Editor of Life Learning magazine Editor of  Natural Life magazine Author of educational books Small/Home Business writer Poet Speaker Interview on Radio Free School

Welcome to these regular musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings by Wendy Priesnitz.  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. (Thanks to a couple of readers who sent me the link.) 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.” Here’s the article. 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 Return to current weblog Comments? Suggestions? Email Us copyright © Wendy Priesnitz 2007

Topics & Passions: natural learning simplicity environment parenting creativity / writing books ~ What I'm Reading: The One Who is Not Busy by Darlene Cohen (2004, Gibbs Smith, Publisher) Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer (1989, Da Capo Press) The Breaking Point - How Today's Women Are Navigating Midlife Crisis by Sue Shellenbarger (2005. Henry Holt & Co) Goddesses in Older Women - Archetypes  in Women Over Fifty by Jean Shinoda Bolen (2001, Harper Collins) ~ What I'm Listening To:  The Silver Collection: Stan Getz and The Oscar Peterson Trio (Verve, 1958) Another Day by Molly Johnson (Marquis Records, 2002) Dear Heather by Leonard Cohen (Sony BMG, 2004) Corazon Libre by Mercedes Sosa (Deutsche Grammophon, 2005) ~ Fav Bookmarks: Radio Free School Positive News Parenting Without Punishing Institute for Local Self-Reliance The Guardian John Taylor Gatto Organic Consumers Association Free2be Common Dreams New Scientist News Link ~ Fav Quotes: Art, Writing, Creativity Life and Living Men and Women Learning Environment and Peace