Posts tagged with "learning"
-
Right To Education At Any Age
In the Indian constitution we have an article which specifies that children in the age group of six to fourteen years have the right to get free and compulsory education. It is a pretty good amendment to the constitution. But what I don’t like about it is the specific age that is mentioned. Why shouldn’t it be a fundamental right to have education at any age? Some kids or even adults may not be able to learn at a young age, and may prefer to learn at a later age. Of course no one is stopping them for learning, but it may not be free. However, with the advent of technology and internet, learning can be free at any age.
...continue reading -
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.
...continue reading -
Learnings From 2020
The year 2020 has been special in many ways. We have seen something that was unprecedented not only in my life, but even during my parents life. Who would have ever imagined a lock-down of the whole nation for example? Many things were a first in 2020. While the year was not too bad, I did have a few learnings. In this last post (hopefully) in the year review series, I want to go over my learnings. Pretty much all my issues and the resulting lessons were related to Franklin :).
...continue reading -
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.
...continue reading -
How Do Unschooled Children Learn?
The question that we often get asked when someone learns that we are unschooling is "How does your kid learn?". You see, in the case of home schooling there is at least a curriculum and everyone expects some teaching. They intuitively understand that home schooling means teaching subjects like Math, Science etc. What craziness is this unschooling where the kid is completely left to learn on their own?
...continue reading -
Should You Save For Kids Higher Education
You know my stance on saving for kid's education. Those who have read my blog or know me, understand that we are unschooling our kid. Most already know that I retired early. I guess early retirement and unschooled kid is probably not a common combination? Or may be it is just my feeling. Because, in this combination, one rarely plans to setup a corpus for kid's higher education. And yet many people ask why I haven't set aside a corpus for the kid.
...continue reading -
Is Unschooling for Everyone?
While we jumped ship and joined the unschooling camp, it may not be for everyone. Just like how early retirement is not applicable to everyone, so too is homeschooling or unschooling. While we still consider that we are at the early stage of our unschooling journey (although we have been unschooling for a couple of years now), I can already see a few "disadvantages" and "risks". I had to put those words in quotes because we don't see it as a disadvantage, or risk, but for some others it looks that way.
...continue reading -
How we went from Homeschooling to Unschooling?
I already talked about why we unschool our kid. And you also know that we did not start out that way. Like most parents, we started out with the idea of homeschooling and then eventually we are turning more and more into unschooling parents. The reasons are quite complex and we ourselves probably don't know the true story because it happened ever so slowly and we still are in the process of unschooling. Still learning that many things we are doing are not really unschooling, but a mix of home and unschooling. Seems like this unschooling things is more of a journey than an end goal.
...continue reading -
Our Unschooling Journey
Our journey towards unschooling was a bit haphazard and not a straight forward decision. In the initial years we were unclear whether we wanted to home school our kid or not. I have always wondered if I would have gained more knowledge and moved faster in life if I was home schooled. As a kid I used to complain that I wish I would not be forced to study all the subjects that we were taught in school. I asked my parents if there is a school where I can only study math, physics, chemistry and computers and nothing else. This was way back in 5th standard or so, when I was may be 10 or 11 years.
...continue reading -
Bored In Retirement. Not.
When I announced my early retirement, some well wishers asked me if I would get bored with so much time on my hands at such productive age. When I told them that I will be working on some fun projects, which should keep me busy, they still wondered if I would feel bored after 6 or 9 months. Some call or email me every few months to see how I am doing. My relatives ask my parents if I am getting bored. It is now almost 9 months since I retired and yet my To-Do list keeps on growing and there is no scope for boredom. But it is fun that way because I am working on the things that keeps me interested and excited to jump out of the bed every morning to tackle them.
...continue reading