Posts in category "unschooling" - page 2
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The Role Of Luck
Luck has a huge role to play in one's success or failure. We should not forget the role of luck in our lives. I am what I am is primarily because of how lucky I have been in many aspects of life. There are people who are more hardworking than I am and yet don't have the results they deserve.
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Optimal Conditions For Self Directed Education
I spend a lot of time on Youtube trying to learn something or the other. And from time to time I arrive at some interesting videos shared by others. Most recently I watched the talk on Self Directed Education by Peter Gray. I suggest anyone interested in unschooling go watch it.
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Task List For Our Kid
While unschooling means free spirited learning, sometimes we like to give order to chaos. Our daughter (who is now 7) gets to do whatever she likes whenever she likes. I wanted to see how she would react if we gave her a task list.
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Dilemma Of An Upper Middle Class Parent
One of the things that I observed is that as kids move from middle class to upper middle class, the fire and hunger to achieve comes down. Kids in lower or middle class families have a thirst to learn and achieve that slowly mellows down as the lifestyle improves. Some how I feel they become more complacent.
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Grow In Complete Freedom
When people ask me what is this unschooling thing we are doing, I find it very difficult to answer. Not because I don't know what I feel about unschooling, but because I am unable to articulate my thoughts into words. When you are an unschooled parent, you subconsciously know what it means to you. You can understand why you behave the way you behave or do the things you do given a situation with your child. But it is extremely difficult to explain to others who only understand school or home school.
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The Gift Of Free Play
School has become an abnormal setting for children. Instead of admitting that, we say children are abnormal and that we need to correct the children. Of course as an unschooler I would certainly like to believe that. Whether it is really true or not is in the eye of the beholder. I am not here to argue about the merits or demerits of school but to point out that play is an important part of a child's development. Most of what I am about to say in this post is pretty much what is covered in the excellent TED talk linked below. You can skip this article if you watch that video.
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Ability To Learn By Yourself Is Fundamental
Some people ask us if we are worried that our kid may not learn much because she is not going to school. Their primary worry is that she may not be able to find a job without education. Our worry on the other hand is that kids these days are spending so much energy on learning things that may not even interest them. And worst of all, they may end up with a job that they don't like to do because they have a degree in an education that wasn't of their own interest.
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Are Unschoolers Missing Out On Social Skills Development
When ever some one learns that our kid is being unschooled, this is one of those questions that I invariably get asked. Are unschooled or home schooled kids missing out on social skills. I am certainly not an expert on the subject, but how does one assess whether a kid has developed social skills. Is shyness an indication of under development? Does participating in debates and winning them mean good development? I am really not sure. As far as I am concerned, if a kid can socialize with other kids, they have enough skills. Or may be I am being naive in thinking that way.
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Building A Periscope With Cardboard
I think I can build a career making cardboard toys. Every time my daughter has an "idea" for a toy, I have get ready to build something out of cardboard. After the doll house, disk drop game and rolling ball machine, the latest idea from my daughter was to build a periscope. She probably saw some youtube video of some one building it.
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Some Useful Educational Resources
In the most recently concluded Virtual Meet-up, there was a lot of discussion about children's education. My colleague and a reader of my blog Naveen B shared a bunch of useful resources. I thought it will help other readers as well so here they are
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