Unschooling NYC

I said last night that I have a suggestion on how to ‘fix’ compulsory education in this country, and some of the problems caused by semantics that label kids from a young age into one category or another.   This originally appeared in a post titled “What If”, published on October 4th in case you are interested in reading or re-reading the whole thing.

“What if tomorrow, when kids walked into their schools, they were told to hand in all of their textbooks and instead were asked simply to write on a piece of paper what they like to do most

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741 miles.  12 hours.  2 stops.   Cruised out of the city at 6:34 am led by a gorgeous full moon (we missed the eclipse because…we had a 12 hour drive in front of us!) and arrived at 6:27 pm to snow, snow and more snow.   Which is exactly what we were hoping for, as my parents’ farm is surrounded by some great sledding hills.

So ‘gifted’.  Touched a nerve with that one, didn’t I?   Here’s the thing.  I am NOT opposed to anyone trying to provide their child with the best possible education.  I know that we all have differing … Read more

For those of you who aren’t familiar with her, Lenore Skenazy became the most hated Mom in America a few years ago because she let her then 9 year old son ride the New York City subway by himself.   Mind you, she and her family live in NYC, her son is familiar with the subway system  and had been begging his parents to let him ride the subway on his own for some time.   As a result of the uproar over her decision (which people only found out about because she wrote a column about it – she certainly wasn’t … Read more

Did you know that there is a National Association for Gifted Children?  I didn’t, but there is.   I started searching around today for some information about the effectiveness of these Gifted and Talented programs (which I didn’t find) and came across the NAGC website.   This website is very….thorough.  (Actually, this website makes me want to vomit, but I’m trying to be diplomatic)    At the top of the website it reads:  “What is Gifted?  Gifted individuals are those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude or competence in one or more domains.”   So, you mean, everyone?   Because I think all kids, if … Read more

A few days ago I mentioned sitting with a couple of mothers from our building at our holiday party and hearing about the Gifted and Talented programs available in NYC public schools.  I didn’t go into a full description of the conversation, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what I was told and am  troubled by it.   There are many issues with these so-called Gifted and Talented programs.  I have a problem with them because just by virtue of their existence, they create an ‘other’.    If you are not in the G&T programs, you are ‘other’.  (They don’t call … Read more

I read somewhere that practitioners of Feng Shui advise playing your favorite music very loudly for a few minutes every week or two to clear a room, apartment or house of any negative energy that may have collected.  Dancing while doing this helps too.   I think the theory has merit – it’s sort of like the change of atmosphere and mood that takes place when a thunderstorm moves through in the summer;  afterward everything seems fresher and renewed.  Laughter – good, full belly laughter, has the same affect.

We’ve had one of our more difficult weeks this week, for no … Read more

Blogging can be kind of a weird thing.  Sometimes very personal.  Sometimes too much so.   I read Heather Armstrong’s blog at Dooce.com, which is often very funny and often extremely personal.  As she has said, if you’re looking for a blog with no oversharing, you’ve gone to the wrong place.   A friend of mine recently told me he saw a cartoon (probably in the New Yorker) where a mother is handing her daughter a Diary to write in and the girl looks at it and says, “But why would you want to write in a diary if nobody is going … Read more

Many of the entries I write are made up of topics which are the result of reading articles or books on educational methods and beliefs, and then contrasting it to what I see around me in the homeschool/unschool community.    This entry is no different, except this one is about how one such article caused a brief ‘school brain’ (as I like to call it) relapse and moments of panic.   The new second in command of the DOE of New York City is a man born in South Africa and educated in the most liberal schools in the U.S. – both … Read more

To start, I must clarify something I said in yesterday’s entry.  I do not believe that ALL doctors are arrogant with a God complex.   Didn’t mean to ruffle feathers – there are many wonderful conscientious doctors out there.  I’m sure you know who you are.  🙂

Ok, now that we got that out of the way, let me say a couple of things about toddlers.   Actually, I’ll say something about myself first.  There are many things I probably wasn’t great at when my kids were little.  Two things I was really good at was putting them to bed and getting … Read more

The headline on my Yahoo homepage this morning read:  “Pilot duped AMA with fake M.D. claim”.   I don’t normally read more than the headlines (too depressing) but this one hooked me.  The first three paragraphs read as follows: