How a Behavior Chart Harmed Our Daughter

There are many evidence-based reasons for concluding that those commonly used behavior management charts found in many classrooms are not helpful, healthy, and can have negative consequences. Even for children that always maintain “good” behavior, these charts can have a negative impact on their mental health. We found this out the hard way.

colored behavior chartOur first encounter with the colored behavior charts was public school kindergarten. Those first few days didn’t seem to bother our daughter much. Our parenting philosophy at home was based on being authentic, peaceful, and empathetic, so she was already a child that wanted to be respectful to others and manage her own behavior.

Daily reports from the teacher showed our daughter constantly landing herself on the “good” colors green and purple. But we found it odd that when asking our daughter about her day, all she could typically remember was which child was on the “bad” colors. The behavior system seemed to be more of a distraction at that point than anything else.

As time went on, we realized it was more than a distraction. When we talked with her, we were surprised to learn how distressed she was on behalf of her fellow classmates. She noticed the impact the colored chart had on her classmates. She felt empathy for them, but helpless to do anything. She saw the injustice when certain friends were put on “bad” colors for minor infractions or false accusations made against them. She saw how reputations of children were being shaped as a result of what colors they typically landed on.

She showed signs of distress and worry that one slip-up could result in negative public judgment in front of her peers. Each day you could see the anxiety and stress building within her. The pressure to avoid getting her clip moved down became overwhelming. This was regardless of the fact that in our conversations with her, we always conveyed to her that we didn’t believe these colored charts were an appropriate tool. This didn’t seem to reduce her anxiety. It makes sense from her point-of-view; we aren’t there with her in the classroom—which is a completely different ecosystem within a rigid institution. An environment that we discovered to be authoritarian, hierarchical, inauthentic, obedience-focused, freedom-restricting, behavior-controlling, and testing obsessed. She was trying to conform to this type of system, but it was harming her mentally in order to do so.

A month into kindergarten and she was begging us to tape her mouth shut to prevent any possible slip-ups that could result in her clip being moved down.

Things were getting worse and our list of concerns grew. We talked with the teacher and administration. Most of our concerns were disregarded, or we were told that this was the policy and it couldn’t be changed.. “This is just the way things are done”, they would say. Feeling like we weren’t going to make any headway to change the behavior management policy, we began looking at alternatives.

As we were researching our alternatives and nearing a decision to homeschool, our daughter came home extremely upset. She had been “put on yellow”. Our daughter explained that she was in a “center” playing a “learning game” that was to be played a certain way when one of the four children in that center suggested they play that game differently. The idea sounded good to them, so they tried it the new way. The teacher came over and told them they were doing it wrong and to go put all their clips on yellow.

My daughter tried to defend herself: “But…”, she tried to say, but was cut off by the teacher. “No ‘buts’, go put your clip on yellow now.” She felt angry, defeated, shamed, and wrongly targeted. When she came home we could tell she was holding back tears. We felt sick after our daughter, who had never before shown any signs of emotional distress, said she felt like killing herself. A 5-yr-old child who—before starting kindergarten—was normally a cheerful, inquisitive, and affectionate was becoming depressed, disengaged, and disinterested in learning. Our child was being damaged by a system with no evidence of even being effective. This was madness.

Before we had reached this point, we had already done our research and found that there wasn’t any compelling evidence to support the use of these colored behavior charts. In fact, the evidence suggested they did more harm, than good. In conversations with other parents and educators, we were hearing about similar experiences with these charts and the detrimental effects they had seen in children. Beyond the charts, our concerns about the classroom environment expanded into other areas that were punitive. This just wasn’t the type of learning environment our daughter deserved—this was inhumane.

Without any alternative schooling options that fit our needs and desires we decided to withdraw her and begin homeschooling. That was over 3 yrs. ago. We spent a few years deschooling and trying to repair the damage done to her. Luckily, we feel like our decision was the best one we could have made and we have our cheerful, inquisitive, and affectionate child back. We have been able to create a homeschooling learning environment that allows her to express herself, socialize, be creative, be a leader, follow her interests, and best of all, be treated with dignity and respect.

