Research on Teaching Math: Formal Arthmetic at Age Ten, Hurried or Delayed?

Tweet

An amazing article by Harvey Bluedorn, author of A Greek Alphabetarian. You can read the original article at Harvey's website, Trivium Pursuit.

Provincialism is the word which we use to describe an opinion which is narrow and self-centered in perspective. Because the common practice in our culture in our day is to begin formal instruction in arithmetic as early as age four or five, many have questioned the suggestion that one may wait until age ten before beginning formal instruction in arithmetic. Waiting until age ten for formal instruction in arithmetic is often misnomered "late start" or "delayed academics."
A broader perspective would examine more than what is simply the prevailing practice of a particular culture at a particular time – especially if that practice is a policy largely imposed by the government. We don’t claim to have the last word on the subject, but we have examined the matter more broadly, and in this article we will present some of the things which we have discovered. We will quote only a small selection from authorities we have found, and we will allow you to form your own opinion before we comment.

Can Kids Teach Themselves?

Tweet
By Linda Dobson who owns and maintains the website Parent at the Helm, and is the author of many homeschool books.

I always shied away from praise about the kids’ behavior, intelligence, talent, kindness, whatever. Assuming there was enough time for the conversation that would commence as soon as I said it, I’d respond with something to the effect, “It’s not me; it’s the kids; really, they’re educating themselves.”

Interesting how the person who just moments before was flattering me suddenly experienced a complete body language shift. The eyes might widen in disbelief, or narrow as if I was the devil incarnate standing before her (it wasn’t always a “her,” but mostly). It was the narrow-eyed ones that made me wonder if the conversation was going to result in a visit from some child protective agency.

How the Public Schools Keep Your Child a Prisoner of the State

Tweet

Karen De Coster, CPA  is an accounting/finance professional in the healthcare industry and a freelance writer, blogger, speaker, and sometimes unpaid troublemaker. She writes about libertarian stuff, economics, financial markets, the medical establishment, the Corporate State, health totalitarianism, and other essentially, anything that encroaches upon the freedom of her fellow human beings. When she has a few moments of spare time she prefers to do functional fitness, kayak the Detroit River, and drink hot toddies. Check out her website. 

Public education, in its current state, is based on the idea that government is the "parent" best equipped to provide children with the values and wisdom required to grow into intelligent, functional adults. To echo what former first lady Hillary Clinton professed, these public school champions believe "it takes a village" to cultivate a society of competent human beings.

As Hebrew University historian Martin van Crevald points out in his book, The Rise and Decline of the State, nineteenth-century state worshippers who wanted to impose a love of big government ideals upon the youth popularized the archetype for state-directed education. Additionally, there was an overall appetite for discipline of the "unruly" masses that reinforced the campaign to take education out of the hands of individuals. After all, the self-educated masses might resist government decrees, and this kind of disarray would be undesirable in the move toward building a powerful, controlling state apparatus.

"Learn Free" Unschooling Documentary

Tweet

"Learn Free" is a documentary about unschooling created by Lillian Mauser-Carter interviewing several families of self-directed students and their experiences. A first person look at how unschoolers succeed in self-directed learning.

On the Importance of Whole Soul Safety Or the Real Reasons to Rise Out of School

Tweet

Eli Gerzon, writer, traveler, worldschooler, is an unschooler who chose to leave school at fifteen. Inspired by his life learning experiences he coined the term 'worldschooling'. You can visit his blog.  

It’s difficult for me to talk about unschooling and education because I have so much passion and so many thoughts and feelings about it that I’m not sure where to start. So, I’ll start with a story from my school years. At the time, I was really into “Star Trek: the Next Generation” (I still think it’s one of the best shows ever). On Star Trek they have all this ridiculous lingo: the hull was always “about to buckle” or the “warp core was going to breach.” The captain shouted one of the simpler trademark sayings whenever they encountered a hostile alien ship. He’d yell, “Shields Up! We’re under attack!” Then they’d fire some “photon torpedoes.” I was in fourth grade and I have this memory of walking onto the grounds of Bishop Elementary School and saying to myself, “Shields Up! We’re entering school!”

Part of me wants to tell you all about my experience with school: nine years in and nine year out. I was born unschooling (like everyone), and exactly three years ago in this week of April I decided to unschool. The Waldorf School was my introduction to school for first and second grade and then Arlington Public Schools from third grade to freshman year of high school. 

What is Unschooling?

Tweet

S. Courtney Walton is an unschooler with works appearing in The Good News Herald and St. Louis Christian Parent. Here she discusses what unschooling means to her.

