- A chance to excel? A school district in Colorado is eliminating both grades and grade levels in a radical attempt to help its students learn. In theory, students assume more responsibility for their own learning, and take as long or as short a time as they need to advance from one level of the material to another. This has enormous potential for good, though I’ll withhold judgement until I see whether or not it truly encourages students to learn more, faster, or if administrators will be content with results like a first grade classroom that took a year “to create—and refine—a classroom code of conduct…which includes items such as "don't hit people" and "we will not play with hair."
-
Food for thought. From Percival Blakeney Academy, a thoughtful look at homeschooling
through an analogy with home cooking.
[Wh]at about a family eating a meal planned by the mom but cooked by a housekeeper or cook? Or a takeout meal served at home on one's own dishes? Or a frozen lasagna baked in your own oven with bakery bread and your own salad? Or a make ahead meal prepped in a commercial dinners-to-go kitchen by the mom from their menu card and then cooked up weeks later at home? Which of these is home cooking and which isn't? Is there a difference between home cooking and eating at home (and does the difference matter)?
- The Great Homeschooling Divide (or one of them). Here’s a mom who effectively voices the position of those who homeschool because they believe public/private schools aren’t good/affordable enough. My gut reaction is, these people don’t GET homeschooling AT ALL. But that’s unfair. Finding no suitable alternative is a legitimate reason for homeschooling, as long as it’s understood that if every school were suddenly, magically perfect for everyone, many of us would still insist on home learning. To borrow from the above-mentioned analogy, I don’t care how great the restaurant is, it will never replace the family dinner table.
- In case you thought your state's homeschooling requirements were onerous. Educating Germany, a website in English—though some links are to articles in German—in support of educational freedom in Germany, in which homeschooling your children is likely to result in having them forcibly removed from your home.
-
Legislation, sausage...and textbooks. Did you ever thumb through your child’s textbook and lament,
“Who writes these things, anyway?” Turns
out that’s a dangerous as wondering what went into the hot dog you just swallowed. More so, maybe. A former editor at a major textbook publisher
tells what you don’t want to
know.
I got a hint of things to come when I overheard my boss lamenting, "The books are done and we still don't have an author! I must sign someone today!"
From sausage to Switzerland, it is somehow relevant that Stephan and I recently bought a Swiss cooking book called "Tiptopf." It also happens to be the textbook that has been used in Swiss home-economic classrooms for many years and one that most students still have years after graduating. It is a good book full of helpful information in a usable form. It has gone through revisions, but I'm sure it doesn't cost them 60 million every six years.
You know it's a good textbook if it's still in use after graduation!
