TPP 209a: Blake Boles Asks Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School

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Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children 41 min 1 speaker 6 chapters transcribed 8 hours ago

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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Debbie Reber 0:00

Hey, it's Debbie. Today I'm sharing a Playback Friday episode. Unless you're a longtime listener, you likely haven't heard this one yet. And even if you have, I bet you'll get something completely different from it this time around. 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.

Debbie Reber 0:46

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? And now here is my conversation with Blake. Hello Blake, welcome back to the podcast.

Blake Boles 1:19

Thanks for having me, Debbie. Good to be back.

Debbie Reber 1:21

I'm happy to have you here for a very timely conversation.

What is the purpose of Blake Bowles' new book “Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?”

Debbie Reber 1:25

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 nineteen, 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?

Blake Boles 2:00

Let's dive into the murky waters.

Debbie Reber 2:02

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?

Blake Boles 2:26

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. But the most important thing is that they learn how to be self directed, they learn how to be intrinsically motivated, and that will solve most of their problems in life.

Debbie Reber 3:16

Yeah, and this is what I love about this concept so much. And we also have talked about Ned Johnson and Bill Sticksroot in their book The Self Driven Child. I know that you're a fan, I know that I'm a fan. My listeners are like, Okay, Debbie, enough with this book because I talk about it all the time. But there is a lot of research, right, that backs up this idea that given a chance to explore And and learn in a way that taps into their intrinsic motivation that these kids, even differently wired kids, can be very successful.

Blake Boles 3:51

I I agree and I would like to reinforce your obsession with that book because the self-driven child is excellent. And Bill and Ned did a much better job of speaking to a wide audience of parents, parents who are firmly in the conventional school system, uh, than I have ever done in my books. And uh I had Ned on my podcast and and I said, Hey, your book essentially implicates conventional schooling. at every turn. You don't say it explicitly, but it's there.