If you have made the choice to homeschool your child, I am suggesting unschooling. Simply put, it is learning to trust your child and yourself to learn what it is you are curious about. You are giving yourself permission to live outside the system of having an outer, foreign authority telling you what your child needs and instead finding and trusting your inner guidance system. It is always there. It has just been educated out of us to make us believe we need a system instead of common sense. It also encourages us to be the same and then compete with each other to overcome this feeling of being the same. Strange! We restrict ourselves out of habit. We learn to follow rules and stay in a guarded space that feels safe, when part of us is trying to find a way out but doesn’t recall how it got stuck in a box it couldn’t see. If you have not decided to homeschool yet I am going to give you several things you might want to consider. 1. True learning is based on following the desire to know something. It is human nature to want to learn as is demonstrated by child learning to walk or talk. Reading math, and writing are natural next steps. There is a purpose in learning these just as their is a need to communicate. Talking happens naturally over the first two years of his life and the other skills follow quite naturally with little formalities. 2. Think of the complex connections that have to be made during those first two years to learn how to talk. Why should the other skills need constant prompting and “teaching.” 3. When one is forced to “learn” he turns off; it becomes work and not pleaurable like it was before school took his natural curiosity away and replaced it with numbing and repetitive worksheets, let alone tests in Kindergarten! 4. Vocabulary develops in the context of what a child’s needs are and he remembers them because he uses them. 5. Staying connected to your inner core means as a teen there is nothing to find and nothing to rebel against since he has always been himself. 6. Teaching children to memorize data overloads the brain with useless information that then stunts the natural connections that would be made in the brain by ones own investigations. 7. Rewards and punishments teach children that others are the judge of them. They do not learn to listen to their own voice inside or correct themselves. In following their own interests, they learn that they are whole and complete people and trusted to make wise choices for themselves. 8. I know several valedictorians in high school who in college are lost. They only know how to follow directions but not think independently. College professors complain about the incoming freshmen because they are expected to have opinions and write about it. 9. Parents who have instilled within their children a feeling of self-respect by honoring their ideas and listening to them, rather than letting the system take over or the television, are rewarded with children who respect others, listen to others and have the courage to become leaders if they choose. 10. Children are amazing and if we let them be children instead of “products” of the system, they will continue to grow in ways that are natural to them. They will learn that they alone make things happen. And that they are capable of changing things that they see need changing.
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AuthorHello! My name is Mike Ugalde, I am a student of pedagogical faculty. Also, I am a writer at Edusson, cyclist, drummer, The Neighborhoods fan and collaborator. Acting at the junction of modernism and computer science to express ideas through design of the blog. Archives
December 2018
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