tasmlab

Hi Ccuthbert, we're coming around the more we talk to people. We've been at it for about 22 days so far and most initial plans have been chucked. My misuse of the term 'unschool' aside, just hearing what others do day-to-day has been helpful. THanks! We had to cut down to accommodate their daily prayer schedule. Can't be praying if you've got your nose stuck in a book!

This is politically incorrect/racist enough to be a felony, and perhaps a digression, but illustrates that we're not the first ones to question poverty in Africa: "Since the dawn of history the Black Man has owned the continent of Africa – rich beyond the dream of poet's fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet and yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud. With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail.” — Charles Darwin I'm not suggesting that this is conclusive, but it may not just be capital theory, knowledge, political caste, freedom, etc., that alone drives some cultures to retain their impoverished status. It's an ugly line of thinking to be sure.

I'm just scanning your post seeing all of the HOURS of talking in the first week. Looks awesome! Stuff about relationship two years/two months ago, etc. Who cares? The potentially good ones don't come at neatly calculated time intervals from central planning. Go with it!

I'd say this goose is cooked. If you don't really love him, the rest is just piling on. Go and be free. Some people don't even finish college or have their first kiss by your age. You've lost nothing and can only possibly makes things worse for no reason. Might as well go file tomorrow morning when the office opens. (disclosure: I'm just a stranger on the internet. Peace!)

I would guess because they are skeptical of the status quo and of the stories they hear from news/govt/schools/etc.

That's a very sweet post! I don't know how old you are, but you'd be shocked at how quickly 20-30 goes. 10 years may be too long to wait. My wife and I started our family when she was about 32 which seemed young to us. After taking some time to get preggers, lapses between kids, etc., she was nearing 40 by the time we had our third and then essentially ran out of time to safely have numbers 4, 5 and 6. And our friends who started late and had miscarriages had it even worse.

You can see that the headline/idea is being presented like it's this unthought-of, unprecedented program born out of a staggering amount of common sense. No houses? Give em' a house! But don't we have decades of data on this? There's housing projects, alphabet cities, section 8 like in every state which are the same idea.

Nope. No jobs in philosophy except perhaps teaching. There was even a thread here where a philosophy student was wondering why his philosophy professor at his po-dunk midwestern state college had a Harvard PhD teaching the class and that's because that was the only job a PhD in philosophy can get. But two other considerations: - If you go to college to enjoy yourself, meet friends, chat with girls, learn how to drink beer, don't spend too much money etc., and just need a diploma to enter the job market, philosophy is just as valuable as any other nonsense degree such as english, communications, sociology, psych, anthropology, reading, acting, finger painting etc. It would at least show that you are awake and thinking. - I'm not a big fan of using what you really enjoy as a means to pay bills, because too often you'll have to screw one or both up to keep them the same. I.e., you will have to compromise your philosophy (say, teaching Plato and Decarte to disinterested undergrads) or screw up your money making ability (say, working at a college teaching philosophy) It'd be better to become an oil baron or something and then study the philosophy that you enjoy from your yacht.

But dude, you're wearing shades!

Eh, you are consuming a bit of media that's a little off the center of mainstream but still have advertisements on TV for the most part. There's a long tail out there and different strokes for different folks. Now, when you start liking weird stuff like stapling your testicles to a board or dressing like a bronie, get back to us.

HOA's usually only cover a few blocks, are contractual, are small enough to walk out of. In my own personal conjecture, I would think an anarchistic society would probably still have lots of these and they would resemble little block-sized governments (in a sense) as people decided to mutualize boring stuff like waste water and playground maintenance. For an argument from EFFECT, HOAs actually give you stuff. Ours does lawn maintenance, road maintenance, runs a central swimming pool, playground, tennis courts, etc. This may sound like a government, but they don't run a military, attack other countries, send pot dealers to prison, give subsidies to banks and corporations, inhibit the economy, run a welfare state, force children to go to school, manipulate currencies... Actually, if the government was just like a HOA, I would probably limit my anarchism to just complaining on discussion forums. Um, er...

If we want to beat down the rich kids' privilege, we probably shouldn't wait until inheritance time. Why wait until the parents die? We should strip them before they even eat their first bite of caviar via silver spoon. They could well get their PhD from Harvard Medical School long before dad croaks. I sort of get the emotional tug of this idea (abolishing inheritance) looking from the children's point of view backwards (e.g., why do some kids get money) but not from the parents' POV down e.g., "I want to give my children the property I have." That all before you get into property, theft, or the yucky idea of pumping all that cash through the government for them to handle - even if the government were completely moral and efficient.

