HEM’s Questions & Answers – March-April 2010
“I never thought I’d be homeschooling through high school, but here we are. My oldest is 16. I hear people talk about tests and college visits but I don’t know what steps to take when. At what age do we start? Any helpful hints?” -nervous mom
Your responses must meet our deadline of January 15th, 2010. Please recognize that your submission may be edited for length or clarity. Indicate how you prefer your question or answer signed.
HEM’s Questions & Answers – March-April 2010
“Subscribing to lots of publications (daily newspapers, weekly science magazines, lots of monthly magazines) is a highly enriching part of education in our house. But economic realities mean that we have to cut way down. This doesn’t make the avid readers in our family of kids from 9 to 17 very happy. What are your picks for most valuable periodicals?” -Sarah Quinn
Your responses must meet our deadline of January 15th, 2010. Please recognize that your submission may be edited for length or clarity. Indicate how you prefer your question or answer signed.
Tags: daily newspapers, HEM Questions and Answers, monthly magazines, weekly science magazines
Radical unschooling advocate James Marcus Bach was interviewed by Helen Hegener for the Nov-Dec issue of Home Education Magazine. A high school dropout who coined the term ‘buccaneer-scholar,’ James is an internationally recognized expert in the field of computer software testing, and has taught critical thinking and software testing around the world at places such as the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Son of author Richard Bach, whose bestselling books include Stranger to the Ground, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions, and many others, James dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen to pursue his own interests. An excerpt from the interview:
“We can always find ways to separate, divide, make distinctions. That is often important (it’s the “contrasting ideas” part of my own learning practice). What is also useful and important is to find commonalities, consistencies, and unifying patterns, because then we can use our knowledge of one kind of thing to gain insight into what is apparently another kind of thing.
“If human minds were merely disparate parts, then it would be possible to operate on one of our parts without affecting the others. But that is not our experience. When I deal with my son I can’t tell him to turn off his moral judgment while I use threats to scare him into learning what I wish him to learn. He’s learning about morality and ethics continuously as he experiences the world around him. “Do what I say but not as I do” and “do what I say and not what makes sense to you” and “Learn not as I learned– from experiment and experience– but only as you are instructed” are not workable principles for raising kids in a free society.”
Read the complete interview online – free – at the link above.
Tags: Buccaneer Scholar, homeschooling, intellectual buccaneering, James Marcus Bach, Radical Unschooling, unschooler
As parents, we do some of the most important work in the world. Unfortunately, it is often overlooked, even by us parents. It is important that we take time to think about, recognize, acknowledge, keep in mind, and share with others the work that we do and the resulting benefits. Parents’ work is essential to children’s well-being, to parents themselves, and to society as a whole. No one else can do this work as well as parents can.
As homeschoolers, we have more experience with and often greater understanding of and stronger commitment to the benefits of parents’ work. Our voices need to be heard, especially now as pressure is growing for children to start school at younger ages and spend more hours per day and days per year in school and for government and professionals to take more responsibility for children at the expense of parents.
This column explores some obvious and not so obvious work that parents do and ways some parents cope with economic challenges by increasing the family work they do. Then it discusses reasons why the media doesn’t give parents the credit and recognition they deserve. Finally there are suggestions for what we can do.
Continue reading Parents’ Work: Invaluable but Nearly Invisible, by long-time columnists Larry and Susan Kaseman, in the Nov-Dec 2009 issue of Home Education Magazine.
Tags: children's well-being, Home Education Magazine, homeschooling, homeschooling dads, homeschooling families, homeschooling freedoms, homeschooling in the news, homeschooling resources, Larry and Susan Kaseman, Parents' Work, Parents' Work: Invaluable but Nearly Invisible, reasons to homeschool, responsibility for children, socialization, unschooling
The Book Arts Bash is a writing contest for homeschooled authors. The Book Arts Bash celebrates untrammeled creativity, and promotes the integration of writing across the curriculum. We put homeschooled students’ best work on the desks of literary agents, best-selling authors, and other industry professionals, to encourage young writers and connect great minds.
The first Book Arts Bash happened in fall of 2008, click on the link to view the winners and the impressive list of judges. This year features larger monetary prizes and critiques from literary agents in NYC and LA for the top three in each category. Novels will be accepted in ten separate age groups, and all entries must be between 1000 and 10,000 words. Submissions began in November, the deadline for entries is January 1, 2010. Finalists will be announced February 14, 2010, and the winners will be announced: April 1, 2010.
Check out the Book Arts Bash and get your entries in – multiple submissions are welcomed!
Tags: Book Arts Bash, curricula, curriculum, homeschool resources, homeschooled teens, homeschooling, homeschooling and writing, homeschooling resources, reading, unschooling
Of all possible homeschooling resources – after, of course, such pipe-dream unobtainables as unlimited time and money – next-best is a library card. Kids vary certainly, but there’s no doubt, as Neil Postman said, that a magnificent education can be obtained solely through reading; and even for the reading-resistant, the library has a lot to offer. And, should your young library-goers need support, encouragement, or just some great books about libraries, there are many resources out there.
One of the many uses of libraries is as a prime source of information, and – though most librarians are certainly helpful – it’s useful to know how to find it for yourself. This is the theme of Deborah Heliligman’s The New York Public Library Kid’s Guide to Research (Scholastic, 1998), which guides readers through a research project from beginning – choosing a topic – to end. For example, kids learn how to use card and online catalogs, discover what kind of information is found in various kinds of reference books, and learn how to find information in magazines and newspapers, how to use the Internet, and how to judge reliability of information sources.
Read more of Rebecca Rupp’s “Loving the Library,” in her regular column for HEM, Good Stuff, for the May/June, 2005 issue.
Tags: books about homeschooling, children and libraries, curricula, curriculum, Deborah Heliligman, Good Stuff, Home Education Magazine, homeschool resources, homeschooling, homeschooling and libraries, homeschooling and the library, homeschooling families, kids and libraries, libraries, library, Loving the Library, reading, reasons to homeschool, Rebecca Rupp, unschooling
