The trouble is that we have left the Industrial Era for the Imagination Age, but our mass education system remains fully entrenched in factory-style schooling. By many accounts, mass schooling has become even more restrictive than it was a century ago, consuming more of childhood and adolescence than at any time in our history.
Tag: unschooling
Unschooling and Workbooks
Just as we have crayons and paper, books and computers, yarn and playdough, magazines and watercolors, we have workbooks. They are nothing fancy–just the ones you can pick up at a local store or online (my gang seems to like Brain Quest)–but they are scattered around our home. These workbooks are available to the kids, just like all other tools and supplies, to use and explore as they like.
Letter To a Prospective Homeschooling Parent
Welcome to the exciting world of learning without schooling! You have already taken the important first step in redefining your child’s education by acknowledging the limitations of mass schooling, recognizing the ways it can dull a child’s curiosity and exuberance, and seeking alternatives to school. Now it’s time to take a deep breath, exhale, and explore.
A Voluntaryist 7-Point Plan
As advocates of a truly free society, we voluntaryists, unlike the statists who outnumber us, do not engage in traditional political activism. This simple fact got me thinking about a habitual plan or checklist each of us might form or follow quite naturally, in the course of our daily lives in order to promote the kind of stateless socioeconomic order we envision.
Life Outside the Cloister
Every time a person asks how homeschoolers learn about relationships or socialization, I think that some folks must believe a) that homeschooled kids must be stuck in the home all day, since their own experience is with being stuck in a cloister, and b) they must not realize that lots of life actually happens outside that tiny cloister in which they spent most of their early lives.
Brent’s Journey (1h14m) – Episode 081
Episode 081 welcomes Brent Mayberry to the podcast for a chat with Skyler. Topics covered include: growing up in Arizona, his father’s medical doctor credentials from Mexico, public school, three different college majors including economics, LDS mission to Argentina, serving in the Army National Guard as a staunch Conservative, being deployed in Africa near Somalia (Djibouti), journey to voluntaryism, his wife and kids, being a stay-at-home unschooling dad, screen time, influencing others, Utah Patients Coalition, and more.
How Should We Answer Our Children’s Questions? (7m) – Editor’s Break 034
Editor’s Break 034 looks at answering questions posed by our children, particularly difficult ones like, “Is God real?”
Superstitions Regarding School
My family has been on our unschooling journey for going on six years now. Within that time I have had the opportunity to meet countless other unschooling parents, families and people raised with unschooling, both online and in person. What I have learned has revealed to me bit by bit the superstitious nature that is the belief in the necessity of school, or other forms of compulsory education.
Superstition Still Plagues Humanity
When I think of behaviors or convictions from the past now considered superstitious, I can’t help but find many modern analogs. It’s not difficult when we define superstition as follows: a belief in something in spite of the absence of supporting facts or evidence.
Why Most Homeschooling Systems Devolve, and Why You Can’t Plan a Startup
The notion of a year-long plan created in an Ivory Tower and imposed on all students of the same age without deviation no matter what market feedback is coming is absurd and tyrannical. Imagine an incubator like Y-Combinator paying some smarties to come up with The One True Business Model, roll-out schedule, target market, hiring strategy, budget, and action plan, and imposing it upon every one of the startups in their program. Oh, and demanding every company produce and sell the exact same product.