Do you think homeschooling is a viable educational alternative?
Homeschooling can be a viable and wonderful alternative to traditional S-chooling. However we have noticed a trend which we believe is leading to the next step in guiding and educating our children. Homeschoolers, including unschoolers, are forming co-operatives so that parents as teachers can share the responsibility and so that the children have a social group. In some cases, the homeschooling groups even hire teachers to teach certain subjects.
We believe this tendancy is the embryonic stage of the most powerful means of enriching our children's lives that humanity has ever devised - the community. Of course, this is nothing new. Our own ancestors and indigenous peoples all over the world know the power of the village.
Around the world, groups with similar thoughts are springing up. They are saying:
- We (including our children) need to reconnect with nature for our own health as well as the planet's. It is urgent that we appreciate our own intimate relationship with the great living entity that is our planetary home in the universe.
- The current global environmental crises reveal how urgent it is that humanity comprehend the interconnectedness of all sciences and arts.
- We need to relate to one another and our children so that they live and learn peaceful, win/win conflict negotiation.
- For optimal, happy, healthy development our children need to grow up in the midst of actively, productively, creatively engaged mentors who love them.
- The learning of children needs to occur through involvement with life experiences, as the result of intrinsicly interesting, meaningful, and purposeful activities.
- It is imperative that trans-global dialogue for understanding and networking for cooperation increase for the beneifit of all humanity and our planetary home.
The sum of these criteria adds up to more than the parts. These community learning centers are seeking to ignite the soul of the individual through joy, love of learning, and love of life. Physiologically and psychologically children recapitulate the growth of humanity. The truth-seeking, exploration into the unknown, and innovative pursuits of the human family over thousands of years have enhanced the intelligence of the human race, just as they enhance the intelligence of the individual child. Likewise, the inborn gift of the imagination, far from being a useless extra that gets in the way of real learning, is the vehicle for the development of superior intelligence and the advance of humanity. Similarly, all forms of creative expression, including the arts and handcrafts, are the hallmarks and stimulators of heightened intelligence in all areas - including science, math and language. Let us again become storytellers, who interweave knowledge and wisdom, looking to nature as the Great Teacher of spiritual and practical truths. Let children gravitate as an inner voice dictates to visible mentors, each industriously engaged according to his own talents and most enjoyable form of self-expression.
We wonder if a single individual, whether a mother or a classroom teacher, is likely to be able to supply all the benefits of a consciously designed community. The time is ripe for people to come together to cocreate the protective, creative, dynamic womb of the village. This doesn't have to mean that people give up their vocations. It does mean a creative pooling of talents and resources that include diverse ways of participating in the community. In the best scenario an environmentally conscious group envisions ways to create a sustainable future for all children while living these principles in their immediate biome. The informed, heartfilled community is the ideal organ for transformative global interchanges, while nurturing the heart and soul of each and every child in its midst.
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