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dianeblitzer's comments:

on Unschool

I raised one daughter who had an uneasy relationship with school. She is 20 now, and, unlike parents whose children are still school age, we are seeing the consequences of alternating conventional and unconventional education.

My daughter started school in a Montessori preschool. For her first few years, I was an at-home mom. This was sufficiently unusual in our neighborhood that I had to enroll my daughter in preschool in order for her to have playmates.
The Montessori experience emphasized her predispositions to self-reliance and self-directed learning, as well as her comfort in groups of any age.
She returned to the Montessori system after a brief episode of home-schooling, which involved use of community programs at the library, the Y, and the Children's Museum.
She had another episode of alternative education when she was 14. She and I spent 3 months traveling "student-style" in Eastern and Western Europe, including a college-level course in foreign language, at which she excelled. She also learned to use train schedules, city maps, foreign alphabets, and willingness to launch herself into new environments tempered by concern for her personal safety.

When she was in a conventional middle school and an academically challenging high school, we started getting negative reports: Your daughter is exceptionally capable, but she doesn't do homework. I don't want to flunk her, but if she doesn't conform to the homework requirements, I have to."
We wound up sending a very bright girl to summer school twice to make up courses she flunked. She aced the courses in summer school - she says because she could focus on one subject at a time, instead of having to drop what interested her in order to complete assignments in other subjects.

After high school, we permitted our daughter to postpone college and enroll in a program of only what interested her. One year of this was not enough; so she continued in specialized programs that permit her to gather credits towards a B.A. by distance learning.

At age 20 and with no bachelor's degree, our daughter is supporting herself living abroad, working as a tutor in her specialized college and as a freelance editor of books in her area of interest, and possibly assisting with the translation of a very important text. Moreover, she is chronically happy.

At one point in her grade-school career, we spent a day at one of Portland's best public schools to determine if this might be preferable to the Montessori program which, after all, requires paying tuition. I am sorry to say that I was ready to leave after only a couple of hours. The teacher was experienced, the kids were engaged, the facilities were comfortable. But I watched as worksheets were handed out, and the kids who understood the lesson finished the worksheets quickly and got fidgety and disruptive, and the kids who did not understand the lesson struggled with insuffucient time to complete the worksheets, and in an atmosphere that was at least stressful and possibly humiliating.

Every child is different. In one family, siblings may require different types of schooling. You have to recognize how each child learns best. You also have to separate yourself from conventional notions of achievement and consider what each child needs to be happy - Even a very bright kid may be happier and more successful repairing cars than studying physics at Princeton.


posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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on Primary Conversations: Portland Mayor

Portland is Sister City to Ashkelon, Israel, a city currently targeted by rockets being fired from Gaza.
The only hospital in the region, Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, continues to serve injured from both sides of the political divide - even while under fire.

What sort of support can the Portland-Ashkelon Sister City Association, and its advocacy of Barzilai Hospital, expect from you as Mayor?

posted 5 years ago
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