What does unschooling means to me.

The other night I've managed to catch a BBC UK program called Last Chance Kids. It's basically a documentary on how certain UK schools is doing to increase the level of reading. It was really teeth grinding, nerve cringingly painful to watch the way the teachers and headteachers speak to those children. How is it possible that it's accepatable for teachers to shout at those children? There's was this kid, and he was obviously having issues, as it was blatantly stated that his father was in jail, and his mother is struggling to survive on "single parent benefit". It was obviously from this kid's language, that he was constantly swore at and it's second nature fo r him to swear at the teachers. It was obvious this kid is suffering from low self esteem, and is using this "I don't have to listen to you" and "I can swear at you" gung-ho appearance to hide his embarrassment and unhappiness at being unable to read. Nobody ask the this kid why he's misbehaving. It was obviously that with this kid, it's been agreed amongst the adults there's a "no tolerance attitude" applied towards him, everytime he misbehave. Seeing the number of times this kid been shouted at by the teacher, right across the room. The number of times of not having the chance to explained and defend why he did what he did and the immediate punishement by being ordered out of the room, in front of the whole class.

I'm not saying this can happen to my son, but then, I thinking surely it must be so unpleasant to even be in that same class, having to put up with this constant battle between the teacher's shouting and the child's kicking off his chair as he storm off to the headmistress room.

So what does unschooling means to me? Well, it meant speaking to the child, allowing the child to tell you what's going thru his mind. It meant to respect and accept that the child does have up and down feelings that is equally as important and legit as our, and is quite capable of fixing his own problems, if given the opportunities to do so.

I do realised this 11 months of unschooling has isolated me and my kid, so far away from any unpleasant and harsh world, especially school environment. Am I cotton woolling him from reality? Am I cotton woolling myself from reality? Am I hiding from facts of life? We've been hiding so long away in our unschooling bubble that it was quite a shock to our system to see reality played out on that tv screen. But yet it was only just 11 months ago, DS was in that scenario. I clearly now understand and feel his distress and can understand why he was so disturb and effected by a school environment. And that documentary only just a half hour show, already I was feeling really upset for that child, I can imagine how bad it can be for my son to be in that situation 9 - 3pm, 5 days a week?

So am I being un-real by hiding my son in these lovey dovey, fluffy, happy and nourishing world of homeschooling/ unschooling? The mantra constantly chanted in the school playground, while waiitng for our kids to come out "Yes, it's horrible, my kid's not very happy because blah blah blah...." "Well, life's hard, and they'll just have to learn" "Oh yes, I told my kid, life is unfair and he'll have to learn to acecept it" "school is all about preparing our children for future" Blah, Bah, Blah!!!

So, school is all about learning to put up with your unhappiness and get on with it, and you can do "happiness" when you're eventually big enough to rebel against your teacher! Homeschooling is also all about putting up with your unhappiness too, just in a different setting, in that you're allowed to start living your life happily, as how you want it, when you graduate "out of your parents house"

Basically, put your life on hold until you're finished memorising all those school texts!

Now, unschooling is all about learning to live your life as how you see fit, right here, right now. So that you can get it out of the way, and concentrate on the more important things like your interest! It's about practsing "real life", in preparation for your future. It's about practising to say "NO, this is not what I want", "No, this is a mistake" "No, it's a wrong choice, but at least I tried, and I've found out that I didn't like it" and say to yourself "Now, what can I do next?"

It's about "Not having to put up with unhappiness" and DO something about it. Not just moan and bitch and complain and grudgingly accept it and say "Life's tough but that's life" !!!

Now, unschooling for us is about trying many different things, until we find the things we liked enough to incorporate into our lives, for keeps, for real. And should we outgrown it sometime later, so be it, because it's only natural, and it's OK TO CHANGE!! It's about learning to live harmoniously with other people, naturally your parents and friends will be your first.

