Teens going to universities
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Dear all,? i though this refletion will be further analysed here. Saw a question of a university teacher that is thinthing about homeschooling her children and as doubts about what she names "sending kids to college". She asks if other himeschoolers think about foing s¨®. I know it is an english expression but it always felt weird to me that one can name it "sen to" unstead of "helping to reach the goal of goind to college "? i responded this way: "You need to deschool, minimum, one month per year of school, and the years as a teacher also count. I was also teaching at the university, this means i was, from 2 years old until 38 in the school system... I went through a long period of deschooling, meaning a lot of reading, talking to other homeschoolers, listening to podcasts, reflecting, and trying to see the world without the lens of school. I don't plan to send my kids to college. If one day, something they are interested in leads to the path of academia, I will pay for all the classes they need to prepare for the exams, and I plan to pay for college too. I have a savings account just for college; they are 9 and 14. When my oldest has an interest, we explore together how it can be a job and what is needed to do that job. When he liked cars, we saw he could drive trucks, work in a kart racing place (sorry, have no idea of the name in English); fixing the karts would require being a mechanic, and that could be done with professional training or engineering. We visited several mechanics and an old car museum; he worked in a classic car mechanic shop for a few days. Then I got around 30 magazines of classic cars, and he realized he liked researching about cars a lot more than fixing them, and he asked if he could be a "car journalist". We talked with a person whose uncle was a famous "car journalist" in Portugal and she told us about all is work trips, isnlove for cars... Se also saw he could work in a car factory, and that would involve leaving our country. ?We bought all the games and devices he wanted to play driving games; we went to all the important car races, exhibitions, museums, and gatherings in our country (it's a small country, but even so, it was a lot of time, research, and money invested). ?We studied the colors of the cars per decade, how each color was made and why (there is a lot of history and science in this one, you can't imagine), he knew every car factory in the world, when they opened, bestsellers, etc., who copied who... One day he did not care about cars anymore and changed his interest to sports, nutrition, health. We have big prints of the human body in our house: bones, muscles, nerves... he goes to every parcour jam he asks for, when on holiday I research for parcour teams and ask if he can join, we do a lot of research about nutrition, superfoods, try new diets... one day we checked all sports and nutrition training in our country, and he liked none of them. Then I remembered that unschoolers can access the Open University in London, and there he found a training that is more about the study of athletes' performance, and that's what he says he likes the most. He is learning yoga, he does a lot of parcour training every day, also does BTT, and walks around 2 hours a day. His English gets better everyday (unlike mine) so he will have no problem studying in any English-speaking country. He does a lot of academic research about everything he hears and reads; the last one was about creatine... a few months ago he was researching peer-reviewed studies about how love impacts the performance of Olympic athletes. I think that if he goes to university, he will hate some subjects and love some others; he seems to have the ability to research and digest information, which is useful in college. Maybe he will not do it, or maybe he will choose what he wants to study only at 25, or 30, or later... I have no idea, whatever he does, we will be here to support him." A quinta, 11/04/2024, 19:49, Sandra Dodd <aelflaed@...> escreveu:
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C¨¢tia Maciel? |
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-=-I know it is an english expression but it always felt weird to me
that one can name it "send to" instead of "helping to reach the goal of going to college "-=- I think that phrase "send to college" is hundreds of years old, in English, from the days that a family would need to pay lots of money, and physically pack the kid up in a coach and have servants take him to some distant city. Sending them that way, not ordering them to go. I could be wrong. :-) There are some universities in Europe (as you likely know) that are nearly a thousand years old. University of Bologna, Oxford, University of Paris. Those are older than English, just about. :-) There's an unschooler who is going to Oxford. He asked to go; he wanted to go. His parents sent him (by paying for it, giving him permission, and providing transportation). I'm defending English. I do see your point that facilitating a teen's desire to go to a university sounds better in unschooling terms, and I don't know the equivalents (if there are any parallels) in Portuguese. Marta, or Alex, or someone¡ªwhat are the differences? What is offending C¨¢tia that's not bothering me? :-) Sandra |
Catia Maciel
Sandra Dodd