Feeling like a Real Uni Student

I am starting to feel like a real uni student after my adventure into the deep dark depths of the closest university's rare and collectible books section.  Oh boy did I have fun?!!  I got to look over some very inspiring floor plans for an Australian architect.  I also got to peer through glass cabinet doors at books on education from long ago.  Wouldn't you love to read how they used to teach English almost 100 years ago, or trigonometry or read records of Australia's history right back to 1800s.  Oh I just drooled and said I would be back for a little light reading sometime soon!  ;-)

Another bit of news about uni - got my marks back for my first subject, Critical Thinking!  88% High distinction!  Yay, I do still have brain cells that work!

Best wishes
Jen

Having confidence to homeschool

It is sort of like this.

From my perspective it seems there was an era where some people lost the ability to understand food and it became much easier to rely on the supermarkets to supply simple things like bread that we could make ourselves, and to supply jar mixes and packet mixes.  The people who thought this was the only way came  to rely on these premade foods, not realising there was a way to do it for themselves.  Of course, in the meantime there were still others who were making their own and even growing their own. 

Then we had the cooking show thing.  We got to see all sorts of people cooking, some like Maggie Beer with fancy stuff that those inexperienced ones would just drool over and still think cooking from scratch is not possible unless you were a professional.  Then we get to Jamie Oliver.  A bit more down to earth, and it looks a bit easier, less fussy.  Now some are starting to believe the ordinary non-professional could do this, but he is still a "professional" so maybe it is harder than he makes it look.  Still not ready to try in case they fail. Then add on Master Chef etc and we are seeing ordinary people cooking from scratch.  Now we realise maybe we can do this thing.

But still there are those people who think that you must be "qualified" as a chef or cook to be able to cook so they keep relying on their jars and packets or going out to eat "proper food" prepared by someone else.  They could have done it themselves but either they can't due to lack of belief in themselves, or an over belief in a "system" that doesn't always work for everyone's tastes or health.

This is how I view the homeschool/ public school debate.  It doesn't matter how much we try to teach people how to cook from scratch.  If their mindset is that only "professionals" can cook from scratch then they will continue to find every reason they can to support their mindset.  After all no-one likes to be wrong.

I think the problem comes when the only people who are managing the system have all the one mindset.  That is when we would become very limited in our freedoms.  And that is why the BOS (NSW Board of Studies) needs to have more input in a very regular way from the homeschooling community.  We need them to know that we have figured out how to cook even if we aren't professionals.  They need to respect that we have the right to be different from them, and that we don't have to all follow the same method.

Just a thought
Jen