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Archives
- May, 2006
Radio Show on Unschooling –
May 25, 2006
CBC national radio featured
a 20-minute piece on unschooling this morning, which included an
interview with me. The host and researchers clearly were floundering
trying to understand the idea of curriculum-less, teacher-less, test-less
education. And the education professor they chose for the obligatory
“balance”
was very nervous and rambling. She told me later she actually supports
unschooling, although not homeschooling (referring to school-at-home).
Did the producers make the assumption that she was anti-unschooling
based on her job?? Maybe they got that information from the same place
they discovered that unschooling is “homeschooling’s radical twin”!)
Anyway, all of that served to make me to sound quite sane and unschooling
to sound
not scary. You can read about the program and listen to it here (scroll
right down to the bottom).
Posted: 2006/05/25 3:25 PM
Buying Our (Hip) Way to Salvation? – May 13, 2006
I don’t know about you, but I’m up to here with solicitations from
light green websites and ezines that know that I would just
love to “do the right thing” for myself and the planet…that is, if
it were convenient, fun, inexpensive and made me feel good. And that if
I subscribe (so their advertisers can count eyeballs focused on their
ads), they will be the first and the best and the only to help me in my
quest to buy my way to saving the planet from environmental degradation.
So what’s with this apparent need to make
eco-consciousness hip? Is there a new generation of people who won’t
do the right thing if it’s not easy? And what does “hip” mean
anyway? Does it mean having not to exert oneself, change one’s
lifestyle an iota, endanger one’s manicured (“naturally”, of
course) fingernails by stirring a pile of smelly compost or – horrors
– sweat by disembarking from one’s hybrid SUV and actually walking
to the grocery store, cloth bag in hand? Obviously, it doesn’t involve
wearing “Birkenstocks or burlap” as one of these self-styled
eco-hustlers told me recently. Or eating granola. Who knew?
Now, I’m all for creating a sustainable economy.
Matter of fact, I’ve been running a business for 30 years now that
helps do just that. (Why do new converts so often think they’ve
invented whatever they’ve just converted to?) But this apparently
“growing market of light green consumers” better wake up and smell
the organic, free-trade coffee. Call me old, square or cynical, but I don't think
buying our way to salvation will work, in spite of the oh so earnest laziness of this new genre. But I
guess some of them will be laughing their way to the bank as Rome burns.
Posted:
2006/05/13 7:05 PM
Five Reasons To Skip
College – May 4, 2006
Interesting article recently in
Forbes magazine. It deconstructs conventional wisdom about
the need for a college education, citing guys like Bill Gates (rose up out
of Harvard to start Microsoft), Larry Ellison (co-founded Oracle after he
rose up out of University of Illinois), John Simplot (didn’t finish high school but made billions after
inventing the frozen French fry) and others. Intelligence and street
smarts, rather than education, are, according to the article, better
predictors of success and high income. And what about investing the money it would cost to
attend an elite university, while learning a trade, possibly on-the-job?
(My husband Rolf is famous for wowing high school kids with the fact that
steamfitters can easily and regularly make over $100,000 a year.) And – ready for
this revelation? – “You don't need to be in a classroom in
order to learn something.”
Posted:
2006/05/04 2:56 PM
Go Look It Up – May 2, 2006
I was in a home recently where a curious eight-year-old, delighted with the
warm spring weather, kept bouncing into the house and asking questions
about various flora and fauna. Mom, a trained botanist, refused to answer
any of the questions. Instead, she told the child to “go look it up”. I
wanted so badly to ask the mother if that is that how she would answer
another adult who asked her a question. She probably thought she was
encouraging independence or the learning of research skills. Instead, she
frustrated and bewildered a child who had an immediate need to know
something that she knew her mom already knew. Later, the woman compounded
the problem by quizzing the child to see if she had, indeed, looked it up.
The child sullenly refused to
respond, perhaps, once again, because she knew her mother knew the answer
to the question.
Posted:
2006/05/02 5:27 PM
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