Once a week I have a moment of panic that unschooling is not working. But it’s not like I’m telling the kids, “I think you should go to school.” It’s more like I tell myself my kids will grow up to tell everyone how they wish their parents had emphasized math. Or schedules. Or socializing. […]
I’ve been stressing about how I can teach my kids self-discipline. I have thought, for a long time, that self-discipline is the key to happiness. Because so many things that drive your happiness—what you eat, when you exercise, if you smoke—come down to self-discipline.
This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2. I keep my children home because I have as many issues as my in-laws think I do. Truly, I am a bit to the far left of sanity, but that’s because I am […]
Education does not lift kids out of poverty. In fact, education does nothing to overcome the close correlation between the parent’s earnings and a child’s earnings. Poverty persistence is nearly unbeatable.
I have heard homeschooling parents talk about a need for student portfolios, as a way to show what homeschooled kids accomplished since they don’t have traditional grades. But that seems like a waste of time to me.
This is a guest post from Sheila Baranoski. She writes a blog about unschooling and she writes fiction for kids. “Easy for you to say unschooling works,” someone told me. “Your kids are interested in academic things. You don’t know my kids. If I unschooled, all my kids would do is play video games all day.”
I took the kids to their favorite arcade as soon as school was back in session, so we could avoid all the crowds. Of course all the people working there asked why the kids aren’t in school, so we did the usual conversation where they say, “Oh, so your mom teaches you?” And I say, […]
Kids need to think in pictures because that’s the way of the future. YouTube is quickly overtaking Google as the search engine of choice, but not for people who grew up in the age of text. (Like, probably, all of us). So I mean mostly the people who are growing up today, on the verge of […]
There are some kids who are completely engaged in a widely revered activity and they receive accolades at each turn. Most kids are not those kids. When it comes to self-directed learning, a wide majority of boys—and a good number of girls—will put themselves in front of a video game.
This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 13, 11, 9, 5, and 2. Back when I was planning on sending my son to school, the things I figured I would have to teach him would be respect, sex, drugs, how to work hard, […]