S. Courtney with her family

Unschooling often means different things to different people. Depending on whom you ask, you may hear phrases like, "delight-directed" "child-centered" "informal learning" or "learning without a curriculum." In practice, unschooling incorporates all of these. Learning takes place apart from a curriculum, in an informal setting, sparked by subject matter central to the child's interests and often involves a lot of fun.

For me, unschooling is a natural part of parenting. My husband and I are blessed with four children who have never been schooled, neither in the traditional sense nor at home. For some that may sound negligent, and many have asked, "How can learning take place if they are not in a school, or you don't at least bring school home to them?" Well, real learning comes from real living and even if my child had only one interest in life, s/he could pursue that interest and be well educated. How? Children are by nature scientists and artists. They want to explore, understand and create. So, let them! While following their interests they will naturally learn to read, write, add, subtract, do derivatives, and what ever else!

Public Schools - Public Prisons

Tweet

Joel Turtel, author of Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie to Parents and Betray Our Children, compares public schools with prisons.

Why have we put our children into education prisons called public schools? What crimes have they committed? Why do we condemn almost 45 million innocent children to this punishment? Do I exaggerate by calling these schools "prisons?" Well, let's compare prisons and public schools.

What are prisons? They are places where people are locked up against their will for crimes they have committed.

What is life like for a prisoner? The warden and prison guards, in effect, take away the prisoner's life and freedom. They force a prisoner to live in a small cell he doesn't want to live in, eat food he may hate, work at a job he detests, associate with other prisoners who may be dangerous, and remove him from everyone and everything he loved in the outside world when he was free.

Like prisons, public schools impose their will by force, by compulsion. Local governments force parents to send their children to public schools just as the police drag convicted criminals into prison (even though many parents are not aware of this and voluntarily send their kids to these schools). A parent can be convicted of alleged child abuse and sent to prison if she disobeys the school authority's order to send her child to the local public school.

Is Public Education Necessary?

Tweet

Sam Blumenfeld, lecturer and author of nine books, asks the question 'is public education necessary'?

We would not have to ask the above question if public education had not become the great, costly, and tragic failure that it is. It has failed the children, but in reality it has not failed the progressives. They were the ones who engineered the dumbing-down process which parents and taxpayers continue to pay for. But it is the children who suffer in terms of becoming intellectually disabled, semi-literate, disoriented, frustrated, and terribly unhappy. But what is even a bit disheartening is that many liberals still believe that government schooling has been a noble experiment. 

Perhaps Walter Lippmann, the great liberal pundit, best expressed liberal disappointment in the great experiment when he wrote in 1941, while World War II was raging in Europe: “Universal and compulsory modern education was established by the emancipated democracies during the nineteenth century. ‘No other foundation can be devised,’ said Thomas Jefferson, ‘for the preservation of freedom and happiness.’ Yet as a matter of fact during the twentieth century the generations trained in these schools have either abandoned their liberties or they have not known, until the last desperate moment, how to defend them. The schools were to make men free. They have been in operation for some sixty or seventy years and what was expected of them they have not done. The plain fact is that the graduates of the modern schools are the actors in the catastrophe which has befallen our civilization. Those who are responsible for modern education -- for its controlling philosophy -- are answerable for the results.”

Eliminate Public Schools

Tweet

The following is a fictionalized scenario written by Paul Galvin of what might result if the public schools were eliminated. At the moment this idea has a near-zero, if not zero, chance of happening, particularly in those states whose constitutions now contain or have been construed to contain provisions enshrining a “positive right” to an education, meaning a positive claim upon the labor and property of others, a claim backed by the left’s stock-in-trade, the coercive force of the state. As resistance to ever-bigger government increases, with a commensurate greater appreciation for individual liberty, state constitutions will be re-examined, perhaps even amended. What follows is not a prediction, only an exploration which in turn may lead to better ideas. Finally, readers should bear in mind that eliminating public schooling is not the elimination of education, but rather the expansion of both freedom and education.

“Alright, George Bailey, you’ve got your wish. The public schools were never invented. Now stay calm, and don’t fret about the many strange but freedom-affirming phenomena you’ll encounter as you stroll through a re-invigorated Bedford Falls. Ready?”

Freedom for Taxpayers. Property taxpayers would no longer support a system which even its supporters readily admit must be “structurally improved” [Statist-ese for, “Give us more money”]. Anything in constant need of major improvements, not just routine adjustment, which produces uneducated “graduates” year after year (JayWalking anyone?), for decades on end, is irredeemable, netting very poor investment returns for taxpayers despite huge outlays. Since a sizable percentage of local municipal budgets (usually well over 50%, typically with supplemental “help” from state capitols) is dedicated to school funding, the elimination of this line item will give meaningful property tax relief.

School Is Prison Video with Peter Gray

Tweet

School Is a Prison video with Peter Gray interviewed on Freedomain Radio. Peter Gray, research professor at Boston College discusses why he thinks school is literally a prison.

