TPP 209: Blake Boles Asks Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
41 min
2 speakers
3 chapters
transcribed 5 hours ago
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What is the purpose of Blake Boles' new book "Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?"
I think that those families who do see that their kids are thriving a bit more, not being in the traditional classroom, and who are a bit disillusioned by uh the the taste of of school that they've seen during the pandemic time, I think those families might opt for something different. And even if it's two percent or three percent of all the families who are doing remote schooling right now, that'll be a huge number. number of people and that could be a big influx into the world of alternative and self-directed education.
Welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. During this time of global school upheaval, I wanted to bring back to the podcast self-directed learning advocate Blake Bowles. Longtime listeners to this show might remember Blake from our previous discussion on unschooling. If you haven't listened to that, it's worth going back and checking it out. I will link to it in the show notes page. Blake is the founder and director of Unschool Adventures, the host of the Off-Trail Learning Podcast, and the author of several books on unschooling, including The Art of Self-Directed Learning, Better Than College, College Without High School, and his brand new book just out this month: Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?
Now, most of us are not currently sending our kids to school in the traditional sense, and not by choice, I recognize that. But I'm guessing that this experience is disrupting many parents' ideas and assumptions about education and what it should or shouldn't look like for their child. And I know many are reconsidering whether they'll send their child back to school once they do reopen. This is precisely why I wanted to have Blake back on the show. Even parents who can't wait for schools to reopen will get a lot out of this conversation, as we've pretty much all been thrown into this grand experiment in remote learning together. I hope you find this conversation as thought provoking as I did. Oh, and one last thing, be sure to tune in to next week's episode as I'm bringing a new topic to this show and one that has been requested by many listeners.
That topic is sleep. I will be talking with Dr. Roberto Olivardi about the relationship between ADHD and sleep challenges, and he has a lot of strategies for children struggling with sleep. So that's next week. And be sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss when it drops. And now here is my conversation with Blake. Hello Blake, welcome back to the podcast.
Thanks for having me, Debbie. Good to be back.
I'm happy to have you here for a very timely conversation. So actually when we scheduled this conversation It was initially the sole focus was going to be on your new book, which is called Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School? The case for helping them leave, chart their own paths, and prepare for adulthood at their own pace. And we are gonna talk about that today. But now we are also recording this in the days of COVID-19, and there's so much to talk about when it comes to unschooling and what's happening in families. So does that all sound like a good plan to get into that?
Let's dive into the murky waters.
The murky waters indeed. As a way to get started, I've read your bio and the introduction. And again, I encourage listeners, if you haven't and you're sparked by this conversation, definitely go back and listen to the first uh interview that I did with Blake. I'll have that in the show notes pages. But could you start by defining unschooling as a concept for those who aren't familiar with it?
Sure, I think of unschooling as full-time self-directed learning. And so most homeschooling parents will start by thinking, okay, there's some things that my kid absolutely has to learn, math or foreign language or social studies, whatever it is. And then they can have some self-directed time um after they do that mandatory stuff. And unschooling is about making the self-directed stuff paramount and making that first priority and saying, once my kid realizes that they need math or they need foreign language, uh, I'm putting faith in them that they will uh figure out how to gain those skills, how to learn that content, how to jump through the necessary hoops.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
What is the purpose of Blake Boles' new book "Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?"
0:00–22:42
2
How does Blake define unschooling and why does he prioritize self‑directed learning?
22:42–38:39
3
What is happening with remote schooling during COVID‑19 and how are families reacting?
38:39–41:40
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
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TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids