Schools are designed for Left-Brained Learners, as are almost all homeschool curriculums.
(I know that the brain may not actually store personality traits on the right or left sides, but this is a term that is recognizable and we will use it to keep things simple.)
(p.s. the photo above is my husband and son in red)
Anyone with a child who struggles with schoolwork should spend some time on this website ↝ The Right Side of Normal. ↜
And if what you read there sounds anything like the way your child learns ...
... then you MUST buy Cindy Gaddis' e-book.
Understanding and Honoring the Natural Learning Path for Right-Brained Children
The way that I see it, right-brained children are DISCRIMINATED against in schools. To me it's not much different than racism or sexism and I won't send my children to that kind of an environment.
You see, right-brained children learn a different way, and learn things in a different order at different ages.
Image Source
One of the biggest differences is that a right-brained child does not naturally learn to read until between the ages of 8-10, unlike the left-brained child who will usually start reading between ages 5-7. And his writing and spelling skills will come around age 11-13.
Actually, in the case of my eldest child those skills came at the far end of the spectrum. This was predicted in the book, as my son falls into the category that she calls the "Builder/Lego" type. This type of child, especially when they are boys, will be the latest readers of all.
Cindy's observations in "The Right Side of Normal" have proven to be exactly true for my children!
The right-brained child will likely focus on science at a younger age, and Cindy explains how all of these things that the child is naturally learning first are the foundation that they need for the other skills like reading to develop properly later.
But all of this normal, natural development in right-brained children is NOT considered acceptable by the school system.
Homeschooling will not help the child either if the parents use a curriculum based on the same school system standards.
When the right-brain child resists the parents attempts to teach them in a "left-brained" manner, the parent becomes frustrated and thinks that homeschooling is a failure or too hard to force upon their child.
The author explains how our education system has a Left-Brained Value System
Our Left-Brained Value System
Most of us were mass (public) schooled, and most schools primarily utilize left-brained teaching methods, resources, and time frames. It’s human nature to repeat what we experience. In other words, what we know is what we believe to be true. So when we graduate from school, we’re inclined to give value to left-brained traits in educational settings.
That’s why we value the left-brained learning style of early memorization using short-term memory skills, part-to-whole scope and sequence formats of building upon the previous information, and symbolic skill development.
That’s why we value it all in a particular age time frame, too, beginning at the ages of 5 to 7. Any child who doesn’t function according to this supposed norm may receive academic learning labels.
Chapter 8 of "The Right-Side of Normal" is called:
Loves To Learn; Hates To Be Taught
I quickly recognized my eldest child in that statement. If something that I am trying to teach my son lacks relevance to him, he won't put in the effort.
Resistance is also a way to express that something isn't working and they aren't able to learn this yet or by this method. Since children lack fully developed communication skills, they can't articulate the problem and instead they resist.
These children are not being bad -- they are being true to themselves and doing the best that they can.
My son has always LOVED to learn. He absorbs information like crazy if it is something that interests him. But trying to use a curriculum with my son was a problem. I tried a bit at Kindergarten age and quickly abandoned the attempt.
This is why I chose Unschooling.
If I hadn't chosen to unschool my son, I feel that we would have been constantly fighting and I would have been pulling my hair out. So it really was the logical and sensible conclusion for me.
In reality, I didn't choose unschooling ... unschooling chose me.
For More Stories Like This One, Visit My Blog And Follow Me: @canadian-coconut 
Please Comment Below and Let's Have a Productive Conversation!
I like that... unschooling chose you. I think that my stepson may fall under this category as well. I will have to do some digging into the topic. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Thanks. Yes, do some digging. There are lots of great books about unschooling out there, and lots of great websites.
But like I said, if you have a right-brained child, unschooling may be the only reasonable option -- both for your sanity and the child's sanity.
Today's 'educational' system teaches little other than how to conform and comply- it singles out free thinkers and punishes them. That's because some very nefarious left brained beings run this planet and they fear free thinkers more than anything and they use the 'educational' system to identify free thinkers and crack down on them until they comply.
I've always been a rebel and I always will be- I saw how FUBAR the whole system was very early on in life- they knew with me that they had a mustang on their hands but try as they did- and boy did they try- they never broke this bronco.
The good news is I think within two years all of this will be exposed and the 'education' system as we know it will be thrown on the ash heap of history along with many other sadistic practices that have been convertly implemented for so very long.
The tables have turned and now it's the free thinkers that they couldn't beat down that will be calling the shots soon : )
We couldn't agree more. For a while, we were at a homeschool co-op in the states and they were just starting to introduce a mega online homeschooling curriculum. We tried it out and it was terrible for us as it was just another public school spin-off disguised as "homeschool". In fact, a teacher at the co-op said it basically was "public school at home". After 1 term we left the co-op and now live our own vision of what it really means to homeschool. We currently do a mix of different curriculum to fit our learning needs, and our creative project, Saturn Music & Entertainment, incorporates real world interaction as we learn. We take as much time as we need to fully learn and embrace an idea or topic or subject. We wish more people could see the benefits to homeschooling.
That's a great project that you have taken on! I took a quick peak at your website.
You should do a post on how you encourage children to step into the crypto-currency / blockchain world. I'ld like to know more about that.
