A few days ago I posted an entry on why banning homework would be a good idea. Today, after an interview with a reporter and a nice session with a photographer, we’re on the front page of the National Post. Reporter Anne Marie Owens contacted me after I posted on the topic and followed up on some of the comments over at Rob Paterson’s blog (where all the good conversation is on this stuff). Anne Marie used a couple of us to illustrate a nice review of recent research on the topic. Those that read here know that we engage …
My friend Alex Kjerulf today has a post about homework that I am in complete agreement with. He points to this TIME magazine story which, to an unschooling parent, is no news at all. I already don’t send my kids to school, which we can do here in Canada. It’s called unschooling. BUT if for some reason my kids did go to school I would do what I have advocated others do and that is, I would refuse to allow the school to assign them homework. It is not simply the fact that kids are overworked. There are four other …
Serendipity. Nancy White posted yesterday about why we seem to be suffering from a lack of innovation in the world, and whether it was all about the culture of control and fear. To which I replied – in several hundred words now – look at schools. And then today, AKMA has a nice post on a talk he is due to give to some Christian anarchists about his family’s experiences with homeschooling, and it’s lovely and concise and carefully thought through and all that stuff that I love about AKMA’s writing. Something’s in the air, eh?
Have a listen to Sir Ken Robinson, from the TED conference, on creativity and education. It’s a great talk filled with humour and deep insight about how the public education system does not serve creativity, children or our collective future. Some quotes: All kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them. Creativity is as important as literacy and we should teach it with the same status. Kids will take a chance…if they don’t know, they’ll have a go. They’re not frightened of being wrong…If you’re not prepared to be wrong you’ll never come up with anything original…We …
Kevin Kelly on the meaning of Wikipedia, from Edge.org The bottom-up hive mind will always take us much further that seems possible. It keeps surprising us. In this regard, the Wikipedia truly is exhibit A, impure as it is, because it is something that is impossible in theory, and only possible in practice. It proves the dumb thing is smarter than we think. At that same time, the bottom-up hive mind will never take us to our end goal. We are too impatient. So we add design and top down control to get where we want to go. That is …