Musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings
about radical unschooling, natural parenting, green living, social justice and more by writer,
author and Natural Life magazine editor Wendy
Priesnitz.
Archives -
July, 2009
Helping Kids to Educate Themselves – July 30, 2009
I was recently engaged in an email conversation with a reader who was seriously
concerned that “unschooling” equates to “unparenting” and “uneducating.”
None of my descriptions of the so-called “radical unschooling” lifestyle –
trust, respect, learning by doing, life learning, authenticity, interest-based
learning and so on – convinced this person. In fact, they seemed to make him
increasingly skeptical. Finally, though, the light bulb flashed on when I began
to write about my intention (35 or more years ago) to help our daughters to be
self-reliant. The notion of helping children to educate themselves resonated
with this (non-homeschooling) critic like nothing else had and he began to agree
with me that self-education is not only effective but not neglectful and even
desirable – “One of the biggest gifts a parent can give to a child,” he said. One of his sticking points
had been confusing the institution of
school with education; the other involved the passive (being taught) versus the
active (learning and knowing). Eventually, he even dropped his certainty that
schools are actually in the business of educating people.
After that, he told me his concern was motivated by a cyberspace storm
started earlier this month by a
bizarre rant by an uniformed
homeschooling blogger who called unschooling “educational
neglect” and wrote that “John Holt has a lot to answer for” for coining
the term. (Kinda hard when you’ve been dead for close to a quarter century!)
Her main issue seems to be that unschoolers believe in non-coercion and she
believes in coercion but doesn’t want to call it that. Anyway, in order to
keep my blood pressure in check, I don’t normally pay attention to this sort
of stuff. But the blog posting and my conversation with this man reminded me
about how important terminology is to our understanding of concepts that are new
to us, even when we think we’re open-minded.
Posted: 2009/07/30 12:07 PM
Digital Learning – July 29, 2009
Schools have been appallingly slow to embrace technology. Those that have
computers don’t have enough of them, don’t trust kids to use them and often
block applications. Students are generally more able to use them than their
teachers. Cell phones are often forbidden. So it was refreshing to see
Grown Up Digital author Don Tapscott speaking at the
World Future Society’s conference. He outlined the many changes that we need
to make in our institutions, our families and our attitudes in order to engage
kids in learning…and to help them be safe. We do everything the opposite that
we should do, he said, such as taking away all the collaborative tools that
young people use to augment their learning processes. "Give them a license
to self-organize.... Give them the feedback they need and want to get
better." Here’s an excerpt from his presentation.
And here’s one teacher in the
UK who might taking steps in the right direction. His kids – who attend a high
school sponsored by Microsoft, learn at home using a collaborative private
social networking site. Apparently, exam results in English and IT have improved
by up to a grade compared to the scores of pupils of the same ability at the
school who were not taking part in the networking trial. Government advisers are
considering using the software to enable pupils to work from home if swine flu
forces schools to remain closed this fall. Hey! This is the same country
that’s trying to regiment
homeschooling. Somebody should point out the ontradiction!
Posted: 2009/07/29 12:53 PM
Change For the Sake of Our Children – July 27, 2009
Léandre Bergeron is a parent, social activist and writer whose article in the
upcoming September/October issue of Natural Life magazine illuminates the respectful,
trusting way of parenting and educating children that I’ve practiced
and championed for the past 35 years. Léandre suggests that we treat our
children as “distinguished guests” – people we respect and admire for who
they are and who grace us with their presence. He has much more wisdom and
experience to share in his new book For the Sake of Our Children, which we’ve
just published and is now back from the printer and ready to be ordered.
Collectively, we have much work to do to own up to the
damage our society does to our children through the ways we parent and educate.
I sometimes wonder if we are willing to make the sweeping changes in our
institutions, public policies and personal lives that are necessary to reverse
that harm to our children and to our society. But, recently, as I was listening
to an album of old tunes by singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen, I felt grateful for
the increasing community of people who are pushing for those changes. We are, to
paraphrase a line from Cohen’s song Anthem, taking advantage of the cracks
that appear in everything, which is where the light gets in.
Posted: 2009/07/27 12:14 PM
Traumatized Children, Traumatized World – July 26, 2009
Melting ice caps, droughts, a revived nuclear threat,
dysfunctional democracies, renewed hunger in Africa, millions losing their jobs
and homes due to others’ greed, the emotional impoverishment that gives more
media coverage to a dead rock star than to repression in China.... The world’s trauma is,
thankfully, far away from my life. And yet, as I wait for the fall issue of
Natural Life to come back from the printer, David Albert’s brave and
important article about
the effect of trauma on children (bits of which can be previewed on the
magazine website) keeps the concept top of mind.
In his article, David is not thinking about trauma in far
off places, although that is certainly of concern to him (and healing it is
part of how he lives his life). He writes, instead, about the wounds
experienced by children in our own society through adult pressure, especially
as a result of their forced attendance at schools that all too often rob them
of their dignity, respect and human rights. Some readers will think he
overstates the case when he likens the effects of the repetitive and ongoing
stress felt by children to the experiences of soldiers returning from Afghanistan or Iraq. But he makes a compelling
case by comparing the hyper-arousal, defiance and dissociation that are hallmarks
of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to the behavior of some children and young
people as they try to deal with the pain of humiliation, disrespect, injustice
and constant assessment of school and their other day-to-day environments. And,
he notes, these are also the “symptoms” of so-called disorders such as ADHD and
ODD.
As David Albert’s writing partner Joyce Reed says,
“Repetitive stress makes children stiff with resistance. They lose their
flexibility, resiliency, their open minds and comprehensive vision.” And that,
writes David, is ominous, for the sake of both our children and our world: “Our
society’s inability to deal creatively with major social issues – from war to
poverty to ecological devastation – stems from our collective incapacity to
think straight because of the impacts of past injuries and insults to our
psyches.” We know what we have to do.
Posted: 2009/07/26 1:41 PM
Another Government Against Homeschooling – July 21, 2009
There seems to be a new pandemic developing right now – and it’s not swine
flu. Sweden is the latest government trying to turn back the educational clock and remove
children’s right to learn what they want at their own speed. Here is
a link to the proposed changes from the English language section of the website
for Rohus, a politically and religiously neutral homeschooling organization in
Sweden that is taking on the government. They invite people in other countries to sign
a
special petition to help their cause. I believe that these attempts by
governments to outlaw home-based education are a result of its popularity
and success...and, therefore, the level of perceived threat it causes to the
hopelessly outmoded public education system. So there may be more before the
powers-that-be give in and admit that the emperor has no clothes on.
Posted: 2009/07/21 3:54 PM
Fighting
for Home Education Rights in the UK – July 19, 2009
Last month, I wrote a
piece about a problem for homeschoolers in the UK. Now,
they have organized a petition appealing to the government
to reject the recommendations that call for registration and monitoring of
homeschoolers there. The authors of the petition write that the report
is “a totally disproportionate response to a perceived problem full of
unsubstantiated allegations that home educated children are more at risk of
abuse than those at school. This simply is not true, as the report itself makes
clear. Enacting the recommendations in this report would establish the state as
parent of first resort, even though current legislation makes parents
responsible for providing a suitable education for their children.” Here is
the Support Home Educators in England petition.
Posted: 2009/07/19 3:01 PM
Natural
Life Online Subscription Available – July 18, 2009
Over the past while, we
have had a number of requests for an online subscription to
Natural Life
magazine. And now, it is available, at half the price of a print subscription.
For now – at least until we are able to gauge the level of interest and
therefore how much time and money to spend on programming and other
infrastructure – the format is password-protected PDF.
That password also provides access to our ever-growing archive of back issues of
Natural Life and all issues of Life Learning magazines.
Natural
Life has been reader-supported since Rolf and I launched it back in 1976.
(It is difficult to promote a conserve/simple lifestyle and attract companies
selling the latest knick knack, green or not.) Aside from amassing a huge amount
of credibility, which we value highly, that lack of dependency on advertising
has allowed us to weather the current recession-induced advertiser downturn. But
the recession has meant that we have had to re-think everything we do at Life
Media, to be sure we are on solid footing going forward. I hope we are managing
to maintain a fair balance between paid content (we think our articles are worth
paying for!) and free.
