More families are deciding that school's out - forever
Kate Hammer,
Globe, Mail,
Sept 13, 2010
Favourable coverage of a recent "unschooling" trend taking place in Ontario, rooted in the writings of John Holt and based on the idea of experiential learning. Though it would be nice to see a stronger basis in theory, including especially a mention of Ivan Illich, and more description of the role the internet plays in unschooling, the story is nonetheless detailed and descriptive, describing a number of unschooling families. And the coverage must be seen as some sort of breakthrough: when have you ever read coverage of contemporary learning like the following in a newspaper?
"School boards and education ministries are embracing experiential learning. There was a time when students were drilled and heavily tested on rote memory, such as the names and dates of British sovereigns. But research suggests that this is a temporary, limited form of learning: Kids gain more when they can ask questions and learning is tied to emotion...
"Some children thrive in the classroom and others don't and, despite the best of intentions, the system sorts them into winners and losers. Recent initiatives by education ministries and school boards to shrink dropout rates, promote alternative schools and improve kindergarten are all fundamentally an effort to reduce the sorting. Unschooling's underlying idea is that all kids are winners."
p.s. This story was the first found using Calibre, an open source e-Book reader. The software runs on Windows, Linus and Apple, and supports a long list of readers. Cut and paste worked perfectly, the web URL was included with the article, and I was able to copy the image included with this post. Thanks to Nancy McKeand for the link.
"School boards and education ministries are embracing experiential learning. There was a time when students were drilled and heavily tested on rote memory, such as the names and dates of British sovereigns. But research suggests that this is a temporary, limited form of learning: Kids gain more when they can ask questions and learning is tied to emotion...
"Some children thrive in the classroom and others don't and, despite the best of intentions, the system sorts them into winners and losers. Recent initiatives by education ministries and school boards to shrink dropout rates, promote alternative schools and improve kindergarten are all fundamentally an effort to reduce the sorting. Unschooling's underlying idea is that all kids are winners."
p.s. This story was the first found using Calibre, an open source e-Book reader. The software runs on Windows, Linus and Apple, and supports a long list of readers. Cut and paste worked perfectly, the web URL was included with the article, and I was able to copy the image included with this post. Thanks to Nancy McKeand for the link.
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