Posted on 18th February 2010 by Judy Breck in General | Schools we now have
education, gloval_knowledge_commons, phoenix, schooling, schools
UPDATE: This has been revised: Findability and Commons are combined and the new section Next is added. The heading beneath the logo is slightly revised. Handschooling.com is a work in progress. Thanks for your patience. Judy
The heading beneath the logo is:
Meet the new phoenix arising from the ashes of failed education, and help it take off
There are pages being developed to replace the roughly sketched ones now online for these 5 areas of action:
1 Mobiles
2 Findability
3 Nurture
4 Next
5 Politics
The purpose of Handschooling.com is to explain and illustrate the 5 areas and to make practical suggestions for action by readers in each of them. This blog is about how to use our talents, resources, and influence as educators, parents, and citizens during the transition from analog schooling to the new schooling arising around the global knowledge commons.
Hopefully, I am not overdoing the bird! Several readers have sent positive comments since my last post about the metaphor of the phoenix for what is happening to education. The phoenix myth has persisted in several cultures for many centuries, as reflected in the manuscripts and images collected in The Medieval Bestiary, the source of the images in this post. The idea is a powerful one that rings true. The phoenix reminds us that sometimes it is better to let an old institution go up in flames, and then to enjoy a creative rebirth. Handschooling.com focuses on the new young fledgling of 21st century learning — which is now like the little fellow spreading his wings here: A phoenix rising from the still-glowing ashes of the fire that consumed its previous incarnation.
Although we still await the full conflagration of schooling’s aging analog-cored incarnation, here we turn our attention and support to the exciting new fledgling.
Posted on 12th February 2010 by Judy Breck in Findability
Lincoln, schooling
On this, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, let’s remember that this great lawyer, speaker, writer, emancipator, and statesman was an early 19th century handschooler: what he had in his hands were a few books in analog form. He was born February 12, 1809, lived most of his childhood in the rural near wilderness of southern Indiana and Illinois. In the quotation below, Lincoln describes the brief episodes of schooling he experienced as a child. He did not attend college. He became a lawyer by reading for the law, not by attending a law school.
Abe Lincoln was an avid self-learner, as is captured in the above illustration from Lloyd Ostendorf’s Abraham Lincoln: Boy to Man. I have added an iPad to the illustration to suggest what a young Abe can do today as a handschooler.
How Abraham Lincoln described his schooling:
My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, litterally [sic] without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals, still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond “readin, writin, and cipherin” to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard [sic]. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since.
