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Strollerderby
Over 2 million children in the U.S. are unschooled.
I always thought that if I am ever someday forced to take my kids out of school due to our refusal to vaccinate, I would rather unschool than homeschool.
The TODAY Show reported this morning that over 2 million children in the U.S. are legally unschooled. Continue reading »
Soccer practice. Swim lessons. Tennis camp. Gymnastics. Piano. Community theater.
Practically from the moment we give birth, parents are offered a plethora of structured activities for themselves and their kids. From your first new baby group to your kid’s high school theater habit, you are urgently invited to spend the next 20 years devoting every waking moment to enrichment activities.
A lot of these classes have a lot to offer. But some families have said “Enough already”, and chosen to slow down. The Slow Family Living movement in Austin tries to teach parents how to take time for themselves and their kids.
When our children hit a certain age, most of us pack them up and send them off to school. We do this because it is expected and necessary. How else are they going to learn the things they need to know to succeed in life? Of course, not all parents are willing to put their children’s futures into the hands of paid strangers. And estimated 1.5 million children in the U.S. are homeschooled, learning their lessons in the comfort of their own homes with mom or dad leading the way.
But what if there were a third option? An option that didn’t involve lessons at all? What if we just let our kids stay home and do their own thing, choosing what they want to learn, when they want to learn, and even if they want to learn? For an estimated 100,000 kids in the U.S., that is exactly the type of education – or non-education – they are getting.
Probably, you remember being taught to read. Methods vary: children are taught reading by phonics, by memorization of sight words, by Montessori techniques. But pretty much all of us are painstakingly led down the path to literacy by teachers, parents, librarians, and any other adult involved in our early development.
In a new blog at Psychology Today, Peter Gray argues that kids can’t really be taught to read. They learn when they’re ready, in the way that works for them.
Whenever you’re in a specialized subculture, it can feel like the most useful of words take an absurdly long time to reach the pages of the dictionary. And as we all know, parenting is a specialized subculture.
But we’re getting there: Continue reading »
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