This amazing video from a TED talk by a confident teenager named Logan LaPlante has had more than 3.6 million views on YouTube.
In his view, the main purpose of education should be to help students become “happy and healthy.”
He describes his own unique version of schooling–which he calls “hackschooling.” It is homeschooling of a sort, using the Internet to delve into whatever interests him. It is not for everyone, only for those who are very self-motivated, curious, energetic, and industrious.
But what I see in his talk is a plaintive and passionate protest against the factory model, industrial age in which he cram information and instructions and tests down the throats of bright young people and expect them to like it. They don’t.
How will we adjust to the hackschoolers? How will we change our mindset to encourage them instead of crushing them? Or can we?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
While admitting I haven’t watched the video, this sounds exactly like Nikhil Goyal’s idea. I reviewed his book on Amazon and basically said he’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, there are a lot of problems with the factory model of education, but the factory model is not the only influence on current education. There are ways to bring self-directed learning into the school rather than leave self-directed learners to their own devices. Even the smartest and most self-directed can benefit greatly from being in a classroom setting with teachers and fellow students.
Dienne, why do you feel obliged to open a discussion of something you haven’t bothered to watch?
To save time, would you (and everybody who is ready to hold forth that this is just like what they’ve always said..) please look at the child’s own diagram, at 6:04 minutes, and get back to us.
Check out the link provided by Shawnacoppola.
Use the word “hack” in your title and any old idea is new again. I think the concept of the autodidact has been with us for ages.
Well, chemtchr, I’ve learned to trust my intuition. When certain key phrases come up, so does my guard. Having now watched the video, I can say it was pretty much what I expected. Logan is definitely smart and motivated, I’ll give him credit for that. But he’s also extremely young, privileged and inexperienced. I’m very happy he’s had the life he’s had – I truly wish every child could have that life. But until we get to a point where every child can have that kind of life, most kids can’t have that kind of education. In the meantime, he’s just talking the same kind of “creative disruption” as Nikhil Goyal and, for that matter, Bill Gates, which throws the lives of millions of kids for whom traditional school is a safe haven into chaos and churn.
I’m all for bringing many of the principles of “hackschooling” into traditional schooling (most of which already are present in affluent schools). I do think every child should be allowed to pursue their own interests at their own pace to a large degree. But I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. As alluded to below, I’m really not convinced that Logan is getting a very thorough education in the basics – he’s just learning the parts of subjects that interest him. To truly know a subject, sometimes you have to be bored. Some times you have to be challenged in uncomfortable ways that you might shy away from on your own. Sometimes you need an experienced perspective outside yourself. All of these things take someone serving as a guide – a teacher. I don’t think being compelled to be grounded in a subject through a traditional school approach is going to kill anyone’s creativity. Perhaps if Logan were in a drill and kill test prep factory, that might have killed his creativity, but as affluent as he obviously is, I hardly think his traditional education was anywhere near that stifling.
I guess a lot of what irks me is the cult of youth in this country. It’s great that young people have a voice (but I wish it wasn’t just privileged young people who did). But we develop our voice by being challenged by those older and more experienced than us. It seems like lately the mindset of the whole country (at least the movers and shakers) has been to always look to the new, the innovative, the disruptive – don’t fear “change”, etc. No one wants to listen to veteran teachers who might know what those new fangled ideas might not work (and in fact, they’re not so new anyway). No one wants to listen to the old fogies who are just “entrenched” and “set in their ways”. Not when there’s the next new and exciting thing just around the corner.
You write that this form of schooling “…is not for everyone, only for those who are very self-motivated, curious, energetic, and industrious…” but this is precisely what schools need to turn out for the jobs of the future. Our schools today are designed to squelch self-motivation, curiosity, and energy and we are surprised when students are not industrious. Kids like Logan know they can learn more looking at screens that interest them than they can by looking at books that prepare them for tests on the common core. Schools need to change the way they do business to encourage this kind of self-directed learning instead of insisting on batching students into age-based cohorts.
And here’s what’s REALLY perplexing: the business community that clamors for standardization in schools is simultaneously clamoring for “self-motivated, curious, energetic and industrious” workers. What’s wrong with this picture?
We just watched this as a faculty for the purpose of collegial dialogue. What I found fascinating about the discussions was that many faculty & staff members complained that working to ensure that students are “happy and healthy” was “not [their] job.” That it should be the job of the parents. My point was, OK, so if the family unit has changed and this is (many times) NOT happening at home, isn’t it the obligation of the public school system, which has an ethical obligation to provide for the young members of our democratic society, to take on this job, at least partly? Why continue to complain that it is “not our job” instead of adjusting our job to meet the needs of children?