If you would like to learn more about behavior charts and suggested alternatives, please see this document of helpful articles and resources.

Alt Education Word Cloud

Education Labels

I started a Facebook poll in our homeschool and alternative education group to see which term(s) families preferred to use to describe their approach to education. Here are all the labels that were included in that poll. New labels will continue to be added to this list as they are added to the poll.

  1. Homeschooling
  2. Relaxed Homeschooling
  3. Life Learning
  4. Eclectic Homeschooling
  5. Self-directed learning
  6. Unschooling
  7. Interest-led Learning
  8. Classical Homeschooling
  9. Self-directed education (SDE)
  10. Worldschooling
  11. Natural Learning
  12. Charlotte Mason Homeschooling
  13. Radical unschooling
  14. Child-Led Learning
  15. Outschooling
  16. Project-based Learning
  17. Roamschooling
  18. VillageLearning
  19. Independent Learning
  20. Delight Driven Learning
  21. Brighter Schooling
  22. Funschoolers
  23. Alternative Learning
  24. Self-Learning
  25. Waldorf Schooling
  26. Family-directed learning
  27. Roadschooling
  28. Free Range Learning
  29. Home Education
  30. Autodidactism
  31. Home-based Education
  32. Student-led Learning
  33. Immersion Learning
  34. Standard Schooling
  35. Student-centered education
  36. Organic Learning
  37. Alternative Schooling
  38. Anachist Free Schooling
  39. Thomas Jefferson Homeschooling
  40. Spirited Homeschooling
  41. Freelance Learning
  42. Home Learning
  43. Sudbury Schooling
  44. Edupunk
  45. Montessori SChooling
  46. Open Source Learning
  47. Unit Study Homeschooling
  48. Homegrown Education
  49. Multiple Intelligence Learning
  50. Virtual Schooling
  51. Democratic Schooling
  52. Traditional Homeschooling
  53. Wildschooling
  54. Child-Focused Learning

Education is being Uberized

Uber revolutionized transportation. Airbnb transformed the lodging and short-term rental space. Netflix was pathbreaking in the field of on-demand entertainment. In all of these instances, innovative, agile ideas competed against existing, outdated models. And they won.

They leveraged the best technology to transform their respective fields.

I feel bad for the taxi drivers who spent a lot of money for a regulated, now near-worthless medallion, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I called a cab. And the popularity of Uber has led to other competitors entering the space, so if you don’t like Uber and its practices, Lyft and other ride-sharing companies are quickly gaining market share. Disruptive innovations may initially cause some challenges as a market gets re-calibrated, norms get re-shuffled, and workers get re-trained, but more choice and more variety, at different price points and with different levels of service, are generally better for patrons.

The true genius of these three examples of innovations that completely altered their industries is that they did so by simply bypassing the existing, rigid model and going direct-to-consumer – giving end-users a service that was leaps-and-bounds better than the status quo. They also leveraged best available technology to transform their respective fields. I think the same disruptive innovation could work in education, as new, agile learning models gradually grow and replace existing, obsolete conventional schooling. After all, taxis are still available for those who want them, but there are now many other choices.

The Ubers of Education

The possibilities for education without conventional schooling are almost limitless, and we are already seeing many of these models gain popularity and presence. Khan Academy has become a household name for free, high-quality, on-demand, online learning. Khan is joined by other, free online learning platforms, such as Duolingo, Coursera, HarvardX, and MIT OpenCourseWare – to name just a few. YouTube makes learning easy and interesting, whether I am trying to learn how to properly chop celeriac, or my 6-year-old daughter is learning how to preserve and pin the bugs she collects, or my 8-year-old son is learning his latest skateboarding tricks.

In fact, on that last example, a recent Forbes article on the future of learning describes why it was that skateboarders got so good in the mid-1980s. It turns out, that was the first time skateboarding sports videos became widely available – using new VCR technology – and quickly improved skateboarders’ skills. Forbes contributor, John Greathouse, writes:

In the same way action sports videos rapidly accelerated the skill level of millions of participants, augmented and virtual reality will also propel the dissemination of practical, tactile skills across the globe.”