Posted: 2009/07/18 4:50 PM
Unschooler Video
Profile – July 17, 2009
Here is a video interview with a young woman
I knew when she was a child and who learned without school until
university. It is always great to see these articulate, passionate and well educated unschoolers! The video was made by Randy Kay and Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko
from Radio Free School (see the audio interview with me that is linked to the left on this page). They are unschoolers, as well as professional writers and broadcasters.
Posted: 2009/07/17 1:54 PM
A Life of Learning – July 15, 2009
Now that the book Turning Points: 27 Visionaries in Education Tell Their Own Stories (2009, Alternative Education Resource Organization) has been published,
I have posted my contribution A Life of Learning:Empowering, Respecting, Trusting, Unschooling Children on this website. Enjoy!
Posted: 2009/07/15 6:19 PM
Respecting Children – July 15, 2009
Someone asked me yesterday how I would sum up my philosophy of parenting and
education in one word. “Respect,” I responded. She was surprised that I hadn’t
said, “Trust.” But respect goes farther than trust. Unschoolers trust their
children to learn to read, write, do math and science, etc. without attending
school, as a result of their naturally programmed curiosity and interest in the
world. However, having respect for children is harder. It means that we unconditionally
respect their rights, freedoms, feelings, personality, temperament, challenges,
opinions, motives, needs, desires, abilities, perspective, personal space and
privacy. We not only trust them to learn but respect their right not to learn
certain things (nobody doesn’t learn….) in certain ways and at certain
times/stages. That’s what I expect as an adult and I believe that children
deserve nothing less.
Posted: 2009/07/15 11:53 AM
The Long Arm of the Law in Japan
– July 12, 2009
I’ve just received an email from my long-time contact in Japan, Kyoko Aizawa
(Otherwise Japan) about a change in the law about homeschooling in
Japan. Until now, the law has been rather murky there, with a few (estimated at under
1,000) families labeled as “school refusers.” Now, it seems, the government
is cracking down with a new law that passed on July 1 governing people ages zero
to forty, some of whom could be willfully unemployed or otherwise not
comfortable functioning in society…or who choose to learn at home. Kyoko
worries it is “really dangerous” because it gives the police the power,
among other things, to enter people’s homes and force children under the age
of 15 who don’t go to school either “into school or a mental hospital to be
medicated.” This is, says Kyoko, “forcing parents to raise children
according to the government’s childrearing practices…and endangers basic
parental rights to education children according to their convictions.” The
stated aim of the new law is “to support people who have problems living as
normal members of society.” But the definition of “support” is one I’d
have to disagree with and, in fact, this law appears to violate human rights in
some serious ways.
Posted: 2009/07/12 8:20 PM
Contemplating a Deal With the Devil Named Google – July 12,
2009
So Google decides a few years back to scan millions of books into its
proprietary database – in cahoots with some U.S. libraries, including Harvard
University’s and the New York City Public Library System – and apparently
assuming that copyright had expired or nobody would notice. Anyway, it is
without the permission of the copyright holders, either authors or publishers.
Some publishers and the Authors’ Guild get wind of this theft and file a class
action suit. There is a settlement agreement worth $125 million – pocket
change to Google – that will, in effect, wrap their knuckles and allow them to
continue with their project as long as they pay royalties. That agreement has
recently raised anti-trust concerns and is being looked at by
U.S. regulators, with a hearing scheduled for October. But before then, as an author
and small, independent publisher, I have to decide whether or not to do a deal
with the devil named Google. I and my publishing company can either opt out of
the settlement (and sue Google on my own if I could afford it) or we can be part
of the settlement. That would give me some tiny amount of revenue if and when
Google were ever to scan books that I have written or published (they haven’t
done so to date) and control over whether or not they could do so. But it would
mean that I would be giving my tacit approval to activity that is definitely
unethical and probably illegal under international copyright law. Either way, it
seems like I have a bunch of paperwork to do and my time won’t be reimbursed.
