Unschooling Rules ~ Clark Aldrich
Reading Time: 1 Hour.
Read this if you’re new to the idea that schools aren’t delivering on their promises. This is a great guide to think about many of the issues that might be bothering you about the failures on the schooling system in how it relates to learning. The author keeps his points short and the points themselves can serve the function of thinking prompts to spur you to reflect and research further.
It is also an worthwhile read if you’ve already stepped out of the education-industrial complex. You will be familiar with many of the ideas presented, you will be introduced to some that you hadn’t thought about and you will most definitely get some help in articulating the issues in crisp and concise manner..
Some of the ideas are really well articulated. You know you’ve been thinking along a similar vein but just couldn’t put words to your thoughts.
Some of what Aldrich says is downright obvious (and tongue twisting). But it needed to be said anyway. For Example Rule 8 “What a person learns in a classroom is how to be a person in a classroom”. Pretty obvious isn’t it. We’re all familiar with Rule 9 “Sitting through a classroom lecture is not just unnatural for most people, it is painful”.
The rules are short and easily flow from one into the next. This book is a starting point, not an end point. It is the starting point to think about the many shortcoming of this educational-industrial process. There are no solutions presented, no recipe for stepping out of school, no defined pathway to self design your own education. This is not a shortcoming of the book. It is what makes it special. The solutions after all are many, and will be unique to each family, community and culture.