Category: education
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The fallacy of the best and the brightest
Last week my daughter graduated from Harvard. It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since we dropped her off in the yard, right after her picture was plastered on the cover of Boston Magazine, something we certainly didn’t expect to happen after I was one of several parents interviewed for the article. The graduation…
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Busting homeschooling stereotypes
This week I read yet another really dumb article about homeschooling. Sherene Buffa, on a website called Momtastic, declares “I cannot imagine not sending my children to school.” The double negative in that sentence is indicative of the negativity in the larger piece, in which Buffa pretends to “top my hat off” to all us…
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The semantic bleaching of ‘unschooling’
Even though semantic bleaching, the evolution of a word’s meaning over time, is a natural process in language, it can sometimes create confusion, annoyance, and even protest (think of the ongoing media lament over the word “literally”). In homeschooling circles, the current buzz is all about the word “unschooling.” Weeks ago I wrote about it…
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Homeschooling: what if people stopped asking what if?
Recently I heard a national radio show host trying to wrap her head around homeschooling during an hour-long program on the topic. Many of her questions were of the “what if” variety. You know the type of questions I’m talking about. What if the kid doesn’t learn to read, what if the kid plays video…
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The rich, complex legacy of John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto has died. He was a brilliant, complicated man with a huge presence and heartfelt opinions. He won awards for teaching in the public schools of New York City, but those prizes mean little compared to the difference he made in the lives of scores of students. He was also a monumental influence…
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Conscious homeschooling
What is unschooling? That question has been debated among homeschoolers for years, but what’s happened recently is something I never would have predicted. The word “unschooling,” originally coined by John Holt in the 1970s, has come to be applied to free schools and alternative schools, or, if you will, unschooling schools. That’s reflected in an…
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Banned Books Week and the freedom to read
In case you didn’t already know, it’s Banned Books Week. The top ten challenged books of 2017 include some that I let my kids read, like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. In case you’re wondering why that classic coming-of-age story might be inappropriate, the reasons are violence and use of racial slurs. Although I…
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A commercial-free childhood
A friend of mine volunteers for an organization called Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. In a time when marketers have unprecedented access to children, I think it’s a worthy cause. I had occasion to think about this last night after running into a fellow homeschooling mom I hadn’t seen in a long time. Our kids…
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Putting our trust in kids, and in ourselves
Being a parent is a tough job. So many decisions to make right from the get go. Where to have the baby. How to have the baby. How to feed the baby. Where to put the baby to sleep. Before you know it, it’s how to toilet train, how to handle screen time, how to…
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Don’t try to get your kids to do chores, just let them
I loved this NPR article on kids lending a helping hand around the house. I also hated it. The title, for example: How to Get Your Kids to Do Chores (Without Resenting It). I understand about click bait, but still, there’s so much implied in that title that I dislike, including trickery and veiled coercion,…
A Potluck Life 