Saturday, July 29, 2023

Locals and Education Freedom

I'm currently trialing the locals platform as a means of sharing more information on home ed. My main aim with this page, is to encourage anyone interested in home education to give it a try, and to have an awareness that whatever method one chooses, it *will* work, as long as there is dedication towards the education, and progress in that education.

Anyhow this is the link to my locals page. Please join me there. :)

https://educationfreedom.locals.com/post/4385782/why-home-educate

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

John Taylor Gatto's Resignation to the Wall st Journal, July 25th 1991

I'm sharing this because this was John Taylor Gatto's resignation letter, and it seems to be getting harder to find. Very worth reading IMO.

I quit, I think

I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think.

I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world I don’t want to live in.

I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can’t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.

Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.

An exaggeration? Hardly. Parents aren’t meant to participate in our form of schooling, rhetoric to the contrary. My orders as schoolteacher are to make children fit an animal training system, not to help each find his or her personal path.

The whole blueprint of school procedure is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. It grows from the faith that human value is a scarce thing, represented symbolically by the narrow peak of a pyramid.

That idea passed into American history through the Puritans. It found its “scientific” presentation in the bell curve, along which talent supposedly apportions itself by some Iron Law of biology.

It’s a religious idea and school is its church. New York City hires me to be a priest. I offer rituals to keep heresy at bay. I provide documentation to justify the heavenly pyramid.

Socrates foresaw that if teaching became a formal profession something like this would happen. Professional interest is best served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating laity to priesthood. School has become too vital a jobs project, contract-giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be “re-formed.” It has political allies to guard its marches.

That’s why reforms come and go-without changing much. Even reformers can’t imagine school much different.

David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can’t tell which one learned first — the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I will label Rachel “learning disabled” and slow David down a bit, too.

For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won’t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, “special education.” After a few months she’ll be locked into her place forever.

In 26 years of teaching rich kids and poor, I almost never met a “learning disabled” child; hardly ever met a “gifted and talented” one, either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by the human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling.

That’s the secret behind short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion punishing our nation.

There isn’t a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We don’t need state-certified teachers to make education happen–that probably guarantees it won’t.

How much more evidence is necessary? Good schools don’t need more money or a longer year; they need real free-market choices, variety that speaks to every need and runs risks. We don’t need a national curriculum, or national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people learn, or deliberate indifference to it.

I can’t teach this way any longer. If you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. Come fall I’ll be looking for work, I think.

John Taylor Gatto wrote this article for The Wall Street Journal, July 25th, 1991. Gatto was a New York State Teacher of the Year. An advocate for school reform, Gatto’s books include Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, the Underground History of American Education and Weapons of Mass Instruction.

Sunday, July 23, 2023

Some Thoughts on Learning

I've been home educating long enough now, to feel pretty happy with what we do. I've seen my children learn and grow, and many of the things that left me nervous and uncertain in my early days have been overcome. I have two adult children in their early stages of making their way in the world, and on the whole I feel home educating has been the right choice for our family.

Some things that I think are worth considering on this journey are the balance between structured (classes, etc) and unstructured learning (question led and going down rabbit holes!) and multi-generational family and independent learning.

Learning together- exploring colour as a family.

My parents were a blend of structured and unstructured in their approach to learning, and some of my fondest memories are of me spending time with my Dad, and having him explain to me various activities, that perhaps other adults would have thought I was too small to understand. As the second youngest of 12, I assume now he treated me this way because he was treated this way( he died 21 years ago). I feel very blessed to have had this experience and to have been able to bring an experimental multi-generational sense of learning to family, that I now realise was routed in spending time with my Dad.

When we started home educating, DD23, had been to a Steiner school and the creativity and the practical side, and the screen minimisation (both DH and I were in favour of this, both of us had computers young, and DH works as software engineer) and in our early years I was very much trying to replicate Steiner at home. I did quite a bit of reading on it, including reading some of Steiner's takes on education. At this stage now, in my 18th year, I feel this background continues to serve me in how I approach education with my children, as I have this understanding to fall back on, when I am wondering how my children are progressing in life. The main tenants, I find particularly useful are knowing that children in the first seven years tend to imitation, from 7-14 they tend to imagination, and from 14-21 they tend to inspiration.