Hi Josh, Adie (age 8) likes: - Bike riding - Minecraft - Wii, Legend of Zelda in particular - Horseback riding - Karate (at least she likes the class she takes) - Her hamster, Gilbert - Ancient Egypt - Drawing and painting - Playing with toys (currently a country playmobile set) - Cooking and cooking TV shows - Playing with friends - Performing magic (on and off) - Theatre/acting That's all that coming to me in a minute of thinking. She was an excellent student in PS. She also tends to be a rule follower, like she worries if she sees somebody at the movie theatre with their feet up on the seat.

Around the end of point two he finally comes out and just wants to make working not something people have to do, esp. in the light of our self replicating robots. This article went around in my facebook circle and it even made some lefties wince.

My idea behind the write-ups is to encourage active literacy i.e., encourage writing skills. I will not make them mandatory nor universal but will instead recommend that she records how she wishes. We'll have to do documentation of some sort for state reporting, but I think you are right that the plan has too much and seems dictated/positioned to make too much needless and probably crappy busy work. The spelling and grammar was a reaction to the curriculum request the state-approved homeschooling association requested. I sort of soured when I saw it. I personally make a pretty good living as a professional writer and I didn't really learn grammar rules in depth until I was 30. I'll probably buy a book or two to make the association happy, offer them if she wants them, and then just provide correction or direction as needed. She doesn't need to do weekly lessons. Hi LanceD, I've heard variations on this story over and over the more I read. It's just taking me a long time to get my head around going from the scramble to get the kids on the bus for public school to embrace self-directed learning. I really appreciate your story. I'm going to send it to my wife. As an aside, we just ordered Skylanders swap force for my five year old son. Glad to hear that it was fun. Reading has been a mix for him, as we play lots of reading video games (Legend of Zelda series in particular). He gets frustrated that he can't read at times but then doesn't necessarily want to learn. My five year ols She watches a lot of youtube videos (this month is a lot of the minecraft guys) and wanted to create her own a few months ago. We filmed it but couldn't get the footage to load on the computer (this is a longer, boring story), but now I'm investing in getting her and her brother set up to do video production. They are both really excited. For me, I think it would be a great skill to have in our era, even vocationally. And I thought it would be a good way to make the state recording compliance stuff more valuable. Ron Paul also recommends it in his homeschooling book to teach public speaking and technology.

Hi everyone, thanks again for your review! As you know, this isn't a theoretical forum discussion. Three real live kids are at stake! I may reflect on specific comments, but here's what I'm taking at a high level: Put my daughter in the drivers seat: Have my daughter come up what she wants to do, be sure it is a conversation and put her in charge. Got it! That was my intention although it doesn't come across in the document. She'll still need my help and I should introduce her to options, but, again, not make it a tops-down directive of any sort. Still WAY to schooly: We've come a long way in the past four weeks since we've made the decision (The Calvert catalog already long ago trashed) but I should still throw this much structure out the window and not try to replicate school at home. Screw the state: Some mixed notions on what we'll have to demonstrate to the state, and I'm still not completely sure how closely they will audit. We do have to keep documentation and prove progress. This said, I can fake my way through government paperwork as well as anybody and what the state wants shouldn't be driving actual knowledge attainment. _________________________________________________

Agreed that elementary math is as tedious as it comes, mostly memorizing computations (arithmetic) with little mathematic thought. Grace Llewlyn recommends "Mr. Anno's" book which are logic/math-based stories and puzzles that have nothing to do with memorizing tables but encourage mathematical thinking. I have it on order, haven't seen it yet, and don't know much about it.

I meant both, as in "I recommend we try at least this much in a month to start." Yea, the bible study and spankings were a joke just for the FDR crowd. My idea for the first month was to see if she could finish by the end of the month as a goal. If she wanted to do her math all in one day, on the last day of the month that would be fine. If she didn't complete it then we'd explore why and see if we wanted to do something different. Great points, Lians. You make a good point about disciplines vs. activities and the need to explain the state obligations. According to law we have to cover reading, writing, math, social studies, and science. The main directive (bad term, perhaps) is to read or watch video and than express a reaction back with the subject matter being her choosing. This still may be too structured. And I haven't decided how much math we'll grudge through either. I guess it depends on if she likes it or not. It was a strong subject in PS. Thanks all (so far) for your thoughts!

