Crazy and sane, just sitting there.

The 6 Dumbest Things Schools Are Doing in the Name of Safety

My niece, Gina, who was unschooled and is now grown, sent this link. It's at Cracked.com, which is a humor site, but this article isn't very funny. There are links directly to news reports of new, surprisingly not-meant-to-be-funny, controlling and limiting rules in some real American schools and school districts. THIS is where unschoolers come from.

Brie Jontry, who is the unschooling mom of an artistic young daughter, sent this, and I'll keep the note in which it was delivered:

I just read a timely piece in the New York Times titled, "Our Plugged-In Summer." It was timely for two reasons: this post and the general on-going conversation among new-to-unschooling, and the not-so-new, about all the learning that happens as a result of ALL kinds of media and, I recently commented on another list that seeing kids as "plugged-in" isn't helpful for teasing apart concerns about TV and computers. After all, kids (and adults) aren't machines that need an external power supply.

Anyway, here's that article....
"instead of avoiding the Internet while we were on vacation, my family and I made good use of it, and it rewarded us in many ways"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/fashion/this-life-a-plugged-in-summer.html?_r=1

......and, because I often hear Sandra's voice in my head, commenting on my thoughts, here's a link to her page on "Balancing in the Middle Ground"

http://www.sandradodd.com/balance

Brie

Those who sent the links are involved with unschooling. Those who wrote the articles are not (as far as I know). —Sandra