Home-Education is About Learning, Not Schooling

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Zion Lights is a writer and mother interested in ethics, attachment parenting, permaculture and green living. She is a regular contributor at One Green Planet. Check Out her website.  The original article can be found here, but has printed here with the author's permission.

I wonder whether approaching the subject a different way would have been more tactful. First, a barrage of questions washes over me; 'What do you mean, you're going to teach them yourself? How will you know what to teach? But you're not qualified to teach that subject?' Then, more adamantly stated, 'Are you sure it's legal?'

These are the incredulous comments of a teacher friend of mine after hearing that my husband and I plan to home educate our children. She studied for four years in order to teach in a school, and she strongly believes that teachers who study for less than two years are not 'properly qualified' to impart knowledge to young people.

So, I'm having trouble conveying to her our decision not to send our children to school. To say that we plan to 'home-school' our daughter does not offer much explanation, as the term implies that teaching will take place in a structured fashion, in the home instead of the school, with a strict timetable, exams and homework, and to a strict curriculum. If this was the case, there would be little difference between home education and school education.

Whoever Said There's No Such Thing As a Stupid Question Never Looked Carefully at a Standardized Test

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Alfie Kohn is an American author and lecturer who has explored a number of topics in education, parenting, and human behavior. He is considered a leading figure in progressive education. His website is here. You can find the original article here.

It can't be repeated often enough: Standardized tests are very poor measures of the intellectual capabilities that matter most, and that's true because of how they're designed, not just because of how they're used. Like other writers, I've relied on arguments and research to make this point. But sometimes a telling example can be more effective. So here's an item that appeared on the state high school math exam in Massachusetts:

n 1 2 3 4 5 6 tn 3 5 __ __ __ __
The first two terms of a sequence, t1 and t2, are shown above as 3 and 5. Using the rule: tn = (tn-1) plus (tn-2), where n is greater than or equal to 3, complete the table.

Richard Elmore: "I do not believe in the institutional structure of public schooling anymore"

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Dr. Gary Houchens is a former teacher, principal, and district administrator now serving as Associate Professor of Educational Administration, Leadership, & Research at Western Kentucky University. This original writing can be found at his website School Leader.

In my teaching and writing I sometimes ponder whether the existing structures of schooling are actually the biggest obstacle to student learning.  Can schools as we currently know them ever accomplish the mission we've established for them?

This week Richard Elmore, one of the nation's most prominent educational thinkers, emphatically shared his conviction that they cannot.  Speaking at a forum on education reform sponsored by the Aspen Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Harvard Graduate School of Education (where Elmore is professor), the father of instructional rounds distinguished himself from other panelists by concluding that schooling as we know it will inevitably fail.

"I do not believe in the institutional structure of public schooling anymore," Elmore said, noting that his long-standing work at helping teachers and principals professionalize their practice is "palliative care for a dying institution."  Elmore predicted "a progressive dissociation between learning and schooling."

How to Learn Anything

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Dale J. Stephens is an American entrepreneur, speaker, and author of Hacking Your Education, best known as one of the original 24 recipients of the Thiel Fellowship. He is also the founder of UnCollege, which is a social movement that aims to change the notion that going to college is the only path to success

I’ve been hiding away working on Hacking Your Education. It isn’t going to write itself, and I have to focus all of my energy on getting my edits back to Penguin before July.

Last weekend I was in Porto, Portugal, where I spoke at EDEN—the European Distance and E-Learning Network. I caused quite a stir at EDEN, which is exactly what I wanted to do. In countries like the United States, it can be a controversial topic to discuss alternatives to the traditional systems. But in the United States, we have homeschooling, we have unschooling, and many alternative schools—from Montessori schools to self-directed colleges like Goddard. However, in European countries such as Germany, Sweden, and Spain, homeschooling is illegal. It is much more crass to talk about education reform in many parts of Europe than in the US.

27 Non-School Skills Children Need

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Leo Babauta is the creator of zenhabits. He is a writer of numerous books, is a vegan and an unschooling dad.

Everyone knows that our school system, in general, is not giving our kids the basic reading, writing, ‘rithmatic and science skills needed to be competitive in the high-tech workforce of the upcoming generation (at least, that’s the general assumption, and we won’t argue it here).