So back to my question. Am I fooling myself by wrapping ourselves in these friendly unschooling bubble?

No, not at all. Infact I'm really happy that I've put such a big divide between that horrible, harsh world and my child's world. I feel all those negativity is so unnessecary and un-relevant to our world. Yes, negativity exist, evil exist, hardship exist, unhappiness exist and many more bad feelings exist- I'm not denying it. But what I'm saying is, I don't have to invite it into my child's world, not now, as I'm sure all these factors will naturally flow into his life as he grows older, and venture out into the world. Does this means my child won't be able to face such negative reality? I don't know, but I do know that there's a high chance my child will be able to extricate himself out of any uncomfortable situation, if he wants to. Life's to short to be fighting every battle.

What I am saying is it's so ridiculous that all these parents thinks that it better for their child to be immerse into all the negative feelings, in order to give them immunity to future hardship? Well, if that's the case, why don't we just sent them into military camp, for military training, considering the world now is so full of war and terrorist.

There's no reason for any children to grow up, having to put up wth all these bullying, of not having the chance to develop respect for themselves and others. Of having to accept they are defenseless and therefore unable to change it. No wonder all these children grows up being angry and nasty. Guess where they're learning it from. Yes, I'm really glad I've wrap us both up in this lovely bubble and can swish ourselves away from any horrible situation that we don't like, if we can help it. It's not about not wanting to face reality, It's about being able to make that decision to say NO when it's too much to handle!

If I'm helping my son to channel all his energy into building a more positive, happy self, rather than waste all those energy, trying to heal his broken heart and build more defenses, because some kid is being angry and mean and is taking his frustration out on my kid by calling him stupid or "stinky", my son might just have so much love left over, enough to share with others.

A very evident case based on Halloween trick and treating 2 nights ago. Son and 9 yr old friend went trick and treating, with just 1 bag. The agreement was they will split the goodies among themselves later. My son has already pointed out that he doesn't like chocolate, so the friend can have all the chocolates collected. When they were dviding up the loot, the friend ended up with more, as there were more chocolates than sweets. The friend was so adamant that my son should have the equal number of items. But my kid didn't like the chocolates. So this kid ended up giving my son all his non-chocolate sweets, so that they can equal out the amount. In the end, the number still didn't balance out, the friend was beginning to get upset. My kid just stated "It's ok Jack. It doesn't really matter anyway. I'm happy with what I've got and I don't need anymore. BUt you can share some of these, since you've given me all of your chewies, and now you have non!" And they happily did just that, chewing thru my son's share of chewies and boiled sweets!

See what I mean? Harmony + Love = Sharing. In return, you'll get respect.

It's a Mathe-Magical Moment....!

In following up from Jnr's game invention last week, combining elements from his Toon Town and PS2 Star Wars Lego game. With me as a scribe, and him, the mastermind, this exercise has now culminate to a very impressive game, set out into 4 parts. Every part consist of X number of droids to eliminate, in order to gain the rewards of various part of a metal suit. This a full metal body suit is necessary as a disguise to enter the enemies headquarters.

It is very enlightening to see all our months of PS2 and computer coming together in the form of an elaborate story-telling game.

Jnr has also been digging out his Lego Knight's Kingdom bits for imaginary play.

And he's been counting. Somehow, he seems to see relation between numbers and Lego and droid killings and parts of metal body suit.

For every action, there's a re-action!

Well, to me, it's always the same pattern emerging. Whether it's tv or pc or toys. The grass is always greener on the other side.
And I think this is what happens here.

I think because DS was always too busy with his electronic media that he doesn't have time to play with any of his toys, that so much so when he's in someone else's home, he's binging on thier toys. Just as any kids whose home either have no tv or is allowed very limited tv time, will naturally binge on our tv. Of which the parents is very quick to cite this situation as an example why they don't allow tv, as the kid will get stuck to the screen.

