School Survival

J wrote: Listen. I'm not going to say my name. Call me J. Point is, school is the bane of my existence. Something you've heard before, I'm sure. High school is hell. I feel my life value is determined by a letter and a number. My parents are literally screaming at me to get my […]

by Jerry Mintz (originally posted here) In reference to: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/school-turnaroundsreform/how-billionaire-donors-are-har.html It’s too bad that the school reformers and the billionaire funders have to make every mistake there is to make on their way to, perhaps, finding the real clue to how learning actually works. I think they mean well. Probably they feel a little guilty […]

A boy of 15 who has never been to school has become the youngest student for more than two centuries to win a place at Cambridge University. Arran Fernandez, who was educated at home by his father, Neil, will start a mathematics degree at Fitzwilliam College next month. It will make him the youngest Cambridge […]

Home-school ban in Sweden forces families to mull leaving. A small change in Sweden's schooling law is about to make a big difference for Swedish home-schooling families, potentially causing them to flee to other countries or bring cases to international courts to protect religious and parental rights in the socialist country. The Swedish Liberal Party […]

by Pat Farenga One of the core ideas of John Holt’s approach to education is that children are good at learning. John asserted in the early sixties, often and clearly, that children are natural learners and that adult interference in their attempts to learn, often through uninvited teaching, inhibits children’s learning. This idea continues to […]

The New Hampshire House of Representatives on Wednesday rejected a bill that would tightly regulate homsechooling. The state House voted 324-34 against changes to the current law. "Winning by such a significant margin is welcome relief for New Hampshire homeschool families," said Mike Donnelly, staff attorney for Home School Legal Defense Association. The bill was […]

Delaware’s child welfare law, known as The Delaware Child Care Act, is being used by state officials to unreasonably burden some homeschooling families with government oversight. As amended in 2001, the law defines “child care” to include, in part, any person, association, agency, or organization which (1) has in custody or control one child or […]

by Rick The liberal elite see homeschoolers as more of a threat than your typical fruit of kaboom jihadist... or so it seems: Fundamentalist Protestant adults who were homeschooled over the last thirty years are not politically disengaged, far from it. They vote in far higher percentages than the rest of the population. They mobilize […]

Waukegan’s ordinance reads as follows: Sec. 15-16.1. School curfew. (a) It shall be unlawful for any person under the age of 18 who is enrolled in any public, private or parochial school to be present in any public place, building, street or assembly in the city, other than school, during any hours when school is […]

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) doesn't do everything right, but it's a huge step in the right direction for getting young people to actually be treated as individual human beings, with their own opinions and their own individual hopes and dreams, instead of as property of their parents. Apparently […]