“It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage." - George William Curtis
Nobody gives you an education. If you want one, you have to take it. Only you can educate you—and you can’t do it by memorizing. You have to find out who you are by experience and by risk-taking, then pursue your own nature intensely. School routines are set up to discourage you from self-discovery. People who know who they are make trouble for schools.
To know yourself, you have to keep track of your random choices, figure out your patterns, and use this knowledge to dominate your own mind. It’s the only way that free will can grow. If you avoid this, other minds will manipulate and control you lifelong.
Gerald Warner reckons that the German homeschoolers' political asylum in America exposes the EU Gulag:
Why did the German homeschoolers not seek political asylum in Britain? Because our rulers subscribe to the same tyrannical statist philosophy, is the answer. Every possible obstacle is put in the way of homeschooling parents in Britain.
The mentality is that the state – not parents – is the natural controller and shaper of children’s lives and beliefs. When a schoolgirl can be given an abortion without her parents’ knowledge, we know that, while public utilities may have been privatised, children have been nationalised. Read more...
ALSO on the news: One of the growing number of children who are being taught at home, for Archie there will be no dreaded Sats exams and when the time is right he will likely bypass GCSEs and move straight to A-levels. Read it here.
AND, on EO's campaigning site, a new page -Where are we up to with the Bill? - which can be read here.
Finally, we also have the Memorandum submitted by AHEd: Children Schools and Families Bill.
The Freechild Project defines unschooling as the process of learning through life, without formalized or institutionalized classrooms or schoolwork. Unschooling relies on interpersonal relationships and natural learning progression to have effect on learners, instead of textbooks and classroom teachers. Self-education is the liberating practice of teaching yourself.
Freechild believes that deschooling is also anti-formalized and anti-institutionalized education of any sorts. However, this process deliberately emphasizes the absence of the systemic approach to learning, and negates the need for schools. Some homeschoolers use a "deschooling" process to get ready for learning at home.
Check it out here.
"Your life, time, and brain should belong to you, not to an institution."
Grace Lwellyn in The Teenage Liberation Handbook
Paula Rothermel: I was invited on two occasions to meet with Mr Badman. At our first interview Mr Badman was interested in what I had to say. His opening question was to ask me if home educating mothers suffered from Munchhausen's by Proxy. I thought this to be a curious starting point - that of questioning whether home education is a symptom of mental illness.
Read more...
A judge in Germany has left a teen in the custody of his parents – for now – a big win in their ongoing war with authorities over the legitimacy of home education practices. (...)
One of the first acts by Adolf Hitler when he moved into power was to create the governmental Ministry of Education and give it control of all schools and school-related issues. In 1937, the dictator said,
"The youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled. This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing."
Read it here.
Terry Deary, the creator of the Horrible Histories, shares his feelings towards the school system:
“I detest schools with a passion. Schools are an utter waste of young life. Learning things that will never be any use to you. The only reason they are there is to keep kids off the street. They were a Victorian invention. The Industrial Revolution took kids from their families and made the parents work in factories long hours. Then they said, ‘we can’t have these little kids working here.’ So what do we do? Lock them all up in the same room all day and we’ll call it school. I spent hours learning trigonometry, physics, none of which prepared me for life. Relationships, talking to people, managing money, planning your career, how to help someone who has cut their leg open. I have had to learn these things by default.
“There won’t be any schools in 25 years. There will be mentoring. Older people passing their skills on to younger people. Teachers know nothing about life and the real needs of pupils.”
So true and yet sometimes we can lose sight of who are our nearest and most dearest...
Image 1 - via vi.sualize.us, Image 2- via lolitta
In stark contrast to last week, I have had the most wonderful, exciting, inspiring, happy week. So, I think I will finish this week today and then I can come back here next week refreshed, ready and roaring to go again. Wishing you all lots of hapiness until next time!!
xx
Anna
Image 1 - Flickr
Image 2 - Vi.sualize.us
Parker Palmer: "A spirituality of ends wants to dictate the desirable outcomes of education in the life of the student. It uses the spiritual tradition as a template against which the ideas, beliefs, and behaviours of the student are to be measured. The goal is to shape the student to the template by the time his of her formal education concludes.
But that sort of education never gets started; it is no education at all. Authentic spirituality wants to open us to truth - whatever truth may be, wherever truth may take us. Such a spirituality does not dictate where we must go, but trusts that any path walked with integrity will take us to a place of knowledge. Such a spirituality encourages us to welcome diversity and conflict, to tolerate ambiguity, and to embrace paradox. By this understanding, the spirituality of education is not about dictating ends. It is about examining and clarifying the inner sources of teaching and learning, ridding us of the toxins that poison our hearts and minds."
Listen online: Parker Palmer Podcasts
Sugata Mitra on how kids teach themselves.
"A child is curious by nature; he or she has a natural instinct to make sense of the world around him. The need to explore on their own is a strong motivating aspect that provides the necessary impetus to go ahead with learning."
Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others' viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout our entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times.
Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness.
'Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry,
the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness
which does not bow before children'
Fancy some online reading? What about...
Home education series (volume 1) by Charlotte Mason?
You can download it here. And you'll find volume 3 here.
"Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose."
Also worth checking:
Charlotte Mason's
20 Principles
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