As for doing everything they are not allowed to, well DS's friends (my kid's 7 and these friends are 9 and 10 and been to Steiner school and is now HEing) who seems to think it's cool to say all those bad words (because they were not allow to say them when they were at thier home), needless to say my son follow suit until I pointed out what he was doing and leave it to him to decide how he should behave. After a while of glorious swearing, the fun's ran out and son's decided that those words were rude and is "not nice" (Direct result of our many discussions while playing Grand Theft Auto, with many "translation" what those swear words meant). He has since taken to remind his friends not to say it, as there is no reason to (well, for DS yes-no reason for it, but for his friends, I believe they are expelling thier frustration of being clamp-dowm (or up, should I say) most of the time, so hence the need for such "verbal detox". Again, swearing give them a sense of control and power over thier lives, because for a short while, they are able to say and do what they are normally not allowed, it's called re-action, or for a better word "rebellion"! A very loud and liberating feeling for them, but not so for my poor ears!

These same boys will get stuck infront of the PS2 the minute they arrive, playing alot of the 15+ games that they are normally not allowed, and will try very hard to get my son to convince me to allow them to play with the couple "18+ games that they are most definetely not allowed" that I've put out of reach. My answer is always "Call your mum, if she says yes, then it's yes with me" and as always, it never went pass that stage. However when my son's turn to go to thier house, my son is not interested in thier Xbox at all (understandable as they only have 2 games, a racing game and a skateboarding one, both of which my son have no interest in). He prefer to play with thier toy.


As for doing everything they are not allowed to, well DS's friends (my kid's 7 and these friends are 9 and 10 and been to Steiner school and is now HEing) who seems to think it's cool to say all those bad words (because they were not allow to say them when they were at thier home), needless to say my son follow suit until I pointed out what he was doing and leave it to him to decide how he should behave. After a while of glorious swearing, the fun's ran out and son's decided that those words were rude and is "not nice" (Direct result of our many discussions while playing Grand Theft Auto, with many "translation" what those swear words meant). He has since taken to remind his friends not to say it, as there is no reason to (well, for DS yes-no reason for it, but for his friends, I believe they are expelling thier frustration of being clamp-dowm (or up, should I say) most of the time, so hence the need for such "verbal detox". Again, swearing give them a sense of control and power over thier lives, because for a short while, they are able to say and do what they are normally not allowed, it's called re-action, or for a better word "rebellion"! A very loud and liberating feeling for them, but not so for my poor ears!

I'll say....not enough days away from those electronic pixels!!!

I have to admit that I do worry about Jnr straining his eyes, due to too long hours of staring at the computer screen. Which is why I do constantly seek out outdoor activities that he can do, for a bit of fresh air and exercise. And little things that we can do indoors too, which unfortunately is not many, as he is always not interested. So I have to say I am relieved to see him dragged out his box of 3D Star Wars puzzle in the shape of Dart Vader head, and started working on it. So far, we've managed to complete the 2nd stage this puzzle this evening. Over the weekend, Jnr and Papa Gecko's managed to put together a science kit that I've bought - an electric pulley, which was fantastic as that got Jnr playing with it for a few hours. Hurray!

In the last 3 weeks, we've gone swimming twice, and participated in den buidling in the heathland near us which was quite nice as that got us out in the nature for a good 4 hours. Jnr did his 2 session of skiing on consecutive Saturdays. Last week, we went for a movie called Flush Away and spend the whole of the next day in the city, window shopping. And this week, we went mushrooming with Professor Fungus at Alice Holt Park. It was a beautiful day with lots of sun and we ended up spending the whole day running and climbing around the park. And tomorrow, we're going for a Roald Dahl's play. So, we're only clocking an average of 2 "non electronic activity" day, within a very active electronic medium- filled week. This can be quite worrying, especially now that the cold weather is setting in. Mama Gecko's brain need to be ticking....busy thinking up some more activities to distract Jnr away from those very attractive and addictive pixels!

Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning by Marc Prensky

Another book to my collection.

"The POSITIVE Guide for Parents Concerned About Their Kids' Video and Computer Game Playing "Marc knows it all depends on how we use our games. He knows that if parents place good video games into a learning system in their homes they can reap major benefits for their children and themselves. They can accelerate their children's language and cognitive growth." -James Paul Gee, Tashia Mogridge Professor of Reading, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Marc Prensky presents the case-profoundly counter-cultural but true nevertheless-that video and computer game playing, within limits, is actually very beneficial to today's "Digital Native" kids, who are using them to prepare themselves for life in the 21st century. The reason kids are so attracted to these games, Prensky says, is that they are learning about important "future" things, from collaboration, to prudent risk taking, to strategy formulation and execution, to complex moral and ethical decisions. Prensky's arguments are backed up by university PhD's studying not just violence, but games in their totality., as well as studies of gamers who have become successful corporate workers, entrepreneurs, leaders, doctors, lawyers, scientists and other professionals. Because most adults (including the critics) can't play the modern complex games themselves (and discount the opinions of the kids who do play them) they rely on secondhand sources of information, most of whom are sadly misinformed about both the putative harm and the true benefits of game-playing. This book is the antidote to those misinformed, bombastic sources, in the press and elsewhere. Full of common sense and practical information, it provides parents with a large number of techniques approaches they can use-both over time and right away-to improve both their understanding of games and their relationships with their kids. "

To see other people's opinion
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Bother-Me-Mom-Im-Learning/dp/1557788588

A Surprising Math Moment..!

I have to confess that as unschooling as I can be or aspiring to be, I do have moments that I do panic and start questioning my own wisdom in encouraging and revelling in this laissez-faire approach to learning anything and everthing that's in no way resembles a school curriculum. Hence, I would say we are unschooling extremely well, because I'm panicking now! We're learning alot of general knowledge stuff predominantly science or history or engineering based, touching abit here, skimming abit there, sometimes we just dive in deep and mull over it. But we're nowhere near any maths or writing or spelling.

But all of the sudden, out of Jnr's current obsession with Disney Toon Town, Jnr was asking and initiated discussions on numbers. Like him exclaming to me that 4+4+2 is the same as 8+2. Or him asking how much will 8 x 10 makes, which got us discussing how everything that's "x 10" always have an extra 0 behind it. Discussion then led to understanding the concept of maths - addition means to increase; minus means to decrease; x means to magnified and division meant to separate. And how when you times everything with zero, it alway zero the sum, no matter how complicated or long that sum is!

At the moment I'm having a fantastic time watching and playing with my son. He's imposed his Disney Toon Task game and rules onto his PS2 Star Wars Lego game. Instead of defeating Cogs, he's defeating x-number of droids in order to get the parts of the disguised suits he needs. And he's making up rules as he's going along this game!

Fascinating! He's just drew 20 circles representing "merits" he needs to get on his note book and told me that for every droid he kills, it's 5 merits, hence he's to destroy 4 droids in order to get all 20 merits! Multiplication LOL!

Unschooling Article by New York University, Journalism Dept

Endless Summer
Unschooling is a radical branch of home-schooling where kids control what and when they learn -- free of teachers, schedules and tests. Unschoolers say it's intellectually empowering. Critics call it irresponsible.
By Sarah Karnasiewicz

Celine Joiris has never failed a test. Never eaten crappy cafeteria food. Never been picked last during gym. It’s not that she’s a supernaturally lucky 16-year-old — she’s simply never been to school. “I like the idea of studying, but school is just like incarceration,” she explains. Her brother Julian, 17, agrees. “My approach is, planning, schedules — OK. Tests, OK. College, OK. Whatever. But I don’t really want to think much about it,” he shrugs. “I can’t tell you where I’ll be in two years.”

