Comments on: The secret

By: Joe "Learn At Home" White

Joe "Learn At Home" White — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 02:13:42 +0000

As a software developer I will agree with you on the point about liking what you do can make you better at it and you will enjoy your work more.

But, after a few years, I ran into a situation where I started to hate programming because the stress of the job wore me out.

Eventually, I just quit one day. I had no job lined up to go to, I just quit. After a few weeks, a friend of mine and I started working on a new online service offering and programming was fun again and I got to be more creative than on my corporate job.

We now home school both our children and part of their education includes the fact that we don’t follow the school year exactly. We own 11 time shares and we do a lot of travel in the fringe seasons (cheaper and less crowded).

The other part is extolling the joys of being self employed and how family, education and financial preparedness far outweighs going with societal norms.

When my kids are sitting on the beach in Mexico or Spain (or Aruba this year) in November and going over their Spanish school work or working out some ideas for a social studies paper, we remind them that their friends are stuck in a boring class room in snowy Minnesota. They are eager to keep their grades up to a level that exceeds state standards under threat of having to go back to public school.

By: » Convalescent Mode everywakinghour

» Convalescent Mode everywakinghour — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 20:04:29 +0000

[...] Things have been slow around here. I started to try to write on the timeless question “How will unschooled children learn to deal with struggle and difficulty” but couldn’t get my thoughts to connect. But anyway, Ron already gave the secret. [...]

By: The 8th Country Fair is open!! | The Country Fair

The 8th Country Fair is open!! | The Country Fair — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:29:44 +0000

[...] Ron, of Atypical Homeschool, takes the whole idea of homeschooling is life/life is homeschooling to include his chosen field of work in The Secret. [...]

By: Ron

Ron — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 01:46:54 +0000

jax – to the first, I suppose there will always some anxiety toward that. But when compared to many other concerns we’ve had with life in general, it’s pretty insignificant.

To the second, yes and no: yes, at times at least one of them would prefer that we made educational choices for him/her (but if we did that we would also have to provide external motivation toward those goals/objectves) and no, I haven’t had the sense from any of them (excepting what I’ve just mentioned) that they would prefer it any other way.

By: jax

jax — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 20:33:59 +0000

yeah, I love programming too. I even love support – problem solving to a deadline is right up my street. Was there ever a time with any of your kids that you worried that they weren’t going to find something they enjoyed, or a phase where they didn’t seem happy with unschooling?

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:31:27 +0000

joVE – Definitely. At least in my experience.

kim – I suspect there are alot of adults in our society who don’t believe it. I think the sleeping on air matresses may have something to do with being tired

By: kim

kim — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:54:14 +0000

Nicely said. I hope my kids learn that too. It is a message most people don’t get sent in today’s world I think. Thanks for posting about it.

Too tired to blog every night?! I guess rehabbing really is exhausting.

By: joVE

joVE — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:17:50 +0000

Great points. And I agree that unschooling fits with this philosophy. In fact, many of the arguments I hear against is are of the type “but kids have to learn to do things they don’t like because we all have to do some stuff we don’t like to get where we want to be”. It seems to me that once you recognize the relationship between a particular task (that might be unpleasant or just plain hard work) and a goal that you want and that you know will make you happy, then this becomes less of a problem.