If you live in New York City and are looking for homeschooling resources, you probably already know about Laurie Spigel’s site.   In case you don’t, Laurie has links to so many programs, outing ideas, free summer fun – she is a veritable well of information, all of which you can access at Homeschool NYC.

Laurie will also be speaking at the upcoming EduEvolution Conference here in New York on June 15th.  The purpose of this workshop/conference is to introduce people to four different types of alternative education, including Waldorf, Montessori, Reggio Emilia and Homeschooling (which can of course incorporate any of the others.)  The conference is being organized by Theodore Poulis and you can get all the details on his website at Transformative Culture.

This past week I’ve spoken to or read about quite a few people who are pessimistic in the extreme regarding not only the state of our educational system but the state of our country and the future of the world in general.  They have a lot of evidence to back up their theories, and it can make for some really depressing discussions.

Thank goodness, then,  for people like Dale Stephens, whose UnCollege post today contained a link to an article Dale wrote and that was originally published in Fast Company titled, “Rethinking Motivation in Education”    Dale also posted a link to Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech to the 2012 graduates of the Universtity of the Arts in Philadelphia, which is fantastic and much of which is applicable to everyone, whether you go to college or not.

Speaking of commencement addresses, one that is not only very funny but has a lot of good things to say (again, even if you do not attend college) is Conan O’Briens speech, given last year at Dartmouth.

So despite the doom and gloom predictions, despite the news of crushing student debt that graces almost every issue of the NY Times and despite the seeming inability of many to acknowledge that the solution to these problems is not more of the same…..there is a lot of good stuff out there, and a lot of good people working to change things.  Yes, they’re a minority, but if I was betting, I’d think long and hard before betting against them.