The future of learning, interwoven with cutting-edge technology, will also very likely include innovative learning spaces that encourage individuality and invention. Unlike conventional schools, new learning spaces will place less emphasis on order and more on originality, less on conformity and more on creativity.

The Makerspace Model

We already see the seeds of these conventional schooling alternatives in self-directed learning centers around the country. Here in Boston, Parts & Crafts combines elements of a makerspace and self-directed learning center to create an entirely non-coercive, technology-enabled learning environment for young people choosing to learn without school. The makerspace model is likely to be an enormous catalyst in shaping the new ways in which people, young and old, learn through their community and throughout their lifetime.

Makerspaces and hackerspaces are popping up most rapidly and accessibly in libraries across the country. As an article in the Atlantic explains,

Makerspaces are part of libraries’ expanded mission to be places where people can not only consume knowledge, but create new knowledge.”

And therein lies the startling difference between education of the past and of the future: conventional schooling forces learners to consume knowledge, whereas the future of education empowers learners – of all ages and stages – to create knowledge.

Just as Uber helped to give riders swifter, better service at lower costs than traditional taxis, the disruptive education models of the future will be better and cheaper – and much more relevant – than conventional schools. These new learning models will revolutionize the education field through choice, technology, and empowerment.

The future is here.

Reprinted from Whole Family Learning.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Are Factory-Like Schools the Child Labor Crisis of Today?

Most American children and teenagers wake early, maybe gulp down a quick breakfast, and get transported quickly to the building where they will spend the majority of their day being told what to do, what to think, how to act. An increasing number of these young people will spend their entire day in this building, making a seamless transition from the school day to afterschool programming, emerging into the darkness of dinnertime. For others, there are structured afterschool activities, followed by hours of tedious homework. Maybe, if they’re lucky, they’ll get to play a video game before bed—a rare moment when they are in control.

There is mounting evidence that increasingly restrictive schooling, quickly consuming the majority of childhood, is damaging children. Rates of childhood anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, and other mental illness are surging. Teenage suicide rates have doubled for girls since 2007, and have increased 30 percent for teenage boys. Eleven percent of children are now diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and three-quarters of them are placed on potent psychotropic medications for what Boston College psychology professor Dr. Peter Gray describes as a “failure to adapt to the conditions of standard schooling.”

Dr. Gray goes on to explain:

It is not natural for children (or anyone else, for that matter) to spend so much time sitting, so much time ignoring their own real questions and interests, so much time doing precisely what they are told to do. We humans are highly adaptable, but we are not infinitely adaptable. It is possible to push an environment so far out of the bounds of normality that many of our members just can’t abide by it, and that is what we have done with schools.

In the early twentieth century, concern about children’s welfare in oppressive factories was a primary catalyst for enacting child labor laws and simultaneously tightening compulsory schooling laws. Yet, for many of today’s children, the time they spend in forced schooling environments is both cruel and hazardous to their health. Gone are the oppressive factories, but in their place are oppressive schools. Where is the outrage?

In a New York Times Op-Ed article this week, author Malcolm Harris posits that young people are placed into these high-pressure, increasingly competitive schooling environments by corporate interests aiming to push job training to younger ages without having to pay for it.  He writes:

There are some winners, but the real champions are the corporate owners: They get their pick from all the qualified applicants, and the oversupply of human capital keeps labor costs down. Competition between workers means lower wages for them and higher profits for their bosses: The more teenagers who learn to code, the cheaper one is.

Harris’s solution is to encourage students to unite collectively, following a labor union paradigm, to demand better schooling conditions.  He asserts:

Unions aren’t just good for wage workers. Students can use collective bargaining, too. The idea of organizing student labor when even auto factory workers are having trouble holding onto their unions may sound outlandish, but young people have been at the forefront of conflicts over police brutality, immigrant rights and sexual violence. In terms of politics, they are as tightly clustered as just about any demographic in America. They are an important social force in this country, one we need right now.

While Harris and I agree that the conditions of forced schooling are untenable and rapidly worsening, we disagree on the solution. To suggest that students unionize to demand better compulsory schooling conditions is similar to suggesting that prisoners unionize to demand better prisons: It’s a fine idea but it’s completely futile. Children are mandated under a legal threat of force to attend compulsory schools.

