Just read the Associated Press story out today, “More school: Obama would curtail summer vacation”. I have a lot of thoughts as a former kid (who lived for summer vacation each year and felt that that last day of school each June was a day of liberation) and more recently as a parent who used to dutifully send my kids to school as well.

Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe. “Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas… But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.” (more…)

So what the heck does it mean to be an “internally motivated learner”? Is such an animal the exception or the rule? And can internal motivation drive even formal academic learning? In a culture where conventional wisdom seems to think that most of formal education needs to be mandated and externally motivated to be successfully undertaken, I think these are very important questions.

Certainly infants and toddlers learn most or all of what they learn for internal reasons. Infants don’t need to be motivated or instructed in how to walk, they are driven to do so and through practice, trial, and error they figure out how to do so. Toddlers learn to speak with a minimum of instruction, by listening to people speaking around them and learning to vocalize words and put them together into phrases and sentences. They learn a myriad of other skills involving coordination of their bodies with their brains on their own as well. (more…)

I thought it was appropriate to follow up yesterday’s discussion launched by my thoughts about trying to sort out a few of the societal issues around homeschooling, and whether it is an appropriate educational path for some kids.

Confessing again my position up front, I gravitate to the educational path of “unschooling”, where the learner sets their own curriculum and works at their own pace, generally outside of a formal educational setting. But I have come to the conclusion that “unschooling” is not for everyone. The truth as I see it, and this seems to be something that a lot of people have trouble grasping, is that no one educational path, even the conventional instructional academic school, is for everyone. (more…)

There is an extensive article in today’s online edition of Education Week, Critics Question Alaska Home-Schooling Success, from the Associated Press on issues with home-schooling, particularly state regulation of this educational path in Alaska.

The article starts out stating the issue clearly and succinctly… (more…)

There is an article in September 3 online edition of Education Week magazine, “Why Not Count Them All”, addressing the issue of whether kids who are a year or more “late” graduating from high school should be counted in school graduation statistics. For me, the whole idea that the process of formal education encompassing generally over a decade of one’s youth leading hopefully to high school graduation has a high-stakes “schedule” makes no sense. It is an unfortunate remnant of the industrial era in which public schooling flowered and unfortunately a residual but inappropriate conventional wisdom of that era. (more…)

In January of 1982, already under the wings of Toni and Judith, my new feminist mentors, employers, hosts and patrons (though they were women the word “matrons” just doesn’t have the appropriate connotations) I plunged willingly into a new deep end. Toni was in charge of setting up the Los Angeles office for the last-ditch ERA Countdown Campaign effort to attempt to get three more state legislatures to ratify this proposed U.S. constitutional amendment, the focus of the mainstream women’s movement of the time. She had put together a four-person staff (all women) for the office, but one of the people she had slotted had dropped out at the last minute. To fill the gap she decided to broaden her gender horizon and offered the job to me, as I had previously proved myself as a volunteer. (more…)

Unschooled and free-schooled kids, required at an earlier age than most to start charting their own life course (at least in terms of educational direction), tend to become more entrepreneurial as adults and less inclined to work for “the man” as they say. I have not seen statistics proving that out, but certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence. It certainly seems to be playing out in my own kids’ lives (both unschooled during normally high school years), with my 23-year-old son Eric a year into a small business venture, and my 19-year-old daughter Emma two years out from finding her first job at a small woman-owned café in the neighborhood. (more…)

It is rare in our culture when any activity can capture the interest of and entertain both youth and adults, as I believe is the case in this very sophisticated game of obfuscation, divination, and the opportunity to share a laugh or two as well. The game “Balderdash”, the trademarked version of the game I first played as “Dictionary”, is just such an activity, a simple parlor game yet a very sophisticated exercise in word-smithing in the context of cultural awareness. Given that, it is still a game that a sharp pre-teen or older youth can master and go toe to toe with adults. My thirteen-year-old niece insists that we play the game at every family party, and with seven to ten of us participating, we have had a number of memorable sessions. (more…)

So much of our society’s concern and discussion about “reforming” or “transforming” our education system is focused on giving our youth the skills to participate successfully in the 21st Century workforce so our country can successfully compete in the world economy. A lot of alternative educators might make a good argument against this kind of grand social engineering, and say that an education system in a democracy like ours should instead be focused on creating an enriched environment for learning. We should then rely on the innate learning drive in our youth and the internal compasses of them and their families, to chart a course to best realize their unique skills. (more…)

There has recently been a movement among national and state-level public education leaders towards creating and adopting national standards for English language arts and mathematics. Concern comes from the fact that American school youth don’t test as well on standardized language (English in our case) and math tests as their European and Asian peers. Even President Obama has jumped on that bandwagon. (more…)