As a side note, here is a very interesting and thought-provoking piece on these TED talks: http://hackeducation.com/2013/03/03/hacking-your-education-stephens-hole-in-the-wall-mitra/
My point was, OK, so if the family unit has changed and this is (many times) NOT happening at home, isn’t it the obligation of the public school system, which has an ethical obligation to provide for the young members of our democratic society, to take on this job, at least partly? Why continue to complain that it is “not our job” instead of adjusting our job to meet the needs of children?
You are not going to find that answered in a TED talk. The question is too large, does not allow for a tale of personal transformation, and the answers are too messy.
Ann, I understand that. It was a question I posed during our faculty discussion.
I was actually just reiterating your point and the inability of a TED talk to answer these questions or even to raise these questions. I think the point you made was important.
great link, BTW
The link is to the great Audrey Watters, everybody. You should follow her, everybody, if your reading speed is up to it.
Thanks, shawnacoppola, for raising the banner of generalized responsibility for every child’s happiness and health. Yes, it damn sure is our job, and it isn’t just for teachers, of course.
Thanks to my colleague Becky for the link! And I agree with Ann that the answers are “too messy” for a TED talk. Has to be a discussion, for sure.
It is human nature to focus on the outlier. “Factory” schools work for most. They are not the dull, desolate, islands of boredom that popular culture would have us believe. The vast majority of students need instruction and guidance from experts. In both school and work. There is only so much money and talent to go around. There are other issues in this country.
But this country/culture is big enough for both outlier and mainstream.
This is nothing less (or more) than another form of “distance learning,” a learning mode that has a long and varied history. It has always been and probably always will be available to a small number of self-directed, accomplished, and disciplined people. These people have always been a small majority of people, so any future for this will always be on the fringe of larger actions.
Getting an education is a social activity in which we use social cues and structures to assist people to do something quite difficult: to learn in a concentrated fashion. Gone are the days that a child could learn what they need to know at a parent’s side. But being at someone’s side, a good teacher one hopes, is a necessary component. Those who continually push for more mechanization of the process are misguided (too many guided by greed).
I would have to disagree that getting an education is a social activity. Those social “cues” you speak of, often discourage free thinkers from participating, but their ideas may not be the same or fit in with the majority. Look back to many of our great leaders, men who founded our country. They were all self educated.
I have to agree with Bette that school that schools and students can be very difficult for students out of the mainstream of students. There is constant pressure to conform to others expectations.
Innovate, create, and then, recreate. Explore the world of knowledge and find your niche within it. That is what all genus does. We need to cultivate curiosity and creativity to to empower all of our students to discover the answers to the questions of the 21st century. Warmest regards to our hostess and all of you. Teach on!
This ‘hackschooling’ is also only for those rich enough to have a parent home to facilitate said education. Not the mention the tools required by this type of education, computer, printer, trips to the museum, library…not every student in my school has this opportunity outside of school.
You’re so right, cary444, but it is our responsibility to make every one of those resources available to all children, one way or another. I’m actually certain it can be done, so there’s no excuse not to work toward it. This kid isn’t off on his own, without community resources or investment; far from it.
Please direct your attention to the slide at 6:04, so we can talk about the actual child on the stage. Logan’s diagram shows four lobes on his clover:
hackschooling
Creativity hacker mindset (Heart)
Experiential classes and camps (Hands)
Technology and online resources (Head)
Happy and Healthy 8 TLCs (Health)
Well, heck, every child would love to get all those things, with or without classrooms to keep them in.
But no amount of “creativity hacker mindset” on the part of an economically dispossessed working class child is going to get her those other three resources. Real brick and mortar schools can (and do!) provide little slivers of each of them, so please let us not brainstorm ways to take even that away from this generation of America’s children.
Community organizations like Boys and Girls clubs fill in some of the gaps for urban children, and many rural communities still hold some of the communitarian values needed (I alluded to 4-H deliberately). Unfortunately, the best graphic illustration of the WoHeLo clover is on a page that mentions “carcass performance” as an education objective.
http://www.tvsp.org/picklamb.html
I watched the video weeks ago, and just watched it again to see if I was missing something. Much of it rubbed me the wrong way the first time I saw it, and much of it still rubs me the wrong way.
