homeschooling

My best memory of school was probably leaving school. Because I hated that fucking place.

Children, even when very young, have the capacity for inventive thought and decisive action. They have worthwhile ideas. They make perceptive connections. They__e individuals from the start: a unique bundle of interests, talents, and preferences. They have something to contribute. They want to be a part of things.It__ up to us to give them the opportunity to express their creativity, explore widely, and connect with their own meaningful work.

The philosophy of project-based homeschooling _ this particular approach to helping children become strong thinkers, learners, and doers _ is dependent upon the interest and the enthusiastic participation and leadership of the learners themselves, the children.

Allowing children to learn about what interests them is good, but helping them do it in a meaningful, rigorous way is better. Freedom and choice are good, but a life steeped in thinking, learning, and doing is better. It__ not enough to say, __o, do whatever you like._ To help children become skilled thinkers and learners, to help them become people who make and do, we need a life centered around those experiences. We need to show them how to accomplish the things they want to do. We need to prepare them to make the life they want.

To learn how to do, we need something real to focus on _ not a task assigned by someone else, but something we want to create, something we want to understand. Not an empty exercise but a meaningful, self-chosen undertaking.

Education is every day and everywhere, the only thing you have to pay is attention.

School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony.

Break the teacher certification monopoly so anyone with something valuable to teach can teach it. Nothing is more important than this.

Education is a system. Learning is an ongoing every day process.

Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies.

Schooling that children are forced to endure__n which the subject matter is imposed by others and the __earning_ is motivated by extrinsic rewards and punishments rather than by the children__ true interests__urns learning from a joyful activity into a chore, to be avoided whenever possible. Coercive schooling, which tragically is the norm in our society, suppresses curiosity and overrides children__ natural ways of learning. It also promotes anxiety, depression and feelings of helplessness that all too often reach pathological levels.

Regarding school vs. homeschoolIf it works, send them there!If it doesn't, don't import it.

George dutifully dusted the marks from the expensive rug and retired to the kitchen to await a grave and disapproving Collins, wishing with all of his boyish heart that he had applied for the stables. Cleaning stalls had to be beneficial exercise, and surely one must become accustomed to the smells...eventually.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn_ all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

My mother, who taught me how to read and write and home-schooled me for the first 12 years of my life, whose presence shaped me as much as her absence did, who imbibed in me the values of empathy and fearlessness and hard work, looks down on me today with great pride.

For those of you who may be homeschooled: high school is that four-year asylum where they put teenagers because we have no idea what else to do with them.

Children, who once looked to their parents for leadership, now turn to their teachers for knowledge, their peers for wisdom, and their music and televisions for entertainment.

The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.