Thread:Curious about homeschooling (2)

Well, this is a hard question. For me, it's a "lifestyle" choice. I have a vision for what "pursuing an education" should be like and when my boys attended primary school, our experience was not at all what I wanted, for me or them. Too much crying, frustration, and learning to "hate" certain subjects. If my younger son had to read all of the required books in school, I'm pretty sure he'd graduate "hating" reading. What a shame that is. I'm lucky to be in a situation where we have enough money to be comfortable without my having a "regular" job.

I cherish having the freedom to encourage my children's education as we see fit. We use a self-directed student-centric approach, where the learner decides what's important to him and then we work together to lay out and implement an educational plan. Some call this method "eclectic", meaning that we use lots of different styles and methods. Some homeschoolers replicate the school methods at home--timing, subjects, teaching methods... I don't see this as helpful for me. Others use a method called "unschooling" that works from the premise that people are learning all of the time, and that education comes from living a life (the author John Holt coined the term). I'm not sure if we're unschoolers or not. I'm not sure why homeschooling has grown, except to say that it offers a wonderful life and maybe more and more people can see that and choose it for themselves, if they can.

The potential of homeschooling is, IMHO, the implementation of self-directed, student-centric learning. I'm just finishing the book "Disrupting Class" by Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, Michael B. Horn. Their premise is that over the next few years methods of educating children are going to move sharply toward computer-based courses and then to student-centric learning, based in online adaptive learning tools. I think wikieducator will be part of making this happen. The authors are likely talking only about the USA, but I think student-centric learning will become the dominant paradigm world-wide, hopefully in my lifetime.

I'm interested to see how countries that don't allow homeschooling will deal with this change. I wonder if entrenched schools will be capable of making the shift, and what will happen if they don't.

--Alison Snieckus 03:41, 10 February 2009 (UTC)