Tuesday 2 September 2008

NBTS

Yesterday, on the day before not going back to school, Fergus celebrated by watching Scooby Doo all day. The rest of us spent the afternoon preparing for a photo shoot. All of this because Gillian had talked to a reporter for a good hour about unschooling and, under the threat of the newspaper sending out a freelance photographer, we decided we would just rustle up some pics we had taken ourselves. Only problem... the picture was supposed to show us doing something schooly in the woods and after a couple of hours scrolling through the archives we unearthed a lot of "playing" in the woods, but very little in the way of documented "learning". Darn uncooperative unschoolers! In the end, and after everyone put on clothing, we recreated the deer bone photo (this time with fewer pj's):


The article in question was a full page feature in the Vancouver Sun today on one professor's ideas of re-defining schools. His philosophy revolves around kids studying one topic (like dust - his example, not mine) for 12 years. Apparently, "interest is high"! Gillian was sought out as an alternate voice, though she feels she came off as "just a mom" who can not speak proper English in comparison with the erudite professor. But obviously the article was written for a certain purpose, and that purpose obviously had nothing to do with showing a lovely mother and daughter hovering over some bones in the woods and everything to do with an over-powering photo of a professor standing in front of a concrete jungle. Page hog!

Anyway, Gillian got a few words in. You can read the article here.

1 comment:

Rachel said...

Too bad they didn't at least include the photo in their online version...but I'm glad you got a nice photo of Effie and Gillian examining those bones. :) And couldn't help but notice the line "everything is wonderful" from that article. Seems to me the problem with his idea is that kids are randomly "assigned" a topic, and what if the idea of dust, for example, doesn't capture your passion at all? With modifications, i.e. if the kids can choose the subject or two or three or dozen that they want to become experts on, it might just work. ;)