Unschooling NYC

Over the past few days I’ve had a stark reminder of the fact that schools equate time spent “on task” with learning.

For reasons I will not go into here, I’m getting a real estate salesperson’s license.   To do so I enrolled in an on line course.  According to NY State regulations, you must complete a 75 hour course and pass the pre-licensing exam given at the end of the course in order to be able to sit for the actual licensing exam, which is administered by a proctor in a designated location.   Each time I log in to my … Read more

Forced learning.  Poverty.  Testing. Prejudice.

Money.

Sigh.

So many problems, some of which I’ve been writing about recently.   Behind all of them, powerful people who are making billions of dollars and will work hard to make sure nothing changes.

So what can we do?

We can argue and debate and suggest all kinds of innovation and technology to improve schools.

And maybe some of that will have some effect.

But really, the only way to change things from the root; the only way to change our collective mind is for those of us who are following a different path to … Read more

How much of a mess is our system?

You tell me.

As you know if you’ve been reading this blog, I’ve talked recently about how we as a culture devalue jobs that require working with our hands or any kind of manual labor.    We tell every kid they must go to college to succeed.  Translation?  Kids who don’t go to college are failures.   Not true of course, but so ingrained in our psyche that to some degree it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for many.

We also have a problem with poverty.

The combination of poverty and our prejudice against certain … Read more

If your kid loves to fiddle with electronics, will you encourage her to be an electrician or maybe a mechanic?   Did you think it was weird that I just said “her” in that last sentence?

What if your son loves to sew?  Will you tell him he could be a tailor?

My guess is that the answers will be “no”.  You might tell your kid she could be  an electrical engineer, perhaps an automotive designer, or your son that he could be in fashion design, because those ‘careers’ have status and sound more like something someone should want to do.… Read more

You’ve only got one life so don’t forget to live it.  Isn’t that something we’ve all heard in one form or another?

Then why do we train children to do exactly the opposite?  Children ALSO have only the life they have right now – it is not a situation exclusive to adults, but we act as though it is.   Otherwise how could anyone justify sending their kid to a place they don’t want to be, doing things they don’t want to do and tell them they have no choice if they want to succeed?   In the future.  Doing well in … Read more

Tonight was the annual Guthrie Family concert at Carnegie Hall.   I’ve seen Arlo take the stage at Carnegie 10 or 11 times; sometimes solo, sometimes backed by a symphony, most of the time with his kids & various grandkids and – ever more rarely these days – with Pete Seeger.

Pete and Arlo’s Dad Woody, who would have been 100 years old this year, started writing songs in the 1930’s and singing them wherever anyone would listen.   They were troubadours of sorts, writing songs about the common men and women they met, agitating for unions and civil rights and against … Read more

My Thanksgiving post usually appears over at green-mangoes.com because it typically centers around my family, my friends and my life here in New York City.

And for all those things I am supremely thankful.  My family – husband, kids, parents, brother, cousins, aunts, uncles and so on – are all, to a person, amazing people.  How lucky am I to have good relationships with each and every one of them?  I count those blessings every day.

But this year I wanted to express thanks to a different family.   One that I haven’t had as long and some members of which … Read more

Yesterday I had an enlightening discussion about Math with my friend Emile Gergin, who is a retired physicist. (Not really retired – just retired from work but not from being a physicist.)   The discussion evolved out of my telling him about the Flipping With Kirch blog post – what the teacher had written, my response & subsequent blog post, etc.

And so we talked about Math – which is the subject Crystal Kirch teaches – and learning.   I pointed out that when Kirch mentioned – and so many teachers agreed – that a portion of her students “don’t know how … Read more

It has been suggested over the past few days that I refrain from criticizing teachers – at least the caring, innovative ones – because all I am succeeding in doing is alienating the people with whom I should be working to change the system.   I disagree that teachers are above criticism just because they are trying their best, but I’m all for changing the system.

And because I am willing to try any tactic that might move our system away from coercive education (or maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment), I’ve attempted to reach out.   To one teacher in … Read more

“My students don’t know how to learn.  They don’t know how to succeed.  And, it doesn’t seem like they care to change any of that. And, (which is the hardest part), they do not seem to be trying any of the learning strategies, success strategies, and tips that I teach and model for them.  I have spent SO MUCH time this year talking about how to be successful, how to learn, etc… and it seems like it is all a waste. ”   -Crystal Kirch from her blog ‘Flipping with Kirch: My biggest struggle this year…’

“Students are awful in

… Read more