Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit linked to The Atlantic‘s October article: The Homeschool Diaries.
Reynolds asks: “Is this another foreshock of the coming K-12 implosion?”
The Department of Education continues to plod along with a Race to the Top, in similar style to the George Bush/Ted Kennedy No Child Left Behind educational plan. Race to the Top is a little flashier, as the current administration’s financial draw hauls in preschool standardized testing too. Private schools are currently exempt from these federal regulations.
Glenn Reynold’s question has been asked around by innovative educators, including homeschoolers. Logic should prevail it does not make sense to pull home educators into public school oversight, as teachers unions and many legislators incessantly attempt.
Salman Khan of the hugely popular Khan Academy has some dreams about education.
Salman Khan’s book – The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined:
Formal education must change. It needs to be brought into closer alignment with the world as it actually is; into closer harmony with the way human beings actually learn and thrive.
When and where do people concentrate best? The answer, of course, is that it all depends on the individual. Some people are at their sharpest first thing in the morning. Some are more receptive late at night. One person requires a silent house to optimize his focus; another seems to think more clearly with music playing or against the white noise of a coffee shop. Given all these variations, why do we still insist that the heaviest lifting in teaching and learning should take place in the confines of a classroom and to the impersonal rhythm of bells and buzzers?
A Homeschool Diaries excerpt below:
… the practical reasons for homeschooling are paramount. When you set the city’s gorgeous mosaic of intellectual and cultural offerings against its crazy quilt of formal education, you can’t help but want to supplement your children’s schooling with outings to museums, zoos, historic sites and neighborhoods, and the like. Even in a tight economy, just about every city cultural institution still has an educational division. Why “save” them for weekends or field trips?
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