Yes, Logan is a confident, well-spoken young man with a deep interest in skiing. I would bet just about everything I own that Logan grew up with advantages that most of the students I teach did not grow up with. Advantages like being born into a home that would provide rich, high quality verbal experiences (see Hart and Risley), and a family that had the time and resources to allow Logan to indulge his love of skiing.
Logan states that he “hacking physics was fun” and he learned “all about” Galileo and Newton. I question if he really learned “all” about those men, and the Newton’s Cradle he built is not all that different from the projects the 8th graders in my rural public school build when they study the principles of physics. Just like Logan, the students at my school learn about those principles through “experimenting and making mistakes.”
But we’re presented with false dichotomies about public education all the time these days. Like teachers only let students write about “butterflies and rainbows,” and never about the things students are really care about.
Logan cites the much-watched Ken Robinson Ted Talk in which Robinson claims traditional schools crush creativity. Robinson’s talk has also been criticized by some who study creativity. I think it’s very fair to ask, is creativity really a thing completely separate from domain-specific knowledge? Isn’t what we think of as creative thought really, usually, incremental? From my quick research, even Logan’s hero, Shane McConkey, didn’t create his inventions from scratch, but rather modified existing ski equipment to suit his needs in extreme skiing.
The kind of creativity that really changes the world come from a very deep understanding of a particular body of knowledge.
So that brings me to my real problem with Logan’s talk. I think a major reason It’s incredibly easy for people to criticize traditional schooling is that, if teachers are doing their job right, we make young people uncomfortable every day. We do that by constantly trying to get them to abandon certain intuitive, yet incorrect, understandings of the world, or to go beyond superficial understandings.
The cognitive scientist Dan Willingham, in his excellent book, Why Don’t Students LIke School?, points out that humans do not like to think. In fact, we are essentially wired to avoid thinking. We would rather rely on the unconscious associations our brain is makes in milliseconds all day long. When we’re asked to juggle information in our conscious brain, we get uncomfortable very quickly.
And yet good teachers ask their students to do that every day.
But it’s very hip right now to claim that learning should always be fun and discomfort-free. I don’t buy it.
What has this hacked education led Logan to want from his life? He wants to start his own business and make ski clothing. That’s . . . nice. How is that radically different than the goal of most young people educated in traditional schools?
And he wants to be happy. Now, that is an admirable goal, and I totally agree that helping young people find their path to happiness should be a major part of education. But to paraphrase the late Dr. George Sheehan, happiness has something to do with striving and failing and overcoming.
The lack of the focus in schools on the pursuit of happiness is because, for at least as long as there have been public schools, educators have bought into, or at least acquiesced to, business interests’ demand for skilled workers. Certainly educators in the past have resisted the focus on mere workforce preparation. There are those who are trying to reverse the swing of the pendulum that now is calling for “college and career readiness” for all. Many more of us need to get on board with those who are trying to reverse the swing of that pendulum. We need to insist on a substantive public conversation on what it means to be educated in the 21st century.
Surely it means something more than creating, say, the next generation of social media or smartphone, or even the next generation of cool ski clothing.
You’ve raised important questions, KenS, though I would disagree with some of your answers. Many children will need to attempt more difficult, challenging and comprehensive work than Logan has yet encountered, but it need not decrease their happiness.
I don’t ever deliberately inflict unhappiness on any student, and there is a certain harmonious comfort for a child undertaking difficult work with the reassuring intellectual presence and support of an adult who is already adept.
The biggest hurdle ahead for our sheltered young princeling is probably the same one that Siddhartha faced, if he chooses to leave his bubble of privilege. The human condition isn’t as easy as self-directed consumerism makes it out to be.
chemtchr, you’ve always posted thoughtful and insightful comments here, so I am sincerely interested to know which answers I’ve suggested you disagree with.
To be clear, I never meant to imply that learning had to make students unhappy. I do stand by my statement that learning is not always fun, certainly not the fun of playing a video game or, say. searching through youtube videos of cats doing silly things.
But learning should always be ultimately satisfying and rewarding, and we need those feelings in our lives at least as much as we need fun.
I really like your comment, “The human condition isn’t as easy as self-directed consumerism makes it out to be.” Exactly. Except, does self-directed consumerism really exist in our culture?
Happiness (or unhappiness) should not be the operative word here.
