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…)

My partner Sally shared with me a piece in Teacher Magazine on homework, and in particular the thoughts of Rick Wormeli, a TLN (Teacher Leaders Network) forum member who writes and speaks about homework issues frequently as a professional development consultant, which I attempt to summarize below… (more…)

In 2003, after three years in a humanistic alternative public charter middle school, our daughter Emma decided to experience attending a large conventional public high school, with nearly 4000 students, for her ninth grade year. One day, early in the semester, one of the vice-principals was a “guest lecturer” for a couple hundred of the Ninth graders, including Emma, that were spending their PE period waiting because they had not yet been assigned to a specific physical education class. He welcomed them to the school and reminded them that their teachers deserved the students’ respect, but the students would have to earn their teachers’ respect. Emma was now duly welcomed and warned that she was now a participant in a large public institution for youth, where she would presumably have to behave and perform to gain the conditional respect of the adult staff of the school. (more…)

I think parents helping with, managing, or even doing their kids homework is a big untold story of how many families cope today with keeping their kids “in the game” of conventional school. So when it at times crosses the line from parents helping to parents doing, is that cheating or is it just what you have to do sometimes to help your stressed out kid survive and navigate the institution? And doesn’t what seems to be a fairly common practice (at least around the circle of parents that I know) favor the kids who have parents that are academically talented, have the time to spend their evenings assisting their kids, and are driven by one reason or another to have their kids be judged as successful (rather than necessarily be successful) at school? (more…)

Here is a provocative quote on democracy and schools, which I believe to be on the mark, from a person named Leonard Turton who I exchanged emails with on the AERO (Alternative Education Revolution Organization) listserv back several years ago. If you consider yourself a progressive person and you believe that our country should embody democratic principles, I think you need think long and hard about what he is saying, and if you can rationalize our current education system with those democratic principles… (more…)

This is a piece I wrote for Alternative Education Resource Organization magazine last fall that I realized I had never shared on my blog. From my experience with Unitarian-Universalist principles and world-view, there is an argument made that it is important to acknowledge that there are many valid spiritual paths in the world that should be honored inclusively. In this piece, I have applied that idea of “Many Paths” to youth development and education….

From our son Eric’s experience, the experience of many other families and youth we know or have read about, and the sobering statistic that up to 50% of our youth in our big city public school districts (including our son Eric) are not graduating from high school, I have come to the conclusion that the ubiquitous, “one size fits all” conventional instructional school does not, and cannot work for every youth, no matter how fully it is funded or how much it is “reformed”. Yet I have talked to plenty of youth who go to conventional schools, do very well, and enjoy going to school each day. I have attended John Lofton’s excellent workshops at AERO conferences where he makes a compelling case that many people in the African-American community believe strongly in the conventional instructional school, if fairly resourced, to be the best shot for their youth to have a chance to succeed. (more…)

I continue with my unschooling theme and my quest to convince people who are skeptical that this is a valid learning path for some as an alternative primary educational “engine” to formal schooling. Just to recap, our son Eric left school in the middle of eighth grade and our daughter Emma after ninth. Eric has had no “formal” schooling since then. Emma has taken several French courses at community college along with a six-week French language immersion school in Montreal, Canada. The many things they have learned since then have been in the context of “real life” and some tutors that Emma has hooked up with along the way to help her learn dance, piano, art, and now continue her study of French.

Anyway… on with the post! (more…)

Besides posting my blog entries here on my very own blog, I also post them on Daily KOS, a progressive political blog site. What is great about Daily KOS is that I get a great deal of responses to my posts which is always great when you are writing and also exposes me to other wisdom that expands my own thinking.

I got over 200 comments to my Daily KOS post yesterday on “College… The New High School” (though many were responses to other responses and not to my original post.) If you want to see my “diary” on Daily KOS, including all the responses I get, click here.

Here are bits from some of the many great heartfelt and provocative comments. I am taking the liberty to excerpt several of them (hopefully not too badly out of context) and comment further to try and keep this discussion stoked. (more…)

I’ve seen a position put forward by people in the Obama administration and others attempting to anticipate the future of education in America that, just as 30 years ago it was important that all youth graduated from high school to find a reasonably good job, today it is equally important that all youth graduate from some sort of two or four year college program to achieve a similar work readiness in today’s world.

On the one hand, since more and more jobs seem to require computer and other technical skills, and society in general seems to be getting more complex, it seems pretty obvious there is truth to this position. Like it or not… everyone now needs fourteen to sixteen years of mandatory education. If you throw in kindergarten, which is pretty universally attended these days, we are talking about fifteen to seventeen years. And what about pre-school, and all the efforts around the country to make available (or even require) universal pre-school attendance for all kids prior to kindergarten? Let’s tack on another year to that requirement. (more…)

The concept of “deep learning” is very big these days in critiques of our educational system. Some argue (and I for one agree) that our voluminous public school state-mandated curriculum requirements are in fact too broad, and don’t give students the opportunity to go in depth into particular areas of interest. The argument continues that immersing oneself in the details of a particular area of great interest inspires a person to “learn how to learn”. Outside the context of something really interesting to sink ones teeth into, learning to research a topic in a library or on the Internet can be a dry and boring exercise, and inhibit or retard the development of a very critical skill. (more…)