Authentic vs. useless learning

The title of this blog relates to what I learn in homeschooling, versus what the school teaches kids similar to me. You see, I learn useful things from homeschooling; that is the "Authentic" part of my title. The school often teaches useless things; that is the part of the title "Useless Learning. I am learning how to write in HTML, and that can get help me get a really good and high paying job. I am learning Chinese not because a language is required, but because we are adopting two boys from China and I want to be able to talk to them. When I was in public school, each year we went to the local playground on a field trip and that took up most of the day. What good is that? The playground is located right in the village, and most of us have been there a million times! Also, in school, they made me write essays about practically nothing. For instance, the teacher made us write stories about a peacock. Isn't that stupid? In homeschooling, I am writing a useful book, that I hope will be published for the whole world to read. Now, that is authentic learning! One big difference is that when homeschooling you can pick what it is that you want to do. If you pick a useless curriculum, then you might as well go to public school. My advice is to find useful things to study, and try to have all your learning be authentic. It really isn't that hard.