladly shake the devil's other hand? Math is not something we want our children to enjoy, it is something we want them to get through.

To read more go to this link://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_08.html

Interesting Math

In an effort to spark mathematical interest in my 11 year old 'girlier-than the other daughters,' I picked up a book from the library called Math Doesn't Suck:How to survive middle school Math by Danica McKellar.
I figured since she likes fashion and style and acting and this book is written by a girl who is an actress and a self proclaimed fashion addict she'd like it.
My daughter's reaction after perusing the book for a few moments? "If they want people to like math they shouldn't have bubble-heads talking about math; it's a stupid book written by a dumb girl who is addicted to boys,dates and shoes."
In the past I have tried to present math in an interesting way. I invest $100 in the Murderous Maths series and that went no where fast. None of my girls picked up these comic,factual and what I consider,fun books.
I've tried to present cool art projects that have a mathematics component;worked on building projects that involve math and measurement. I've attempted to present the kind of math that is exciting and mysterious to me: Fibonacci sequences, the golden rule, phi, math in patterns in nature-and so on. Didn't/doesn't work.
So I question then the reason for why we think everyone should know math. Maybe, like brain surgery or ice-skating or writing novels, math just isn't something everyone is good at or even needs to know! This sounds sacrilegious but I really want to consider this seriously. How much math do we really need to know to get by in this world?

Casting Adolescence in Stone

The psychologist G. Stanley Hall put the modern concept of adolescence on the map a hundred years ago-we can blame him for inventing adolescence. But what came first? There is no smoke without fire so perhaps there really is a period of "storm and stress" leading up to adulthood?
Robert Epstein writes in his book The Case Against Adolescence, that "to Hall,the turmoil of the teen years was the inevitable consequence of recapitulation. In reliving our evolutionary past, said Hall, we must inevitably pass through a stage of great chaos-." But recapitulation theory "is bunk" according to Epstein and Hall's theory was built on faulty science-witness an idea that has severely influenced western perspective on adolescence over the next 100 years now put into question.
"To push the metaphor to the brink, Hall created the life-size, three dimensional, rock-solid image of Teen in Turmoil that Americans have believed in for a hundred years, but the impressive statue that he sculpted has been resting on a platform composed of the remains of some old German biology texts that long ago decayed to dust," Epstein writes.
Kids do go through a period of turmoil as Hall suggested but not for the reasons he gave.
Adolescence as we've created it is the cause of this period of turmoil. It could be avoided since as studies show again and again,adolescence is relatively new in human history,is rare in other cultures and can be reversed with serious doses of real responsibility.

Youth after youth, bewildered by the incapacity to assume a role forced on him by inexorable standardization of American adolescence runs away in one form or another, dropping out of school, leaving jobs, staying out all night and withdrawing in to bazarre and inaccessible moods.
Erik Erikson, Identity; Youth and Crisis (1968)

Adolescence Abroad

Is adolescence in Canada or the US the same as adolescence in Burma, or Ghana?
If not how does it differ? What are the effects of western style adolescence on non western communities?
The third chapter of Robert Epstein's Book The Case Against Adolescence examines these questions in detail and concludes that our type of adolescence is an anomaly. It isn't like this everywhere.
And while our kids are arguing with us to buy them lap-tops and the latest designer jeans, kids over in China or Indonesia are manufacturing these items. Are they (kids abroad) hard done by?

"In pre-industrial nations where young people are rapidly integrated into adult society at an early age,teen turmoil is largely absent. A recent study of 186 preindustrial societies indicates that 60% of such societies don't even have a word for adolescence and that antisocial behaviour in young males is completely asent in more than half of them. When teen problems are beginning to emerge in various countries around the world, they can be traced to the increasing isolation of teens from adults brought about by Western education practices, labor restrictions and media."

Epstein asks a disturbing question: Is it possible that many teens feel empty, frustrated, and angry because their lives lack real meaning? (As compared to the busy work that we keep kids doing at school?)

Freedom to Learn

Peter Gray has a blog at Psychology Today called Freedom to Learn. There's a a blog post up that includes some thoughts on unschooling. Go to http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn
and look for Trustful Parenting May Require an Alternative to Conventional Schooling
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200908/trustful-parenting-may-require-alternative-conventional-schooling

The article is pretty good but the comments are even more interesting.

