Unschooling

Calling Rob Reich, calling Rob Reich . . .
Self-driving cars?? Right there at Stanford University, whence emanate your advanced theories of controlling kids to set them free?

Homeschooling should not be banned, but regulated much more vigilantly.

Not to mention the intellectual cradle of your Stanford-educated colleague Kimberly Yuracko, who quotes your theories so um, liberally -- or illiberally, both, neither? -- as spitshine for her own Stanford-servile theory that home education is a public function from which government is required to protect all children. (Did you two go pub-crawling while she was a student, to swap collegial notes on these elaborate fantasy worlds you both had under construction, like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien?)

It says right there in the news, “The idea of a self-driving car is a really big idea that will have a big impact on society.”

Only if society is asleep at the switch, and that's where you come in, quick! There's still time to cook up some kind of ethical servility theory to stop it. Maybe use your homeschool regulation screed as a template, here, we'll help --

The families of homeschooled children are clearly different from those of traditional schoolchildren.Some 97 percent of homeschooled children live in married couple households; the comparable number for public school students is 72 percent. Nearly 88 percent of homeschooled parents continued their own education beyond high school; less than 50 percent of the general population has attended college. The home environment of these students is supportive, nurturing and encourages diligence. . .

Yes, good! Let's actually focus on the kids and their learning, not just exploit them in the name of helping their exploited moms or any other political agenda. Let's leave prayer and religion out of it, too, since most folks in schools and government (and politics) also self-identify as god-fearing believers; religion is a confounding variable in education analysis that may quack like a duck, but really is more of a duck-billed platypus.

In other words, religion is not education and religious freedom is not academic freedom, wherever it happens. So let's stick to the constitutionally sound raison d'être of Compulsory School -- secular academics and independence sufficient to preserve and protect our liberties and provide for the common good -- for at least this one conversation.

There's no category called "Best Feminist Teen" in the homeschool blog awards, but I wish there were. And I wish there were thousands upon thousands of strong contenders for it, harmonizing with Favorite Daughter's young voice in the alternative education blog-hersphere.

But I get the uncomfortable feeling she may be pretty much the sole standard bearer for that, writing on such a sharp cutting edge that few will even find her point of view to consider it, much less join her. She just doesn't fit comfortably into the curriculum-based Christian conversations and patriarchal perspectives that seem to dominate homeschooling both online and off. And doesn't want to.

Her olive oil essay about purity balls really spoke to many of you non-homeschool types ABOUT homeschool types, but you can well imagine it's the kind of thing that would hurt her more than help her in building and reaching a homeschool following! So if you find Favorite Daughter's writing worth a vote to help bring her fresh eyeballs and keep her unique view engaged in the conversation, please take a minute right now (or sometime this week before voting ends) and give her your click here.

So I was blogging for Thinking Parents today at Snook, about individualism versus institutionalism:

I pretty much hate "versus" applied to any two things. I choose the -ism suffix to mean anything (not just religion) that becomes dominant dogma, elevating some system of belief or aspect of being to an all-purpose imperative, too much of one good thing to the exclusion of others. The one tool that makes every problem look like it needs a good hammering.

In this sense, individual-ism and institutional-ism are indeed opposing mindsets pitted against each other. Ugh!
. . . So today I'm remembering Mortimer Adler's oxymoronic definition of education as the freeing discipline of wonder, and wondering myself where learning without schooling can catch the most light without throwing off too much heat, across the full spectrum of individual and institution?

Two books came to mind in this context --
"The Hedgehog, The Fox, and the Magister's Pox" by Stephen Jay Gould is about reconciling science with the humanities, or how to understand them as an integrated whole, and "The Ant and the Peacock" is about reconciling this seeming paradox in nature: are individuals or collectives favored?

(That's a movie quote, read on to make it make sense.)

The idea of community colleges (and education generally) as the engine of economic progress and social mobility came up in comments here, and I think it's worth many separate blogposts and discussions. I mean only to start it off with this one, but I feel the need to set the table with a little common context first, because I've been struggling mightily to find it in a few other discussions lately, and maybe I'm not the only one. Even if I am, that counts for something, right?

I think reasonable folks understand that ideas, beliefs and practices ought to stand on their own, independent of our personal feelings about any idea's advocates and detractors. Yet I've drawn a couple of dismissive responses here because I am a "homeschooling" parent, as if that were a disqualifier to be taken seriously in mainstream education or progressive discussion of any kind. And even among context-sharing progressives, political thought about education so predictably veers off into the hypocrisy of personal affinity and animosity (for these guys, against those guys) rather than doing the tough work of separating our lizard brain instincts and impressions from our highest-order systems thinking and power of story.

So merely to balance that wrong assumption --but not to confer any special authority on myself, even though I'm pretty sure someone or other will accuse me of that -- I state for the record that I wrote my doctoral dissertation in education leadership and policy on community college effectiveness criteria; my major professor was considered the father of Florida's community colleges, James L.Wattenbarger, who was a longtime colleague of my management professor dad. (They also shared demography as white southern officers and gentlemen, along with generational history and education-economic-patriotic values as children of the Great Depression, both of whom joined the Air Force and later studied their way to doctorates and academic careers.)

In school your payoff comes from giving up your personal responsibility, just doing what you're told by strangers even if that violates the core principles of your household.
Shocking Origins of Public Education, John Taylor Gatto

I will be coming out soon from a gag order I've been on discussing anything having to do with education. I have been reticent about writing on the subject for a whole variety of reasons. When we were homeschooling, or may I say "unschooling", life became our learning platform and as many of you know by my writing there's not a lot I write about my private life, especially when it comes about my kids. It's hard to write without including massive details about the spawnage. I do believe children have a right to privacy.

Now that my kids have been in school since September, I am ready to explode. I have been biting my fingers and tongue because, grock, I hate the culture of schools.

Homeschooling in New York is a double full time job for secular parents with no church groups to pick up the slack of classes, workshops, study groups or just plain old playtime and baby-sitting. If you are one of the thousands of evangelicals, mormons or conservative jews homeschooling in New York, you will have a church, tabernacle or temple as a support system that's got your back. If you are an atheist like us, good luck.

Home education & other stuff– a libertarian-leaning edu-blog

I've been interested in teaching and how people learn since I was six, and (as is usual in big busy lives) all I've done before has led up to what I'm doing now. I grew up in northern New Mexico, I've been blessed with curiously bright and curious friends who shared their questions and answers with me, and there's nothing to do with that but pass it on to any curious others.

Resources, forums and links to some of the most influential voices of the unschooling movement.

On this site you will find bloggers bringing you up-to-date homeschooling information, news and views, free online newsletters, networking lists, and selections from Home Education Magazine, including articles, interviews, columnists, resources, reviews and more!