The first step to addressing the oppressiveness of forced schooling and its harmful effects on children is to fight the compulsion. Rather than trying to improve the conditions of an inherently unjust, state-controlled system, the system itself must be overturned. After all, humans cannot be truly free when they are methodically, and legally, stripped of their freedom under the pretense that it’s good for all.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

What Do Unschooled Kids Want To Be When They Grow Up?

My daughter is a baker. When people ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she responds breezily: “A baker, but I already am one.”

You see, with unschooling there is no postponement of living and doing. There is no preparation for some amorphous future, no working toward something unknown.

There is simply life.

There Is No “After” in Unschooling

To ask what a child wants to be when she grows up is to dismiss what she already is.The question of what a child wants to be when she grows up is a curious one well-rooted in our schooled society. Disconnected from everyday living and placed with same-age peers for the majority of her days and weeks, a schooled child learns quickly that “real life” starts after. It starts after all of the tedium, all of the memorizing and regurgitating, all of the command and control. It starts after she is told what to learn, what to think, whom to listen to. It starts after her natural creativity and instinctive drive to discover her world are systematically destroyed within a coercive system designed to do just that. She must wait to be.

With unschooling, there is no after. There is only now. My daughter is a baker because she bakes. She is also many other things. To ask what a child wants to be when she grows up is to dismiss what she already is, what she already knows, what she already does. 

Baking brings my daughter daily joy and fulfillment while also helping to nourish her family and friends. She writes a baking blog, sharing her recipe adaptations and advice. She reads cookbooks, watches cooking shows (The Great British Baking Show is a favorite), talks to other bakers–both adults and kids–to get ideas and tips. She learned this all on her own, following her own interests, and quickly outgrowing the library children’s room cookbook section to the adult aisles.

As unschooling parents, we provide the time, space, and connection to resources that enable her doing. She has unlimited access to the kitchen. She has abundant opportunities to visit the library and explore the Internet for real and digital information to help her in her craft. She has three younger siblings and many neighbors and friends who are eager to be her taste-testers. Her work is also incredibly valuable. I have never made a pie from scratch but she makes them all the time, bringing them as frequent desserts to gatherings and special events. The market price for her delicious, seasonal pies would be steep. 

Who Children Are, Not Who They Will Become

Will she always be a baker? It’s hard to say. Will I always be a writer? I think so, but who knows? Will any of us always be who we are now? 

We can certainly have goals and ambitions that we work toward. My daughter wants to open a “bakery-makery” someday that combines her dual passions of baking and making, selling her pies and dolls side-by-side. That may be her future goal, but it doesn’t stop her from being a baker and a maker today, creating and selling her goods when and where she can.

With unschooling, learning and living are seamless and synonymous. There is no separation of one from the other. There is no segregation of children from the “real world.” It is all real. The well-known educator, John Holt, who coined the term “unschooling” decades ago, wrote in his book, Learning All The Time:

We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions if they have any and helping them explore the things they are most interested in.

Children are eager to explore and discover their world and to engage in meaningful work and actions tied to their interests and fueled by their limitless curiosity. Our job as parents is to listen to their interests and ideas, support and encourage them, and help connect them to the wider world around them. 

Our job is not to prepare our children for who they will become, but to help them be who they already are. 

“I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.” ~John Dewey (1897)

Reprinted from Whole Family Learning

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Why So Many Homeschooled Children Develop a Love of Reading

I saw the headline in Monday’s Harvard Gazette: “Life Stories Keep Harvard Bibliophile Fixed to the Page.” My first thought was, “I bet he was homeschooled.”

He was.

The article describes the experience of Harvard University junior, Luke Kelly, who grew up in Mississippi and was homeschooled for most of his childhood. Much of his time was spent reading and he developed a passion for books and literature.

And boy do they read!Why did I suspect that a bibliophile college student was homeschooled before even reading the article? Because most homeschoolers love to read–I mean, really love to read. Many of them develop this affinity because they have the time, space, and freedom to read when they want, what they want, how they want.