The Creation of Adolescence?

That turbulent, hormone driven,'devil may care' period of human development is something people made up?
Hard to believe, right? But Epstein presents a convincing case as to how adolescence and the artificial extension of childhood came about since the mid 1800s in western culture at least:

*Nurturing tendencies by women (and some men) to protect the millions of young people toiling long hours in the new factories or getting into trouble on the streets
*The elevated status of women, which gave them a powerful new voice in policy making
*The widespread adoption of the new view that young people are tender, helpless and incompetent (reminds me of how people thought of women in the Victorian era!)
*Determined efforts by the new labour unions to protect the jobs and wages of older workers by pushing young people out of the work force
*The desire of leading industrialists to sweep the streets free of troublesome youths and to prepare new generations of skilled laborers through mass education
*The desire of leaders in the upper and middle classes to impose their moral standards on poor and working class youths
The emergence of new businesses and industries that catered to the young and helped to create a "youth culture."

Says Epstein,"Before these forces emerged, the troubled teen was a rarity in human history. With these forces in play, teens rapidly became isolated from adults and increasingly unhappy about their peculiar place in society;adults in body and mind, toddlers in status."

Here's what John Taylor Gatto says,in an interview with Jerry Brown about the lively America before the industrialists took hold of it: "Independent livelihood was where it was at! You know, back in the 1840's - 1850's it was impossible to assemble an American work force over 40, because people would only work for you long enough to get a little stake, and then cut off and go off on their own. When we look at the history of New England factories, that they're going to concerts, and dances and libraries for the young girls who worked there for just a couple of years until they could bring a little stake to their marriage. That was the American dream, that you could write the script to your own life! And very , very gradually, that dream was converted, and this is quite easy to track, not by evil people, but by people who understood that wealth depends on your ability to command labor. And unless you can assemble large groups of labor, you were never going to be wealthy as the Europeans reckoned wealth, or the English reckoned wealth."

Taylor Gatto places a strong emphasis on the individual, on the entrepreneur in control of himself and his livelihood. Gatto details the lives of archetypal Americans like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison, who were independent, free-thinking leaders, none of whom spent more than two years in any kind of school, and yet all were leading productive, fulfilled lives by the time they were in their teens.

Write in and tell us what you think!

Children no longer

Teens have a champion!

The Case Against Adolescence-Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen by Robert Epstein is a must read for anyone with young people in their lives. Adolescence exists mainly because of ignorance on the part of adults-according to the author. Crazy teens, badly behaved youth, are a result of artificially extending childhood.

I am so impressed by the book that I will be writing a short series covering some of its chapters.
I understand from the author that the new addition of the book comes out in a couple of months at amazon.com so stay tuned!
Now to the series:
why am excited about the book? Well as you know I follow an unschool philosophy as much as I can with the goal of raising competent, creative, self directed, useful young people. As they grow older and they start entering into their teens, I want my daughters to have opportunities to expand on what I've helped establish. But I can see that society is not ready for this.
For example,my 13 year old is as competent as most adults in many ways and yet the only job available to her right now is babysitting. Kids her age are not allowed to work more challenging fields- they are basically held back.
Can we find ways to create more meaningful opportunities for young people?

You might be surprised to hear that rather than tightening restrictions on young people we need to be loosening them. Teens as a group have more restrictions that prisoners or the mentally sick according to Epstein's research. In an interview with Psychology Today (Trashing Teens), Epstein reports,"in recent surveys I've found that American teens are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many as incarcerated felons. Psychologist Diane Dumas and I also found a correlation between infantilization and psychological dysfunction. The more young people are infantilized, the more psychopathology they show."
Can this explains some of the brutality and violence we're witnessing in public schools across North America?

Next blog posting: The Creation of Adolescence

Tell us what you think about us!

Hi Readers!
We post regularly and have fun doing it but we would love to hear from you. We know you're out there so don't be shy!!
Tell us;
1. What you like about the blog
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RFS

Jonas Brothers Are Homeschooled. Who knew?

