Terry McIntyre

...is scheduled as the guest speaker for the 319th meeting of the Karl Hess Club, to convene on May 17, 2021.

Terry McIntyre on "Unschooling."

Education is the process of conveying facts, information, and values to our progeny. For the last hundred years or so, this has been influenced and controlled by public or civic regimes, with increasing involvement from state and federal offices. In many jurisdictions the local school board, directed by parents and teachers, has been superseded by large, often union dominated, consolidated school districts (e.g., LAUSD), which are increasingly subject to national standards of instruction and organization.

The reaction to this pernicious development has been growing support for the traditional bulwark of private and parochial schools, largely independent of government meddling. Lately, school choice initiatives have provided hope against increasing government intrusion into education. We expect to have prominent local school choice advocates address the club again soon.

This month, Terry McIntyre will address education in a different light. He will discuss the theory of passing on knowledge, values, wisdom and, common sense (in olden days it was "horse sense"), liberated from the Bismarckian model of rote learning (i.e., regimented rows of desks in classrooms dominated by authority figures (i.e. teachers and professors).

Terry will describe another path: the child, or learner-centered, model, more self-directed but guided by engaged parents and/or adult mentors. An autodidact-oriented environment largely unfettered by artificial structure, yet gauged to the needs of the child inquirer.

Terry believes that "teaching moments" can arise at any time in the course of a normal day’s activities. Young children are naturally inquisitive and absorb knowledge and culture almost without effort when their natural instincts are not thwarted by regimentation.

In our present day, when primary, secondary, and post-secondary students are "dumbed down," it is essential that parents fight to unleash this system so that their children might flourish. If our posterity is the future (it is), then this is among our most important tasks today.

About Terry McIntyre

Terry McIntyre is a software development/systems administrator. A libertarian activist for decades, he home schooled his children in the 1980s before it was cool. Today his grandchildren are home schooled.

Terry is a longtime member of the Karl Hess Club. He has addressed the KHC on this topic before.