Friday, March 13, 2009

"Endless Summer"

Endless Summer
By Sarah Karnasiewicz
Salon.com


The article isn't new, but I didn't want to lose this quote if it disappears:
"When you buy a curriculum and set your kids down five days a week, except in the summer, all you're doing is playing school at home," says Sandra Dodd, a mother of three unschooled children from Albuquerque, N.M., and an outspoken unschooling advocate. "Most home-schoolers, especially Christian home-schoolers, believe that schools are too liberal and too lax," she explains. "On the other hand, unschoolers believe that schools are too inflexible. Our objections to school are 180 degrees apart from their objections. And so we are not only not on the same team, but school is actually closer to what they're doing than we are."

3 comments:

Tori said...

WOW! What a powerful statement.

What if a person was indoctrinated into the Public School way of "educating" by their own choice to study to become a teacher... and then they realized Public Schools were DANGEROUS, inflexible, too liberal, inefficient at dissemination of information, etc and decided only school at home would come close to being appropriate for her children. In researching the matter, she realized UNschooling was the preferable mode of educating her children, but then she didn't really know HOW to do it? What if she did use subject curriculums, but not for every subject? Could she be a partial unschooler? Is there such a degree of grey? I would like to be a complete unschooler, but I don't trust myself! How do I change this? I would appreciate your thoughts!!

Sandra Dodd said...

that first part, about being a teacher, just makes you one of many. Check here for locals or for a Christian unschooling source (if you think schools are too liberal)
SandraDodd.com/world
or for more general unschooling info:
SandraDodd.com/help

Sandra Dodd said...

I mean to say that I don't think "partial unschooling" ever lets unschooling work at all.