unschooling

Rock-a-bye Baby In the tree topWhen the wind blows The cradle will rock.When the bough breaksThe cradle will fallAnd Mama will catch you Cradle and all!

There was a little girlWho had a little curlRight in the middle of her forehead.When she was good, she was very, very good.And when she was __ad_,Her Papa loved her anyway.

Children, even when very young, have the capacity for inventive thought and decisive action. They have worthwhile ideas. They make perceptive connections. They__e individuals from the start: a unique bundle of interests, talents, and preferences. They have something to contribute. They want to be a part of things.It__ up to us to give them the opportunity to express their creativity, explore widely, and connect with their own meaningful work.

The philosophy of project-based homeschooling _ this particular approach to helping children become strong thinkers, learners, and doers _ is dependent upon the interest and the enthusiastic participation and leadership of the learners themselves, the children.

Allowing children to learn about what interests them is good, but helping them do it in a meaningful, rigorous way is better. Freedom and choice are good, but a life steeped in thinking, learning, and doing is better. It__ not enough to say, __o, do whatever you like._ To help children become skilled thinkers and learners, to help them become people who make and do, we need a life centered around those experiences. We need to show them how to accomplish the things they want to do. We need to prepare them to make the life they want.

To learn how to do, we need something real to focus on _ not a task assigned by someone else, but something we want to create, something we want to understand. Not an empty exercise but a meaningful, self-chosen undertaking.

School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony.

Many of the world__ greatest geniuses all had in common that they were pulled from the school environment. They were freed to discover the undiscovered. They had the imagination to __ee_ a different way and the drive to try to build what they had seen.

I simply stepped out of the way and maintained my courage and my position in the face of constant disagreement, voiced opinion and attack. I held true and I stood my ground. I maintained my convictions and my commitment to allowing them to live in the kingdom of childhood. I protected them from outside influence and allowed their imaginations to soar. I instilled a lifelong love of learning in them and I shared my passion for reading. I allowed them to choose what they wanted to study and I provided the resources for them to delve in, unguided and undisturbed for however long they needed to gather what they believed to be enough understanding to satisfy their own personal drive.

My goal has always been to inspire in them an ongoing love of learning. To awaken a feeling where their work is their passion, so that they never feel burdened or trapped by meeting their material needs, but instead thrive and experience wealth doing what they love while making a positive contribution to the world. To me that is the truest definition of success.

The primary difference I see is that unschooling is an invitation to awaken and ennoble capabilities that exist within the child. Where traditional schooling is to fill the child with facts that we, as a collective have decided upon.

Break the teacher certification monopoly so anyone with something valuable to teach can teach it. Nothing is more important than this.

Education is a system. Learning is an ongoing every day process.

Cause and effect is the basis of my education, leading me to an essence far more profound than any rule of societal conditioning.

Schooling that children are forced to endure__n which the subject matter is imposed by others and the __earning_ is motivated by extrinsic rewards and punishments rather than by the children__ true interests__urns learning from a joyful activity into a chore, to be avoided whenever possible. Coercive schooling, which tragically is the norm in our society, suppresses curiosity and overrides children__ natural ways of learning. It also promotes anxiety, depression and feelings of helplessness that all too often reach pathological levels.

The most important question I ask myself as a parent is this. How can I best help my children be fully themselves and happy with who they are in the world, however they show up.

If the emotions are free the intellect will look after itself

For those of you who may be homeschooled: high school is that four-year asylum where they put teenagers because we have no idea what else to do with them.