http://radiofreeschool.blogspot.com/
This week's news is an interview of Grace Llwellyn, by Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko who does some great interviews!
http://radiofreeschool.blogspot.com/2007/09/radio-free-school-interview-grace.html
And here's an older piece, in which someone else interviewed Beatrice herself. It's really great:
http://radiofreeschool.blogspot.com/2006/12/devil-in-details.html
The beginning....
How long have you been doing Radio Free School? How did you start doing it?
We're into our fifth consecutive year of Radio Free School. I had done a social justice and environmental spoken word show on campus/community radio for a few years, and love the medium; we thought that it would be fun to do a show with our kids. There isn't much radio featuring children, especially shows that have kids as primary agents; we applied for a half hour spot on CFMU and got accepted.
How many people are involve with each episode?
Sometimes as few as two people, interviewer and interviewee, sometimes more, like when we go to visit a science lab we take along some friends, there might be ten people or more. The way the show developed over time is that producing it became a family project primarily.
Could you talk about the distinction between Free/Un schooling and homeschooling, and I guess what the show is about; why you do it?
We started radio free school as a way to follow our childrens' interests and give them a forum to be heard. Since we weren't sending them to school, the show was a way to pursue anything and everything we wanted, very free form,while enhancing their experience of the world. This nicely aligned itself with the philosophy of unschooling which doesn't impose set courses to follow, but follows naturally the child's interest. It is a challenge as people like myself who grew up with schooling (my dad was a public school principal) to realize that we don't need schools as the model for learning,in fact, the way schools are structured they actually kill initiative and the joy of learning in many many children. My permanent record at highschool probably reflects my innate rebelliousness against arbitrary authority, and I really don't expect my kids to be forced into such a position.
