Chelsea Link, 18, Homeschooled, Accepted to Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, U of Chicago, and Northwestern

Chelsea Link says this about her extraordinary, yet relaxed, life: “I think I’ve had a pretty normal high school experience . . . just without the high school.”

Another interesting quote by Christopher Watson, admissions dean at Northwestern, “We haven’t changed the way we review applications, but the way home-schoolers are submitting applications has changed,” he said. “They’ve become very good at taking out the question marks.”

Perhaps it’s a combination of the two? Northwestern may not have changed it’s admissions process, but other universities have.

Congratulations Chelsea! Reading science magazines and playing music is a fine way to go through childhood.

Songs by Geniuses Who Didn’t Belong in School

As we all know, school isn’t the best match for those who are highly creative. It’s no wonder, then, that many songs by talented artists express criticism of school. People of genius, and that includes musicians, don’t belong in school.

I was listening to some Paul Simon today, who is undoubtedly a musical genius, and heard this song, called Kodachrome.

Kodachrome – Words & music by Paul Simon

When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of edu—cation
Hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the worlds a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my kodachrome away

If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know theyd never match
My sweet imagination
And everything looks worse in black and white

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the worlds a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my kodachrome away

I wonder though, if kids of genius aren’t forced to go to school, where will they place their creative angst? And what would they write about? Perhaps geniuses need something to rebel against, to ignite that passionate spirit and to create amazing works of art? What do you think? Can a comfortable and happy genius still create inspired works of art?

Stumble It!

MIT Courseware for High Schoolers and Teachers/Parents

MIT has had its college level open courseware available for a while. Now, they are introducing a new set of online self-paced courses for the high schooler, or adults who would like to brush up on high-school level material.

Teens – Get a Job!

When I was a teen, I always had a job. Not because I needed money, but because if I didn’t have one, I knew I’d be hanging with the stone-heads instead. And, well, to be honest, it got me away from my family and from school where I least wanted to be.
I worked at a music and video store for a long time, and got all the inside info about local concerts. So, I worked my butt off stocking and working the register, then spent all my money on gas, insurance and concerts. I think I saw 15 or so Oingo Boingo concerts, in addition to Bruce Springsteen, De La Soul, The Cure, U2, Huey Lewis and the News, Depeche Mode, Erasure… ah, those were shining times during very difficult years.

Then, later, I worked in a book store. What an AWESOME place to work, especially for a logical/print learner like me – I got to SORT and READ! It was like Christmas everyday. Lastly, I worked for many years at a computer lab. Also great for a communicator/teacher like me.

My jobs gave meaning to my life as a teen. And gave me something to identify myself with, somewhere to go, and I felt important – I was the music/book/computer expert. Not the one being told what to do all the time. Talk about empowering for a teen.

There are lots of great job opportunities for teens that aren’t McDonald’s. Here in Cali, a lot of teens and college students work at In’n'Out – high pay and good working conditions. Indie book stores, musics stores, clothing stores – those are also good. I wouldn’t recommend waitressing (did that) because it’s such a demanding job and hard on the body, but some teens do enjoy that kind of work (tips at some places can be really good). Some of the stronger guys work at UPS, and make bank working at night. Some teens work at the park and rec working with kids. Others make arrangements with carpenters, handy men, painters, etc, as day labor.

A (fun, interesting) job is a great way to give a teen direction, and they are learning very important life lessons at the same time. And gives them power, so they can say they are their own person and learn who they are.

So, if you’re deschooling and you don’t know what to do with your teen. Tell them – Get a job!

What Really Matters?

Take a moment and think about what really matters.

The New York Times reported today that nationally, high school kids don’t know “basic [history] facts like the effect of the cotton gin on the slave economy or the causes of the Korean War.”

Experts worry that kids who don’t know basic facts about history can’t make wise choices in elections.

HUH?

All this testing and seeing what people know and don’t know – it doesn’t matter. Even if every person came out of school miraculously knowing everything about history, would it really make a difference in how we vote?

How many people who have a really good grasp of history use that knowledge to vote?

Ok, I’m going off a little bit here on the voting thing. But what I’m trying to say is that nobody asks the question “why does history matter to kids?”

It’s obvious why it’s important to the teachers and adults who want to make sure kids learn history. It’s all part of the master plan to make sure kids become “successful” and “good citizens” and all the many other reasons that we adults think kids should learn, well, pretty much everything academic. (I mean, we don’t get all a bent out of shape that most American kids don’t know how to build a house, grow their own food or change a tire of a car. But we can’t stand it if kids don’t know what caused the Korean War.)

