I changed my blog title from homeschooling to education

I always feel like a responsible world citizen when I read an article from Al-Jazeera. I know whatever I read from there will come from a writer who has a different perspective on the world than the majority of writers who I read.

So I was happy when someone sent me an article from there about homeschooling. I was surprised that Al Jazeera would cover the topic. But then I saw they have an education section.

That was the nail in the coffin for me calling this section of my blog homeschooling. I decided to change it to education. Because in order for anyone to make sense of homeschooling they have think about education in a much more broad sense.

That change had to wait for a pause in the Ukrainian revolution because my web developer lives in the thick of it.

And the education moniker fits into the rest of my Penelope Trunk gestalt as well, because it’s nearly impossible to talk about careers and not talk about education. An effective career path is actually an effective learning path. Separate the two and your career will fail.

This article by Marc Prensky will be an interesting read for all parents and teachers but especially homeschooling parents. It makes a compelling case against the common core but from a different take than usual: Education isn’t preparing our children with the skills they need for success in the 21st century.  Prensky makes a case for a brand new curriculum.  It is one that many homeschoolers who lean more toward the unschooling do naturally.  He also has an interesting take on technology and how education is an extension of our brains and that is a good thing. 

But this is starting to feel like old news to me. Like, the only reason people have to keep writing stuff like this is because schools are in no position to act on it. Increasinlgly I’m seeing that school-reform advocates largely say the same thing , and schools largely ignore it.

So I am not sure there’s a point in saying things more clearly. We can’t change school. It’s a national babysitting service, and we could never afford to provide that in a more innovative way. We can barely afford to improve it as a semi-jail. So we have no room to do reform until we stop thinking of education as babysitting. And that’s not going to happen because parents would not be able to go to work. It’s just really such  a fundamental problem.

Careers are about education because fulfilling work is about self-directed personal growth. Education should also be about self-directed persona growth, yet we are forced to learn how to educate ourselves in the workplace since we don’t have a chance to self-direct our personal growth in school.

Also, education and careers are heavily influenced by the shifting of our idea of what constitutes a family. The current system for both education and careers stems from an extreme devaluing of family in our society. Homeschooling is a moderate response to this extreme.

And it feels right that my web site has the topics of careers, education, courses and one-on-one coaching. Because we are all learning to make these big changes together.