In practise what this looks like is children under 7 copying everything they see and hear, try to use their vision of the world and what interests them to create the sort of people that they wish to become. For children 7-14, the imagination stage can be creating anything- stories, game, drawings, etc. 14-21 year olds, need guidance through mentorship, inspiring people and stories, and initiation to start to bring themselves into maturity.

So coming back to my earlier thoughts- structured and unstructured learning. Both have value and both have potential. My preference is to have a balance of both in our family. A class with an exceptional teacher/mentor can impart knowledge that I lack and the right circumstances speed up learning. However they do not tend to teach a child how to be a self-directed independent learner. That is something that unstructured learning can offer- particularly I think if a parent/guardian is prepared to be a co-learner with their child/student. Doing research together, asking questions together and exploring together, set up the child to understand how to do the process easily when they are more mature.

Multi-generational learning, in a family or in extended community, brings enormous rewards in that the student gets to receive skills across the family, or across the generations of people that are becoming or have become significant in their field (this of course does not have to mean paid work- it could be a hobby that they are exceptional at). Independent learning give the student a chance to research , to understand their own boundaries and how far and how much they can push themselves without an adult judging whether they have done enough or are good enough. It encourages them to self-assess and to work on themselves, themselves.

A spontaneous bit of history- on a walk to a park to meet friends.

Some interest led learning- Arden exploring textures of fabric close up, on my camera.

And so, over the years I have noticed a couple of things in my community here, in Perth. People doing very structured home education- with lots of text books and classes can manage the high school years easily. They fall back on the idea of the traditional view of education, probably pre-dating modern schooling. Those that unschool in the early years, and do not learn how to learn with their children seem to come unstuck at high school, and seem to particularly need to send their children to high school, as they are uncertain how to transition into more academic style learning. This seems to be particularly the case when people claim that unschooling is "doing nothing" (I have heard this statement quite a number of times over the years, and I highly recommend reading John Holt for anyone that thinks that this is what it is). I find it quite a shame that many people come unstuck at this point, and I think it would serve many people well to remember that they are the child's first teacher- walking, talking, etc and to remember that what skills one has as an adult are valuable to pass on to children. Not force on to them, just work side by side learning together, so that the best of both world's can be had, and that there is no need to find endless classes (or schools) because sometimes learning in the family at home can be enough.

A past obsession; marble runs made out of jenga blocks. There was lots of self-directed creative play, building, learning and inspiration from youtube.

2023

So far this year has been busier than I prefer but quite enjoyable. Irving and I have just started our at home learning routine for the year at the beginning of March, and Arden started in February. Though we had rather a busy summer- with Irving and I both starting red bubble businesses.You can find Irving's shop here. And my shop here. Irving also did swimming lesson at the beach this year, and is now feeling inspired to get his swimming at the level it needs to be to join nippers next summer.

Lots of beautiful beach days in January.

We finished reading Bill Bryson's "Down Under" over the summer, whilst sitting at cafes, after our beach lessons. :) (Though this book has some IMO bizarre comments at times- that I particularly felt the need to edit for DS9).

Arden is up to year 10 and is keen to continue with aviation related studies, and he is continuing with the youth flying club at Bullcreek Aviation museum, and recently signed up for Aviation cadets. He is still doing jujutsu and is almost at the adults belts for grading now. We are thinking that this will probably be his last year doing music classes at Cottage Insititute, as he will have a solid grounding in music should he wish to pursue it later in life. He is also doing sailing classes this year, at Hillary's Yacht club.

To start off the year, he's been largely working on music theory using the ABRSM books grade 1 to 5, in a similar style to how his sister, Willow, did. (She studied a range of instruments and voice, did Kodaly style lessons at Cottage insititute and only worked on the grade 1 through 5 books from year 10). Arden's interest in music however is quite different to Willow's and at one stage he was interested in musical composition and was watching Hans Zimmer's masterclass on composing. He is very particular about being able to hear movie tracks due to this interest in music soundtracks and their relationship to the film. He is a self-taught pianist from watching youtube "piano hands" channels as I like to call them, and atm he plays for about an hour and a half a day.