But there’s much more to life than those basic subjects, and unless you have an exceptional teacher who is willing to break out of the mold, your child isn’t learning the crucial things he or she needs to learn in life.

Why Textbooks Suck

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Roger Schank is an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur. He has worked at faculty positions at Stanford University and Yale University. He is the author of, Coloring Outside the Lines, and his website is here.

I take as my starting point LIFE: The Science of Biology, since it is certainly the best textbook ever written.

LIFE has chapters that start with a question. This is very good. Here are some examples subchapter headings:

1.1 What is Biology?
1.2 How do biologists investigate life?
2.2 How do atoms bond to form molecules?
3.2 What are the chemical structures and functions of proteins?

Real Education Is Human

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A beautiful account by Dr. Kirsten Olson. She is author of the book, Wounded by School. Visit Kirsten Olson at her website.

At an extraordinary and unusual school I visited recently, I observed a seven-year-old girl come before the school’s judicial council. The day before she had violated a cardinal rule of the school.  She had failed to look after her own safety.  She and four of her friends had ventured to a pond dock on the school grounds, where they saw a water snake.  Intrigued, they wanted to catch it. 

Using a Tupperware container, string, and some duct tape, they made a trap and dipped it into the water.  The little girl, her heavy backpack still on her back, leaned too far out over the dock and fell into the water.  Some of the older, high school boys saw her fall in, rushed to the pond, and pulled her out. The water was only waist-deep and slow moving, but in the life of the school, where children are allowed full freedom to roam the school grounds as long as they look out for their safety, no kid had ever fallen into the pond before.  The adults at the school, understandably, were beside themselves.

Why Play=Learning

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In sum: Play = Learning. As children move from the sandbox to the boardroom, play should be the cornerstone of their education. The research is clear: Playful pedagogy supports social-emotional and academic strengths while instilling a love of learning.

By Roberta M. Golinkoff, PhD & Kathy Hirsh-Paske, PhD. They are the authors of 12 books. You can read the original article with references on Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development.

"Our children from their earliest years must take part in all the more lawful forms of play, for if they are not surrounded with such an atmosphere they can never grow up to be well conducted and virtuous citizens."
--Plato, The Republic   

The study of play has a long history. From Plato to Kant, from Froebel to Piaget, philosophers, historians, biologists, psychologists, and educators have studied this ubiquitous behavior to understand how and why we play. Even animals play. This fact alone leads researchers like Robert Fagan, a leader in the study of animal play, to speculate that play must have some adaptive value given the sheer perilousness and energy cost to growing individuals. Researchers suggest that play is a central ingredient in learning, allowing children to imitate adult behaviors, practice motor skills, process emotional events, and learn much about their world. One thing play is not, is frivolous. Recent research confirms what Piaget always knew, that “play is the work of childhood.” Both free play and guided play are essential for the development of academic skills.

Unsolicited Evaluation Is the Enemy of Creativity

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The newest post by Peter Gray who is a research professor of psychology at Boston College, a specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology, and an author. This original piece can be found at Peter's blog Freedom to Learn at Psychology Today Here. 

In my last post I wrote of evidence that children’s creativity has declined over the past two or three decades, a period during which children’s lives, both in and out of school, have become increasingly controlled and regulated by adult authorities. Here, now, is some further evidence that freedom—including freedom from unasked-for evaluation—is an essential element to the blooming of creativity.

Non-directive, Non-Judgmental Parenting Predicts Subsequent Creativity in Children Longitudinal research has shown that children raised by parents who are relatively non-directive and non-judgmental exhibit more creativity later on than do those raised by relatively directive, judgmental parents.

The Real Damage Done By Testing in the Schools: A Conversation With Milo

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Roger Schank is an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur. He has worked at faculty positions at Stanford University and Yale University. He is the author of, Coloring Outside the Lines, and his website is here. Milo is his six-year old grandson.

I had a long conversation with Milo, my six year old grandson, the other day. Milo is very smart. (Yes, I know. What grandfather wouldn’t say that? But trust me, he is.) 

I asked him what he had done that was fun recently and he told me about a game he had been playing with a friend, which was good to hear about since Milo went through a long obsession with chess that I am happy to hear is waning.

I then asked him about school. I asked him if he liked taking the tests (which are everywhere these days - even in first grade) and I also asked him if he had learned anything interesting lately.

