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(A few things from that folder were deleted, for having links that couldn't be accessed anymore, and I deleted a few accidentally.)


In Pictures: One UK family's view of home education


ftmichael
USA

Posted - Apr 19 2005 : 10:29:24 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/in_pictures_learning_at_home/html/1.stm

Alice, Nathaniel and his friend Oliver enjoy an education without ever entering the classroom. They are part of an increasing number of children across the UK who are home educated.

Although Alice and Nathaniel’s mother Louise received a formal education she feels that her children’s home education is the best way for them to learn. "I want my kids to make their own path," she says.

Click the link for pictures and quotes by the mother and kids.
Michael



UK: Famous A-level flunkers


ftmichael
Posted - Aug 18 2005 : 5:04:37 PM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4163746.stm

Flunking your A-levels is devastating at the time but need not condemn you to a life of failure.

These famous figures are living proof that success is not all about getting the right letters in your results envelope:

BBC ANIMAL PARK PRESENTER BEN FOGLE
CHANNEL 4 NEWS READER JON SNOW
SHADOW HOME SECRETARY DAVID DAVIS
BBC BUSINESS PRESENTER DECLAN CURRY
(Contains a brief bio of each and tells what they're up to now.)

Did you flunk your exams? Tell us about your experiences using the form below.

(Lots of people have already written in, telling how they didn't do well in school or on their exams and have "successful" - defined in various ways) careers now.)

Michael



People Magazine's unschooling article



Sandra Dodd Posted - May 15 2006 : 11:35:16 AM May 22 issue (2006) of People has a big photo of Ren Allen's family. It's the issue with Brooke Shields on the cover. The article is better than some, and less glorious than it could've been. Par for journalists. Sandra Dodd
Ren

Posted - May 30 2006 : 10:21:26 PM

The article also feature the Carey family, whose daughter is now attending Harvard. We had the privilege of hanging out with them at the Peabody conference this last weekend and they are a JOY! Michael and Maureen are very interesting and fun folks.

My abs still hurt from laughing so hard all weekend...especially at the folk dancing.:)

Ren


Sandra Dodd

Posted - Jul 28 2006 : 7:24:24 PM

/reninpeople

There's that People Magazine article.

Sandra Dodd



"The Day-Care Scare"


Qarin

Posted - Oct 11 2005 : 7:31:43 PM

This article comes so close to touching the idea that maybe schools aren't a great environment, but not quite:

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0540/051005_news_daycare.php

quote:

In a similar vein, others have suggested that a precocious socialization might be at work. Children in day care, exposed sooner to peers, have more occasion to get into tussles. When other children later get the same exposure by starting school, they catch up, a theory bolstered by the upcoming paper that offers data through third grade. That paper shows that these kinds of behavioral differences disappear because the stay-at-home kids toughen up.

That's the kind of talk that drives Belsky crazy. Speaking by phone from London, where he paints himself as being in exile because of his politically incorrect observations about day care, Belsky castigates his colleagues for their "readiness to cavalierly explain things away."

"When kids take drugs at 15 rather than 22, we don't call them precocious," he says. "When kids get pregnant at 15, we don't call them precocious." He sees children's aggression in the same way, and he isn't reassured by the fact that the non-day-care kids eventually exhibit the same behaviors. He says we need to entertain the possibility that there is some kind of "social contagion process" going on, an idea that neatly blames day care for everybody's behavior, even those who have never stepped foot in one.

Mama to two DD's, 11/01 and 11/04

Free School


gippetto

Posted - May 12 2006 : 10:05:55 PM

You need to subscribe but it's free...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/nyregion/thecity/07free.html



Unschooled thru 8th grade, wins scholarship


Meg
Posted - May 22 2006 : 07:24:06 AM

From the Newark Star-Ledger.

- Meg

#########

http://www.nj.com/specialprojects/index.ssf?/specialprojects/scholars2006/mortpye.html

Ethan Groveman is a contradiction: An ideal example of the success of public schooling -- and living evidence of its limits.

Mature, articulate, self-confident, Ethan is this year's Mort Pye Scholar, certainly one of the most accomplished high school seniors in New Jersey, or anywhere, this year.