Released from standard schooling constraints that dictate reading materials and create arbitrary reading levels, homeschoolers learn quickly that books are vital tools for knowledge and discovery. They are not the props of arduous assignments. They are vibrant narratives that entertain and edify.

With homeschooling, reading is not a separate subject to be covered at certain times in certain ways; rather it is an integral and seamless part of overall learning. Trips to the library are not reserved for 40-minute blocks once a week with a librarian-led lesson. Homeschoolers often spend hours at the library, scouting the shelves in search of a good story, seeking librarian advice when needed, exploring the vastness of its real and digital resources.

And boy do they read! My older daughter has read more books in the past six months than I read in my entire K-12 public schooling stint.

Homeschoolers are also able to learn to read at their own pace, on their own timetable, following their own interests. With mass schooling, reading is regimented. Children learn to read in a specific way, following a specific curriculum, at a specific time. Increasingly, that time is being pushed to remarkably young ages. Kindergarteners are now expected to do the serious seat-work previously reserved for older children. Even preschoolers are being pressured. 

Erika Christakis, author of The Importance of Being Little, writes about the dramatic changes in early childhood education. She explains that much of this change originates from more standardized, Common Core-based curriculum and high-stakes testing requirements. Christakis writes:

Because so few adults can remember the pertinent details of their own preschool or kindergarten years, it can be hard to appreciate just how much the early-education landscape has been transformed over the past two decades…A child who’s supposed to read by the end of kindergarten had better be getting ready in preschool. As a result, expectations that may arguably have been reasonable for 5- and 6-year-olds, such as being able to sit at a desk and complete a task using pencil and paper, are now directed at even younger children, who lack the motor skills and attention span to be successful. Preschool classrooms have become increasingly fraught spaces, with teachers cajoling their charges to finish their ‘work’ before they can go play.

Teachers are beginning to internalize these standards, rather than question them. As assistant professor of education, Daphna Bassok, and her colleagues at the University of Virginia discovered: In 1998, 31% of teachers believed that children should learn to read while in kindergarten. In 2010, that number was 80%. 

Many kids who are not developmentally ready to read on this increasingly pressurized, standardized school timeline are then slapped with a learning disability label and given an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) to get them caught up to the herd. This can often lead to deep resentment, not only of reading but of learning in general.

Homeschoolers avoid the standardization and regimentation of forced schooling, and their learning is often much richer and more meaningful as a result. It’s also more joyful.

So I wasn’t surprised that a college bibliophile was homeschooled. I would have been surprised if he wasn’t.  

Reprinted from Whole Family Learning

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

school schooting

Is School Causing Teen Depression and Anxiety To Skyrocket?

Dovetailing with World Mental Health Day earlier this week, The New York Times published an article about the skyrocketing rates of teenage anxiety, depression, and suicide. It highlights recent data revealing that hospital admissions for suicidal teens have doubled in the last decade, with the highest spike in admissions occurring in early fall as students return to school.

Profiling a young man named Jake, the Times describes his incapacitating school-related anxiety that began in his junior year of high school and reached a breaking point when, at 17, “he refused to go to school and curled up in the fetal position on the floor.”

After a suicide attempt, various antidepressant medications, several hospitalizations, and time spent at a residential treatment facility in New Hampshire, Jake finally managed to get through his senior year of high school and into college, where his anxiety has largely disappeared.

While the article describes various tactics schools and therapists use to address mounting teenage anxiety and depression, one question not asked is this: If schooling is causing these serious problems for teenagers, then why are they going?

In his compelling book Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families From the Torment of Adolescence, researcher and former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today Dr. Robert Epstein explains that adolescence is largely a western societal construct.

“In more than a hundred cultures around the world, teens have no such difficulties—no depression, no suicide, no crime, no drug use, no conflict with parents, Epstein writes. “Many cultures don’t even have a word for the period of life we call adolescence. Why are American teens in such turmoil?”

Epstein goes on to suggest that much of this teenage angst results from the “infantilization of teens” as they are confined and enclosed for much of their adolescence, and their actions and thoughts are controlled by others.

