Old Life Blog

I emailed this to my immediate family. It has some good resources on unschooling, so I thought I'd copy it here. Family, We had a 3 hour conversation with Mom and Dad on Sunday night regarding our plans to keep our children home from school. I would like you all to get familiar with the approach we are taking, called "unschooling". The purpose is not to convince you to do this with your kids, but so that you will understand what we are doing with our kids. That is all, nothing more. ^_^. I'll list a few specific resources, and then some general ones for your own perusing. And I'm happy to answer any and all questions, but keep in mind, although I'm extremely excited about this approach and the future, there's still a lot we need to learn. What is Unschooling? by Earl Stevens Grown Without Schooling? Interview with Jason Hunt, who was unschooled Wikipedia entry on "Unschooling" CNN.com report on Unschooling Free to Socialize in Real Soci...

A study published in July showed that people have become less likely to remember things that they know are only a click away on the Internet. In other words, our selective memory has expanded to exclude things easily found via a web search. I interpret this revelation as meaning that people are selectively remembering the things that matter most to them in their everyday lives. All else are easily accessible, so why waste brain matter remembering them? Small example, I remember far less phone numbers than I used to thanks to my cloud-based contact list. I'll get back to why I started with an explanation of this study. Things We Learn in School When I venture into the land of memories and journey back into my school days, I can't help but wonder about what I've retained from all the things that K-12 public school taught me. I would say that 90% of what I learned was practically useless (not to mention how much of it was wrong). Reading, writing, and arithmetic h...

March 2021: I read this essay and added commentary for Episode 464 of the Everything Voluntary podcast . Oh boy do I feel completely taken advantage of, nay, exploited! I was in dire straits. My front yard was flooding. I wasn't sure why. I figured that my irrigation system's stop-n-waste valve was broken. It's been broken before. This time, however, the lawn was soaked around that area, so I knew that digging down 4 feet was going to be super hard with all that added water weight (mud!), and it was in the middle of the week, mid-day. No way was I going to find some help from neighbors, friends, or family. I was absolutely desperate! I called my brother-in-law, and he said he knew someone that was available to help me. They showed up in a half hour. I don't know if it was the color of his skin or his lack of English speaking skills, but I knew that he was a day laborer. I've heard about these guys, and how they like to undercut their competition, the licensed pr...