вівторок, 28 лютого 2012 р.

About home schools and educations

Definitely homeschool if you can! Look for homeschooling groups in your area that pool resources, but avoid groups with religious or political affiliations. You want your child(ren) to learn to think, not become domesticated puppets. A good non-sectarian homeschoolers group will have excellent resources. The group we worked with had parents who were professors/researchers at the local university, entrepreneurs, artists/performers (including a traveling circus family who offered classes in acrobatics and juggling when they were in the area). We had a library of books and other resources such as microscopes. We arranged for field trips which were truly engaging because the groups of children were very small, allowing for very in-depth hands-on experiences.

Do a lot of research to help you get over the idea that homeschooling requires textbooks (most textbooks are gawdawful), teaching to standardized tests (nice little robot creation device there), or 6 hours a day of work. The reason public school days have to be so long is because the majority of time is spent managing the behavior of large groups. One of the worst side effects of our public miseducation system (don't get me wrong, there are few, but very few, decent public schools) besides teaching children to take tests instead of to think creatively, is the conditioning of ADD and ADHD behavior through the combined mechanism of jumping from one subject to the next and allowing children to subsist on junk food all the while.

Here are three excellent books covering various aspects of education:

Free Range Learning by Laura Grace Weldon

The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto (former NY State and NYC Teacher of the Year)

The Unschooled Mind by Howard Gardner

Also, I recommend reading The Everything Toltec Wisdom Book, which I found to be very thought-provoking.

All the best to you, B!

Немає коментарів:

Дописати коментар