Irving is up to year 5, though in my opinion is only really year 4 and a half, and so that's where he's at, at home. He is born right at the cut off date for registration and since we do Steiner inspired education, I slowed down our stories and themes over the last year, to line up to mid- year since that is better for him. So at the moment we are reading the Norse Myths by Padraic Collum and learning about runes. We've also joined a small STEAM group for a bit of a hang out- there's an activity and play, he's doing music classes at Cottage, and he's doing pottery classes too. Plus there's been *lots* of swimming! We've been down swimming in our pool at least three times a week, trying to get him up to nippers qualifying level.

We had a few event outing's during February. When we had kids really into performance, we used to attend a lot of Fringe and Festival events, though these days we have been doing this very little. Irving and I did go to the Perth Festival Opening at Lake Joondalup- which we enjoyed to varying degrees, but the location was beautiful!

On the same night Arden and Gabriel both went to their first big stadium gig- off to see the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. DH, Damien and I had gone out Friday evening and stopped in to see a friend's band, and just happened to be there when Chad Smith, the chilli peppers drummer approached the band and asked if he could drum. Since we had our mini brush with them, Damien shook hands with him on our way out, it started a bit of a thing here, which culminated with buying last minute tickets Sunday afternoon, and both of them heading out to see the Chilli Peppers.

Our first formal home educating outing for the year, was a fun hang out session of roller skating, and it's now looking like we'll be doing iceskating lessons again in term 3, if everything falls into place. Both the boys loved iceskating when we did lesson pre-covid.

Irving also did first aid classes again this year, Arden decided not to- since it hasn't been that long since the last ones he did.

We also headed out to A Night on Bayview- WASO's performance in Claremont. We all really miss their performances on the Swan River, and the Claremont location is lovely, but we miss the preview of the coming year's orchestral performances. I've been a bit slack checking out the program this year, Arden is particularly keen to go to a few, and WASO do very reasonably priced education tickets.

Irving has really taken to pottery classes and it looks like we'll be doing them all year. He's also been borrowing books on pottery, and we've been watching "The Great Pottery Throwdown", since he's loving it so much. He's had about three classes, so far, but they are only having their first firing, so he's excited to see how his work comes out this week.

Arden and I are back into reading "Tragedy and Hope" for our part 2 on it's take on the history of ww2. And Irving, Arden and I are just finished reading "I Can Jump Puddles" as our family reading. I am looking to find the second and third sequels, so that we can get more insight into Australia at that time, from more of a first hand account. I am particularly interested in his take on the depression, as he has such a unique view on growing up in the bush, as someone living with polio. Irving has also been reading "Charlotte's Web", as a part of our friend's book club, and he's been loving it.

Arden is also doing some study on the idea of earth as GAIA- a living complex in itself, and the forces that affect it. We've started watching Brain Cox's "Forces of Nature" as part of his background research, as well as doing a range of reading.

As an update the older kids are busy with more grown up life- Willow is just being made team leader at work. She's been working in fintech since she was almost 19, initially more admin related work for the merchant operations area, and gradually with increasing responsibility doing online fraud analysis. She loves her work, and it suits her, since one of her hobbies as a home educated student was moderating online message boards.

Gabriel finished TAFE, in 2019, and was hoping to get a job in a cafe, when all of the covid stuff happened. He decided that he wasn't interested in doing more in the digital screen and media area, and instead he was interested in drawing and art- off screen, and also learning Japanese. As well as working part- time in a juice bar, he had been doing this at home, until this year, when he decided he is interested in studying at uni and he took a place in Curtin's uni ready course.

Friday, July 21, 2023

Term 4 2022

Term four disappeared rather quickly - we had our annual moderator visit- which has become fairly routine after home educating so long, and we did a bunch of lovely out and about activities

We learnt a little about herbs and weaving- learning the difference between sow thistles and dandelions as we went to collection dandelion stems for weaving these lavender bunches.

Irving learnt about a few different animals and spent some time drawing them- this is his kookaburra.

Irving finally finished his cushion- doing all the sewing with the exception of the zip, and Arden made himself a t-shirt.

With non-seasonal Halloween both Arden and Irving wanted to make some creepy food- so we made some pizza dough and some home made lemonade with add activated charcoal for some creepy colouring!

