Unschooling NYC

President Obama gave the commencement address at Barnard College yesterday and then taped a show with the ladies on The View, after which his motorcade drove past our building. ( I scared the kids, who were in their rooms, by screaming, “Get out here!  The President is going by!!”)   I haven’t seen The View segment yet, although of course I’m sure the issue of same sex marriage came up.   I read today that people think his endorsement of same sex marriage was “a political move”.  Hmm.  Because pandering to the homosexual community is a sure election winner?  Really?  What country … Read more

Sunday’s Times cover story was a cheery article about an entire generation crippled by massive student debt.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Seriously, this is getting old.   College is too expensive, schools are ineffective, bullying is on the increase, testing is insane.

But bring up an alternative like, say, unschooling or even just changing our school system to model the success of Finland, and people flip out.   “Oh no, we MUST have compulsory schooling, testing, college!”   “How will kids learn anything otherwise?  How will we be able to keep track of what they are learning?”

Sigh.

The key element behind all this … Read more

Last night while Maya & Ben went to see some of their friends in a production of “Bye Bye Birdie”  (which they said was fantastic), Joshua and I watched the documentary “Being Elmo” about Kevin Clash, the puppeteer who brings Elmo to life on Sesame Street.

As documentaries go, this one is particularly wonderful for those of us who remember the start of Sesame Street, who revered  The Muppet Show and who walked around in shock years later at the news that beloved Muppets creator Jim Hensen had died at the age of only 53.

And it is the wonderful … Read more

This is the true story of our friend Lucy, a mostly unschooled teen.

From the time she was very young, Lucy has been heavily involved in the arts.  She studied violin, sang in the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus and took part in many amateur theater productions.

Then at the age of 15 she decided she wanted to audition for the LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts here in NYC. (That’s the “Fame” high school, for those of you familiar with the original film & subsequent TV series.)  The thing is, LaGuardia normally only auditions for acceptance into 9th grade, … Read more

One of the most difficult things for me as an unschooling parent is letting go of the idea that learning and education must be centered around “academics”.   It’s what we’ve all been taught.  The important knowledge is academic knowledge.  You aren’t smart unless you’re good at Math or well-versed in History or Science.   If you haven’t read (& understood & enjoyed) the classics, your education is lacking.  If you admit to being baffled by, or worse, uninterested in the Periodic Table of the Elements or Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” what you are really doing is exposing yourself as … Read more

As parents, we are programmed to believe that our kids are great and beautiful and talented, and that is as it should be.

However, when we begin praising them for every move they make, every time they make one, it is my strong unwavering belief that we are doing the kids a disservice.    Of course it’s exciting when a child takes his first steps.  We applaud, we cheer, we tell him how great it is that he did it.  But imagine if years later we were still cheering every time he walked into the room.  We wouldn’t, would we?  Because … Read more

There were a lot of great blogs and articles this week on learning & education, so I thought the best thing I could do tonight is share them with you.   They are all worth a few minutes of your time.  My favorite of the bunch without question is this Forbes.com article by Jessica Hagy entitled, “9 Dangerous Things You Were Taught in School”.   I want to embroider these 9 things on pillows & hand them out as gifts.  Read them. Every day.

Next up is Kenneth Danford – co-founder of the North Star school for self-directed teens – & … Read more

Today my kids were not made to wake up early.

They did not rush through breakfast & grab their books so as not to be late for school.

They did not sit in a classroom and submit to being ‘taught’.

They did not need to ask permission to eat, or go to the bathroom.

They were not told to pay attention, or to sit down, or to stop talking.

Today my kids did no homework.

I did not ask my kids what they learned today.

Today we did not argue over bedtime.

INSTEAD….

Today my kids slept until they woke … Read more

I was all ready to launch this new site with a great, positive blog about the benefits and wonders of self-directed learning, and then I saw this ad:

I despise this ad on several levels.

I despise it because it’s so damned patronizing.  It basically comes right out and says that parents are clueless creatures who need “help” to know what their kids are up to.

I despise the people who sat around and decided that the image that would best depict truancy is a young black boy playing a Nintendo DS.

I despise the assumption that there is … Read more

The following quote was posted on Facebook this morning by Laurie Couture, and I’ve been thinking about it all day:

Often I succeed at this, but I know there are many times I that I don’t.   It is so easy to get distracted, especially when I’m tired or thinking about all the things piling up on my to do list.   Do I really want to hear Ben give me another rundown of why the clone army is defeating the droids?   In long and agonizing detail?   Not if I think of it that way, no.  But when I remember that his … Read more