“Reclaiming play and a love of learning that is our childrens’ birthright”

This site supports most of the actions being taken by the SaveOurSchools site (oregonsaveourschools.blogspot.com) where dedicated and independent-thinking teachers and parents were successful in leading the Oregon opt out movement from state-mandated testing that has never proven to be useful or improve quality learning.

However, our experience with children in public schools is that the paramount goal should be to save our children, not the schools. We plan to explore how entrenched administrative bureaucracies at the state and school district level have perverted the idea of local control, and petty bureaucrats have lead us to a place where our six year-olds are forced to sit in chairs all day, often with no recess or movement between 9-3 other than to get up from one chair and go, — without any talking! — to sit in another chair.

The people who are running our public schools do not understand children, and that is a problem that affects our community’s health and welfare and our collective humanity.

We will quote from the likes of John Taylor Gatto, who was named Teacher of the Year in New York and the delivered a speech blasting the administrative bureaucrats that have nearly destroyed our nation’s public education system. And Dr. Yong Zhao, who teaches at U of O’s teaching college. Zhao opposes Common Core and warns that the style of direct instruction used in schools today hinders learning. Then there’s Prof. Brene Brown, whose TED talk on vulnerability is among the Top 10. Her book Daring Greatly devotes a whole chapter to the need to “rehumanize” education and work. And of course Sir Ken Robinson, who delivered the most-watched TED talk ever about how US schools are crushing childrens’ creativity, “mercilessly so.” (See Resources below)

Our ideas are informed by leading progressive thinkers on education, and by pioneering homeschoolers who are leading the silent revolution in reclaiming childhood and a love of learning that is our childrens’ birthright. Homeschoolers are no longer the stereotyped clannish ill-fitting sorts. Many families in my town last year (2015) just simply walked away from their childrens’ enrollment in public elementary schools and found each other at a home-school co-op taught in a Farm School style. We parents were a mix: A lawyer (me) , a real estate professional who was chair of the PTA, and a music teacher. A fourth family, where one parent has a Ph.D. in Education and the other is an accountant, chose not to enroll their child in public elementary school after spending time inside their local school. These are all families who believed in public education and didn’t immediately choose expensive private schools (now $7000 – $40,000 per year) as many wealthy families do.

A fifth family, whose parents are a pre-school teacher and a University Professor, respectively, have also chosen not to enroll their children in public elementary school. A sixth family are my neighbors, a sheriff and a higher education advisor, who after watching how the local school’s culture affects our children, applied to get their five year-old into any charter school they could. These are just some examples of the faces of the families who know public schools are broken. The University Professor feels even more strongly than I do that public schools do a dis-service to our children. I asked her to join me in writing editorials, fight but she said, “No way, I would be eaten alive!” Indeed, those in power care deeply about keeping anyone who would make changes at bay.

We all took flack for homeschooling our kids – our families often ridiculed us for it. Some of us homeschoolers integrated our kids back into public schools at later points, and/or attended local co-ops where families together hired gifted teachers to teach small, mixed age classes. My son just finished attending a Marin County, California, public middle school for three years. He graduated with top grades and also won a special award for being the student who showed the most respect for the school and the community. The former silences the naysayers who think unschooling lacks academic rigor; I tend to think the latter is connected to the fact he was homeschooled for most of his primary school years.

This site was created by Lisa Nuss. She is an author, lawyer, and parent. Her bio is in the About Us Section.

“Reclaiming play and a love of learning that is our childrens’ birthright”

RESOURCES

John Taylor Gatto – New York State’s Teacher of the Year

John Taylor Gatto climaxed his teaching career as New York State Teacher of the Year after being named New York City Teacher of the Year on three occasions. He quit teaching on the OP ED page of the Wall Street Journal in 1991, claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children. Later that year “An Evening With John Taylor Gatto,” held at Carnegie Hall, launched a career of public speaking in the area of school reform, which has taken Gatto to all fifty states and seven foreign countries. [From JohnTaylorGatto.com]

“It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“[L]ast month the education press reported the amazing news that, in their ability to think, children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Dr. Yong Zhao, UO Educ. Prof

“Treating students like widgets has produced a generation of aimless 20-somethings.”

Zhao told a group at PSU in May that the current school model doesn’t work. Schools continue to homogenize when instead they should fix deficits or support strengths.

Creativity exists in all of us, yet creativity is not encouraged in schools – “schools don’t like creative people.” “All children are Rudolph; schools are the bully coach.”

Zhao said that most children start with what has been rated a “genius” level of creativity, measured by ability to solve problems – yet this ability is destroyed as they go through conventional schooling. A study at Berkeley & MIT found that the style of direct instruction used in schools today hinders learning.

Dr. Brene Brown, Univ. of Houston Graduate School of Social Work

“When learning and work are dehumanized — when you no longer see us and no longer encourage our daring, or when you only see what we produce or how we perform – we disparage and turn away from the very things that the world needs from us: our talent, our ideas, and our passion.”

Sir Ken Robinson

“Do Schools Kill Creativity?” – Most watched TED Talk Ever

“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed — it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child…”

― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it’s the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves.”
― Ken Robinson

“We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”
― Ken Robinson