Unschooling NYC

It’s what we strive for, but don’t always achieve.

When kids are young they require almost 100% of our attention, and balance is difficult.   At least it was for me.   Making a sandwich while holding an infant was a skill I didn’t have when Maya was born (even if she was in a sling).  By the time Ben came along, I could practically cook a six course meal with one hand.   Still, it was hard to find time for things like reading, or sewing or even showering!    Everything, it seemed, was interrupted.

As parents we get so used to this … Read more

I read a blog entry earlier today from Shannon Hayes, who posted about the decision she made to go from unschooling to using a curriculum for math and writing with her 8 year old daughter.   It was very thought provoking and I’ve spent a lot of time this evening mulling it over.   At first it was just me and my brain having a conversation that went something like this:

My Brain:  Hmmm, maybe you should impose your own educational agenda on Maya & Ben in areas in which they currently lack.

Me:  No, I shouldn’t.  That’s just school brain talking.… Read more

Today was possibly the easiest 741 miles I’ve ever driven from Indiana to NYC.  Amazing, given that the last time we drove back on a Friday I was almost in tears by the time we pulled up in front of our building.

The 12 hour drive flew by; my kids were content and brilliant travelers as always; but the coup was that I avoided sitting in 1.5 hours of traffic at BOTH the inbound Lincoln and Holland Tunnels by deftly (yes, deftly) heading north on I-95 and taking the George Washington Bridge, an approach to the city which is apparently … Read more

We’re heading back to New York tomorrow morning, and depending on how long the wait at the Holland Tunnel is when we finally reach the city, (it’s torture, because we can see our building – so close and yet so far away) I may or may not be in the mood to post tomorrow night.

Here, then, is my list of favorites from 2011, in no particular order.

Books:

It was a great year for Young Adult Fiction (or at least for my reading of Young Adult Fiction). Some of these books were not published in 2011, but I plead … Read more

Days where we:

Answer Ben’s questions about astronomy, and as a result figure out how far it is to the nearest star beyond the sun. (And how long it would take to get there. We won’t be visiting anytime soon, is the general answer.)

Go “treasure hunting” in the valley next to my parent’s house, specifically at a site where in the early part of the 20th century, a house once stood.

Realize that we have only one more full day here before heading back to New York. We are both happy and sad.

Appreciate the atmosphere and ice cream … Read more

I enjoy reading blogs from other unschoolers.  There is a lot of very helpful and insightful information available, and reading about other families who are choosing a similar path for their children is comforting.

It can also be very overwhelming.

I personally get overwhelmed when I read accounts of what other kids are interested in; how they taught themselves some kind of complicated science, or how the parent finds ingenious ways to include math in a natural and challenging way so that the kids love it and clamor for more.   Just writing that I can feel my insides clench up.… Read more

Anybody who studies genetics will tell you that when the gene pool of a given population becomes too uniform, stagnant or (dare I say it?) standardized, the results are not favorable.   The health of the population suffers, as does the aesthetic appeal and overall intelligence.   This is true of animals (as any farmer or vet knows) and of people as well.     Only with an influx of new dna, new genes, will the population be re-vitalized and strengthened.

It seems to me that an analogy can be made here between genetic diversity and compulsory education, which has become a stagnant gene … Read more

This has been a great weekend.  Joshua’s flight Friday out of JFK was on time – something of a pre-Christmas miracle.  Saturday saw us having breakfast with friends at a restaurant in the local airport.  (It’s really very good, too.)  Usually the biggest planes to come in and out are 2, 3 and 4 seaters, but we were treated to the landing of a charter jet and watched with interest as the 5 or 6 passengers disembarked.   Upon leaving the restaurant, we met the pilot and flight attendant and got to talking.  Turns out they had flown the passengers Columbus … Read more

I define sheepwalking as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them brain-dead jobs and enough fear to keep them in line…It’s ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change, and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise… Training a student to be a sheep is a lot easier than the alternative.  Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school.  So why does it surprise us that we

… Read more

I came across an article today that was originally published in the NY Times in 2006.    The headline of the article read “Homeschoolers Content to Take Children’s Lead”.   The homeschoolers they were talking about were unschoolers, and the issue was so-called “child-led learning”.

Two things stood out to me, one from the article itself and one from the comments, which to be fair were filled with opinions both pro and con.    From the article:

“It is not clear to me how [unschoolers] will transition to a structured world and meet the most basic requirements for reading, writing and math,”

… Read more