Our final portion of the year saw us doing quite a few history walks around the city. The city of Perth has some great history guides and we got out and about and looked around our city as tourists for a few weeks. Looking at the architecture, and old stories of our local area. We also had a surprise visitor for about a month- as my brother stopped with us, on his way home from Malaysia, whilst heading back to Adelaide. So there was lots of other things going on during that time- we hadn't seen him since pre-covid, when we last visit Adelaide, and there were many interesting conversations during that time.

Arden had been wanting to do sailing earlier in the year- but with all the covid things going on here that didn't eventuate, until finally in term 4 an opportunity do a home school class appeared at Hillary's yacht club. There were a bunch of delays- with our start to summer being slow- and classes being cancelled and rescheduled though eventually sailing did happen!

Arden was also lucky to get the chance to try a rather unique home education class- herbalism- another home schooling Mum had arranged for a herbalist to run a class. There was a mix of looking at plants, studying the actions, learning how herbs treat illness. Arden found it quite interesting, and useful.

He also got an opportunity to try a one on one parkour class with Isaac from Make Parkour- another thing he had been wanting to do for some time, but seemed much easier post all the covid drama. He had an amazing lesson with Isaac, who was very attentive, and pushed Arden to try some new ways of moving.

In a continuing theme of opportunities suddenly appearing Arden was invited by his flying club to have his first attempt flying a plane. Over the years Arden started at the Aviation kids club and learnt about planes and flying, his interest has grown until he got to join the Youth Flying Club and was able to start flying on the simulator most weeks. He and another home educated friend got to share their first flying experience, his friend taxiing and flying part of the leg to Murray Field, and Arden getting to try taxiing and partial flying back to Perth. It was a very satisfying experience for him, and now he's looking forward to trying more!

Term 3 2022

During our winter break, we started, and finished this 3,000 piece "Where's Wally?" jigsaw puzzle.

Arden and Irving finished their weaving. Arden's was done on an inklette loom, and Irving's a lap loom.

Since Arden has done quite a bit on biology before and is also inclined to doing lots of physical activity, we pulled out my massage books from when I was studying, and learnt a little about massage, reflexology and essential oils.

Irving designed and hand sewed, embroidered, and appliqued a cushion cover for himself. This project last a little while as he built up the patience to keep going, and he developed more speed as he got better at it.

Damien took Arden and Irving off to Wild movement to learn about making spoons using fire.

As part of our chemistry block last year, Arden made soap from a base of lard and lye.
Just finished.

And curing.

There was some experimenting with bending glass, and copper wire.

Since Arden is interested in aviation for his WW1 studies we read "The Red Baron", unfortunately we watched the movie too! We do not recommend it at all- the story veered far too much from the truth for both Arden and I. We also watched the movie "Fly Boys"- which was about the first American aviation pilots who flew with the French, before the US joined WW1. Some of this movie was also apparently inaccurate, however we used it as a starting point for further research.

"Joyeux Noel" has been a favourite around here for our WW1 studies. It is the history, of the Christmas Armistices, where the Germans, French and Scotts, decided to lay down their weapons and celebrate together. It's also worth watching the research they did to make the film- they were very attentive to detail, and brought in some very interesting facts- such as the execution of a cat, who was seen to be a spy!

We also bought a double distiller to experiment with making our own essential oils.

]

2022 part Two

We had a bit of a rubik's craze here early last year, which saw Irving in particular taken by the 3x3 and the 4x4 cube. There was lots of watching youtube and practising the algorithm until, he went from the first more basic cube to the larger one. It also happened that there was a speed cubing event in the Fringe, so we had to go to that! They were astonishingly fast to watch, and seemed a little unnatural.

Irving decided to cut all his hair short.

Off on the wheels- new rollerskates, and a shorter hairstyle.

Working on some maths- creating prisms and NAPLAN. This was the first time we've done NAPLAN in the family. Willow did OLNA, Gabriel didn't do any tests. It was a useful exercise in the experience of doing a test, for Arden, and I think reassured him, that his education is working! Personally I found it amusing that I was allowed to run the test. Historically that would not have been ok.