But why do kids care about history? Why should they?

What really matters to kids? All the details that fill their brains? What about all the adults who don’t have even a fraction of the knowledge of what they knew when they were in school? Should we keep testing people after they graduate to make sure they aren’t forgetting what they learned? If all this stuff kids are supposed to know, if it was all really that important, wouldn’t it be MORE important that adults know it? When these kids leave the doors of school, and then go off to do their thing in their lives, why don’t we care if they know history anymore? Or math or even how to read?

All this stuff we are giving our kids to learn doesn’t stand up to long term scrutiny. The information is far from useless. And far from irrelevant. But is it what’s really important? What really matters?

What about the desire to keep learning even after we become adults?
What about the ability to keep an open mind and continue to add new ideas and perspectives to what we already know?
What about becoming energized by learning, not tired by it?
What about caring about our world, instead of feeling like we are victims?
What about teaching people they have control of their lives, and can make smart decisions?

If knowing the origins of the Korean war (from the American historical perspective) is indeed important for understanding how to pick our politicians or how to understand the implications of local policy, then wouldn’t it make sense that this kind of information would come up in conversation? Or that inquiring minds would see its importance and do research on it?

The things we teach our kids are just things. A laundry list of information. Until it has specific, local, individual meaning for a person, academics are a meaningless to-do list to get out of the way.

To me, that’s the worst form of education. That’s the fastest track to burnout and to not giving a damn about what the information is. What really matters in education is that the kids care. If they don’t care, it’s not worth teaching it to them.

If they don’t care, I’d rather them not know it. If they don’t care, and I insist they learn it, how is that a basis for them to care about it later? I’ll be reinforcing the idea that learning these things (that are inherently quite interesting) are boring and unimportant. If they don’t care, then I don’t WANT to give them the information. I don’t want to waste the time or energy to make them learn something they aren’t going to benefit from.

Instead, I wait for when they do care. Then teach them. Or, I should say, learn about it together. Because even if I know something, when we learn something together, the kids often bring up ideas that I had never thought of before.

I want everything they learn to be because they want to learn. Because when they want to learn, I know it matters to them. And it’s only when something really matters that we can do anything with the information we know.

So, what really matters to YOU? What really matters to your kids? If it doesn’t matter, they ain’t gonna learn it, even if they regurgitate it properly.

Stick to the things that matter.

How Teens Learn at Home

In one of my earlier comments, Lucie posted a link to her wonderful blog about her journey on learning how to be a homeschool mom of teens, after years of being in the public school system. She’s come so far in such a short time, it almost brings tears to my eyes (tears of pride). The peace her family has found flows off the page. If only all families, and all mamas could feel that feeling. Wouldn’t this would be a better place?

Online High School Effects Homeschoolers

Our modern high schools, which have kids going to class all day, five days a week, do a poor job of truly preparing our kids for an adulthood which doesn’t look like 9-5. There’s little flexibility in what a teen can study, how they manage their days and how they get real life experience.

This article in the LA Times gives me hope that our young kids, when they are teens, will have more choice and more flexibility in learning what they need for their adult lives. Online classes certainly are no panacea for education. However, if more and more “traditional” schools recognize that online classes can be just as good, or even better, then that’s one step closer to being accepting of other alternatives, such as work-study, mentorships, self-study, and attending community college instead of high school.

In other words, the more flexibility public high school students have in their programs, the more choices and the more acceptance high school homeschoolers will have.

Even the UC system is getting on board with accrediting online courses. And an increasing number of high schools are offering kids the flexibility to do at least some of their classes online while attending traditional classes and extracurriculu activities at the high school campus. This kind of hybrid between traditional classes and independent study is exactly what many students crave. Being able to tailor their schedule according to their daily rhythms, learning styles and level of understanding is what high school kids need to prepare them for the “real world” where the skill of knowing how to manage their life is the one of the most important of all. And I mean really manage their life, not manage someone else’s to-do list that was given to them.

All in all, I think this is a step in the right direction. It may not be the perfect solution, and it may be a reaction that has nothing to do with trying make education “better” (in other words, it could be due more to the fact that technology exists, businesses want to sell their product, or teachers attempting to reduce their overloaded schedules). But no matter what the reason for it happening, online classes and increased flexibility are good for high school, and for homeschoolers.

An Unschooling Teen Speaks

The articles over at ProgressiveU aren’t always fantabular. But this one.. oh, … how it glows.

It’s written by a teen, who was inspired by the Teenage Liberation Handbook, and John Holt.

