At this point, I’m sure you know that I’m going to tell you I don’t like Waldorf. Because I don’t like public school and I don’t like Montessori and I don’t like Sudbury. So of course I don’t like Waldorf. Read more
It’s funny that we have studies to show that the kid who can look at a marshmallow and not eat it will do better in life than the kid who eats it right away. But what about the parents? Read more
This is a guest post from Ian Peters-Campbell, vice president of engineering for Green Dot. He originally wrote this piece on Quora.
A top school is good for two things: a network and a first-glance pop on your resume. It’s absolutely not necessary, but it can help when you’re new to the industry. Read more
Once you realize that school is a ridiculous place for your kids, you start looking for alternatives. Many people ask me what I think of Montessori as an alternative to public school. Read more
I was with my kids at Build-A-Bear, engulfed by toy-marketing genius, when I misplaced my iPhone and left the store without it.
My mom called to tell me. Read more
Here’s an episode of 60 Minutes where there’s a kid who got put in special ed at school and survived. In fact, they think the kid is “on track to win a Nobel Prize.” But what 60 Minutes really wants you to realize is how great 60 Minutes is for telling you about how the kid was caged for his genius but is now doing typical genius activity. Read more
The bus ride to school would be an hour each way, with kids up to five grades older than my sons. Unsupervised by anyone but the driver. So I decided to drive my kids to school.
School drop-off and pickup was so chaotic and time consuming that I hired someone to do it. Read more
After decades of research about what makes a person happy, it turns out that self-regulation is at the top. Sonja Lyubomirsky studies every day actions that can increase our happiness and it turns out they all require self-discipline -from giving two random compliments a week to walking with a book on our head for one minute a day. Gretchen Rubin’s bestselling book The Happiness Project is her leveraging self-regulation to test out the theories of positive psychology in every day life (for example, five compliments to her husband for every criticism.) Read more
I just got an email from my local homeschool group announcing openings in the local homeschool football team. This is notable because as Jews, we were not allowed to be officially part of their group, but I guess football is different. It’s also notable because tackle football is so over-the-top dangerous that I can’t believe homeschoolers are participating. Read more
These arguments about public vs private school are so meaningless. Of course we can’t have a national public school system without forward mobility if we take out all the rich kids. The problem is that this argument distracts us from the core issue, which is that school doesn’t work for anyone, rich or poor. If school worked, then it wouldn’t matter if you have your kids in a private school or a public school because school works, and school is a method for upward mobility, and school is the right place for kids. Except it’s not. Read more