I came across this Ted Talk. A lot of his points struck home with me. A child who can't sit still, he needs to move to think. Ignoring the arts. Only focusing on making adults into workers and not thinkers. As my eldest son enters middle school, and after seven years of homeschooling, I'm changing my mind. Not on homeschooling, but on how I homeschool. We are using a new technique this year. I hope they will be able to not only read the classics, and do their math, but create, and try, and fail, and succeed. My favorite quote from this Ted Talk was "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with something original." He goes on to say that the school system and later your job makes a mistake the worst thing that could happen. So when we are afraid to fail, we don't try, and nothing new happens. It's an idea I wrestle with. My trying something new could fail my children, but what if I don't fail. What if we come up with a great new way to learn? To read. To write. To understand. To explain. To create. To be original.
