Unschooling With ADD

Posted on August 30th, 2002 in ADD/ADHD, Dyslexia, Getting Started, Otherways Magazine, Unschooling

by Kathy Ward
In recent years there’s been a strong trend for parents to remove their children from school and bring them home to learn because many schools have been failing to provide a positive learning experience for their children. These kids have been bright, personable, competent in many realms, and yet they’ve found themselves existing on the outskirts of the learning experiences that have been offered them, often having been diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) or ADD (ADHD without hyperactivity commonly referred to as Attention Deficit Disorder). Frequently these children have other diagnoses attached to their ADD/ADHD, depending upon what their problems with institutional learning may be. These learning disabilities include but are certainly not limited to Developmental Reading Disorder (DRD or dyslexia), Developmental Writing Disorder (dysgraphia), Developmental Arithmetic Disorder (dyscalculia), NLD (Non-verbal Learning Disorder, which might be considered the opposite of dyslexia), and Auditory Processing Disability.

Many of the children have been disheartened, overwhelmed, or even become depressed by what they’ve encountered in an institutional setting.

Re. Apostrophes

Posted on August 30th, 2002 in Otherways Magazine

An article by Fred McArdle, West Brunswick.

Q: We have arguments about it’s and its at our place, and it’s causing chaos. Could you please give us an explanation we can understand, so we can eat our tea in peace?

A: It is a common problem, and one that can even lead to hostility. I’ll do my best to sort it out briefly for you.

The quick answer to your question is that it’s means specifically either it is or it has, and is in either case a contraction, or shortening of two words into one.

The word its (without apostrophe) means belonging to it , and is called a possessive adjective. It is a legitimate single word, and is not a contraction at all.

The easy way I remember this is to “tie” the word its to the word his ( as in his hat), but I don’t know if that works for anyone but me! For example, in a sentence like The car has lost its wheels, if I can replace the word its with the word his and still feel that the sentence is grammatically OK , then its has no apostrophe. The sentence The car has lost his wheels sounds OK grammatically, so its has no apostrophe in the original sentence.

Yesterday’s Child

Posted on August 30th, 2002 in Otherways Magazine

Janie Bowman Copyright (c) 1993, 1999 . Reprinted with permission.

YESTERDAY’s child was born in the 1800’s. As a young boy, he was considered medically fragile. Every respiratory illness known to mankind in that age seemed to seize him.

Even though YESTERDAY’s child spent many of his early years ill, this did not stop his insatiable curiosity and boyish escapades. TODAY’s child would be described as “just being a boy.”

YESTERDAY’s child often found himself in risky life-and-death situations. One time, around the age of five, this boy nearly drowned in a canal; and later he almost smothered as he sank into the depths of a grain elevator. TODAY’s child would be described as “having no common sense.”

Socialisation and Home Education

Posted on August 12th, 2002 in Getting Started, Otherways Magazine, Socialisation

By Fred McArdle, West Brunswick

The school system is designed to produce citizens, not individual thinkers, despite the rhetoric of most educational authorities.

If we are to make sense of our society, what we need are thinkers who see things from the outside. But we are all born into our particular environment, and that is what usually sets our perspective, whether it be Catholic rather than Muslim, or Protestant rather than Catholic, or Israeli rather than Palestinian, or white rather than black, or even “civilised” rather than “native” or “primitive”, or even for some of the more simple-minded, born in one Australian state rather than another. Each particular environment has inherent values, prejudices, modes of behaviour, and, naturally enough, we assume that these are “normal”. The word “normal” comes from the word “norm” and automatically implies some standard, or “rightness”. So, we always begin by assuming that our inherited way is “right”, and most commonly, in fact, the only right way.

If we really want to know what our world is like, we must ask those who do not have a particular mind-set, because they are not born into a culture or particular set of circumstances - but such people do not exist, and there does not seem to be much hope of having visiting Martians to give us an unbiased view.