Off the Beaten Track
Alternative Learning Ideas
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Why Off the Beaten Track?
A Metaphor for Schooling
Educational institutions, like beaten tracks or trails, evolve over time. While a beaten track was never planned, it responded to the needs of those traversing it. It took them where they wanted or needed to go through established, predictable territory. Over time, just as trails became more defined, so did the structure of schooling. It found the shortest paths, avoided swamps where possible, forded streams, climbed mountains, but eventually arrived at its destination. Once people followed a trail to a successful end, others followed, hoping for the same success.
The school system has remained a slowly evolving institution, even in a world where globalization and technology are forcing massive change. One educational theorist argued “the persistence of authoritarian patterns of teaching and learning is a function of the culture of schooling, a culture embedded in 4000 years of stone and seemingly impervious to real, systemic change.” However, schooling has grown, one might argue, much as a trail grows as it gets more use. It widens gradually, becoming more clearly defined. The dirt, beneath the onslaught of many feet, is slowly pounded into a harden surface.
I like to think of alternative educational ideas as different paths, different ways to reach a variety of destinations. Alternative approaches to education are less established and predictable. You are less sure where you will end up. You may not follow the tried and true established procedures of traditional schooling. You may search for new vistas, follow new paths or creep through uncharted country. You may run into unexpected swamps, dead-ends, and get lost; or you may discover sweeping landscapes, tumbling waterfalls, majestic mountains and exotic flora and fauna. The possibilities are endless.
Purpose of Site
The purpose of this blog is to discuss alternate approaches to education in light of traditional, cultural approaches.
I love to watch children learn, more specifically how they learn. For that matter, I like to watch anyone learn. I want to do everything I can to foster learning. I have been a fan of alternative forms of education ever since I stuck my neck out and homeschooled my fourth-grade son. I’m particularly interested in the role technology and the growth of the Internet will play in the future.
My dissertation focused on how technology was employed, or not employed, to learn literacy in homeschooling families. I interviewed twenty homeschooling families who held a wide variety of educational philosophies. I have continued to interview fourteen of these families for seven years now and hope to continue for another three years. This longitudinal study provides lots of stories and data about alternative education.
The purpose of this blog is not to find the 'one true path'. I believe there are and should be many paths. The families I interviewed have graciously given me permission to share their stories. I share these stories because they provide such a diversity of possibilities, so many different paths. Please hear these stories with care; questions and your own stories are welcome, but this is not a forum to harshly criticize what is shared. I intend to also post about articles and other ideas which would be open to more debate and discussion, but I will protect the sharing of everyone's personal experiences.
My interest in alternate education doesn’t diminish the respect I have for traditional education, having taught in elementary school for eleven years and in college for three. I’m curious how traditional schooling will evolve in this digital world.
