You wake up to the realization that you have an important meeting in 30 minutes. You leap out of bed, throw some clothes on, grab your keys, and rush out the door. You’re halfway to your car when you see it.
It’s not a moment of zen, but of economics.
Somebody has slashed your tires.
The primary difference between public education and public schooling is that the former is openly accessible and self-directed, while the latter is compulsory and coercive. Both are community-based and taxpayer-funded; both can lead to an educated citizenry. But public education–like public libraries, public museums, public parks, community centers, and so on—can support the education efforts of individuals, families, and local organizations with potentially better outcomes than the static system of mass schooling.
Kudos to these parents for listening to their parental instincts, despite pressure from the school to do otherwise. They saw that forcing their son to read at age 6, before he was ready, was causing him to hate reading and despise books. They recognized that the rigidity and uniformity characteristic of the mass schooling model was smothering their son’s curiosity and innate, self-educative ability.
OK, so we all want to learn skills — new languages, programming skills, physical skills, history, math, writing, games, so much more. But these four problems stand in our way. Let’s take them on. We’re going to discover four keys to overcoming these four problems so that we can tackle anything we want to learn.
So my son builds these levels on the WiiU game Mario Maker. He’s posted some of his favorites to the network so others can play them and, if they like them, give them a star. He checked in the other night only to find two of his favorite creations had been removed from the network because they did not get enough stars in a given time span. Here comes the pain. And the learning.
Wouldn’t it be nice if your children just did what you asked all the time? Do you ever have this thought? Of course you do! You have children. I have had the same thoughts (trust me), but when you really think about the long term consequences of obedience and how that looks in a relationship, you start to really question our culture’s parenting methods.
This is so against our usual approach that it might seem impossible. Love our inner Gollum? Absurd! We normally want to hide it, get rid of it, cure ourselves and forget everything about it.
You need to own your motivations if you are ever going to break out of your ordinary routines and aspire to something more. It is the only way you will have the will to try, to tread onward when things go wrong.
“My 5 year old son keeps asking to do more math, and I have to keep explaining to him that school is over, and it’s summer vacation now!” Sorry, but you’re doing home education wrong. Anytime anyone, of any age, expresses an interest in math, I’m happy to oblige.
The media we consume, the friends we have, our choices in play, our decisions of how to spend our time all have many various and complex purposes to them.