Turn off school week

You know all about "turn off tv week" right? How mainstream America seems to think this is a grand idea and everyone thinks it's so positive to limit a child's access to something in yet another coercive manner.

I looked at the points being made and couldn't help but replace the word "tv" with "school". So here ya go:

• School cuts into family time, harms our children's ability to read and succeed in life, and contributes to unhealthy lifestyles and obesity.
• Here are just a few of the facts:
  On average, children in the US will spend more time in school, than interacting in their families and community this year.
  
• Americans frequently or always let school interfere with family time and true, rich connections with their passions.
  
• As Anne Ohman, unschooling advocate says, "Real, natural learning is in the living. It's in the observing, the questioning, the examining, the pondering, the analyzing, the watching, the reading, the DO-ing, the living, the breathing, the loving, the JOY. It's in the joy."

Who Participates?Anyone and everyone. Millions of people all over the world have participated in School-Turnoff Week since it began in 1995. Children and adults, rich and poor - people from every background and all walks of life - take part through schools, churches, or community groups, as families or individuals.

What's So Great about School-Turnoff Week? Turning off school gives us a chance to think, read, create, and do. To connect with our families and engage in our communities. To turn off School and turn on life.

So turn off your school, turn off that schooled mentality and LIVE!! I proclaim next week, school turn-off week. Maybe after a week of living without school, a month or a year or a lifetime of it will seem completely natural.:) But hey, then you'd be an unschooler. Cool!

*Above picture from the St. Louis Live and Learn conference (or "what happens when you get a bunch of free kids together that have unlimited access to tv")