Is School Math a Waste of Time?

How long does it take a ten year old who’s done almost no curriculum to “catch up” with her schooled peers? Turns out: not long.

Observe, Act, Observe, Reevaluate

I was talking to a friend the other day about changes that have been in the works in our local school system. I didn’t know this, but apparently for a few years now the elementary schools have been working under a new grading system, where they don’t rank the children by numbers or letters. Instead, […]

I Was Unschooled and I Didn’t Know It

The weird thing about unschooling is that the name is kind of terribly misrepresentative–unschooling isn’t about school at all. It’s about believing that learning happens naturally, all the time, and that if natural learning is fostered, then it continues unrepressed forever. So “unschooling” isn’t just a thing that children do in lieu of school. It’s […]

Unschooling with Public School

I have been wrestling the past few days with a philosophical paradox. It started when E complained to me about a couple schooled cohorts of hers who like to quiz her on some of the dubiously useful trivia they picked up in school. She didn’t have the answer, and she doesn’t have trivia of her […]

Enjoy Summer THEN GET BACK TO WORK

One of the local elementary schools is in my neighbourhood, so I pass by their sign board relatively often. Over the summer, this is the message they had up: And I thought it was cool how, in principle anyway, we seem to have shared values. The difference, I suppose, is in application. Their admonition to […]

Lemonade

Let’s get schooly for a moment. Not that I think spending your life comparing yourself to others is a great plan, but when you’re living alternatively, occasionally getting schooly has its benefits. It can help to validate one’s own choices, and help others to understand said choices, by speaking their language. I come in peace. […]

The Lesson by the Lake

When we moved here to Brooks, one thing I was excited about was the location of our rental. It overlooked the biggest of the town’s manmade lakes; very picturesque, and it has a well maintained paved path going all around. It’s about 2.5 km, with a nice play structure 1/3 of the way around. In the […]

Hypocrisy and All of It

Here’s a thing about unschoolers: we are an incredibly amorphous group. You can’t even fairly call us a group–we have no leader, no rule book; we’re all over the map. All we have are ideas. Sure, those ideas started with one man, who put them into some great books, but there’s still about a million ways to […]

Everything is Going to be Alright

In all of my love for the unschooling philosophy and lifestyle, I will admit that I have harboured one main anxiety: math. If I’m being honest, it stems from the classic problem of parents wanting to share all their greatest passions with their children—the same root, I’m sure, as my need for my children to know […]

Interest-Based Learning

Sometimes unschoolers will describe what they do as “interest-based learning”. It’s a quick, easy to understand phrase that satisfies the casually curious without triggering shock and confusion. It’s not the totality of what makes unschooling…well, unschooling, but it’s accurate that interest-based learning is a key component to the philosophy. I have learned, though, that while […]