Deschooling Yourself – How to Recover from Traditional Schooling

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For those who have been to traditional school and need help deschooling. Also, some great links for any unschoolers. Written by Jamie over at Self Made Scholar, a blog all about self-education.

Shred your textbooks! Burn your report cards! Before you embark on an independent learning journey, you’re going to need to take some time to un-learn the negative lessons you picked up in traditional schools. Chances are you’ve spent a good thirteen years of your life sitting behind a desk. Maybe more if you attended college.

Perhaps your school years taught you how to read, how to solve mathematical equations, and how to come up with good excuses when you forget an assignment. You probably don’t remember many of the facts you learned – I know I don’t. In one upper-division course, I spent three tortured weeks memorizing twenty minutes of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” in Old English. Today, I remember three words of it. Don’t get me started on logarithms and quadratic equations.

Should We Connect School Life to Real Life?

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Excerpted from Will Richardson’s new TED Book Why School:  How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere. Richardson offers provocative alternatives to the existing education system, questioning everything from standardized assessments to the role of the teacher. In this chapter, “Real Work for Real Audiences,” Richardson envisions students creating work that is relevant and useful in the world outside school. The original article can be found here.

So what if we were to say that, starting this year, even with our children in K– 5, at least half of the time they spend on schoolwork must be on stuff that can’t end up in a folder we put away? That the reason they’re doing their schoolwork isn’t just for a grade or for it to be pinned up in the hallway? It should be because their work is something they create on their own, or with others, that has real value in the real world.

I’m not even necessarily talking about doing something with technology. (Let’s face it, though: Paper is a 20th-century staple that has severely limited potential, compared to digital spaces.) There’s lots of creating our kids can do with traditional tools that can serve a real audience. Publishing books, putting on plays, and doing community service are just a few examples.

NO to subjects and NO to requirements

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Roger Schank is an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur. He has worked at faculty positions at Stanford University and Yale University. He is the author of, Coloring Outside the Lines, and his website is here.

I have been spending a great deal of time in Europe lately, where the talk is about what to do about the awful governments that countries like Italy, Greece and Spain seem to be saddled with. (I am not saying the U.S. Is any better, maybe it is even worse -- I am simply reporting what I am hearing.)

In the course of one of these conversations, the talk turned to education, as it tends to do when I am around. The suggestion was made that schools should require students to learn about how government works, or maybe how it should work, in order to help citizens make better choices about who governs them and to be better at it when they are actually part of the government.

Unschooling Doesn’t Look Like School At All

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The author, Pam Laricchia, is "living joyfully and unschooling (since 2002) alongside my wonderful family. Hubby and I have three terrific kids and home is a five acre plot of protected wetland and cedar forest in Ontario, Canada that we have dubbed Alternate Universe. You can contact me at pam@livingjoyfully.ca." Read the original article at Pam's website, Living Joyfully.

Unschooling looks like life.

Like an endlessly unfolding summer vacation, minus the warm weather (unless you live a lot closer to the equator than I do!), but with one big difference: the kids don’t spend it decompressing, burning off steam from months of strict schedules and the stress to perform. And they don’t end up complaining they are bored because someone isn’t telling them what to do. Instead, they are busily pursuing the things that interest them.

In contrast, what does learning look like at school? The vast majority of us parents went to school, so we understand that process quite well: there’s a curriculum that dictates what we learn; a teacher that tries to help us understand it; and a test that determines if we remember it. Repeat that loop over different subjects and many years. It is an exacting process designed to meet its goal: teaching large numbers of students a defined collection of information and skills, within a set number of years.

Why Long Lectures Are Ineffective

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If students can only focus for 15-minute intervals, shouldn't we devote precious class time to something more engaging? Khan is the founder of the Khan Academy, a nonprofit with the mission of providing free, high-quality education for “anyone anywhere” in the world, and the author of The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined.

Each school day, millions of students move in unison from classroom to classroom where they listen to 50- to 90-minute lectures. Despite there being anywhere from 20 to 300 humans in the room, there is little actual interaction. This model of education is so commonplace that we have accepted it as a given. For centuries, it has been the most economical way to “educate” a large number of students. Today, however, we know about the limitations of the class lecture, so why does it remain the most common format?