What’s that? A smart 17-year-old without a plan? A bright, middle-class teenager who’s not stressing out about SATs and admissions essays? In an era when college prep begins in preschool and adolescents need Palm Pilots to manage their after-school activities, such nonchalance has the power to shock. What about all those stories about home-schooled kids dominating national spelling bees and hogging spots at Harvard? Surely “whatever” is not in their vocabulary.

But Celine and Julian Joiris are not your typical home-schoolers — they are unschoolers, followers of a radical approach to education that rejects not just the routines of traditional school, but the authoritative ideology it represents. Unschoolers make up approximately 5 to 10 percent of all home-schoolers. They learn without teachers, curricula or exams; rather, their whole lives are laboratories in which skills and smarts are acquired piecemeal, through casual interaction with the world around them.

In the last decade, the number of Americans who home-school has surged at a rate of 29 percent a year, to include more than 1.1 million adherents nationwide, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But as their ranks have swelled and the movement has become more accepted, some of the contrarian ideals that once made it revolutionary have been diluted. Though there remain some real religious and ideological differences between traditional students and home-schoolers, on a practical level, at least, life for many home-schoolers bears a similarity to that of their public school counterparts. They work in online classes and with prepackaged curricula. They have tutors and field trips. They compete with one another over who has the most impressive internship and collect offers of admission from elite universities.

“When you buy a curriculum and set your kids down five days a week, except in the summer, all you’re doing is playing school at home,” says Sandra Dodd, a mother of three unschooled children from Albuquerque, N.M., and an outspoken unschooling advocate. “Most home-schoolers, especially Christian home-schoolers, believe that schools are too liberal and too lax,” she explains. “On the other hand, unschoolers believe that schools are too inflexible. Our objections to school are 180 degrees apart from their objections. And so we are not only not on the same team, but school is actually closer to what they’re doing than we are.”

Since 1960, when A.S. Neill published “Summerhill,” a chronicle of life at his “free-learning” British boarding school, and American educational reformer John Holt coined the phrase “un-schooling” in his books of the late 1970s, the philosophy has emerged as the rebellious twin of the home-schooling movement. While paired in many people’s minds, the two have distinct agendas and ideologies. “It is a distinction that is as old as the home-school movement itself, and is an artifact of the fact the movement grew out of both the alternative school movement of the 1970s and the Christian day school movement,” explains Mitchell Stevens, professor of humanities and social sciences at New York University, and author of a definitive study of contemporary home-schooling. “And those distinctions reflect a larger tension in American culture in differences as to how we should raise our kids.”

Indeed, while it is largely unschoolers’ laissez-faire approach to learning that shocks the uninitiated, the most radical aspect of unschooling may not be the manner in which it approaches education, but the way it challenges parents to reimagine childhood. In “How Children Learn,” published in 1967, John Holt wrote: “All I am saying is … trust children. Nothing could be more simple — or more difficult. Difficult, because to trust children we must trust ourselves — and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” Thirty years later, the belief that children are essentially capable creatures — curious, independent and resilient — is still at the heart of unschooling.

But since Holt wrote those words, American parenting has undergone a tectonic shift. “Good” parenting now seems to be a skill rather than an instinct, something learned not from trial and error, but from self-help authors, life coaches, psychologists, consultants and parenting experts. Whether it is “The Baby Whisperer” pledging to “solve all [parents’] problems,” or Dr. Phil McGraw promising a “step-by-step plan for creating a phenomenal family,” the prevailing sense is that the world is a demanding, dangerous place, tamed only by discipline and determined planning.

For parents fed up with the micromanagement of their children’s lives, unschooling appeals because it disregards conventional wisdom about giftedness, age-appropriate learning, and competition. “There is a sense that the kind of intensive parenting we see increasingly among upper-middle-class families is something that is driving a large portion of people crazy … and unschooling can be read as a kind of dissent toward that hyper organization,” says Stevens. “So while in some ways it can be just as intensive as other approaches, at least it’s on your own terms, and on your turf, and you’re not beholden to the half-dozen organized activities you’ve enlisted your child in.”