I never ask my own kids if they had a “happy” day when they come home from school. Instead we ask, “Did you learn anything new or interesting?” or “Did you do anything new or interesting/”
The idea of deliberately inflicting “unhappiness” (sadness? gloom?) on students should be a null concept. Of course we want to work with generally happy, well adjusted youngsters. I would venture to guess that the emotional well being of students is much more dependent on their family and social life then whether or not we our classes piqued their interests. Most of the students I have worked with would say that they generally dislike school because it is boring, but at the same time are living generally happy lives with friends and family.
So, for Logan to suggest that school should be about his personal happiness seems to me to the kind of thinking that lacks a mature perspective on personal interests, career goals, and educational opportunities, and life in general. Unfortunately for Logan, ‘hacks-chooling’ will probably not help him with the kind of mentoring and perspective he needs. The kind he just might get from a human teacher.
KenS
Your comment on false dichotomies is right on the mark. Just the kind of perspective Logan could use. Going to school, skiing, and becoming a ski apparel entrepreneur are by no means mutually exclusive.
As far as most students not liking to think – spot on as well!
Most people do not like to think. Emotions, intuition, hunches, rumors, anything but the hard earned truth. Most of us know that teaching is difficult because we are up against this well conditioned side of human nature. If our classrooms were filled with eager, attentive, curious, and highly motivated students who loved to think, and ponder, and wonder, and ask, and who loved the challenge of intellectual struggle, our jobs would be easy.
KenS, what I disagreed with is this presentation:
“The cognitive scientist Dan Willingham, in his excellent book, Why Don’t Students LIke School?, points out that humans do not like to think. In fact, we are essentially wired to avoid thinking. We would rather rely on the unconscious associations our brain is makes in milliseconds all day long. When we’re asked to juggle information in our conscious brain, we get uncomfortable very quickly.”
I don’t think it’s a particularly excellent book, and even though others may like it, that kind of opinion-based prescriptive writing isn’t “cognitive science”, or any other kind of science.
It’s just not my genre. When he applies his false erudition to advice about how to structure the schooling experience, Willingham kind of makes random suggestions, some of which many people would already agree with (offering proximal learning challenges, for instance). Thus, many reasonable people will have a general impression of finding the work validating. That’s how pop psychology books function.
Humans do like to think, in my experience. I didn’t buy the book, so I’ll use an example from it, which you can get to on the Amazon preview. There’s some garbled, wordy puzzle about how to hold a candle up that frustrates and bores kids. No fun. But if they had candles and boxes and tacks, they’d certainly find it fun and interesting to tack things to the wall.
For some students I think the discomfort comes from not allowing the students to think, from requiring them to go down the predetermined path that students in that grade or age must travel.
Could you describe the mechanism that prevents any student from thinking beyond the textbook or syllabus?
I am thinking about what happens inside the class, not outside it. the issue is clearest in mathematics. Students are constrained by the curriculum offered in the school, by the scope of the text used, and the experience of the instructor teaching the class. Students in a high school English class can read Shakespeare, but students in a high school mathematics class will not read about Galois theory.
Include the fact that students spend only 10% of a calendar year in school. That 90% of the year to expand any horizon they choose.
TE
I have to agree with you on your math example. It would take an exceptionally well read math teacher to digress beyond algorithms and correct answers and completing the odd number on page 274.
Math is, in my opinion, the one subject where the null curriculum is the only aspect of math that would interest students.
However, back to the issue of ‘discomfort coming from not be allowed to think’. Its hard to feel as though your thinking is being restrained when students don’t even know what theyre missing, such as galois theory or engineering applications.
The access to information that students have with the internet mean that students can know what they are missing. This is going to be an increasingly important issue for high schools.
Despite the unlimited access to information I find students general knowledge of the world more shallow than ever. It may be the information age, but it definitely isn’t the knowledge era.
I suspect that depends a great deal on the student. Using a textbook and resources on the internet, my middle son taught himself Galois theory over the summer before his senior year in high school, something that would have been much more difficult before having access to the internet and the large community of mathematicians that gather on line.
Can the internet be trusted to transfer cultural history? Are there things worth knowing that a hackschooler will probably not happen upon on the internet or in casual conversation? Some decry the particular version of history being taught by the textbook writers. Are we better off leaving it to a million voices online? (Those voices are increasingly dominated by commercial interests.) these questions make me skeptical and cautious about throwing away traditional education to serve transient interests and passions… No matter how compelling this might seem to parents and adolescents.
But… To find passion in a schools does seem sadly lacking. Maybe schools exist to awaken passion, but not serve it — to equip the mind with skills to pursue passion.
