Essential and Subversive: Parents in Education
However beneficial we understand parent involvement in education to be, the system we have is not integrated, but segregated.
Learn MoreMadame President, Our Teacher
The primary role of parents applies also to teachers and world leaders: Dear Madame President [though of course, you may turn out to be a man]: Teaching and teacher education have traditionally been viewed as women’s work and practiced by women. Like nursing, teaching has never been taken seriously among the more august professions…. I […]
Learn MoreWe’re All Home Schoolers
Today’s homes are if anything even more important in the educational ecosystem of most Americans.
Learn MoreHomeschool Moments: Dishing Out BOF, Dealing with Prejudice
Overcoming prejudice and distrust is not a one-time attitude adjustment, but a continuing journey in the company of people who are not like us, but who may become our civic friends. Such a strategy might go a long way toward more important goals: building a supportive environment for homeschoolers, and reinvigorating the varied practices of education & learning in America today.
Learn MoreOn Manifestoes
So here are some manifestos of the present day on books, education, faith, and civic life. Though their weight for good or ill, for much or little, is as yet unknown, these are some of the words that will shepherd us into our shared future.
Learn MoreThe Hundred-Mile Diet Map and More
A new map of food sources within a hundred miles of Madison, Wisconsin, shows kind of connection and sharing that will allow us as human societies to learn to be conscious of and take responsibility for the earthly places in which we live and move.
Learn MoreFamily, Heroes, and History
One thing that Aldo Leopold did to become great was find, and use, his voice. His family was in many ways similar to mine and to thousands of others here in Wisconsin; his famous shack seemed completely familiar to us–just like Grandad’s place up north. But he made a difference in the world by figuring out what he had to say that was worth saying, and saying it wisely and well.
Learn MoreWriting Tips from Hobgoblins, Pandas, and Doves
The fantastically helpful Janice Campbell has reviewed Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins: The Careful Writer’s Guide to the Taboos, Bugbears, and Outmoded Rules of English Usage; Lynn Truss’ (or is that Truss’s?) aggressive panda is back for the kids in Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference!, and from his first year English […]
Learn MoreWhat Are Blogs? Not Monologues but Conversations
Here at the beginning of the 21st Century, the internet connects us (however imperfectly) across barriers of geography, race, class, age, ability, family situation, income, education, religion, culture, and even language. The monologue of the powerful few, for good or ill, is overcome by connections among the many. With those connections come power — ordinary people like you and me are given the power (and therefore the responsibility) of participation in each others’ lives.
Learn MoreGood Oak and Good History: Leopold’s “Sand County Almanac”
Here, right here, is where it happened–the Leopold family and their farm, the acorn, the rabbits, the Civil War, the covered wagons (with all the Ingalls family times), the Great Depression, the dust bowl drouths, floods, storms, fires, extinctions, and acts of government; and the lightning, and the heat from the fire.
Learn MoreLearning Like Magic
It makes a sensational, controversial headline: A Harry Potter-centered curriculum boosts a failing school into the top 5 percent. Students must recite a spell (“numerus subtracticus”) when answering math questions. But on closer inspection, this turns out not to be just a school carried off into frightening conformity to the current fad. Whatever you may […]
Learn MoreOf Lists and Learning
At their best, the lists are intended to be guiding abstractions of something deeper and much more complex than any list: the collected wisdom and practice of a whole community, whether of mathematicians, writers, historians, or scientists. That knowledge is fully present only in the community itself, and distilling it into a list is a deeply self-reflective exercise for practitioners in any field of human activity.
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