Educación Sin Escuela and Other News

UN MUNDO POR APRENDER: Educación sin Escuela (ESE), Autoaprendizaje Colaborativo (AC) y Educación en Familia (EF). Edited by Erwin Fabián García López.

For those who understand Spanish and want to know more about homeschooling, this new book is for you. The National University of Colombia, in Bogota, has held three conferences about learning without schools, autodidactic and collaborative learning models, education in family settings, and flexi-schooling models. The articles are based on presentations given at the first two conferences, including my keynote speech for the first conference in 2009, The Challenges Homeschooling Presents to Social Science Research (revised for the new book; I’ll add the updated version to my website soon).

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The Alternative Education Resource Organization has given its website a facelift, adding many new articles, especially from homeschooling sources.

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Libertarians have supported homeschooling part of their platform for individual freedom for a long time and this new article, In Praise of Homeschools, from the Ludwig von Mises Institute is another solid example.

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Michelle Barone is a professional counselor whose work I’ve enjoyed at several homeschooling and unschooling conferences. She is presenting a free workshop via teleconference, Finding Your Way: Unlimited Possibilities in Your Unschooling Life, that may interest you.

The Dark Side of Government Schooling in Sweden

In 2011 Sweden banned homeschooling "except under exceptional circumstances," forcing some families to immediately leave the country in order to continue homeschooling and others to stay and see what would happen. Those who stayed have faced very stiff fines for every day they homeschool their children, though to date no one has been taken to court for payment. But it appears this will soon change. Swedish educationists want to be sure that children have the right to go to school, but not the reciprocal right to decline and learn in other types of settings, such as at home and in their communities. A strange “right” this is—the right to be forced to attend school under threat of fines, the right to lose your children to social services, and the right to only follow instructions from government agencies about what you can and can’t do for your children’s education.

There is a Swedish news article about making this explicit in their law; my friends in Sweden have translated this blog entry by one of the proposal’s proponents, Lotta Edholm:

Today I have written an opinion piece together with Ann-Katrin Åslund (Liberal Party) in Aftonbladet asking that the social services act be changed so that the social authorities have the possibility act when children are held from away school by their parents - often for religious or ideological reasons. Every child has a right to an education. The school law states that education shall "be designed in accordance with democratic values and human rights". This is incompatible with a system where parents simply can refuse to send their children to school and the social services has no support in law to intervene. Deputy Minister of Social Affairs, Maria Larsson, who is also responsible for conditions for children, should take an initiative to change the social services act so that the social authorities can intervene when children are kept away from school by their parents.

There are significant differences in social attitudes and laws between Sweden and the United States, so it is not useful to simply say that US law is better than Swedish law and they should be more like us. But there is a very strong assumption by the Swede’s that education is a science that can only performed by those who are certified in it, and challenging that perception may be the hinge for successfully challenging the Swedish homeschooling ban. Here are some ideas on that topic:

If there is one correct way to educate all children, why are there so many different pedagogies? If education is only the result of instruction performed by professionals in schools, why do countries with lots of educational options, such as Finland and Denmark, flourish? There is a large research base that supports informal learning and other models besides government schooling: How does Sweden justify ignoring a human’s innate ability to learn on his or her own, as we’ve done for centuries before compulsory schooling became the norm (around 1850), as well as all the research that supports intrinsic motivation, autodidactic behavior, and learning by doing as deep sources for educational excellence? What about the Pippi Longstockings—those children who do not respond to control and prediction in classroom settings but nonetheless succeed in life? Getting parents involved in their children's education is vital according to every piece of research I have read, so why must parents stop at a certain point? Why must education be either/or (school/homeschool) and not both/and? I can go on, but I’ll stop here for now.

Underlying a lot of this discussion, from what I can tell by reading in translation, is also a fear of “the other”: people whose religious, educational, or political beliefs are different from the government’s beliefs. We have struggled with this issue in our own country and have created a pluralist society that tolerates many ways of living and growing, though it is hardly perfect. Nonetheless, we are at least making an effort at inclusion in the United States; it remains to be seen if such tolerance for “the other” will continue in Sweden.

