If you're trapped inside a school that doesn't engage you and you're willing to make a change, then I have good news for you: You can leave school tomorrow and never look back. All you have to do is become a homeschooler.
We put a colossal amount of energy into shepherding students through systems that don't quite fit for many individuals. For some, doesn't quite fit is an understatement. For some, real suffering and damage is taking place as they try to fit but don't.
There is something vaguely pyramid-scheme-feeling about a college dropout becoming successful by talking about how successful he's managed to be as a college dropout.
The subject of parenting could possibly be the most discussed, debated, written about, studied, analyzed and frustrating practice in all of human experience.
In an era of skyrocketing tuition fees, millions of students will find themselves unable or unwilling to finance the college package deal. Luckily, higher education doesn't have to be delivered by a college institution.
Somewhere along the 12-year stint of schooling, students need the challenge of answering, "What do I really want to learn? What kind of help do I need to pursue my dream?" Considering those questions is the seed for maturity.
Advocates of unschooling and critics alike seem to understand the practice as a radically "child-centered" form of education. However, this distorts the vision of unschooling's intellectual father.
Thinking differently from most people about school is just part of my identity. How could I not? I grew up without school. My reality is different.
-- School's never out for 14-year-old Zoe Bentley. Nor is it ever in. The perky teen from Tucson, Ariz., explores what she likes, when she likes as ...
When people emphasize that homeschoolers are normal, that we fit in, I find myself feeling a little frustrated. For just a moment, I find myself thinking, "We aren't just like everyone else! Our lives are a wild adventure!"
We don't have as much pressure from school and friends telling us what to like, so it's our responsibility to figure out how to spend our time.
Homeschooling requires bravery. You have to be willing to be different. You will have to answer a lot of questions that start with the words, "But socialization...."
If parents wanted to put together learning co-ops they could pool their money to do that. Parents and their children, rather than the government, would determine what was best for each family.
One of the problems with comparing school and everything that "unschooling" encompasses is that, well, they aren't comparable.
School and home are never really perfectly balanced alternatives to one another. They aren't opposites. School is controllable and uniform to an extent that unschool can't possibly be.
Unschooling is a type of homeschooling that promotes organic, self-directed learning without the structure of traditional education. My family has unschooled our kids for over a decade.
Sanda Dodd is an renowned advocate of unschooling who lives in New Mexico. Here's an interview with her youngest, 17-year-old Holly, followed by two segments with Sandra herself.
