It seems as if the Western World is made up out of paradoxes, and everywhere I turn I find them. I got to thinking about “work” after writing an article for Life Learning magazine a while back. Work is the single most valued thing in Western society. When you meet someone new,the first question will be: “what do you do”. We are a folk that defines themselves through their activities. If you do not “do” anything – or at least anything that complies to the general definition people hold, Westerners donʼt really know where to put you, and it generally ends a conversation dead on track.

When it comes to kids in Western society, we are most worried about their “success” in life. And success, of course, is defined by their capacities of landing a well paid job, later on. So – from a young age – parents stress about “raising the bar high enough”, getting in the right schools and following the right courses. As kids get older, and get to go to college or university, they are told to choose a path that will ensure good (read well paid and available)career opportunities.

Now even though (paid) activity is so very valued in Western society, children are to be kept faraway from it. We even made laws to keep them out of it. Children are kept off the work market on purpose, for years. That is the whole purpose of collective schooling anyway: initially, to keep them safe while both parents are at work and secondly to keep them off the market and dependent, so both parents have to continue working.

So even though we are most concerned about our kids getting a good job, and every step we take from the day they are born is directed to ensure that we do everything in our power to ensure that super magnificent well paid job, nothing, not one thing on their perfectly laid out trajectory towards that job prepares them for actually having that job. Nothing prepares them for the responsibilities that go along with that job. And nothing prepares them for controlling the money they earn from that job, which was, after all, the big goal of the scheme.

Now maybe that’s also a piece of the puzzle: to make them “ambitious” and have them make as much money as possible, and then to have them spend it as swiftly as possible to get the economy rolling, because they never learned to manage it.

Anyway, it seems really strange to me how so little people in the Western World see how much pressure we put on children to eventually get “a good job” and how little we do to actually prepare them for that job.

By Mamapoekie

I was recently introduced to a fantastic FREE tool for unschoolers who want or need to keep records of their children’s learning. Evernote is a free application that helps you keep track not only of all your online activity (websites, games, videos), but also personal notes, photos, sound clips, text documents, etc. I think Evernote can be the entire portfolio–you can even scan documents (drawings, writings, etc…).

After you download the program, create “notebooks” to hold the information you gather from websites, games, interesting online videos, etc. Put Evernote on all your computers and smart phones, that way if your partner is out with the kids and someone asks a question, and your partner can looks up the answer, that info can be sent directly to the appropriate “notebook”-same with photos or notes that are made. { Read the complete article }

Babble has a top 50 best mommy bloggers awards voting going on now!

Laurie Couture is an unschooling mama that writes her blog here. Laurie specializes in helping parents heal their children’s emotional, behavioral and learning struggles through attachment parenting, natural education and alternatives to psychiatric drugs. She offers supportive parenting coaching and consulting as well as attachment parenting workshops and seminars through LaurieACouture.com. Laurie is a proud unschooling Mom to her 16 year old son, Brycen, who is a musician, writer and game inventor.

You can vote on her blog at Babble.

If there are anymore unschoolers on the list let us know!

I wasn’t going to get back into things until after the New Year, but a reader needs help.
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Hello, I am new to unschooling and trying to learn all that I can. Some blogs on here seem very informative.

I guess unschooling just varies alot from person to person. I am basically against this system. The school system, the whole thing. My 5 yr ol does half a day kindergarten and I really dont like it. I dont want hime going to first grade but have a hard time envisioning how to avoid it. Here the big joke lol- I am a law school student with a semester and a half left so I have a ton of dept piling up ugh. My wife and I also have 3 year old daughter and a brand new 2 month old son. { Read the complete article }