Despite the revolutionary tenor of their ideas, unschoolers claim they aren’t zealots. Advocates insist that unschooling produces creative, unconventional kids, but even they acknowledge that such a life is not for everyone. Combing the Web, on message boards like the one at www.unschooling.com, it is not rare to see a message from a mother who writes, “My son is 10 years old and has been doing the unschooling method. His reading is advanced [but he’s] struggling in math. I’m starting to worry he’s learning nothing.”

Laurie Chancey, now 25, was entirely unschooled until college — and remembers how frightening the early years felt for her and her mother, Valerie Fitzenreiter. Living in rural Louisiana, they were true renegades, cut off from a larger unschooling network that exists on the coasts and under relentless criticism from family and neighbors. When Laurie was 6, a relative turned her in to the truancy board, prompting a series of threatening phone calls and angry letters. But Valerie, who went on to write an influential book about their experience, “The Unprocessed Child,” remained unwavering. “Mom had been so bored in school and after reading ‘Summerhill,’ she decided she would unschool me before I was even born. It was amazing, but she just had this complete faith that I would learn what I needed to learn when I needed to learn it, in the face of everyone’s opposition,” says Laurie. “Finally, when I started to reach my mid-teens, other people could see that I wasn’t an idiot and I’d be OK.”

“I admit, when we started this 20 years ago, we were just a bunch of radicals on the Lower East Side — writers, artists and musicians — who thought that we knew our children better than the public schools,” says Francoise Joiris, Celine and Julian’s mother. But over time, she says, her motivations have taken on deeply personal meaning. “My father was a professor and often took me out of school to travel with him,” she explains. Once, when they were living in Virginia, he volunteered to teach her classmates history at their home when the local teachers went on strike. “That experience was amazing,” remembers Francoise. “And by the end, not one kid wanted to go back to school.”

As a mother, she has tried to approach her own children’s education with the same joy and freedom. “When we were little, we did a lot of workshops with friends,” recalls Julian. “One friend’s mother was a doctor and she would have a group of us over a few times a week to talk about science. The next year, she gave a Shakespeare workshop, and we read plays, acted them out, and made our own costumes.” As small children, they often tagged along with their mother while she worked as a dog trainer for films and television. (Now Celine is herself an accomplished dog trainer and frequently competes in canine agility trials with Francoise and their two Norfolk terriers, Stamp and Fleet.)

Their days at home were loose and unstructured, filled with hours reading on the living room futon or playing homemade quiz games about Greek mythology and geography, calling off nations from a map. While occasionally Francoise nudged them in a certain direction, by suggesting a book or an activity they might enjoy, in the end she felt it was important that Celine and Julian call the shots. Since entering adolescence, both have been entirely in charge of their own schedules, attending tai chi classes twice a week and volunteering part-time as antiwar activists. Julian, a devoted member of the New York Assembly of the Society for Young Magicians, performs regularly around the city for other home-schooling groups. Still, both admit that some weeks pass in a blur, without anything to show for the hours. “There are times that I’ll spend a bunch of days hanging around the house, bored,” says Celine. “Then I start to feel guilty! .”

Indeed, despite her idealism, Francoise doesn’t pretend her family has found utopia. Though they have been at it for 16 years, even Celine and Julian’s father, Chris, a painter-turned-architect who didn’t want to be interviewed, has had a hard time embracing the unpredictability of his children’s future. “He supports it,” says Francoise, “but I don’t think there’s one of us that hasn’t at some point worried, what if my child still isn’t reading at age 15?” In the end it often comes down to the strength of parents’ convictions. “The real problem most people have,” says Francoise, her face serious, “is that doing this requires too much faith in kids, too much work on the parents’ part — and no guarantees.”