Thanks self-excavator! Yes, we're going to solicit her input and it won't be rigid. My thought is that this will be a starting point as we take her from the lock down of public school to pointing to some of the things she can do with minimal instructions. Honestly, I'm hoping something grabs her and she runs with it. We also have to at least have a paper trail for the state it seems, so some of the structure will also be theatre for administrators.

Hi FDR friends! Here's a draft of my first unschooling/homeschooling monthly plan for my eight-year-old daughter. I'm brand new to this and my wife and I are fighting pangs to get too schooly at home. Let me know if you think this is too structured, too vague, concerns, additions, etc. It's being deployed on Monday. This is essentially a list of activities to be completed each month. It feels open to me but should only take about 1/8 the time going to school full time would take, so there is still lots of free/self directed time. My five year old's is much less. Thanks in advance! _____________________________________ Adie’s recommended minimum monthly homeschool activities (draft) Month ______________________________________ Grade 3. Reading and writing: 1 fiction book, Adie’s choice, age appropriate (continually more advanced) 1 Non-fiction book (science, history, tutorial, geography, biography etc.), Adie’s choice For each book, a scripted Youtube report to be created, 2-4 minutes in length. To be posted to Adie’s website in video and text form. Fiction report can be speech/talking head. Non-fiction report should include photos/video/diagrams or other explanatory images. Parents to recommend literature as appropriate to sub self selection now and then Note: Library trips or Amazon used bookstore needed Writing: Ongoing or multiple fiction or non-fiction projects of Adie’s choosing (e.g., Gilbert’s diary, short stories, other report). Adie’s discretion Progress shown over time Scripted video production counts Published online at Adie’s website Spelling and grammar: Spelling and grammar book lessons as appropriate Spelling and grammar apps on computer. Math: Four lessons per month from somewhere like: Khan Academy Brainpop Itunes U IXL Sub mathbook progress as applicable. More is dandy Science and social studies: Two video lectures/lessons/documentaries per month Adie chosen and parent recommended. Half page written review (typed) for web site Youtube review OK Can sub videos for books or articles (Note: Mom and dad to create list of good sources/sites) Art and music: Consider lessons in either/or Explore at home Physical activities: Multiple lessons/clubs to be attended (horseback riding, karate, soccer, track, gymnastics, swim team, etc.) To be signed up with mom Home economics: Cooking, weekly Chores, weekly Personal finance, as needed Family educational field trips: At least one (hopefully more) trip to location to learn something (nature center, museum, class etc.) Document through half page write up or video Self directed projects: Any other hobbies encouraged and/but we’ll need to remember to write about them, photograph outcomes or create youtubes to document progress. Could include pet owning (hamster), collecting, sewing, webpage, writing, crafts, etc. Other group events: TBD Bible Studies and corporeal punishment 10 hours bible study per day including weekends Mandatory spankings for every mistake, daily. _________________________

Thanks! Nothing has really happened yet. The two school-agers had their last day of public school on December 9th, we moved across country and then took the x-mas/new years holiday. I've put together a really basic program on paper, ordered them new computers and have looked up some things we are going to do in our new community. The kids are excited. We have to document to a degree their 'schooling, so we're going to experiment with a lot of video production and web development and they are bonkers excited about this. I'll keep everyone posted. I'm planning on posting the 'plan' here soon and would love other people's feedback. We still get these (wrong) pangs to replicate a school-like curriculum at home when we probably need more wait-n-see at this point.

Are you crazy head-over-heels in love with him? I would start with that. If you are thinking about divorce solely on worldview, your heart may not be in the mix. More of a general observation, but at 20* you were still obviously still drinking from the firehose of change and learning. Fresh out of being parented and indoctrinated to finding the likes of what people think here is EPIC. I mean, you probably aren't mentally settled yet and who would want to be at 23? From a practical standpoint, if you are emotionally done with him, you and everyone will be unscathed by a divorce. I'd be surprised if you have assets at this point, no kids.... you are just doing paperwork with the government at this point. Like breaking up a teenage love affair and getting a new drivers' license at the same time. But that last sentiment is only heartless if you are bonkers in love. I'd start there. * (Any age really, I'm not suggesting this is easy for anyone of any age)

This is quite common in my experience. We've long had agreements with both sides of my family (mine and my wife's) that adults wouldn't exchange presents. Mostly because we found ourselves just laboring to find something - anything - that somehow a normal adult wouldn't just buy themselves. The children all get gifts though, and lots of them.

Amen brother! Apparently 13 years, five days a week of public education seems to be inadequate to produce someone of even marginal utility.

Not to be morbid, but if she has a lot of medical problems, smokes, etc., you may get another go around while you are still youngish. Even have kids perhaps.