Unschooling NYC

This post has nothing to do with life learning, or unschooling, or education. Except you might learn about some music or movies with which you weren’t previously familiar.  Or not.    Believe it or not, there are days when I don’t think about learning or the state of education.   Not many, but they do exist.

Today was almost one of them.

Why?  Well, mostly because I not only went to Pilates, but then did a Beyond Barre class as well.  (Back to back, thank you.)  I am Superwoman.  At least until tomorrow, when the sore muscles will kick in.   Before I … Read more

We all have those days.   Those days when we look around and think that everyone else has the perfect situation;  that we must be doing something wrong because why can’t we figure out how to live the way they do?   Of course, most of those thoughts fall under the category of ‘the grass is always greener’.  (Someone once said, “The only happy people I know are people I don’t know well” which is funny but also sort of true.)

On those days when I think that everyone else must have it better than I do, I have a list of … Read more

This pretty much speaks for itself:

Our education system, as it stands, from kindergarten through graduate school, is the opposite of resilience, flexibility, and adaptability.  It teaches a narrow set of academic/analytic skills, mostly divorced from the practicalities of life, and drills them into you for hours, days, weeks, months, and years on end.  Analytic skills may be valuable to success in a rapidly changing, chaotic world, but they are far, far from the whole picture.  Success, happiness, contribution, innovation, and leadership depend on a range of human skills, most of which are not taught in school.

(Peter) Thiel says: 

… Read more

Maya wanted to dye one section of her hair blue.    This seemed a very reasonable request, and today, after one failed attempt using a dye that claimed you didn’t need to lighten the hair first (you do), we achieved the level of blue-ness she was looking for:

Pretty cool, huh?

Most parents think I’m crazy for ‘allowing’ her to dye her hair.   I’ve been listening to their expressions of amazement for over a week and I really don’t get it.  I mean, it’s just HAIR.   It’s not a tattoo or something equally permanent.  (I’m not saying she couldn’t get a … Read more

Faith is something I think you need a lot of to be a life learner in our culture.  Not religious faith, but a belief and complete trust in your kids and their abilities, and also in yourself and your family.     It’s interesting to me how so many people who profess to have complete faith in a God of their choosing seem to have little or no faith and trust in humanity.    (They are not the only ones, just the loudest ones.)   Some people I know who attend church or are devout in a particular religion view all the people they … Read more

Gabrielle Zevin, author of some of Maya’s favorite books, today tweeted a link to her Sunday Confession (on a page called Gabrielle Zevin Writes – you’ll need to scroll down a bit to see the confession.)

I absolutely love this because I have done exactly the same thing.    The only difference is, I’ll reveal the title.   It’s  The Corrections.… Read more

Based on current data, I think it is very likely that my daughter Maya will grow up to be an entrepreneur/business owner of some sort.   What form this will take is anybody’s guess at this point, but she has so much of Joshua’s knack and interest in business that I can’t see her spending much time working for someone else, except as a stepping stone.

As for Ben?  At this point he thinks working as a Lego designer might be fun, and I think whatever he winds up doing it will be spatially creative, if you get my meaning.

Of … Read more

The New York Times, in its’ online Education section, has been running a series of articles under the heading “Student Opinion”.   They ask students age 13 or older to comment on articles pertaining to different education-related subjects.    This morning someone on the homeschool email list posted the link to the latest Student Opinion article, titled “Would You Want to be Homeschooled?”

I encourage you to read the article –  and the 70 or so comments that follow, but in case you don’t have time to do that right now, here is a condensed version.   The Times excerpted an article relating … Read more

When Joshua and I were first married we lived on East 2nd St. in Alphabet City.    There was a garage band recording studio/drug den on our corner, the Hells Angels on 3rd St. and CBGB’s a couple of blocks away on the Bowery.   South of CB’s the Bowery became something of an industrial wasteland at night, and it was easy to imagine it as hunting grounds for the infamous Bowery Boys gang of the mid-19th century.

Today, though the Hells Angels club remains as a bastion of tough, the drug den is a high rise doorman building, and CBGB’s is … Read more

First Quarter Reports are due next week.    Maybe it’s a coincidence, but this time of year it seems parents talk a lot more about curricula and classes – possibly because in the back of their minds they are planning their quarterly report.

Participating in this kind of conversation is akin to traversing a mine field for us unschoolers, mostly because it is a prime opportunity for school brain to kick in and start ranting, “Hear that?   THEY’VE all been learning about Finnish history, delving into algebra, organic chemistry and earth science.  Oh sure, your kids take Spanish, but THEY are … Read more