For all its iconoclasm, and to the chagrin of some critics, unschooling is entirely legal. Every state has a set of standards that govern home-schooling, and which unschoolers must also obey — though their interpretations of those guidelines are sometimes rather loose. But because levels of oversight differ enormously from state to state, it happens to be far easier to unschool in Oregon than in Pennsylvania. In New Mexico, Sandra Dodd has been able to unschool her three children from birth through their teen years, with little interference from the state. When her daughter Laurie was 11, Valerie Fitzenreiter discovered she could register with the Louisiana Board of Education as a “private school” and never reported in again.

In contrast, in New York, where the Joirises live, families submit an IHIP (individualized home instruction plan) each summer outlining the material they expect to cover in the coming months. New Yorkers also face periodic standards tests: every other year before the 4th grade, and annually after that. But for the Joiris family, at least, unschooling’s unorthodox methods seem not to have been an academic handicap.”The exams were never as scary as I expected,” remembers Julian. “In seventh grade, he refused to study any math, and I was terrified he wouldn’t pass,” says Francoise. “But after Julian took the test, he said, ‘It was fine. I only got one wrong.’ And he was right; he did.”

After talking to a dozen unschooling families and studying their blogs and message boards, I’ve found countless similar tales of sucess. But outside that small circle, even among liberal home-schoolers, unschooling still provokes uneasiness. Gail Paquette, a home-schooling mother of two and the founder of the Web site Hometaught.com, is one of unschooling’s most vocal critics. “A child-led approach may develop the child’s strengths but does nothing to develop his weaknesses and broaden his horizons,” she writes. “I [mostly] disagree with the premise that children can teach themselves what they want to learn, when (and if) they want to learn it. Certainly children do learn some things on their own, but their often roundabout way of going at learning is not necessarily the best way.”

Indeed, given the temptations and distractions of everyday life, is it unreasonable to wonder how much kids can really learn when just left up to their own devices? Conventional wisdom tells us that when not compelled to study the basics of reading and writing and arithmetic, the average kid will fritter away the day playing video games and flipping TV stations. And while unschoolers argue that that is an unfairly pessimistic take on children’s curiosity and innate abilities, it would be hard for them to deny that their approach can lead to the acquisition of idiosyncratic skills. When she went off to her freshman year in college, Laurie Chancey was already a gifted computer programmer — but struggled to get through a class in remedial math.

She is hardly alone. Dependent as it is on the changeable passions of a child, unschooling is replete with 10-year-olds who can explain the subtle differences between the Mesozoic and Paleozoic eras but can’t complete a multiplication table. In a make-or-break world where kids are measured by advanced-placement credits and varsity letters, if an interest can’t be showcased on a résumé, is it a waste of time?

“Kids in traditional school spend a whole lot of time learning penmanship, and things like that don’t really matter in the long run,” counters Chancey, who is on her way to earning a Ph.D. in sociology from Louisiana State University. “I know it scares a lot of people to think of divorcing from the school system entirely, and lord knows, people have all sorts of odd reactions when I tell them about my background. But luckily, in my case, I’m succeeding in a very traditional way, so it’s easy for me to say, ‘Look at me, I did OK. This can’t be all bad.’”

So while unschoolers aren’t groomed their whole lives for Ivy League admissions, that doesn’t mean they won’t end up there anyway. Celine Joiris has been working as a volunteer at New York’s War Resisters League and hopes to live and work in Paris for a few years before applying to Harvard. Julian has no immediate plans for college, but continues to study the concert violin and has steadily been attracting gigs as a magician. Somehow, without a battery of grades and tests to prove it, these kids know they are smart. Without their parents providing a map, they feel ready for the future. “As we get older, I think things are going to get less complicated,” says Celine, with just a flicker of a smile. “I mean, at some point, people stop asking what grade you’re in.”

http://journalism.nyu.edu/portfolio/bestof/2005/001877.html

MamaGecko's having a wobbly moment..!!!???

