Practical Homeschooling » unschooling

Students paid $100,000 not to go to college

Laura — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 05:32:22 +0000

I just HAD to post this article that another homeschooler discovered on Yahoo News. It’s nice to see how society is beginning to understand that it’s our instinctual desire to learn and advance ourselves that will determine who we will become – and not be defined by what school or college you attend. Read on!

It sounds like a teenager’s dream and a parent’s nightmare.

Peter Thiel, PayPal’s co-founder, is paying 24 college-aged students $100,000 to just say no — to college.

For two years, winners of the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship have focused on developing business ideas instead of heading to class.

The fellows will work in Silicon Valley with a network of more than 100 mentors where they “will pursue innovative scientific and technical projects, learn entrepreneurship and begin to build the technology companies of tomorrow,” the press release states.

Two Canadians are among those selected.

Eden Full, a 19-year-old woman passionate about making solar power more affordable, is the founder of Roseicollis Technologies, an enterprise she began at the age of 15. Her SunSaluter, a solar-panel-rotation system, currently provides electricity for two small villages in Kenya.

Albertan Gary Kurek, also 19, has spent the last four years developing mobility aids. Inspired by his grandmother’s battle with cancer, he built her a walker-wheelchair hybrid that adjusts to a user’s moment-by-moment power needs and encourages strength restoration.

Four hundred applied for the positions, all eager to prove Thiel’s hypothesis that they’ll learn more in two years in the real world than four in the classroom.

Thiel has made no secret of his opposition to higher education, calling it the next bubble and criticizing the often-crushing cost of study.

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” Thiel told TechCrunchearlier this year. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

He decided to offer students an alternative to the direct-to-university path.

“There is irreducible conflict between staying in college and implementing a great idea,” Thiel told USA Today. “The pernicious side effect of the education bubble is assuming education [guarantees] absolute good, even with steep student fees. That is often not the case.”

His experiential fellowship may prove that future Mark Zuckerbergs and Bill Gates of the world — both of whom dropped out of Harvard — don’t have to be the exception when it comes to success in business.

(Photo credit: Doug Palmer/Reuters)

Getting Your Child A Camera

Laura — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 23:55:37 +0000

My little shutterbug!

My little girls are born artists. They are like me in that they can’t pass by any form of artistic medium without having to have a go at it. This definitely includes cameras.

Since they were old enough to talk, both Dawn and Emily have constantly begged me to use my cameras. I have two of them: a Canon XSi and a Sony Cybershot. I’m not willing to let them use my Canon (and it’s nothing personal–I won’t even let my closest friends use it), but I’ve increasingly allowed them to use my Cybershot.

At what age should children be allowed to start experimenting with cameras?

As soon as they have an interest.

With digital technology, we no longer need to purchase film and pay to process pictures. Children can take as many pictures as the battery life and memory card allow, and easily weed out the ones they don’t want.
Durability. Cameras are now being designed for children in mind. For about $20-$100, you can buy a camera specifically designed for children that can withstand shock and wear and tear.

For a child, taking photos allows them to show their friends and family how they view the world. Kids often see things quite differently than us–they see things that we have pushed out of our minds as being unimportant or inconsequential. Let them embrace these small treasures.

Recommended Cameras

Fisher Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera for Boys

Fisher Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera for Girls

SAKAR Crayola Digital Camera- Purple

Disney Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 1.3MP Pix Junior - Red/ Yellow ( DS14002)

The Underground History Of American Education

Laura — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 02:36:02 +0000

A free e-book by John Taylor Gatto

Two-time Teacher Of The Year for the state of New-York, John Taylor Gatto, shocked the teachersphere when, at his acceptance speech, he began to scorn modern educational practices and called for a reform in the way we educate our children.

He is an ardent supporter of homeschoolers and returning children to their families where they belong. His book, The Underground History Of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling is available online for everyone to read. It offers a fearful insight into the real reasons for forced government education.

From the book’s Introduction:

“… Underground History isn’t a history proper, but a collection of materials toward a history, embedded in a personal essay analyzing why mass compulsion schooling is unreformable. The history I have unearthed is important to our understanding; it’s a good start, I believe, but much remains undone.”

“… what I’m trying to describe [is] that what has happened to our schools was inherent in the original design for a planned economy and a planned society laid down so proudly at the end of the nineteenth century.”

How Much Time Do You Get Your Children To School/Educate Each Day In A Structured Manner?

Laura — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:30:55 +0000

A friend of mine posted this letter to a local homeschool mailing list, and I wanted to share it along with my response, hoping that you too, can share your own opinions.

Hello all.

I took my children out of school at the end of January last term, and have decided to home educate them. I have slowly been imersing myself in the home school community and getting involved with other families as our family schedule allows.

My frustration is this. I have been feeling really bad as though I am not keeping up to what I ‘signed up for’. We have not been structured at all since taking them out. I tried that for the first few months and that just didn’t work, partly due to my oldest having diagnosed adhd (and likely the others have it too). So we un-schooled or de-schooled for months after that (my oldest had been in grade 5 in the school system and is considered near genius level intelligence).

I know my children learn best through using technology and it has been a slow process of waiting for our computer issues to be fully dealt with (having to re format them with another operating system, basically fully wiping them out) so that I can have just computer software. on them to use for learning, and they will not have access to the internet on those computers. So while waiting, they haven’t been technically doing muuch educating (aside from playing online once day, and reader rabbit on the one computer, went to the telus world of science recently and toured all the exhibits briefly, as best as can be with children w/ adhd, and taking books out of the library for them to read and give a brief bullet point word document on what they found interesting about the book they read). Aside from this they haven’t had anything structured, just trying to get the older two more active with helping around the house.

I am anticipating getting them the horse back riding lessons that were posted on here earlier, which I think will be a lot of fun.

So I guess what I’d like to know is about how much time the majority of you get your chilren to do schooling/educating each day in a structured manner. My children are age 4,6,8, and 11.

Thanks for your feedback, I’m looking forward to the replies.

And my response:

It sounds like you are already doing a great job! As I like to say, children learn in spite of us. Give them some tools and let them fly.

Have you thought of using some funding to get a laptop for them? Especially for your oldest, he could make good uso of it to make projects and create computer programs and such. Lotus123 is now free and so easy to use that children can program on it.

Get involved in the community. Tomorrow there’s a gym day at Evangel for homeschoolers–what better day to expend some energy?

As long as you let your children follow their passions, you can never go wrong as far as education goes. Check out Sandra Dodd‘s website for a different perspective on children and education.

What advice do you have for this mother about home-educating four very-active children? Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below.

More Families Deciding that School’s Out Forever: Globe and Mail

Laura — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 22:27:11 +0000

It may sound flaky, but the ‘unschooling’ movement’s ideas are going mainstream as parents are increasingly opting to keep their kids out of class.

Kate Hammer
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
Published on Friday, Sep. 10, 2010 5:00PM EDT
Last updated on Sunday, Sep. 12, 2010 12:11AM EDT

It has been Saturday in the Laricchia household for nearly a decade.

The family’s three teenagers, Michael, Lissy and Joseph, have known nothing of alarm clocks, races for the school bus, arguments over homework or report-card angst since their parents started “unschooling” them in 2002.

The small but growing movement the Laricchias have joined is known by many other names, including deschooling, life learning and edu-punk. At base, unschooling is home-schooling returned to its postwar progressive roots, far from the Bible-thumping mould that has come to dominate the modern image of home-schoolers.