“Driven by evolutionary imperatives established thousands of years ago, the main need a teenager has is to become productive and independent,” Epstein writes. “After puberty, if we pretend our teens are still children, we will be unable to meet their most fundamental needs, and we will cause some teens great distress.”

The word adolescence was coined in a mammoth 1904 book by G. Stanley Hall, the first president of the American Psychological Association.  Hall’s book, the 1400-page Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education, struck a chord with policymakers and educators hoping to expand mass schooling.

An American Heritage article on the history of adolescence claims: “Among the book’s supporters were secondary school educators who found in Hall’s writing a justification for their new enthusiasm about moving beyond academic training to shape the whole person. They also found in it a justification for raising the age for ending compulsory school attendance.”

Enclosing young people in compulsory schooling environments for most of their teenage years severely restricts their freedom and challenges their evolutionary adaptability.

It is perhaps no wonder that Jake’s anxiety lessened as he left high school and went on to college, where he gained more freedom and more personal control over his schedule, his classes, and his social life.

In an article for The Huffington Post, author Blake Boles writes about how high school should be more like college, with teenagers given the freedom, independence, respect, and real-world immersion they so desperately need.  He writes: “Real learning thrives when students have real choices. Give high school students the same freedom as college students, and we’ll take education a step in the right direction.”

Boles should know. His company, Unschool Adventures, works with unschooled and homeschooled teenagers through immersive travel programs and self-directed learning initiatives.

While it is critically important to help teenagers struggling with school-related anxiety and depression, it is worth considering the evolutionary mismatch between forced schooling and adolescence. Designed to be fully immersed in real-world experiences and productive work, dictating their own thoughts and actions, and surrounded by adult mentors, teenagers are instead cut-off and controlled. Freedom may be their best medicine.

This post A Theory on Why Teen Depression and Anxiety Are Skyrocketing was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Kerry McDonald.

Schooling Was for the Industrial Era, Self-Directed Education is for the Future

Our current compulsory schooling model was created at the dawn of the Industrial Age. As factories replaced farm work and production moved swiftly outside of homes and into the larger marketplace, 19th century American schooling mirrored the factories that most students would ultimately join.

The bells and buzzers signaling when students could come and go, the tedium of the work, the straight lines and emphasis on conformity and compliance, the rows of young people sitting passively at desks while obeying their teachers, the teachers obeying the principal, and so on—all of this was designed for factory-style efficiency and order.

The Imagination Age

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. The first compulsory schooling statute, passed in Massachusetts in 1852, required eight to 14-year-olds to attend school a mere 12 weeks a year, six of which were to be consecutive. This seems almost laughable compared to the childhood behemoth that mass schooling has now become.

Enclosing children in increasingly restrictive schooling environments for most of their formative years, and drilling them with a standardized, test-driven curriculum is woefully inadequate for the Imagination Age. In her book, Now You See It, Cathy Davidson says that 65 percent of children now entering elementary school will work at jobs in the future that have not yet been invented. She writes: “In this time of massive change, we’re giving our kids the tests and lesson plans designed for their great-great-grandparents.”

While the past belonged to assembly line workers, the future belongs to creative thinkers, experimental doers, and inventive makers. The past relied on passivity; the future will be built on passion. In a recent article on the future of work, author and strategist John Hagel III writes about the need to nurture passion to be successful and fulfilled in the jobs to come. He says:

One of my key messages to individuals in this changing world is to find your passion and integrate your passion with your work. One of the challenges today is that most people are products of the schools and society we’ve had, which encourage you to go to work to get a paycheck, and if it pays well, that’s a good job, versus encouraging you to find your passion and find a way to make a living from it.

Passion-Driven Learning

Cultivating passion is nearly impossible within a coercive schooling structure that values conformity over creativity, compliance over-exuberance. This could help explain why the unschooling, or Self-Directed Education, movement is taking off, with more parents migrating from a schooling model of education for their children to a learning one. With Self-Directed Education, passion is at the center of all learning. Young people follow their interests and pursue their passions, while adults act as facilitators, connecting children and teens to the vast resources of both real and digital communities. In this model, learning is natural, non-coercive, and designed to be directed by the individual herself, rather than by someone else.

