A blog about a blog

"Ramblings of an Unschooling Family – by Laura Riesenberg"

The Blog I chose to follow, and look into was written (and updated often) by a wife to one, and a mother of eight children. The reason this Blog stood out to me on the ‘blogs about education’ link, was because the education this woman believed in was ‘unschooling’. When reading through this Blog the two similar themes that relate to our course are controversy, and loss.

The Blog itself is not controversial in nature, as it consists mostly of silly memories, and daily doings, however ‘unschooling’ is a very controversial topic of discussion. I recently watched an episode of Dr. Phil that featured parents debating over how appropriate unschooling is while raising children. Unschooling is like home-schooling but involves no precise, traditional teaching, only encouragement of natural life lessons. Many parents who home school their children, or enroll their children in the educational system feel that unschooling deprives children of a normal life as they grow older, or keeps them from getting good jobs etc. which is why the topic is so controversial.

Closer to the beginning of Laura’s entries she went into detail about the loss of both her parents. Laura’s parents were killed in a car accident a few weeks before Laura was about to give birth to her first child, and is a big part of her reasoning to keep her children close to her, and at home instead of putting them in school.

This Blog was interesting to me only because I was already interested in the unschooling topic, however I most likely wouldn’t recommend it to others unless this topic came up in conversation. Most of the entries talk about what was made for lunch, and what her younger children discovered at the park, nothing that would excite me enough to keep going back to read new entries after this journal is completed.