My Son’s a Latin Lover,
Says Jonas Brothers’ Mom

The Jonas Brothers may all wear purity rings, but at least one of them is a veritable Latin lover!
Interviewed on Homeschool.com Radio, the superstars’ mom, Denise Jonas, reveals what her home-schooled sons’ favorite subjects are.
“Kevin loves literature and he loves Shakespeare. He also loves etymology, which is amazing. And he loved and he studied Latin,” she says of her eldest boy, now 21. “My husband and I disagreed on if he should take Latin or Spanish. And I said, ‘He has a passion to want to do Latin. Let him do that.’

“Frankie [8], our little one, is in love with science. Nicholas [16] loves English. And Joseph [19] – I don’t know that he has any favorite,” Denise tells host, and Homeschool.com senior editor, Rebecca Kochenderfer.

She also discusses the home-school curriculum she favors for her musical prodigies. “That would be Accelerated Christian Education. It works because of our travel schedule. And for my older boys, online stuff is just fabulous,” says Denise.

But her chat about home-schooling doesn’t end there. Denise also discusses what she likes most about it. “Everything’s an advantage. For instance, it’s great that we can take our kids to a midnight screening of Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience because we home-school – and we can sleep in ‘til 10 o’clock!”

The Child is RIght

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Changing Ways

On the car drive up to Lake Simcoe the winds chase the clouds until my daughter exclaims in wonder at their rapid speed,"Oh Mummy, I've never seen the clouds could move so fast!"
Out the window,the sun,a ball of fiery gold flashes through the branches of the forest, gleaming brilliantly through the leaves of the trees, racing by our side to be first.

This morning, all is calm and beautiful on the lake. In the evening, I watch the sunset and before my very eyes,the sky turns from pink to deep red and the clouds transform from an old traveler with a broken staff to a phoenix broad and strong of wing.

By night time, the lake is a turbulent,brooding mass of water the wind whipping and blowing wildly at its surface.

And so it is with us all. We change.
Today's unruly child is the calm and collected youth of tomorrow.
The raging little boy has evolved into a tolerant and empathetic young man, capable of dealing with disappointment.
The mother now sees that her worries and concerns were pointless;it was just a passing stage, nothing to fret about at all.

Nothing is permanent. We forget that in our worry to do what we think is right for the people we are responsible for. All too soon, they have grown up, passed away, left us behind.
Wouldn't we be better off if we loosened up, went instead into the mystery of things, had faith that this too will pass?

Free Schooling

Here's a bunch of cool video clips from the EducationRevolution.org site starting with Nellie Dick and the Modern School-a preview of a two-hour interview with a 96-year-old pioneer in the alternative education movement. Born in the Ukraine of Jewish, anarchist parents in 1893, she started anarchist schools in England back in 1908, went to the US in 1917 to teach at the Modern School in New Jersey. The Modern school movement was founded on the ideas of the Spanish anarchist educator Francisco Ferrer.

Research

There are men charged with the duty of examining the construction of the plants, animals, and soils which are the instruments of the great orchestra. These men are called professors. Each selects one instrument and spends his life taking it apart and describing its strings and sounding boards. This process of dismemberment is called research.

The place of dismemberment is called a university.

A professor may pluck the strings of his own instrument, but never that of another, and if he listens for music he must never admit it to his fellows of to his students. For all are restrained by an ironbound taboo which decrees that the construction of instruments is the domain of science, while the detection of harmony is the domain of poets.

Professors serve science and science serves progress. It serves progress so well that many of the more intricate instruments are stepped upon and broken in the rush to spread progress to all backward lands. One by one the parts are thus stricken from the song of songs. If the professor is able to classify each instrument before it is broken, he is well content.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Mentoring: the old hanging out with the young

