Episode 075 welcomes Russ Fugal to the podcast in a two part conversation with Skyler and Morgan. The topics covered in this second part include his background as a reader, cryptography and peer 2 peer technology, mathematics and his desire to make it simple for his children, cognitive development on how we count, why people are born with the ability to count to 4, the language he developed early on to count in base 4, a conversation on base 10, base 12, and base 60, origin of Roman numerals, his daughter’s stronger interest in reading than in mathematics, switching tracks from mathematics to reading development, how children teach themselves to read, speed reading, Chinese characters and reading, his new program called EAR (Engaged Aided Reading), why phonics is a crutch to fluency, reading well is reading by sight, not by phonics, why are brains are good at pattern recognition, the development of his mobile app based on EAR and sight reading, and his hopeful presentation in the SXSW 2018 conference.
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Why Our Coercive System of Schooling Should Topple
I’ve been called a crazy optimist, a Pollyanna, a romantic idealist. How can I believe that our system of compulsory schooling is about to collapse? People point out that in many ways the schooling system is stronger now than ever. It occupies more of children’s time, gobbles up more public funds, employs more people, and is more firmly controlled by government – and at ever-higher levels of government – than has ever been true in the past. So why do I believe it’s going to collapse – slowly at first and then more rapidly – over the next ten years or so? Here are four reasons.
Social Norms, Moral Judgments, and Irrational Parenting
Our current norm of extreme protection of children has become, unfortunately, not just a social norm, but a moral norm. If you don’t watch your child (or have some other responsible guard watching) every minute, you are, in the eyes of many people, doing something immoral. How can we change this crippling social norm and get back to common sense?
The Many Benefits, for Kids, of Playing Video Games
Video games have been under attack by the fear-mongers ever since they first appeared, and the attacks have not diminished. If you Google around the Internet using harmful effects of video games as a search phrase, you will find all sorts of frightening claims. If you look into the actual research literature, you find very little if any evidence supporting the fear-mongers claims, and considerable evidence against those claims.
Words Poorly Used #74 — Education
The experience of school teaches the same thing as prison does, that survival is dependent on maximum control of the hierarchy. The warden/principal must make sure that all aggression goes down the structure, not up. Neither bullies nor rapists are of any real concern, to the upper tiers, since the lower in the hierarchy a victim stands, the higher the penalties for upsetting the order.
How Children Learn Bravery in an Age of Overprotection
I doubt if there has ever been any human culture, anywhere, at any time, that underestimates children’s abilities more than we North Americans do today. Our underestimation becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, because, by depriving children of freedom, we deprive them of the opportunities they need to learn how to take control of their own behavior and emotions.
Why Children Protest Going to School
Why all this protest? Education is a good thing, right? Children need to become educated to do well in society. Society goes to tremendous expense and trouble to provide schooling—lots of it!—for every child (whether they want it or not). Are these kids just spoiled ingrates?
Why Our Coercive System of Schooling Should Topple
I’ve been called a crazy optimist, a Pollyanna, a romantic idealist. How can I believe that our system of compulsory (forced) schooling is about to collapse? People point out that in many ways the schooling system is stronger now than ever. It occupies more of children’s time, gobbles up more public funds, employs more people, and is more firmly controlled by government—and at ever-higher levels of government—than has ever been true in the past. So why do I believe it’s going to collapse—slowly at first and then more rapidly—over the next ten years or so?
Why Self-Directed Education?
Written by James Davis. Six years after deciding that our family was going the route of self-directed education, it’s almost hard to remember what we used to think. When I think about my wife and I earnestly discussing whether we’d choose a conventional public school (the diversity!) or a conventional private school (the opportunities!), it’s…
We Have Almost Destroyed Childhood
To me it boils down to this: A lack of unsupervised free time is a mental and physical HEALTH CRISIS — and also a potential democratic crisis. If kids never learn that they are safe when they’re unsupervised, they will always expect and even demand supervision. With that, they’re abdicating their own role in shaping their lives and society, and trusting authority to tell them what to do, how to act, what to believe.