These school posters explicitly reveal the troubling reality that mass schooling retains its 19th-century roots as a system of social control. Originally designed to bring order to an increasingly diverse population, the industrial model of mass schooling continues to impose order by encouraging compliance, rewarding conformity and eliminating individuality.
Category: Whole Family Learning
Homeschoolers: The Enemy of Forced Schooling
Holt observed through his years of teaching, and recorded in his many books, that the deepest, most meaningful, most enduring learning is the kind of learning that is self-determined. As “the enemy,” we homeschoolers reject the increasing grip of mass schooling.
There Are Consequences for Eliminating Free Play
Mammals are innately playful. Our large brains and complex social structures require that we learn vast amounts of information in childhood to help us thrive in adulthood. How do mammal children learn all of this? They play.
Bully-Proofing Won’t Work Until We Give Kids More Freedom
Children who are bullied in school have very few choices and very little recourse. Required by law to attend an assigned public school, many children and their parents have minimal agency to withdraw from a bullying scenario. Some parents will look for alternative schooling options for their bullied children, like private schools, charter schools, online schools, or homeschooling. But for many families, these choices are not available or accessible.
How My Daughter Reminded Me What Self-Directed Education Really Means
On the walk home from the park, I told my kids about this new idea for a dedicated time allotment for various “subjects.” I suggested that maybe it was something we could try and wanted to know what they thought about the idea. My 10-year-old daughter’s answer was priceless. “Mom, no, I don’t think so. That sounds sort of ‘schooly’, don’t you think?”
Can Self-Directed Education Exist In Public Schools?
“Do you think Self-Directed Education (SDE) can be integrated into the current public schooling model?” Responses ranged from “no way” to “anything is possible,” with commenters pointing out the key factors that would need to exist to make it work: increasing parental empowerment and mobilization; loosening compulsory schooling regulations; trusting children more and weakening the authoritarian structure of modern schooling; investing in smaller schools and classrooms.
Schooling is Not Inevitable
As back-to-school time approaches and articles swarm on how to make the transition to September easier and more successful, maybe it’s worth pausing to ask: If something is so unpleasant for so many of us, why are we doing it?
Homeschooling Can Be Tough Sometimes
In a span of 24 hours this week, I heard from two homeschooling moms threatening to send their kids to school. First, was a text with “I can’t do this!” Next, was a conversation with a mom who wants to send her child back to school and catch a break. Both moms were feeling frustrated, tired, and uncertain. Both were feeling that school would be easier, better; yet knowing deeply that isn’t true. Both were feeling what we all feel sometimes.
15,000 Hours of Playing School
As so often happens when we reach adulthood, and especially parenthood, we realize how much we don’t know. I realized that I might have been successfully schooled, but I didn’t feel well educated. When I reflect on the approximately 15,000 hours I spent in K-12 public school, I think of what a waste of time most of those hours were.
Worksheets or Wonder: A Story
The sky was a bright blue, clear with wispy white clouds and a strong June sun. My four children were ankle-deep in ocean water, shrieking with excitement each time they spotted a hermit crab or a sea star or a snail as the tide retreated.