I feeling like I'm being too complacent and that we're not really learning! So here goes... this is what we've been doing so far....

Science
* Earth and it's core
* Earthquake and fault lines
* Re-producation in living things
* Clasification of plants - mosses, ferns, flowering and non-flowering plants
* Why leaves are green?
* Light and re-fraction
* Light discussions about atom and molecules in water and solid.

Math
* Greg's seeing the relation between numbers and addition like 8+2 = 10 = 4 +4 +2
* We're still counting pocket money and spending it
* We're counting jellybeans and cogs in Toon Town
* Fraction(Den building event Greg's decided to cut the fungus he found into quarters)
* Still working on time telling

History
* We've drop our intial interest on ancient civilization. We went from hunters and gatherers to as far as Ancient Eygpt and it kinda stop there.
* Mayan/ Chewing gum tree

Geography
* Countries on the equator line is hot.
* Different time line

Spelling is another lovely surprise as Greg's learning to spell more on his own.

Language - Malay coming along really well.

Ski Lessons

Finished Varjak Paw, starting Farthing Wood. Still trying to finish the Myth and Legends book. Perhaps might try to finish the Religion of the World book too.

Tonight I've got the chance to compare my son with his little female "school going" friend. This girl is in Year 2 and we're playing Yatzee. I do not know if the level of Maths she displaying is the level they are teaching in school but she's still having difficulty seeing the relation between numnbers and adition. She was having difficulty addding up simple sums like 5+5+5. And here I am worrying about my son's Maths??!! Me and Jnr are already doing additions on double digits!

GTA Week 8-9

Grand Theft Auto is officially old news now! This week, Gecko Jnr has only been playing 3 hours out of his 7 hours allowance. He stills plays with it but rarely last more than an hour each time.

What are we doing in Sept/ Oct 2007

ICT
Well so far, the pS2 has taken the backseat to Toon Town online but our days are still very much either watching tv (Looney Toons), going online (Toon Town), back to watching tv, maybe some PS2 (only when he's allowed to play GTA).Going out for HEing groups occasionally.


LANGUAGE STUDY
But we've managed to start on our Malay Language lesson, and is making some headway. Unfortunately the Mandarin lessons is not sticking.


MATHS
We're still having some occasional interesting discussion about numbers and Maths from Jnr. Nothing much happening here other than the occasional I Hate Maths pc game that we play together. So base on this, we're still covering add, sub, fraction. Pocket money counting is still going strong.

PE/ SOCIAL
Jnr found a new friend call Jack, so, we seems to be doing alot more outdoor activities together with Jack like swimming, doughnutting down the ski slope, play date and sleep over. Plus Jnr asked for skiing lessons, so he's registered to start this Saturday.Yesterday we went swimming, and today we're going to a indoor play area.

READING
We're still reading many different types of story books. Early this year, we're kinda started on human history type of books, did abit of the Story of the World, started Varjak Paw (still struggling to finish it, because one night, after Jnr fell asleep, I've actually finshed the story myself, so now, it just seems so boring to be repeating the story to him during bedtime!) We then moved onto Myths and Legends type of stories for a very short period. So far, only managed to complete The Arabian 1001 Nights. But last night, we've started on this book called 1000 Questions, which is proving to be not only factual, but also fascinating. Very science based topics, which is convienenient because we're covering science topics like Photosysthesis and catagories of animals, about the moon and stars, subjects that I've been meaning to cover.

GTA Week 5-7

We have managed to settle into a omfortable routine. The idea of having to work for the extra hours seems not interesting enough for Geckno Jnr, hence, he seem quite happy with his allocated 7 hours per week. But this could be due to his fascination with the Disney Toon Town online community. Somehow, I have reasons to believe GTA has just been de-moted to the backseat. Gecko Jnr still plays with GTA but not so hooked on it like when he first started. The current favourite, like I say is Toon Town, with all it's jellybeans and cogs killing and building rescuing.