"His ability to grasp complicated ideas and make them his own is extraordinary," says his physics teacher at Millburn High School, Robert Barkovitz.

But Ethan's parents, Bernard Groveman and Barbara Ancona of Short Hills, kept him home from school until the eighth grade.

They home-schooled all four of their children, starting with Tamar, 19, their oldest, now a Dartmouth sophomore.

"We didn't do it as a statement of criticism of the public schools," says Bernard, a portfolio manager. "We did it because we believed it was the best approach for our children. It worked for them, but that doesn't mean it would work for everyone."

Both parents agree it worked so well primarily because of the efforts of the children's mother. Educated at Drexel University as a designer, she stayed out of work to guide her children's learning.

"I viewed my children as my job," she says.

She did not establish a mini- school at their home. She gave her children the freedom to exploit the richness of their community and their extended family.

"It really wasn't very organized," says Ethan.

No curriculum, no schedule. On Monday morning, he said, when his friends went off to school, "I slept late."

But their mother took them to the Millburn Public Library, allowed them to choose books they wanted, coming home several days a week with shopping bags filled with new collections.

They visited parks, nature reserves and museums. They built with plastic blocks and played in the mud. When they learned how to read, they read newspapers and talked about what was in them.

**snip**



Amazonians score highly on basic geometric tests


Kim

Posted - Jan 23 2006 : 6:55:05 PM

Thought you might like this article: http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-01-19T204605Z_01_N19338662_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-SCIENCE-GEOMETRY-DC.XML
(the link wasn't working, but the rest is interesting, and the information is still out there somewhere...)

"Amazonian hunter-gatherers who lack written language and who have never seen a math book score highly on basic tests of geometric concepts, researchers said on Thursday in a study that suggests geometry may be hard-wired into the brain."

Kim


Benjamin Gilbert

Posted - Jan 24 2006 : 2:46:46 PM

Or maybe that they're very spatial oriented due to their lifestyle.


Kim

Posted - Jan 24 2006 : 6:52:45 PM

I actually don't buy the conclusion that "geometry is hard-wired into the brain". I liked the article because it shows that "math" is part of life and doesn't need to be spoon fed to people for them to understand it. True "unschooling" in action

Kim


Sandra Dodd

Posted - Jan 25 2006 : 01:02:57 AM

Here's what I posted at UnschoolingDiscussion a few days ago:

Someone on my regional list brought this link saying it might be of interest. It's about researchers who showed members of an Amazon tribe (wait... they "tested them" with) pictures of shapes and asked them which was was 'ugly' (meaning different, and they could've said different), and showed them something else that mapped an area, with shapes, and asked a question about which was different. So by that test they're claiming the natives "know geometry."

My response is below.

========================
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060119_amazon_math.html

That's interesting, and says more about the researchers than about the native tribe.

What they did had to do with language and mapping, with correspondence. Yet because there were shapes involved they wanted to call it geometry.

I would have been more impressed if they had themselves figured out in the tribe's language and culture how they use relationships and angles.

If the study helps unschoolers and the promotion of natural learning that's great, and it's interesting, but it's not a very good study as math goes.

Thanks for bringing that.

If anyone here wants more ideas about mathematical concepts in natural ways, or if you have more things to add when you've looked, here:

/math

Be sure to follow the link to Pam Sorooshian's page.

===============

Sandra Dodd



"Unschooling" adopted by the right?


dragonfly

Posted - Jan 27 2007 : 2:31:54 PM

http://www.harpers.org/ThroughAGlassDarkly-12838838.html

The article is about the fundamentalist-Christian perspective on U.S. history. But I found this somewhat chilling:

I was “unschooling” myself, Bill Apelian, director of Bob Jones University’s BJU Press, explained. What seemed to me a self-directed course of study was, in fact, the replacement of my secular education with a curriculum guided by God.
Unschooling has enough enemies out there without our being linked to a movement that is itself subject to attack.

(sigh)

df


Sandra Dodd

Posted - Jan 28 2007 : 2:28:20 PM

God was homeschooling him. He was a school-at-God's-homer. (doh!)

Sandra Dodd

later note: I'm sure I meant "God's school-at-homer," but it's fine either way.