Thank you very much! We homeschool year-round and now that our two children's books are complete, we are starting to draft up blogs on our experiences in the crypto world. Our parents have been involved in crypto tech and crypto currencies for a few years and my brother and I are now starting to understand how crypto tech is changing the world as we know it. We are currently learning about the Etheruem blockchain, smart contracts and new ways crypto tech is changing the way we use the internet. We are also exploring decentralized platforms to distribute our music and ebooks. Thank so much for your input! We'll definitely share more soon.
I really liked your post. My mother is a speech therapist. A few days ago I created an account for her and will soon be sharing her knowledge with us. She developed it over time and based on trial and error a technique to facilitate reading to left-handed children. I think this was already applied in some countries of the world but she was developing it without knowing it existed and in 35 years of profession. Her account is @patry and I think you will like her post. I hope you have a very good Sunday.
Thank-you @tincho. I will follow your mother.
Yes, there is a different method that works for the right-brained child. That's awesome that she has figured out a way to help.
I am finding that your page is an excellent source of great posts. Not just your own, but Awesome job on the resteeming choices!
ah, thanks!
And I've found a post I'm sure you would like! By @everlove- https://steemit.com/philosophy/@everlove/lies-lies-lies-what-s-up-with-all-those-lies
Yes -- thank-you. It is a great article.
Great post. Upvoted.
Yes I am a teacher and I can attest to this. It is all very left brain.
Even as a teacher (which is my profession at the moment) I would say: please homeschool!
Thank-you for your important insight as a teacher.
The % of people that I know who homeschool that are/were teachers themselves is higher than the general population. I think that a lot of teachers can see the problems with the education system better than most. My husband himself was a teacher, but only for a year before he couldn't stand it anymore.
I can imagine him quitting. I am always curious how long I can stand it before it happens to me.... haha.
Still... love being around the kids.
And of course... unschooling is also very important ;)
Unschooling definitely found its way into our lives after public school, online public school, and strictly curriculum based homeschooling left my son and I both incredibly frustrated and at a loss as to how to proceed. Our unschooling started as deschooling...just a period of doing nothing educational in order to restore our sanity. Then I realized, he is still learning. Around this time I learned about Sudbury schools and the more I read the more I felt an overwhelming sense of confirmation that unschooling was what we were meant to do. My son is now 9 and is crazy talented in all things tech and is currently writing his own video game!
Thank-you for sharing your wonderful success story!
It is awesome to hear.
Hm that actually makes a lot of sense; I didn't do so well at school, and when asked why (because apparently I do a reasonable impression of "smart") I always said it was because I didn't have the right kind of brain for it, maybe I wasn't making stuff up after all XD
We're doing the unschooling thing too though I tend to just refer to it !schooling when I can get away with it because the labels with very precise definitions other people were engaging in annoyed me.
My boys exactly! My girl will put in the effort but not without letting me know in no uncertain terms that it's hard and boring and she hates it XD But we usually manage to work things out.
There is more to it than you know! That is not an impression of smart, it's the real thing. Schools are not very good at judging most forms of intelligence.
It's good to see that you can relate and that you are unschooling too. Your children are fortunate.
Wow, this is the kind of article I'm really interested in! It's one of my areas of expertise although I come at it from a more intuitive, spiritual angle.
I believe I must have been one of those children, like yours, who are "Right Brain" dominant.
This was me to a T. All my teachers went on and on about how intelligent I was and yet my grades were really low despite putting hours and hours into a studying. I spent two years shopping for mental and emotional disorders and found a few shoes that fit. I made it into college on my essay and interview alone. Luckily in my third year I had a teacher who understood that I was basically just a salt water fish in fresh water and he explained that I needed to find an interest point in everything that I studied otherwise I would always do poorly because unlike other students, I couldn't force myself to care just for the grade itself. My grades went from C-'s to A's in my last year.
There is more going on than just the left/right brain, but it's important to look at it from this angle. Thank you so much for your articles. I hope to read more about how you raise your kids. One reason I am holding off on having any is because I am trying to create the right environment first, public/private schools are not the right environment as far as I am concerned.
I plan on writing about this experience in the future.
Thanks for sharing your experience! It really verifies what I have said above and what she outlines in "The Right Side of Normal."
I am left-brained and you are right brained.
Once, a new and dear friend of mine explained how excited that she was to have met me, because we had both made so many of the same alternative decisions in life, but she had done it based on intuitiveness without quite understanding how to explain it to others. And I would ramble on for hours to her quoting all the scientific and research reasons for why I had chosen the same things. She said it really felt good to know that what had seemed to others at least to be somewhat crazy decisions on her part, were actually supported by lots of evidence as well.
I'm a researcher by nature.
But your intuitive/spiritual side will probably agree with real science much of the time.
I've had that experience as well with friends! I am most definitely an experiential learner. I learn not only from my own experience but the experience of others. It's actually not much different from science but it's much more fluid as (you probably know) we don't like rules or rigid structure. Many people have made the case that this way of exploring the world is less reliable, but I think that depends on a persons ability to admit that they might be wrong, so a kind of agnostic approach is important.
I find it easy to explain my thoughts to others but it usually requires a lot of metaphors and sometimes a little faith. This can sometimes make it difficult to deal with certain left-brained people who think they're way of seeing the world is somehow better because it IS more easily verifiable.
But I love open-minded scientists! They help me prove a lot of what I knew to be true before I had proof to cite :-D Hopefully I can provide them with sparks of inspiration for their research.