A few great excerpts from an article in Qubec’s weekly Suburban titled Homeschooling can be a valid option, by Linda Zlatkin:
Everything in life is a learning experience. Fifteen years ago, Debbie Smart had an experience that made a lasting, and learning, impression.
When her daughter Isabelle was just over two years old, Smart met some people who were homeschooling their children, and thought: “These kids are really interesting and they’re so intelligent. What a great idea!”
By the time her second daughter, Emilie, came along, Smart began to think that the regular school system might be too rigid for them. She wanted to focus on her children’s natural curiosity.
“I became their facilitator, not their teacher,” says Smart. “They would watch Scientific American on television and then come back and tell me about the fascinating things they were discovering.”
As a result, Smart has been learning along with her daughters — Isabelle and Emilie Desmarais, now 18 and 16 respectively.
They use a student-directed style of homeschooling called unschooling. “It is education, not schooling,” says Smart. “We believe that everything around us has the potential to become a learning experience.”
“Because each child is born with what Einstein called ‘the holy curiosity of inquiry,’ for them, learning is as natural as breathing.”
…since homeschoolers work on the premise that every child is an individual, when you have a classroom of one, the child’s individuality is completely taken into account. After all, they are the only one in the class.
Read the entire article at the link above.
Tags: home education, homeschooling, homeschooling families, Linda Zlatkin, unschooling
In response to comments from last weeks ‘Confessions of a home-schooler‘, by Salon.com senior editor Andrew O’Hehir, Lisa Belkin responds with ‘Parents Judging Parents of Home-Schoolers‘ and I especially like her closing statements.
I think O’Hehir hits on one of the reasons — there is nothing more important than raising children, and therefore nothing that makes us more uncertain. When you are wondering if you are wrong, then you sometimes have to dig in and insist you are right, if only to convince yourself.
True, there are things that ARE wrong — parents who are abusive, approaches that simply don’t work. But more often there are things that are different, or that we form opinions about without all the facts, or that we tsk tsk over to reassure ourselves that we would never do THAT.
I’ve done it. I’ll wager you’ve surely done it. O’Hehir gives us a moment to pause, and think, and try to do it a little less.
More at link above
Tags: Andrew O'Hehir, homeschool, homeschool parents, homeschooling, homeschooling families, Lisa Belkin, Salon.com
“Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” – Miles Davis
I think a lot about mistakes. Partly because as the parent of three boys I am all too aware that I make mistakes with them every day, and partly because I have come to understand mistakes as fundamental keys to learning. I have been puzzling about the idea that mistakes are never just mistakes in the dictionary sense (American Heritage Dictionary: “an error or a fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness; a misconception or misunderstanding”), but are always opportunities for deeper awareness and understanding. I want my children, all children, to have the chance to understand the valuable role of mistakes in life.
Whenever we experiment, we are likely to make mistakes. If we are afraid of mistakes, we will never experiment. And it seems to me crucial to the cultivation of an inquiring and imaginative mind that a person be willing to experiment: with ideas, activities, life. By an inquiring and imaginative mind I mean a mind that is questioning, critical, reflective and creative; this, I believe, is essential for making sense of the world and for living a fulfilling and meaningful life.
Continue reading this classic article, Making Mistakes and Thinking for Yourself, by Jana Mohr Lone, from the November-December 2000 issue of Home Education Magazine.
Tags: home education, Home Education Magazine, homeschool, homeschooling, homeschooling families, Jana Mohr Lone, Making Mistakes and Thinking for Yourself, reasons to homeschool
I always enjoy reading Dana Hanley’s Principled Discovery blog; she’s a good writer and her posts often make me think, or even better, question an assumption. One of my favorite entries is from last June when she hosted the Carnival of Homeschooling and produced the inspired and thoroughly delightful Field Guide to Homeschoolers. It’s a deliciously fun romp through the homeschool blogworld, with Dana’s witty insertions of ‘facts about homeschoolers,’ apparently from a bona fide field guide: “The homeschooler, elusive and quick, is one of the most difficult creatures to study. They do not survive well in captivity, and field studies to date have focused on small, easily observable populations.”
From there Dana skillfully weaves in all sorts of topics on homeschooling, from ’standardized testing’ to ‘mean people’ to ‘when kids ask to go to public school.’ There’s a wonderful section on exploring a homeschooler’s ‘habitat and surroundings,’ an informative collection of ‘materials homeschoolers build their educational nests with,’ and plenty of good reading as Dana provides evidence that ‘There are few things homeschoolers enjoy more than telling you how much they love homeschooling.’
Tags: Carnival of Homeschooling, Dana Hanley, Field Guide to Homeschoolers, homeschool, homeschool bloggers, Homeschool Blogs, homeschool resources, homeschooling, homeschooling families, homeschooling resources, Principled Discover, reasons to homeschool
Writer and researcher Milton Gaither, author of Homeschool: An American History, did a very interesting round-up piece on homeschool-related news articles and stories in his Sept. 28th post titled, appropriately, Current Events Round-Up. He summarizes at the end: “Being news items, these stories are of course sensationalistic and atypical, but they do remind us that homeschooling is a much more complicated and heterogeneous thing than many people realize. A country music legend chooses homeschooling for her children. A Gothardite becomes a Christ-hating murderer. A homeschooling mother gets certified and teaches at the public high school where her daughters excel. A couple of goth homeschoolers are murdered by their own rhetorical ideals. Homeschooling is as varied and unpredictable as life itself.”
Gaither repeats his round-up approach with this week’s post. He sums up: “As I said last week, these stories once again illustrate the breadth of experiences going by the name homeschooling. The families chronicled in The Economist have long been the most common type, but they are joined by child athletes, actors, and even troublemakers and fugitives.”
Tags: Alana Whiting, American School Board Journal, Atheism, Basic Life Seminar, Bill Gothard, Bonnie Richardson, Diane Dobbs, Discipleship Training School, home education, homeschool news, homeschooling, James Dobson, Matthew Murray, Max Blumenthal, Milton Gaither, National Association of Evangelicals, NCES, New Life Community Church, news about homeschooling, Oral Roberts University, Rebecca Mead, Ted Haggard, The Economist, Wynonna Judd
In the October 5 Asheville, North Carolina Citizen-Times, writer Ashley Wilson’s article, Home-schoolers turn to co-ops, is subtitled There’s nothing lonely about learning at home.
After some standard fare about homeschooled kids dissecting owl pellets, staining woodworking projects and drawing pictures, the writer reveals that “support groups, organizations, sports teams, clubs and cooperatives for home-schoolers are popping up throughout the region.”
She adds: “Many home-schooling parents said that as this alternative education form has grown in the region, the number of resources available for their children has gotten overwhelming.”
It’s a good article, ending with some interesting statements relating to the revisited initial question: “Some parents are afraid that the explosion of co-ops, clubs and activities for home-schooled children can take away from what home schooling is supposed to be about: learning in the home.”
Tags: Asheville Citizen-Times, Ashley Wilson, curricula, curriculum, homeschool, homeschool resources, homeschool support groups, homeschooling, homeschooling families, homeschooling resources, North Carolina homeschoolers, North Carolina homeschooling, reasons to homeschool, socialization
