1. Young people mistakenly assume the way to start their career is to go into debt, spend four years taking tests, following rules, chasing grades and getting a degree. 2. Paper credentials won’t launch your career. Employers don’t care about degrees, they care about the right skills.
Tag: class
Banfield on the Hyperbole of Urban Bankruptcy
“When a mayor says that his city is on the verge of bankruptcy, he means that when the time comes to run for reelection he wants to be able to claim credit for straightening out a mess that was left to him by his predecessor.”
The Essential Zen Habits of 2018
As 2018 comes to a close, I have to say … it’s been a year of depth but also chaos and blessings for me and Zen Habits. I’m grateful for the wonderful readers I have had for more than a decade now (all of you!), and for the journey I’ve been on and will continue in the coming year.
The Value of Skipping Time
I think many people forget the intense boredom of schooling. I think they forget their feelings of being treated like an inferior. Too often it is just false/ingrained narratives and flashes of memorable positive moments that remain of people’s idea of schooling.
What Educators Can Learn from “I, Pencil”
For self-directed learners, their creative energies are uninhibited. They are not controlled by a mastermind or a group of omniscient rulers who believe they know what is best for others. Self-directed learners retain their creative spirit, that zest for learning which is so apparent in young children but is often eroded through years of forced education.
How School Districts Weaponize Child Protection Services Against Uncooperative Parents
In my advocacy work with homeschooling families across the country, I frequently hear stories from parents who decided to homeschool their kids because schools were pressuring them to comply with various special education plans, push medications onto their children, or submit to other restrictive procedures they felt were not in their child’s best interest. Even more heartbreaking is the growing trend of school officials to unleash child protective services (CPS) on parents, homeschooling or not, who refuse to give in to a district’s demands.
Some Still Waiting Return of Liberty
For decades I’ve had my doubts about whether America is still the land of the free. With rules and enforcers everywhere you look, it doesn’t seem so. I’ve been wrong. Most Americans are free — as free as they want to be.
Philosophical Tools: In-Group Preference
As humans, we seek familiarity, commonality, comfort. We seek people like us with whom to relate. It’s only natural. We develop in-group preferences, not a bad thing, but interesting. The reason I find this interesting is that I’ve developed my own theory on in-group preference. I call the dichotomy: Quantitative in-group preference and Qualitative in-group preference.
Harvard Study Shows the Dangers of Early School Enrollment
Parents don’t need Harvard researchers to tell them that a child who just turned five is quite different developmentally from a child who is about to turn six. Instead, parents need to be empowered to challenge government schooling motives and mandates, and to opt-out.
An Intentional System for Working with Goals
Goals, like any tool, can be used to bludgeon ourselves over the head with shame and guilt, or can be used with intention, as a way to consciously deep our practice in life. I’ve been known to rail against having goals from time to time, to espouse goal-less living … but the truth is, goals can be used to guide us if they’re used intentionally.