Emma Frost and homeschooling.

This is off on a tangent but it's sort of cool when you see a piece of your life referenced in a comic book. This is from the strangely good Emma Frost series. She's in a college class and homeschooling comes up. And it's not about the nutty christian wing of the homeschooling family...It's John Holt!

John Holt was an educator in the 60's who came to believe that school wasn't simply inadequate for kids but actively hindered their learning. He coined a term, "unschooling," that at first meant homeschooling but has now come to represent a style or subset of homeschoolers who sort of chuck the idea of lessons and formal schooling out the window in favour of natural or child-led learning. It's what we do in our house and it's changed my ideas of what learning looks like and even how I learn.

Basically we read a lot, play a lot and take it for granted that the kids will learn what they need to learn. It looks a little funny at times. Car games are where my 8 year old plays with algebra and though she has a little trouble with reading words like 'this' or 'which' she breezes through 'millions of species'. And the kids pick things up one time and retain it, no drills or constant practice needed.

Anyhow, I wonder if the writer on the series was a homeschooling parent. I must look into this. If anyone's interested I've got some links.

Life Learning Magazine (An unschooling magazine - free PDF downloads of past issues)

John Holt and Growing Without Schooling

Radical Unschooling