Stark Raving Dad

Home educating dad. I create words, podcasts and films that calm the waves of homeschooling doubt.

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

As a homeschool family we’re often asked to justify the educational choice we’ve made. To family, friends, strangers. If you’ve ever asked those kinds of questions, have you tried answering them yourself?

Because if your child attends school, I would like to know the following:

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

"Homeschooled children won't develop resilience."

I hear this a lot. If you've said it - if you've thought it - are you *sure*?

https://t.co/55mbxb9rvC

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

A brand new Life Without School podcast episode is live 🎉 We're examining some very common perceptions of unschooling:

- It's like 'unparenting'
- It creates lazy children
- It involves no rules or structure whatsoever

Have a listen 👇

https://t.co/Zs3J0qIkZa

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

"How do you know you're teaching your child to a high enough standard?"

If you're a homeschooling parent who struggles with this question, here's your path to answering to it.

(but before you click, know this - the path is a winding one)

https://t.co/dBgkYeudQ4

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

@Austen We home educate, and my wife was a teacher too. Turns out that the more we narrowed in on building drive, motivation and confidence in our kids, the more she needed to *un* learn almost everything she'd studied to join the profession.

More on what I mean: https://t.co/V8ppYQIKyD

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

Homeschool parents: stop worrying about academic subjects.

Instead, show your kids how to:

Question
Communicate
Fail
Listen
Research and reflect
Understand others
Form an opinion (and the confidence to change it)

Build up the child, or *what* they learn will mean nothing.

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

Children not becoming good students has never been the problem. It’s the fact we decided such a concept even exists.

The sun is setting on the factory. When dawn breaks, it will be our differences that shine.

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

It’s time to take a good, hard look at what we're filling childhoods with. At the relative value we're attaching to it all 👇

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

But you *cannot standardise people*, at least not without collateral damage, and we should be shocked that we ever tried. Every person born is one-of-a-kind, and any educational system our children are required to spend their formative years in must respect that at its core.

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

Take a decade of a child’s life to ensure proficiency in things we’ve decided for them, demand their compliance to our schedules and plans, test them relentlessly, tie their self-worth to external feedback, and leave them almost no space to explore any deeper meaning or purpose💁🏼‍♂️

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

Every Sunday night, two out of every three working adults fall asleep feeling a heaviness in the pit of their stomach. The feeling that tells them Monday is coming.

How did we end up with a statistic like this?

Simple 👇

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

It's often said that homeschooled children won't learn how to go through hard things.

They need to accept that bad teacher, bully, stressful test, separation anxiety..

But none of that prepares a child for life. It prepares them to grow up believing their feelings don't matter.

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

@MattR1689 Awesome, let me know what you think of it!

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

“No school today, kids?”

“Nope, we don’t go to school - this forest is our classroom today!”

After a bit more small talk, the person passing us on the track leaned over to me: “You will make sure they’re still learning, won’t you?”

Education has gone down a strange path 👇

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

We folded our map, zipped up our packs, tightened our laces, and - sun on our backs - carried on up the hill together.

This was today’s classroom, and we had much to learn from it.

[Stark Raving Dad @issysrd]

Back on the walking track - among nature, the weather, other people, exercise, and fresh air - we reflected.

None of what we were surrounded by matched the accepted definition of the best possible learning space. None of it looked like what learning was supposed to look like.