I also have to wonder what the librarians were thinking. Don’t they learn
about copyright law and ethics in librarian school? Too bad, because I’m a big
booster of libraries as a good example of an institution that people use even
though attendance isn’t compulsory.
Posted: 2009/07/12 5:12 PM
We Are All Worthy of Acclaim – July 7, 2009
I’m not a Michael Jackson fan. But I have heard about his
apparently inexcusable childhood mistreatment by his father, which explains much
of his seemingly tortured adult behavior. And I know that what are often called
eccentricities are sometimes just personality writ larger than life by promoters
and the media, and seen through the lens of many people’s need for heroes
and villains. Most importantly, aside from what sort of person Michael Jackson
was or was not – and the circus of his later years and the tragedy surrounding
his death – I also know that we all are talented, unique, important and worthy
of love and acclaim, while alive and after we die.
Posted: 2009/07/07 8:20 PM
Appearing to Do Nothing is Dangerous – July 6, 2009
Appearing to hang around and do nothing at all is dangerous – whether you’re
a teenager in a public place, an adult at work or a child in school (or even in
some homeschool settings). I can recall sitting at my desk in school pretending
to read a text book as a cover for thinking (or “daydreaming” as it was
derisively called)...or practicing looking attentive while the teacher was
talking and my mind was somewhere else entirely. Unlike some of my peers –
most often boys – I got away with it in school because I was an otherwise
well-behaved girl who got good marks. And now, I get away with “loitering”
in public places with my MP3 player or my journal because I’m a well-dressed
and groomed adult. As I was loitering this morning at my favorite sidewalk café,
I listened to a couple of moms feverishly programming their children’s summer
activities, apparently unwilling to leave a single minute unorganized and
dangerously non-productive. Not for those kids any time to watch ants crawl
along the sidewalk, time to dig in the sand or lie on the grass, time to
consolidate or expand upon any bit
of information they might remember from the
whirlwind of facts jammed into their brains over the school year, time to think
or to daydream. No, they might miss an opportunity to “learn” and to advance
their school careers. They might even forget how to “learn.” Or learn how to think for themselves. And that would threaten adults’ erroneous belief that they are in change of their children’s minds and their learning. Now that is dangerous.
Posted: 2009/07/06 11:14 AM
Learning to Write Without Being Taught – July 1, 2009
I’ve been busy working on a wonderful new natural parenting and radical
unschooling book that we’ll be publishing in the fall. It goes to the printer
in two days. The title is
For the Sake of Our Children and the author is Léandre Bergeron, a well-known
Canadian author and social activist who originally wrote it in French. As I was
finishing up the fiddly bits of formatting and tedious final proofing, I reached
into my briefcase and found a sweet little note from my daughter Melanie. I
wonder if it’s the last one I’ll find of the many she stuffed into nooks in
my suitcases and bags and pockets just before I left her ocean-side home after a
visit last month. She and her sister wrote many notes thirty-or-so years ago,
although not to say they’d miss me when I went home. Those notes were a way to
get my attention – “Will you play a game with me?” They were about
learning to spell – “What is this word?: M _ _ A N _ E.” And they were
about using language to communicate – “Heidi loves Wendy.” Slowly, but
surely, their simple little notes became longer letters and even stories.
Reading and writing were learned as effortlessly as was the art of speaking just a few
years earlier. And now, writing – novels, funding proposals, public
presentations, how-to books – is a part of
their lives. Léandre’s three daughters learned the same way, first asking how
to spell every second word in their little notes, then eagerly moving on to
composing letters to their schooled friends…who, ironically, were too busy
being taught how to write to have time to respond.
Posted: 2009/07/01 9:44 PM
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of
Work by Matthew B. Crawford (Penguin, 2009)
Lost in Cyburbia: How Life on the Net Has Created a Life
of Its Own by James Harkin (Knopf Canada, 2009)
Tangled Lives: Daughters, Mothers, and the Crucible of Aging by
Lillian B. Rubin (Beacon Press, 2001)
~
What I'm Listening To
Take Love Easy by Sophie Milman (Linus
Entertainment, 2009)
Live in London by Leonard Cohen (Sony Music,
2009)
Bare Bones by Madeleine Peyroux (Rounder Records,
2009)
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