Conference in Spain

ALE - Asociación por la Libre Educación
November 5-8, 2009
Pabellón de Cristal, Casa de Campo, Madrid

If you're on facebook, you can follow their discussions by becoming a fan of their association. click here.

Otherwise Instructed: Issues in Education

Two articles by Nicky Hardenbergh of Massachusetts, stored on her site http://www.otherwiseinstructed.com:

Validity of high stakes standardized test requirements for homeschoolers: a psychometric analysis (.pdf copy of the 2008 paper)

From the paper:

In this paper, I demonstrate, through reference to the extensive psychometric literature, that the psychometric tool prescribed in current high stakes homeschool policies, a norm-referenced standardized test, is invalid for use in a high stakes testing policy. Norm-referenced test scores may not validly be used to determine if a student meets a given standard of performance.

I go on to examine another testing tool proposed by some policymakers: the state-specific high stakes criterion-referenced tests administered to public school students in every state. While theoretically valid for determining a standard of performance, such tests would be problematic for use in the homeschooling context. I end by reviewing the setting of cut points on high stakes tests, showing that, to a very large extent, the entire controversy of high stakes testing can be reduced to the question of the validity of the cut point.

After considering the psychometric evidence, I conclude that current and proposed high stakes standardized requirements for homeschoolers are baseless. Policies based on such requirements are a waste of taxpayer dollars and a needless imposition on homeschooling families.

Through the Lens of Homeschooling: A Response to Michael Apple and Rob Reich (.pdf copy of the September 2004 paper)

From the paper:

Michael Apple and Rob Reich speculate that the practice of homeschooling will have negative consequences for our society. Apple contends homeschooling contributes to the “withering” of our “very sense of public responsibility,” and Reich speaks of “the civic perils of homescholing.” Michael Apple is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and Rob Reich is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Ethics in Society at Stanford University. Both men were scheduled as participants in a panel discussion held at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association. The session was entitled, "Educational Choice versus Civic Responsibility: Are Home Schoolers Embracing Their Responsibilities or Fleeing from Them?” I wrote this article in anticipation of their participation on that panel. The other two panel members were Scott Somerville, an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), and Brian Ray, founder of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI).

A copy of this paper, with minor revisions, appeared in:

Homeschooling in full view -- a Reader
Edited by Bruce S. Cooper, Fordham University

How Video Games are Good for the Brain

Steph, an unschooling mom, sent this and wrote, "It doesn't come right out and say they make you smarter, but scientists at MIT are finding some games do have a positive effect on brain development. It is nice that people have finally started to see that when a kid is playing a game, he might be 'in the zone,' but he is not 'zoned out'."

How Video Games are Good for the Brain, on the Boston Globe site

"Video games are hard,'' said Eric Klopfer, the director of MIT's Education Arcade, which studies and develops educational video games. "People don't like to play easy games, and games have figured out a way to encourage players to persist at solving challenging problems.''

The games aren't just hard - they're adaptively hard. They tend to challenge people right at the edge of their abilities; as players get better and score more points, they move up to more demanding levels of play. This adaptive challenge is "stunningly powerful'' for learning, said John Gabrieli, a neuroscientist at MIT.

Adult Illiteracy in the U.S.

CBS Sunday Morning (an American news magazine on CBS television) ran a piece on illiteracy.

I was out of the room without a pen, but there was a quote close to this (maybe just this): "They take on an enormous burden of guilt."

"They" (illiterate teens and adults) do not "take on guilt." They have it heaped and poured and shoveled onto them from the first time they fail to sound out a word to the time they're branded "slow" or "non-reading."

I was thinking that the article didn't say anything that unschoolers don't discuss regularly (at least in the discussions with which I'm familiar), but that's not so. What unschoolers don't know is the *very* high statistics on non-readers among those who have grown up and graduated from school.

One of their main examples was a man with grandchildren who has succeeded in life, had a house, raised kids, did well, but when they talked to him about memories of being ashamed and belittled, he said he still hears those voices, and he cried. He has learned to read, and can read books to his grandchildren.

Schools really need to stop ruining people's ability to read. If they could accept that happy kids can and do learn to read at later ages than six or seven or eight, they could improve their stats and countless lives.

The video isn't on the site yet; I'm not sure if it will be. If someone sees or finds it, please leave a link below, or links to the stats they cited. I didn't take notes, hoping it would be on their website.

I know of no unschoolers who failed to learn to read on their own, with help and encouragement. I was surprised by the statistics on the number of schooled kids who could not read as adults, and who get tears in their eyes just thinking about it.

From home schooling to 'unschooling'

September 3 Baltimore Sun Story:

From home schooling to 'unschooling'
Parents believe in letting children set the pace

Several people were interviewed, the negative "balance" isn't too bad, and it's well done. I wish the editors had let the writer, Joe Burris, go on at greater length, because it seems a lot of prep was done for it.

As usual, some of the online comments are hostile and goofy.

Note from the day after, from my friend Leon: Hey Sandra, You've probably already been forwarded this, but just in case you haven't: http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/parenting/bal-md.pa.unschooling03sep03,0,7747410.story I'm a devout Slashdot reader, and their commentaries are often more insightful than the original article (or at least humorous). I haven't read the Slashdot commentary yet, though. http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/09/04/1511238/Schooling-Homeschooling-and-Now-Unschooling

"What About Qualifications?"

Education Otherwise (U.K.) video:

Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think

Joyce Fetteroll sent this:

There's a very unschool friendly article in the NY Times today— that isn't even about unschooling. :-)

Written by a researcher, she's discovering what we already know but with the added patina of science to give it more weight.

Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/opinion/16gopnik.html

(At one time you needed to register to see articles. Not sure if that's still true.)

Excerpt:

Babies and young children are designed to explore, and they should be encouraged to do so.

The learning that babies and young children do on their own, when they carefully watch an unexpected outcome and draw new conclusions from it, ceaselessly manipulate a new toy or imagine different ways that the world might be, is very different from schoolwork. Babies and young children can learn about the world around them through

Informal Learning: An Interview With Dr Alan Thomas

This is the second in the series of videos commissioned by Education Otherwise.

Dr Thomas is a developmental psychologist, author and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Education. Interviewed at HESFES, Dr Thomas explains about his research into how children learn and his investigation into autonomous, or informal learning.

Visit http://www.education-otherwise.org for more information and subscribe to our channel http://www.youtube.com/EducationOtherwise

"...a Soviet-style government-run monopoly "

U.S. 'Soviet-style' education system not cutting it
by Clark Howard, CNN.com

While this article is not about homeschooling, it does make points of which homeschoolers have long been aware. It's brief, it has grace and humor, and it has truth.

One quote that takes it beyond unschooling, homeschooling OR school, to tax expenditure, is:

Do you think this whole issue doesn't affect you because you don't have kids? Think again. Huge amounts of your taxes are still spent to support schools that are failures.

"Yes," and reading, and thinking

"Yes"
Joyce Fetteroll on Logic (and unschooling)