I was at a meeting and the talk was about a church summer camp and the kids that attended. One elderly gentlemen described a little girl who was very keen to be in the kitchen with him-he is a baker and they were baking cookies.
"She stayed by my side the entire day," he exclaimed. "It was a wonderful day. A great day!"
After a thoughtful pause he said, "well-she ought to have been playing with her peers, getting along with them."
"Why?" I asked. "She was happy hanging with you-you had a great day. What is so wrong about that?"
"It was the best of days," he said reluctantly. For some reason he couldn't reconcile with himself that it was a natural and wonderful thing for the little girl to prefer his company to the company of her peers.
"She must have learned so much from you," I told him encouragingly.
"It's true," he acknowledged in amazement. Companionship,friendship,baking skills,a job well done!
This is the kind of scenario that we need more of. Kids need peers but they need the company of caring,knowledgeable elders maybe even more. She was happy to do a real-life, meaningful and USEFUL activity rather than the contrived 'craft' that had been prepared for them. Self-directed kid? I think so.

time to explore

The sun shines, waves lift the canoe, our paddles gently stir the lily pads. We see the stillness of the Blue Heron on the shore, the diving Caspian Tern, the soaring (was it a bald eagle?) raptor beneath the white clouds.

We eat our lunch as the breeze brushes past, eastward bound, and the fishermen cast their lines from the shore.

Our schedule: be ready for a soccer game at 6pm. Hours to explore...

You gotta go to school! Musical Satire

A "Schoolhouse Rock"-inspired look at the origins of the American education system. Originally recorded with a live audience for "In The Loop" at Minnesota Public Radio in May, 2007. Music and lyrics by Jeff Horwich. More info at http://www.mpr.org/intheloop

Community vs Networks -2

I'm responding to a comment made in response to the post,'Communities Vs Networks.' I agree with the reader that schools are organizations but even more so,they are institutions.
And we know that what institutions have as goal is self-perpetuation.
In the final analysis, an institution has its own best interest at heart no matter the original well-intentioned vision.
I think that the way we use the word community can be misleading. 'The cycling community,''the faith community,''the health community.' If you follow the definition of community as Taylor Gatto explains it in his address "We Need Less School, Not More," these are actually networks,not communities.
"It is a fact generally ignored when considering the communal nature of institutional families like schools,large corporations,colleges,armies,hospitals and government agencies that they are not real communities at all, but networks. Unlike communities, networks - as I reminded you - have a very narrow way of allowing people to associate, and that way is always across a short spectrum of one, or at most a few, specific uniformities.

"In spite of ritual moments like the Christmas Party or the office softball game, when individual human components in the network "go home," they go home alone. And in spite of humanitarian support from fellow workers that eases emergencies. when people in networks suffer they suffer alone unless they have a family or community to suffer with them.

Even with college dorm "communities," those most engaging and intimate simulations of community imaginable, who among us has not experienced an awful realization after graduation that we cannot remember our friends' names or faces very well? Or who, if he can remember, feels much desire to renew those associations?"

I think that last part cinched it for me!
To read the entire essay click here.

The War on Kids

THE WAR ON KIDS is a 99 minute documentary that shows how American public schools continue to become more dangerously authoritarian. Be warned,the message here is hard core;schools are bad places for kids. In addition to failing in their mission to provide education, they erode the country’s democratic foundation and often resemble prisons.
Note *It won Best Documentary on Education at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival. The movie's website is http://www.thewaronkids.com/MAIN.html

Institutionalized Education; Is this the best we can do?

I hear it said that what we have in place is "the best education available to many."

Is that really true? Can we honestly say that what passes as education, i.e. compulsory, state-controlled, mass schooling, is education?

The confusion stems from a misunderstanding of the definition of education as contrasted with schooling.

Schooling is imposed on a person; education is self achieved. Education is not given, but taken. With this understanding, can we honestly say that the best place to gain an education is between the four walls of a school room? For any body, rich or poor?

School worked for a while: 150 years during the time of rapid industrial growth, but does it still? Is mass, curriculum-driven schooling the best we can offer?

School is not flawless my friend, it is miles away from flawless. It can never be flawless because it is an idea that has had it's day.

Still, criticizing mass schooling is tantamount to insulting the Queen or country or God. Like an old tyrant, you can't say a word against it without fear of being persecuted, but like crumbling regimes of tyrants' progeny, it's time to retire or be torn down.

Just because the slaves have shoes and eat seven days a week doesn't make them free men and women.

As John Holt, one of the greatest thinkers on eduction of the 20th century said, "most slaves could not escape from slavery,yet no one suggested or would suggest that because all the slaves could not be freed, none should be." (Instead of Education).

So the weary and wearisome argument that school is our best hope for the children of the poor and disadvantaged, I just cannot buy. Instead, use the enormous amount of money spent on 'schooling' to let people manage their own education.

Pinot Vert

Unschooling wonders

This is a neat piece in the New Yorker about a look at a very creative, unschooling family.
Home Run by Rebecca Mead


Central to the actor’s craft is the ability to imagine oneself into the unimaginable; consider Meryl Streep choosing between her children in “Sophie’s Choice,” or Marlon Brando roaring in the jungle in “Apocalypse Now.” For Mary Albert, who recently appeared in a musical production of “Snoopy!!!” as Sally Brown, Charlie Brown’s little sister, the challenge lay in embodying her character’s notoriously ambivalent relationship to the classroom, since Mary, who is twelve, has never actually been to school. “When in rehearsal the director would say, ‘How do you think, at this moment, you’d be responding to your teacher?’ I would say, ‘I have no idea,’ ” Mary, who has long dark hair and a wide smile, the dazzle of which is only partly obscured by braces, explained the other evening, at a party following the first performance, which took place at the West End Theatre, on Eighty-sixth Street.

Mary, like her three siblings—Lucy, fifteen, John, ten, and Jane, eight, all of whom were in the production—has been homeschooled her entire life. “We were part of a parent-run playgroup, and at some point everyone started testing to get into the right school, and I thought it was insane,” their mother, Erynn Albert, said. (As it turns out, all four Albert offspring have got into the most insanely competitive gifted-and-talented program of them all, the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus; the two middle ones will appear in “Tosca” this fall.)

Lucy Albert, who played Snoopy—she wore white pants and a white long-sleeved T-shirt with a black spot sewn on the back, and had her long dark hair looped up into floppy ears—explained that she was about to drop out of homeschool: she just won a coveted spot at the LaGuardia high school for the performing arts. In the show, Snoopy grumbles that he isn’t allowed to attend school on account of his species; but Lucy said that she thought Snoopy represented the best of the homeschooled individual. “He teaches himself everything, and he has so many sides, and he has time to do all the things he wants to do, and he’s not ashamed of it,” she said. “It’s kind of like me, except I’m not a dog. Maybe a bitch.”

As she spoke, Lucy leaned her head fondly on the shoulder of Briar Montana, fourteen, who played Linus. Briar has been a leading light of the homeschool musical scene for the past several years but is obliged to retire, since he is about to enroll in his first academic institution: the High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies, in Chinatown. Briar, who has wavy hair and delicate features, sounded dubious about the prospect. When you’re homeschooled, he said, “everyone you meet is your teacher, and you have more freedom to pick what you want to learn.”

“Like, I did chemistry when I was nine or ten,” Lucy said.

“That wasn’t real chemistry,” Briar replied.

“Yes, it was,” Lucy insisted.

Ben Goldstein, who is also fourteen, and who played Charlie Brown in the show, actually did a year at school, in the sixth grade. “The fun part is messing around, and interacting with people who aren’t very nice,” he said. “Probably the main reason I left is I found myself being mean.” He did not think that he was missing out on anything educationally by not being in school. “If you’re talking about facts that you’re never going to use, like when they changed the American flag—well, then, yes,” he said. “But I think I can solve problems more creatively than kids who go to school can.” (One problem Ben plans to solve creatively: homeschooling his own future kids without sacrificing the career—as yet undetermined, but definitely intellectually rewarding and lucrative—to which he also aspires. “I want to get rich and then have kids, and then I can have them do all kinds of cool things,” he said.) Regular school, Ben reflected, “can be kind of a dirty pleasure. It’s like watching ‘America’s Next Top Model.’ ”

As the end of their homeschool careers approached, none of the cast intended to go so far as to home-college. Not having a high-school diploma might take a little explaining to admissions staffs. Cole Houston, the show’s eighteen-year-old lighting designer and stage manager, who spent last year doing college applications, said, “You don’t have the transcript, so it’s hard for them to measure what you were doing, and to see that you weren’t playing video games all day.” Not to worry: in the fall, Cole will be heading off to M.I.T. on a full scholarship. ♦