Lockhart's Lament (A Mathematician's Lament)

Tweet

I will post a link below to this PDF written by Paul Lockhart due to the length of it (25 pages). Also see his book.

Paul is a mathematics teacher at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York. 

His article has been circulating through parts of the mathematics and math ed communities ever since, but he never published it. Mathematical Association of America MAA Online states "It is, quite frankly, one of the best critiques of current K-12 mathematics education I have ever seen."

http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

I Feel Sorry For Kids In School. Every. Single. One.

Tweet
By Linda Dobson who owns and maintains the website Parent at the Helm and is the author of many homeschool books.

I check education news every morning. I know good news is rare. I know some days are worse than others. And there are some days when the news breaks my heart. Today was one of those days.

I feel sorry for kids in school. Every. Single. One. For so many reasons I’ve lost count, so the following isn’t an all-inclusive list. Rather, it’s a list about the crux of the problem. I hope parents will use the list to check and see what may be/is going on in their children’s lives, as the children may be so numb as to not recognize what’s happening and therefore not share with parents the detrimental practices and attitudes that permeate their lives.

What is School For?

Tweet

Seth Godin is an American entrepreneur, author and public speaker. Here he ponders: what exactly is school for? Seth's blog is here.

Seems like a simple question, but given how much time and money we spend on it, it has a wide range of answers, many unexplored, some contradictory. I have a few thoughts about education, how we use it to market ourselves and compete, and I realized that without a common place to start, it's hard to figure out what to do.

So, a starter list. The purpose of school is to:

1. Become an informed citizen
2. Be able to read for pleasure
3. Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
4. Do well on standardized tests
5. Homogenize society, at least a bit
6. Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
7. Give kids something to do while parents work
8. Teach future citizens how to conform
9. Teach future consumers how to desire
10.  Build a social fabric
11. Create leaders who help us compete on a world stage
12. Generate future scientists who will advance medicine and technology
13. Learn for the sake of learning
14. Help people become interesting and productive
15. Defang the proletariat
16. Establish a floor below which a typical person is unlikely to fall
17. Find and celebrate prodigies, geniuses and the gifted
18. Make sure kids learn to exercise, eat right and avoid common health problems
19. Teach future citizens to obey authority
20. Teach future employees to do the same
21. Increase appreciation for art and culture
22. Teach creativity and problem solving
23. Minimize public spelling mistakes
24. Increase emotional intelligence
25. Decrease crime by teaching civics and ethics
26. Increase understanding of a life well lived
27. Make sure the sports teams have enough players

 If you have the email address of the school board or principals, perhaps you'll forward this list to them (and I hope you are in communication with them regardless, since it's a big chunk of your future and your taxes!). Should make an interesting starting point for a discussion.

5 Ways to Help Someone HATE Reading

Tweet

Written by lifelong unschooler Idzie Desmarais. Read the original at her blog called, I'm Unschooled. Yes, I can Write.

I've often heard complaints and worries, from a wide variety of people, about how many people, especially youth, don't like to read.  Blame is placed on a variety of things, from texting on cell phones to uninvolved parents to class sizes in school.  But rarely is the actual way reading is taught and approached and looked at brought into question the way I think it needs to be.

I positively love reading, and have since I learned to read at 8 or 9 (and before that I loved being read to), so perhaps I'm not the best person to be writing this.  Maybe someone who actually hates reading should be writing this, instead.  But then again, people who hate reading often hate writing as well, so would probably have no interest at all in writing about why they hate reading!  Besides, I know all the things that I think  were done right to foster my own love of reading, so I figure I can just think of all the opposite things that could have been done, instead. 

Why Do Kids Hate School?

Tweet

Dr. Robert Sparrow is a nationally-recognized expert in childhood development. He is the founder of Sparrow Papers, a commercial research and writing firm.

All of us have met someone in the course of our educational careers that made us feel bad about ourselves. For many people it was a teacher. For others it was a librarian, a hall monitor, a substitute teacher, or a lunch aid. The type of individual I am referring to is stern, condescending, and intolerant of younger people's opinions. They seem to dislike kids, making you wonder why they chose to go into the field of education in the first place.

These negative people change lives. Sure, plenty of kids get by-kids whose self-esteem has been bolstered at home. The ones who suffer most don't get enough recognition at home. But where parents fall short, teachers ought to step in. Teachers, especially at the elementary level, are supposed to be inspired individuals. They're supposed to be working not just for the benefits and vacations, but for the satisfaction of influencing and guiding young lives. It is their charge to be aware of the psychology behind children's bad behavior and emphasize their positive traits rather than their shortcomings. Punishment is an act of laziness; educational professionals have a duty to redirect their students' energy.