Self-Directed Education and unschooling often take place in homes and throughout communities, but increasingly individuals and organizations are launching self-directed learning centers geared toward homeschoolers with both full- and part-time options. These centers make Self-Directed Education more accessible to more families in more places, and each has a unique philosophy or focus. Some are geared toward teens and value real-world apprenticeships and immersion; others are makerspaces that emphasize tinkering and technology, and so on. In Boston, for instance, the JP Green School in the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood serves as a part-time self-directed learning space for homeschoolers and unschoolers with a focus on sustainability and nature connection.  Co-founder Andrée Zaleska says:

People educated in coercive models will be damaged for life (most of us are). The lack of respect shown to their autonomous selves as children translates into a lifelong tendency to “get what they need” by any means necessary…We are part of a growing counterculture which finds traditional schooling damaging in ways that are intertwined with the general brokenness of our culture.

Instead of complaining about the education status quo, entrepreneurial individuals are building alternatives to school that challenge it. Centered around passion and an overarching belief in individual self-determination, these entrepreneurs — who are often parents, former school teachers, and others who have become disillusioned by coercive schooling — are freeing young people from an outdated and harmful mass schooling system. Enlightened parents and innovative entrepreneurs may be the key players in constructing a new education model focused on freedom and designed for the Imagination Age.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Dear Homeschool Curious Parent…

I have been getting emails like the one below more frequently lately, so I thought I would share my general response.

“Dear, Kerry: I ran across your website while doing research on homeschooling. I am a mother of 3 children ages 6,4 and 2. We moved to the suburbs when my children were smaller to take advantage of the top-rated public schools in our town. We had a wonderful pre-school experience due to the choice of school focused on play, outdoor exploration and emotional development.

However, as my 6 year old embarks on her education in the public school system, I find myself becoming more and more disappointed. More importantly, I find her becoming bored and disinterested in learning as a 1st grader.

All of this said, I am contacting you because I am thinking of homeschooling and I’m scared to death! What are the resources? What curriculum should I use? Where do I begin? So many questions! Help!”

Hello!

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.

1. First things first: Connect with your local homeschooling network. This network could be a message board through a Yahoo or MeetUp group, or a Facebook group, or a state homeschooling advocacy group (like AHEM for Massachusetts homeschoolers). Maybe you have already joined the Alliance for Self-Directed Education and have connected with the local SDE groups that may be forming in your area. Tapping into your local homeschooling community, posting your questions and introducing yourself, can be incredibly valuable. You may be surprised at just how many homeschooling families are nearby and the many activities and resources available to you. You may also find families on a similar path as yours. This can alleviate much of the anxiety you are experiencing as you take a peek into this new world of learning. These local networks can help you to navigate your local homeschooling regulations and guide you through the process of pulling your child from school.

2. Second: start reading! Obviously, you are already doing this or you wouldn’t have found my blog, but there is much more to learn. Homeschooling and education blogs and websites are great resources. Here is my short list of favorite books/articles/films to get you started:

3. Third: What about curriculum? Personally, I am an advocate for Self-Directed Education (SDE). Sometimes referred to as “unschooling,” SDE shifts our view of education from schooling (something someone does to someone else, often by force) toward learning (something humans naturally do). With Self-Directed Education, young people are in charge of their own learning and doing, following their own interests and passions, with grown-ups available to help connect them to the vast resources of both real and digital communities. Children direct their education, adults facilitate. 

I am a realist though. (Or at least I try to be!) So I know that it is often challenging for families to go directly from a schooled mindset to an unschooled one. Whenever parents ask me what curriculum they should choose, I say *if* you are going to use a curriculum, I recommend Oak Meadow. A Vermont-based company that incorporates a lot of Waldorf-inspired educational ideas, Oak Meadow is a gentle, rich curriculum with a stellar reputation. 

4. Next: think about your family values, needs, and rhythms. Shifting from schooling to learning may involve some big changes to your family life, your routines, and your schedules. It may lead to reassessing priorities and to carefully juggling multiple work and family responsibilities. It also means you need some help to avoid burning out! Consider your support network of family, friends, and community and get the help you need to make this work for the long-term. If there is a self-directed learning center or homeschooling co-op near you, these resources can also be incredibly helpful in enabling you to find balance and connection.