Maybe the pursuit of passion belongs outside of school anyway… How fractious and impossible would it be to transmit the body of common knowledge in science, literature, and civics, all the while indulging wide-ranging and obscure tangents.
Maybe I value the enculturation function of schools too highly?
I see these kinds of kids everyday! I can tell you, children who are as motivated as Logan, who have the freedom to own his education, and pursue what he is interested in learning about, become experts in whatever it is they choose to learn. Because, there are no boundaries. There is no one there telling him what he HAS to learn, and what’s not important. While I agree that there are many things our children really should learn, I am open to all possibility that outside of reading and mathematics, a person could be quite successful AND quite happy, pursuing his/her interests. I for one, say, there is no better way to keep these children motivated, and to teach them that learning is a lifelong skill/honor/privilege, than allow them to take ownership for their education. I know many of them could probably go in and teach some of the teachers a few things. I see it happen, daily! Children really should be given more credit, and as adults, our job is simply to facilitate their learning and helping them find their way. Not shuffling them through a dictatorial system.
At what age should this begin?
I did watch the video and Logan did say that anyone can hack anything.Public school kids could hack their own education. I know what he means. My husband tries to hack everyday with his orchestra and band. He gets amazing results out of middle schoolers while at the same time teaching them about life.
My first thoughts after watching this – of course public schools can do this stuff, ski trips, etc. – but they need money, resources, time free of bad top-down decision making, like imposed testing
Meanwhile, our schools are being starved out by a discretionary budget that gives 70% (at least) to the Pentagon, yet forces Veteran’s benefits to come out of the money the rest of us are alloted, and same budget designers seem to like the idea of taking more public money away from true public schools and putting it into the hands of PRIVATE CONTRACTORS, that is what Charters are, after all.
Good for this child, that he lives in the idyllic surroundings that he does, and must have wealthy loving parents, community, etc. He reminds a bit of Siddharta (in the novel) before he sees the suffering of others.
Being wealthy gives you a worldview that’s hard to share if you’re not wealthy.
Hmmm … something so familiar yet “new” …. what is it exactly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile,_or_On_Education
Last week a dismayed parent told me that her son wanted to drop out of high school. The week before I had another dismayed parent tell me that her daugher wanted to drop out of high school. These are professional families and their kids are sick of the nonsense. Both sets of parents are great and both the male and female students are good students. What is happening to our students?
Also, learned that two first grade students (a girl and a boy I know personally) are in remedial reading. OY. Nothing is wrong with them.
Too much craziness coming from the FEDs and the deformers. Maybe the deformers whole point is to have schools with no students or teachers in them, just electronics and desks. The teacher will be from a far away country who has no clue about who s/he is teaching. Sound nuts? This is already happening…it’s called OUTSOURCING. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/05/the-dangers-of-outsourcing-public-education/
Hack schooling can most likely be done by young people if given time and access.
The entire structure of school as we know it, at least in Los Angeles, would have to be tweaked to accommodate differentiated classes and student learning.
How about small community schools run by faculty, students, parents and other community members? How about breakfast programs at every school..extended care, parent education, enrichment and community gardens? How about community history and cultural studies? How about the school house..be it brick and mortar perhaps ..becoming the center that people are drawn to instead of a place some do their best to avoid?
How about the school hosting an extended wifi hotspot so that folks in the neighborhood can access the web at little cost….how about access to computers and space to work on assigned or self motivated projects after classes…..
How about stopping the spending of large amounts on textbooks and commodified curriculum packages? How about spending on art and music , dance, theatre, and p.e. instead?
How about equity?
My own kids essentially hackschooled, learning so much from communities around online roleplaying games on the Internet.
http://www.leftyparent.com/blog/2009/03/22/massive-multi-player-on-the-world-wide-web/
http://www.leftyparent.com/blog/2010/06/24/the-adventures-of-an-unschooler-on-the-virtual-high-seas/
Not that long ago one of the Asian countries set as their goal: happiness of their people, not raising the “standard of living” in the American and European tradition of more “toys” etc. [The one who dies with the most toys wins. What an infantile way of looking at life – a philosophy on which to live your life.]
What IS the goal of life? Why are we here? Where are we going? Does more “toys” actually make us more happy?
Sometime way back I read that at that time at least anthropologists suggested that the Eskimos – with the least of material possessions – were the happiest people on earth. Do not know if it is or was true but is worthwhile to contemplate.
