Busy, busy day. Had a children’s ministries meeting at church this morning, then lunch with friends. Tonight we have a youth group trivia fundraiser. I have high hopes for a 3-peat. In light of the busy day, I’m sharing a video I ran across earlier in the week. Every year I hit a time when I start rethinking homeschooling. Not rethinking in the sense of wanting to quit, but thinking again about the reasons I’m doing it, about how it’s working and what I see in the future. This video is very thought provoking. Someone in the comments complains that Robinson doesn’t offer a solution. That may be true (at least in this brief bit from an RSA speech), but diagnosing a problem is valid in and of itself. Many of his observations about our current educational system are the same ideas that started me on the path to homeschooling years ago, and keep me there with my two youngest.
By the way, this speech was given the RSA Animate treatment. I recommend watching their other videos as well. They are especially helpful for those of us who are visual learners.
Strange Figures 
Fascinating video, especially the longitudinal test bit. The last bit about collaboration in particular stuck out, I had a professor at greenville whose tests in several of his computer classes were always open book. He actually explained why: life is open book, be it direct interaction with peers or jumping on the internet to look it up. The technologies that the classes were about would be outdated in a matter of years (one of them already was, I doubt I’ll ever run into an COBOL code without going and digging in the heart of some antiquated system that has been running since perhaps the late 60s), and he was more interested in our ability to find the answers, than memorize them.
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Here’s a link to Robinson speaking at the TED conference in 2006
and in 2010
honestly, I could listen to him all day.
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