5. Finally: talk with your kids! Learning without schooling is a collaborative endeavor that is mostly focused on your child’s distinct interests, learning styles, and needs. Talk with your child and find out what she wants to do. If you are coming directly out of a school environment, you may need some time to “deschool”– to fully embrace living and learning without being tied to the expectations and accouterments of a schooled lifestyle. Go to the library, the museum, the park, or the beach. Take a walk in the woods. Spend long, slow mornings reading books together on the couch. Bake cookies. Ride bikes. Write a letter to a friend. Watch a movie. Play Scrabble. Go to the grocery store, the bank, the post office. Live life. Soon you will see that living and learning are the same thing.   

Best wishes to you as you embark on this exciting life journey! Remember: schooling is a relatively recent societal construct; learning is a natural condition of being human. Happy learning!

Warmly,

Kerry

Reprinted from Whole Family Learning

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Why We Shouldn’t Import China’s Education System

I remember a story my college economics professor told my class many years ago about the differences she saw between her American economics students and the Chinese ones she taught during frequent sabbaticals to Beijing. She said that the Chinese economics students generally had superior math skills and the ability to quickly solve complex calculus problems, but her American students generally had a better grasp on the underlying concepts and context, were able to better recognize when certain calculations were incorrect (like a negative number for the Price of a good), and were more creative with solutions.

While it is certainly important for U.S. students to have strong academic skills, trying to replicate the Chinese education system may not be the best approach. Yet, that is just what author Lenora Chu advocates in her new book, Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve.

As an American journalist living in Shanghai, Chu recounts the experience of her young son attending a Chinese school for five years. Chu acknowledges the often “draconian” ideas and tactics of Chinese schools, but her book touts the benefits of these approaches and suggests American schools should adopt some of them to become more competitive.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article about her book, Chu writes about the ways her son was force-fed eggs by his teacher, prohibited from bringing his asthma inhaler to school, and “isolated” in a separate classroom with threat of demotion after he “failed to follow in ‘one-two’ step during a physical exercise.”

(Related: “What Zhang Knows That Johnny Doesn’t”)

Yet, she says that these practices are beneficial because they give teachers and schools total authority to push for strong academic outcomes. Parental sovereignty and individual liberty become secondary to teacher control and school performance. Chu writes:

“This deference gives the teacher near-absolute command of her classroom. My son became so afraid of being late for class, missing school or otherwise disappointing his teacher, that he once raised a stink when I broached the possibility of missing a few school days for a family trip. He was 5.”

Fortunately, other scholars are speaking out against importing more standardization and control into America’s already coercive, test-driven mass schooling model. In his 2014 book, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China Has The Best (And Worst) Education System in the World, author Yong Zhao explains that the emphasis on subservience to authority and an all-out focus on academic outcomes and test scores may propel China to the top of international education comparisons (see below), but it’s at the price of freedom and autonomy. Skills and scores replace ingenuity and agency.

Chinese Test Scores Versus Other Countries_PISA

In The Washington Post this week, Zhao, an education professor at the University of Kansas, wrote a response to Chu’s book and her Wall Street Journal Article. He states:

“I did not see any convincing evidence in the book that supports the proposal that American students need Chinese schools. Quite to the contrary, I understood the book as further evidence for not importing Chinese schools into America. Little Soldiers is far from a love affair with Chinese schools as the title of the Wall Street Journal article suggests. It is, rather, a vivid portrayal of an outdated education model that does serious and significant damage.”

 

Chu doesn’t seem to mind the trade-off between authoritarianism and freedom. She concludes her Wall Street Journal article with the statement: “Sometimes, it is best when parents—and children—are simply obliged to do as they’re told.”

We should be careful that America does not become a society of obedient “little soldiers,” abdicating our individual liberty to the powers of the state under the guise that it’s good for us. High test scores may be commendable, but not if they come at such a high price.

(Related: “What Zang Knows That Johnny Doesn’t”)

[Image Credit: CIEE College Study Abroad]

This post China’s Education System: A Case Against Importing It was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Kerry McDonald.