Just a Gwai Lo - fun within prescribed limits

Reading Doc and AKMA on an article in The New York Times on home schooling (called "unschooling" in the article, which sounds like people could think it means "uneducating", but is instead meant to distinguish from the the traditional or status quo, much like the word "unconference"), I find similarities with arguments like those of John Taylor Gatto. Gatto writes in his essay—not mentioned in the article, perhaps because it's outside even the home schooling mainstream?—that traditional schools only teach confusion, class position, indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, and surveillance—compelling, if checked by the fact that my sister, an elementary school teacher, loves her job and her students, and whom I believe is a good teacher loved by her students and their parents.

Both Doc (and Julie, whom I thought of immediately reading Doc's piece linked at the top) are familiar with Gatto, which would lead me to guess that Gatto's omission from the New York Times article, its embarrassing correction and all, is puzzling (because of his influence on homeschoolers) or explainable (ditto). My research on the subject consists only of stumbling on links, since I'm childless (my plans for the foreseeable future—May 2007, if you must know—assume that continues). Always in the back of my 28-year-old mind, however, is the question "how would I educate my child(ren)", and while I can't make a decision now, among the values and personality traits I'd like to instill, or would like their teachers and mentors to instill in them would include love, strength, playfulness, seriousness, intelligence, athleticism, grace, and above all, curiosity.

That, in the hope that they will learn from the mistakes of their father, a regular sleep schedule.