Tag: education
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Review: Tara Westover’s “Educated”
I’m definitely late to the party, but I’ve finally read Tara Westover’s memoir “Educated.” I’d been avoiding it for a few reasons. One, the tiresome narrative of extreme-homeschooling-experience-with-autocratic-father seems to dominate most popular mainstream books and movies about homeschooling. Two, friends who know me well warned me that the story contained a sadistic, abusive older…
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Evolving into slow homeschooling
It was inevitable. Now that families have been holed up for weeks at home, some parents are finding that doing school at home is a slog. As a result, we’re beginning to see stories about parents deciding to ditch the curriculum, and the stress that goes with it, in favor of a more relaxed approach.…
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The rise of hybrid homeschooling
It’s a new year, time for new intentions, resolutions, and oh yes, predictions. Last week I came upon an article that predicted four major education trends in 2020. One of them is “hybrid homeschooling.” It could just as easily be called “part-time school.” “For many families, the costs and obligations related to homeschooling are simply…
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Why I’m giving up on ‘self-directed’
self-directed: making your own decisions and organizing your own work rather than being told what to do by managers, teachers, etc. — Cambridge Dictionary Language is like a living organism, growing, changing, and evolving over time. Sometimes I feel like these days, that process of language shifting happens all the more rapidly, reflecting the ultra-fast…
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Instead of expectations
“My early successes in life were…a product of the consistent love and high expectations with which I was surrounded as a child.” — Michelle Obama, Becoming I just finished Michelle Obama’s excellent memoir. It made me laugh, cry, rage, and ponder. In many ways it was a respite, a reminder of the best in people,…
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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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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…
A Potluck Life 