Unschooling NYC

In the movie “Strictly Ballroom” the defining line of the film is one worth remembering:  “A life lived in fear is a life half lived.”

More and more when I look around at the way our culture raises and schools its children, it becomes apparent that fear is the dominant element.  Parents fear for their children’s safety and future beyond all bounds of reason.   They live anxious lives and they pass that anxiety and fear on to their children.    Parents tell their children to stay within eyesight at all times or they could get hurt.   Parents overreact to even the … Read more

In two weeks we’ll be heading out to the West Coast to attend VidCon, which is the annual convention for all YouTube video makers and their fans.   We went last year and had a blast.

One of the YouTube channels Ben watches a lot is “nigahiga” (pronounced neega heega, in case you were wondering), the creation of Ryan Higa and his friends.  They excel at spoofs and satire, and have well over 12 million subscribers.  This means the channel is monetized and although there are no published numbers, similar channels with half as many followers are estimated to bring … Read more

What happens when a family decides to make the move to unschooling and then struggle to let go of all those ingrained ideas about education and learning and what a kid ‘needs to know’ at a given age?   What happens when, a year or so in, it’s just not working?

It’s a topic that doesn’t get discussed much, and I like to think that is because it doesn’t happen very often.

Of course every family will go through struggles and hopefully have the support and will to make it through.   Sandra Dodd had a great blog post several months ago … Read more

Yes, my daughter will officially enter her high school years next Fall.

No, she is not enrolling in a brick and mortar school.

“You mean you will still be homeschooling?”

Yes.

“How is that going to work?”

(Silent sigh.)  Much the same as it always has.

“But aren’t all of her friends going to high school?”

Many of them (sadly for us) are, yes.

“Doesn’t she want to go to high school?”

Umm, no, not really.

“But won’t she miss her friends?”

I’m sure there will be days when she will, yes.

“Sooo…I mean, seriously, don’t you want her to … Read more

The college I attended had a secret darkroom.

It was housed in the sub-cellar of one of the dorms, and to get to it required climbing down a ladder into what from above looked more like a dungeon than any sort of place into which one might voluntarily go.  You had to take a flashlight, because the only electric bulb hung in the interior of the three small rooms.

To this day I don’t know how it got there or who supplied it.  The college?  Unlikely, since they had an official darkroom that was used in classes.  This one could … Read more

One of my favorite stories about travel comes from a woman who used to babysit for one of Maya’s friends and sometimes for us, too.  She is Irish, the oldest of 10 siblings, and one summer she arranged for two of her younger sisters to come over from Ireland and spend the summer here in New York.    They saw all the city sights, went to Six Flags Amusement Park, out to the Long Island beaches, etc.    After all of that, when they called their mother and she asked about their visit, the very first thing they said was, “Mum, in … Read more

Someone posted this video on my FB timeline.

I’ve watched it five times this evening.

Not every homeschooled kid will become a film director of course, but the sentiment shared by Jon Erwin – that because he was homeschooled he had the flexibility to discover the thing he really wanted to do with his life – is one to which many if not all children who learn outside of school can relate.

No matter what shape your … Read more

Anytime I do an interview (and I don’t do that many) it serves as a reaffirmation of why unschooling works for us – why we do what we do.

On Friday I was interviewed for an academic piece – there is irony in there somewhere, I’m sure – and was asked how I came to the decision to basically go against all the cultural norms in education and pursue something so far off the beaten path that most people have never even heard of it.

It’s a good question, and I had to think about it for a few minutes.   … Read more

It’s been almost a month since I last posted here, and it was a much needed break.

The one thing I want every parent to remember is that unschooling is not about spending all your time talking and thinking about  “education”.

It is about living life to the fullest, together with your kids.  You do this, not only by supporting their interests but also by following your own.  That’s how you set the example.   You can talk about what it is to be self-directed until the end of time, but there is no better way to convey the truth of … Read more

Several weeks ago I was watching Charlie Rose interview Ralph Fiennes and Felicity Jones, discussing their film “The Invisible Woman” which told the story of Charles Dickens’ secret relationship with a younger woman during the height of his fame.  In the interview, both Fiennes and Jones said they’d never read Dickens in school, which they found puzzling.  But then Jones said something I found truly insightful.  She said she was kind of glad that Dickens isn’t taught in school (at least in Britain) because then kids don’t associate his writing with something they don’t like, as often happens with Shakespeare.  … Read more