Here’s a short excerpt:

I guess I’ll stop here and explain more clearly exactly what unschooling is. It’s a lot like homeschooling, but with the absence of teachers and/or a curriculum. The whole philosophy is that children can be trusted to have a desire for knowledge; that they want to know things and they want to “learn what is necessary to become an adult” (from Wikipedia). The biggest difference between unschooling and traditional schooling is that traditional schools do not place any trust in children, and unschooling requires complete trust in children.

Homeschooling, the Demise of High School and Stagnant Education

Some of you are going to really like this article by Daniel H. Pink.

I hope he’s right. And I know at least one person who has a similar view of the future.

I don’t think homeschooling’s going to have such a direct effect. But who knows. I won’t complain if the world proves me wrong.

Are Police Procedures Valuable Real World Education?

Spunky’s Blog entry today comments on the surprise “safety drill” at Lee Middle School and High School, in Wyoming, Michigan.

She treated the subject really well from a Christian perspective. I recommend reading it, even if you aren’t Christian. She’s one smart whip.

I’m not sure what kind of neighborhood these children live in. Perhaps having pat-downs and and riot police scouting their community is common enough to be a necessary item to teach. But here’s what I find particularly disturbing about what happened.

1) According to the article, the parents had no idea this was going to happen. (In fact, the police didn’t even know what they were supposed to be doing, or that the parents hadn’t been told.) I put this right up there with sex ed and drug awareness programs – the parents not only have the right to know about this in advance, but they should have enough warning to be able to have their children opt-out of the drill.

2) Only some of the parents were upset about this. The school basically allowed the police to come in and traumatize the kids “for practice” on what to do in case they are ever in a situation where this would happen to them. Has our country become so used to police infringements and government control that we think that practicing this kind of thing is an important preparation for life? What are the odds of any of us reading this blog being involved in a riot-police safety check? Why do kids need this experience?

3) It seems obvious to me that this was an exercise in control. For whatever reason, the school felt it necessary to make it very clear who was in control and that they have the power to find anyone who might be doing something wrong. “Be good Johnny, cuz you never know when police in riot gear are going to come to the school and find out your secrets.”

4) What if they had found something on one of the kids? What if one of the kids refused to do the “drill”? Is this something that the kids had a choice? I doubt they would have been quietly led to the library to wait out the drill. But in the off chance that it was an “optional” trauma, were the kids alerted to their option not to participate?

5) I want to know who decided to have this kind of drill. Was it the principal? Was it the school board? The faculty? Who has so much power that they can bring in a force of police, hold some kids against the wall and search them? Who thought this was a good idea? And why are they employed anywhere in the school system.

The drill, itself, is not implicitly a bad thing. Depending on the kids involved, the neighborhood they live in and the experiences they are likely to have in their lives, it might be a good thing to know how it works.

But if that’s the case, this kind of thing should be an opt-in program. This kind of program is something the parents should know about, the kids should know about and have the opportunity to say “no, this isn’t important to us. We plan to never have to worry about police in riot gear coming to our neighborhood. And if they do, we’ll deal with it then.”

Perhaps this wasn’t about the kids at all. Maybe this process wasn’t for the kids, it was for the staff and faculty. Maybe it was for them to know how the process works. And if that’s the case, I’m even more disturbed.

At what point do we take our prisons and our schools and run them in the same way?

This is a one-time event (well, at least I hope it is!), so my rant about all this isn’t to say that we’re all doomed to public school turning into prison. What I hope is that when things like this happen (and they will), that parents don’t put up with it. Don’t just be “an upset parent”. Get the PTA together, go to board meetings, write letters, make a big stink. This kind of behavior on the schools part gives them way too much power, and in their attempt to try to show who has the power, parents need to remind them that parents have the power. It is their schools, it’s the students’ schools. It’s not the teachers’.

What if your child was at a neighbor’s house, and their dad, as a “real-life” lesson, decided to have his police friend come in and pull this, just to show the kids what’s it’s really like, just in case?

No school district or principle should have this kind of power.

Homeschool critics are so worried about what might happen to little Johnny if he isn’t being watched at school. Why aren’t those same critics off their rocker with anger about the way that a whole bundle of kids are sometimes treated in school? Why aren’t those same critics villainizing public school when stuff like this happens? They do it to homeschoolers – lump us in a group and say that we need to be more regulated because ’stuff happens’. Well, far more ’stuff’ happens in school, and those critics who so proudly uphold their worry about homeschoolers don’t seem to be all that concerned about public school.

I don’t think public school is bad. These kinds of events are, granted, rare. Thank goodness. But they do happen. And when they do happen, we can’t be OK with it. We have to let the people who have control of these things know that we’re not.