Comments on: Why September is the WORST [Guest Post] http://www.radicalparenting.com/2009/09/13/why-september-is-the-worst-guest-post/ Parenting From The Kids Perspective Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:51:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Bob Collier http://www.radicalparenting.com/2009/09/13/why-september-is-the-worst-guest-post/comment-page-1/#comment-4281 Bob Collier Mon, 14 Sep 2009 01:38:26 +0000 http://www.radicalparenting.com/?p=6131#comment-4281 As a stay-at-home dad, I was deeply involved with "school culture" for 13 years - from washing and ironing uniforms and preparing lunchboxes and getting my children to school on time to attending parent-teacher meetings and prize givings and open days and dozens of different activities in between; and I thought nothing out of the ordinary about that until my now 24-year old daughter graduated from high school at the end of 2002 and, in the same week, her ten years younger brother quit school to be self-educated. I had no choice then but to look at the world very differently. It's been most enlightening. These days, my son and I live our daily lives as if school doesn't exist. If we want to hang out at the lake, or any equivalent of that, that's what we do, whatever the month, the day of the week or the time of day. It's an extraordinarily liberating experience - I could say a return to real life - and I find myself often curious that other people seem willing to continue to tolerate the most outrageous impositions on their private lives by an institution that is now lagging so badly behind other educational opportunities in the world at large that have been made viable by the Digital Revolution. Does that really make sense, I wonder? As a stay-at-home dad, I was deeply involved with “school culture” for 13 years – from washing and ironing uniforms and preparing lunchboxes and getting my children to school on time to attending parent-teacher meetings and prize givings and open days and dozens of different activities in between; and I thought nothing out of the ordinary about that until my now 24-year old daughter graduated from high school at the end of 2002 and, in the same week, her ten years younger brother quit school to be self-educated. I had no choice then but to look at the world very differently. It’s been most enlightening.

These days, my son and I live our daily lives as if school doesn’t exist. If we want to hang out at the lake, or any equivalent of that, that’s what we do, whatever the month, the day of the week or the time of day. It’s an extraordinarily liberating experience – I could say a return to real life – and I find myself often curious that other people seem willing to continue to tolerate the most outrageous impositions on their private lives by an institution that is now lagging so badly behind other educational opportunities in the world at large that have been made viable by the Digital Revolution.

Does that really make sense, I wonder?

]]>