I hope so, actually.
http://www.hemlockontherocks.com cavete tyrannis qui doecet in doctrina
Though I do not agree with everything in this video, it resonated with me, my own middle school aged children and a lot of my students (who are teachers). The part I like was the fun and happiness part. I am usually a positive happy and humorous person, but all of the issues impacting education in NC have gotten to me. I do not mind playing the part of the radical but it can be draining. My children liked the balance of what Logan does so we now make an effort to make sure we do more with nature, more with giving to others (helping) more with exercise, more with creating and making things on a daily or at least weekly basis. We are a fairly active creative family- but we are being more intentional about it now. The students who loved this the most were my Belezean students. One in particular was upset that she had trouble motivating her students to write. So we discussed her taking them on a field trip and then them writing about it. I added that they could write to my students. They are so excited to write for an international audience and get their stories published online. We have not completed this project yet but if you want to check it out it will be here. http://storiesfrombelize.weebly.com/
So I am thankful to Logan’s talk. I have to admit this video when we watched it over a month ago has inspired us! It made a nice positive impact on my life, my kids and some of my students. Pretty cool. 🙂
Janna, So true. I feel that school has become too competitive, too high stakes for these young people. I have seen my 12 year old grandson who is was curious, inquisitive, and very physically active becoming withdrawn and frustrated by spending 6 hours a day at a desk where he knows most of the other kids are “getting it” better than him. I have seen my daughter (his mother) becoming stressed as well and fights over homework have begun to affect their relationship at a very crucial time in this young man’s life.
My grandson’s intentional productive nature has become stagnant in a primarily didactic environment. I can’t help but wonder how he might develop in a different environment that allowed him to participate in more real world experiential learning experiences where he gets immediate feed back.
He thinks about going to tech school in high school, but is now being told his grades aren’t going to be good enough to make it if he doesn’t “buckle down”. Even the one outlet of sports is being held for ransom until he performs better.
I wish for him so much more than he will probably get and I fear for his future as I see my lovable, shy grandson (“thanks for the climbing ropes and the camouflage fort building material nana”) being forced to end his childhood too soon.
I also worry for our society because I know he is one of millions.
Clearly, this young man is a talented speaker. With incredible parental support he has used his talents to their greatest advantage. As a parent of four children who up until this year has had a child in the public school system for 28 consecutive years and now home schools my two youngest children, I recognized this young man as a home schooled child from his first sentence.
Homeschooling liberates children in a way that traditional school simply cannot. It gives a child who might have been the victim of bullying due to their nontraditional interests or later maturation to find their own voice before it is drowned out by the voices of the more “assertive” children and on occasion their parents who can dominate public school. Meek and gentle spirits often become squashed and with it their self esteem.
In my experience, by fourth grade. the schools have already decided who their “ambassadors” will be and resources are focused on these students as well, of course, those with special needs. Your “average” student is simply confined to the mundane and must wait until college before their unique gifts can be realized should their spirit survive the assault.
I chose to remove my children from public school after fifth grade. This was when I began to notice the bullying begin. A large percentage of the day was spent on discipline and dealing with a mass group of hormonal 11, 12 and 13 year old children all tossed into the same building like some sort of “Lord of the Flies” on steroids.
I am now in my third year of home school and like the young man in the video my children have been liberated. We co-op with other home schooling families to support one another with our particular skills and have a very strong focus on literacy. Math and Science are taught from different genres from text book, to online, to classroom so that students grasp the concepts even when they are exposed to them in a variety of formats.
It takes incredible parental involvement (usually one parent home) and not a small amount of money to choose this alternative, though and I support public education 100%. In fact, my son is a public school teacher as is his wife. The question is–How do we get public education policy back where it belongs–at the local level?
I wish I’d had this type of schooling. I think its genius, a way to really help children reveal their true selves that often disappear in a normal classroom environment. It may not even be noticeable, but it happens slowly over time. Creativity becomes something to work at and not as it was when imaginations were used in excess.
Many adults spend thousands trying to find themselves, or perhaps only realise it mid-life. This type of schooling begins from the early years when we as children know who we are in our core.
His mother is admirable, and many others, to be able to brave the retorts and go against the normal education system. As Logan says and history depicts, many innovative thinkers, creators and leaders have ‘hacked’ the system. They inspire us and yet we feel we could not do what they did but we didn’t have the same foundation from which their ingenuity stemmed.
I hope to be able to provide my children (if i should have in the future) with the opportunities that accompany Hack Schooling.