Jody Cooper

Homeschooling with Kindles

Mollie is a homeschooling mom in my study. Technology opened up a whole new relationship between Mollie’s children and their grandfather. Their grandfather was a pastor with a disability, ataxia. Mollie explains,

He doesn’t walk well or speak well, but he’s losing different, many abilities and so I was trying to think of ways to connect with him better. He can’t talk on the phone anymore, he lives in Georgia… we see him like twice a year. And I just felt like… even when we’re together it’s hard to talk because he physically can’t speak well.

Mollie’s father discovered Kindles. He could still type and so he got very excited discovering the things he could do with Kindles and he made sure that everyone in the family had one. Mollie was looking for ways for her children to interact with their grandfather so she asked his assistance in planning their Bible class for that year. The rest is history…

He got really excited and he started saying oh he had ideas and he was going to use this curriculum and all that. So, he sends every week on Wednesday, he sends them their assignment for the week, and for my son they are doing a video course and there’s a workbook that goes with it, so you watch a DVD and he takes the notes that his grandfather made up for him.

Collaborating on this project opened other lines of communication for the family and their grandfather. Mollie gets a little emotional when she talks about this. She says,

I just haven’t been able to talk to him very much and now we’re emailing a lot more. And my daughter…so every time she gets her email…she’s better at this because she gets her work done faster, so she has more spare time. But uh she’ll get an email from him with the assignment, and then I got her to try to write back to him. So, she writes back, and she’ll write and tell him whatever she’s doing during the week, just to keep it going. So that’s been great. And I’ve just been emailing him more because I’m paying attention.

I love hearing this story because the older people in my life would love more communication with their young relatives and for this grandfather to have found it using technology is a hopeful sign of what technology might be used for.

Jody Cooper

The Demise of the Nation State

NOTE: My intention for this blog was not to be highly political. However I believe this article provides background to the idea that schooling is suffering and needs to change to meet the needs of the changing world.

On Facebook, today, I read The Demise of the Nation State, published by The Guardian. I had recently come to a personal acceptance that the populist or nationalistic state of our current country is in sync with the state of many other countries and felt very alarmed. This article was long, and mentally taxing at times, but it woke me up to how I accept nation states as a way of life, a way of being. Contemplating the idea that nation states have a lifetime, that death may be part of their journey was alarming. However, this article’s claims seem plausible.

 

If one studies the history of education, one learns quickly that the purpose of most schools has been indoctrination: mainly of ‘country values’ (political), economic needs, or religious ideas. If nation states are failing, then educational institutions, tasked with creating citizens for that nation state, will become obsolete. (I was going to say quickly, but educational institutions never do things quickly.)

 

I am a strong proponent of alternative education. However, I also believe that traditional schooling has played an important role in our nation state. I am deeply interested in exploring ways that traditional educational institutions could be more flexible, change with the times and meet the needs of their growing population. But I can’t say I have any good ideas at present. I fear if I had children to educate today I’d flee to homeschooling or some form of alternative education.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/05/demise-of-the-nation-state-rana-dasgupta

Jody Cooper

Off the Beaten Path

Families that choose a different path for schooling often find that family and friends don’t understand. Janna, a homeschooling mom, coined the phrase “off the beaten path’ when trying to explain their choice.

I mean they just don’t really understand why I would choose, why anybody, but why us in particular, would choose to go this far off the beaten path kind of thing.

She carries the metaphor even further:

…that’s why I keep telling my parents… if anything, it has shown, it’s proven to me and Mark, but also to the kids, that there is no one way. And not only is there not only one way, but there’s not only one way for you.

I feel like homeschooling…we’re already on a different path. I feel like…any other different path you take is cool. I mean homeschooling is a different path for a lot of people; they see it as a really odd path, but it works. I think it works. It works for us. I think it works for a lot of people. I think it could work for more people than people think they could.

I pulled my son off the beaten track in fourth grade, onto a new path of homeschooling. At the time I was unsure how our schooling would play out. I thought even if he just read for a year he’d be okay. He reported to me later that it occurred to him, if we can approach school in such a different way, we can probably approach other things in life differently than the traditional way.

There is no one way to learn, more people can probably manage it than think they can, and it may open up new pathways to thinking and acting in many different arenas.