My oldest is now almost 17, my youngest is 12. They are 2 of the brightest, most sensitive, most caring, most intelligent, most free examples of human life that has yet evolved on this planet. They taught themselves everything they needed to know when they came to a time when they felt it necessary to learn and this includes reading and math and things those of us raised in institutional learning establishments have been trained to believe is important. At the same time they never had to get up early or waste countless hours of their lives in boring classes and they got to spend important time with their family and friends that we all missed growing up.
I know its popular to insult this lifestyle as slacking off and write it off as poor parenting or worse. I don't understand why. Why would a lifestyle motivated by a family's desire to spend as much time together as possible and enable your children to live free lives unencumbered by unnecessary authoritarian learning systems developed before WWII?
Do some research on this if you're a parent or plan to be before you judge these ideas so harshly. Its easy enough to find information on how our present system of education evolved, and since we experienced it all first hand ourselves - we all know its shortcomings.
Finally, I recommend this book: Parenting a Free Child, an Unschooled Life by Rue Kream (shameless plug, full disclosure; author is my wife) at www.freechild.info
Its really time we allowed our children to learn to think for themselves again
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My oldest is now almost 17, my youngest is 12. They are 2 of the brightest, most sensitive, most caring, most intelligent, most free examples of human life that has yet evolved on this planet. They taught themselves everything they needed to know when they came to a time when they felt it necessary to learn and this includes reading and math and things those of us raised in institutional learning establishments have been trained to believe is important. At the same time they never had to get up early or waste countless hours of their lives in boring classes and they got to spend important time with their family and friends that we all missed growing up. I know its popular to insult this lifestyle as slacking off and write it off as poor parenting or worse. I don't understand why. Why would a lifestyle motivated by a family's desire to spend as much time together as possible and enable your children to live free lives unencumbered by unnecessary authoritarian learning systems developed before WWII? Do some research on this if you're a parent or plan to be before you judge these ideas so harshly. Its easy enough to find information on how our present system of education evolved, and since we experienced it all first hand ourselves - we all know its shortcomings. Finally, I recommend this book: Parenting a Free Child, an Unschooled Life by Rue Kream (shameless plug, full disclosure; author is my wife) at www.freechild.info Its really time we allowed our children to learn to think for themselves again