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Cooper Zale
Los Angeles, CA
I'm a parent with two kids, now 19 and 22, who "unschooled" rather than going to high school. Because of their experience with school, and beyond school, I have become an advocate for educational alternatives and believe that education should involve "many paths" rather than the current mostly one-size-fits-all.
Recent Activity
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Cooper commented on the article |Good piece Clay! Teachers, parents and students are all suffering in this overly standardized world of public education. I cannot imagine trying to be an adult managing a classroom full of youth, many who might not want to be there, and being required to conduct myself based on strict standards and focused on improving test scores rather than learning directly.
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Cooper commented on the article |I think any sort of a national curriculum should focus solely on basic citizenship skills, including...
1. How local, state and federal government works
2. Real experience in the democratic process in the student's school and community
3. Good speaking and writing skills
4. Basic understanding of civil and human rights laws
But beyond that very little else. No science, math, art, music, drama, computers, reading. Those are aeas of learning that individual communities and individual studentss and their families can pursue on their own in their schools or other learning environments. -
Cooper commented on the article |
btw Clay... I love the picture you added to your post... so appropriate...*g*
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Cooper commented on the article |
To me as a parent, nationalizing the school curriculum is just removing the decision makers one step further from the kids and parents impacted by those curriculum decisions. This is big-league social engineering by the education-industrial-governmental complex at its best (worst). Must every youth in America that is the same age be studying the same thing at 9:01am every Monday?
This sounds nowhere near like a democratic society to me! -
Cooper commented on the article |@Caroline... okay... thanks for clarifying
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Cooper commented on the article |
@Caroline... Can you say more about what you mean when you say that you see the homeschooling/unschooling option "as aprivilege and not a right"?
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Cooper commented on the article |
@Caroline... Sounds like a rough road for you and your son. How does he feel about the whole experience of so many different schools. A journey worth taking does not always need to be a happy one if there is a story worth telling at the end.
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Cooper commented on the article |
@Caroline... I am also a fan of John Holt and enjoyed hearing a bit of your son's story.
See my blog post "Unschooling Instead of High Schooling" @http://www.leftyparent.com/blog/2009/01/03/unschooling-instead-of-high-schooling/ about our son Eric's experience transitioning from eighth grade in a conventional public school to homeschooling and unschooling. BTW... he also loved history... in his case 20th Century history which they never seemed to get to in his school history classes. So we would rent movies based on 20th Century events and talk about the real-world context for the movie's premise.
Eric found his most effective way to learn about current events and history was to read the online edition of the New York Times every day and then look up anything that interested him or he did not know on Wikipedia. After years of that, what an education he has had! -
Cooper commented on the article |
Joe... As to the middle school kid forced to take Saturady math class, I think he is math-phobic enough as it is and smart enough to know that any attempt to make it interesting is just an effort to get him to learn what other people want him to learn and not what he is interested in.
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Cooper commented on the article |
Joe... Being an "unschooler" myself, I'm not a textbook person either. I was just curious.