Young, Smart, Influential at 17 and Homeschooled

Javier Fernandez-Han was recently named by Forbes Magazine as “one of the most influential people in the nation under 30 in the energy industry;” he invented a process that “uses algae to turn sewage into fuel.” A local news feature about him and his award notes:

Javier is home schooled, something his parents decided to do because of their own educational experiences.

"At least for me, I came out of college pretty much useless. You give me a test, I can take it, but who's going to pay me to take a test?" Javier's father, Peter, said.

As more parents reflect on their schooling I hope they, too, will consider homeschooling an option—not because homeschooling is a better type of school, but because it can be a totally different educational experience than school.

If you look through the Forbe’s Energy list there are four people who are 19 or younger, which is pretty inspiring (I wish there were more information about their efforts; you get no feeling about hard it was for them to get their ideas off the ground and be taken seriously). It appears from the text that three of them were in high school when they developed their new ideas, so one can’t claim it is homeschooling that makes a difference for young inventors.

However, one can claim that homeschooling did not diminish the chances of this young man succeeding as an inventor. On the video attached to the local news story the announcer says, “The parents wanted to empower their children to make a difference in the world no matter how old they are.” Javier’s parents reiterate this point eloquently in the video, and I think it is an important point for any adult who works with children. All too often, adults have nothing but the lowest expectations about what children will do other than “have fun and cause trouble” if they are given freedom to learn. But it doesn’t have to be this way; there are other ways of relating to and living with children besides just educating them to do as you say.

 There are many ways to succeed in life, but our culture’s infatuation with human-made systems makes it seem that only by graduating from a school system can you even begin to think about becoming successful. Don’t tell these Forbes winners though—three of them haven’t graduated from high school yet and the fourth has decided to forgo college!

I can’t say that the other three students greatly benefitted from a standard high school laboratory and science curriculum, but I can say those things are not decisive factors for being a successful inventor. Just ask Javier Fernandez-Han.

We've Got to Be That Light

Dr. Jeff Goldstein of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education contacted me about helping him to spread the word about an inspirational video he made based on a keynote address he presented to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) National Conference in San Francisco. He wrote,

 

I received the comment below from YouTube on 11/30/11 from a homeschool mom that was touched by the video. It really got me thinking deeply about the vital importance of homeschooling, and homeschool moms and dads, as a fundamental element of national education. I think the video might be a wonderful thank you for homeschoolers.

 Here is the homeschooling mother’s comment he is referring to:

As a homeschooling mother, I am a teacher of one child. It is very challenging, but also full of the freedom to teach the way she needs. However, I miss the inspiration and support that school teachers get from the school system. Your video brought me to tears, because it gave me that inspiration that I need, in my isolation. I also loved the groove of the musicalization of your speech; it was very artful. I'll be sharing this with all the homeschooling moms I know. Thank you.

The powerful institutions that control schooling refuse to cooperate or otherwise support homeschooling (see the NEA resolution, section B-82), but there are individuals and smaller groups within those places who nonetheless reach out and consider homeschoolers allies and not enemies (and vice versa). In this spirit, here is Dr. Jeff’s video.

Joy in Learning

Joy in learning is rarely addressed as far as conventional compulsory education goes; however, words like “expectations,” “accountability,” and “rigor” have accumulated around education like flies to fruit; now we pay more attention to the flies than the fruit! It also seems that parents have lost trust in the value of children’s play, with pressures mounting to put children, at ever-younger ages, into controlled education environments in the hope it will make them successful adults. In the name of academic achievement we are depriving our children of the vast quantities of quiet time and personal interactions with other people that are needed to create a self, learn how to solve their own problems, master their emotions, and participate well in group settings. These things can’t be easily structured into a state or national curriculum and that is probably why schools discount them. However, homeschooling allows you and your children to own your schedules, so you have the time to appreciate and leverage your children’s natural tendency to play and learn. I hope the stories and articles in this issue help you feel how desirable it is to remain playful through all our life.

The HoltGWS Newsletter 2 is free.