After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves. -John Taylor Gatto, […]
Archives for April 2012
Unschooling Lessons from Olivia
It’s no secret: I’m a shameless fan of a couple of children’s tv shows. Olivia is one of them. Olivia is a pig with an unschooler’s instincts (although she probably doesn’t know it) surrounded by parents, teachers and friends who are all pretty mainstream. Sometimes the mainstream view gets the limelight (see Say Goodbye to […]
Work vs. Play
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. -Tom Sawyer
Unschooling: What We Learn
…very little of what is taught in school is learned, very little of what is learned is remembered, and very little of what is remembered is used. The things we learn, remember, and use are the things we seek out or meet in the daily, serious, nonschool parts of our lives. -John Holt, from How […]
Radical Unschooling: A Visit to the Dentist
Recently I took my youngest daughter, Maggie, to her first dental appointment. She’s my fourth, so I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. I figured it would go like the initial visits of my three older kids. Our pediatric dentist works hard to make children’s dental experiences positive, and all of my other […]
Unschooling: Yes, Spelling Counts
When I taught elementary school, there were some things we teachers would lament about year after year. Near the top of the list was our students’ truly atrocious spelling. Oh sure, they’d do okay on the spelling tests. But going through a piece of their writing was as grating as nails on a chalkboard. Simple […]