The ''Unschooling" Movement

[Orrin_73]

This got to be a joke. Cartoon in the morning, politics and everything on google, study whenever/whatever and what they want. What kind of an education is this. Never heard of it. I live in Holland something like this would be impossible here.
The ''Unschooling" Movement

[nickinSTL]

1. here's the Wikipedia entry on "unschooling"

Unschooling (also sometimes referred to as "natural learning", "child-led learning", "discovery learning", "autodidactic learning", or "child-directed learning") is the term that means being responsible for your own education. Under unschooling education, parents may act as "facilitators" and may provide a wide-range of resources to their children.

Proponents of unschooling have a variety of reasons to support their position. A common belief underlying their reasoning is that curiosity is innate. Some argue that institutionalizing a child in what they consider a factory model public school, or any form of compulsory schooling, is an inefficient use of a child's time. Proponents contend that such an education is made to be "one size fits all" and is oppressive for forcing a child to learn regardless of his or her interests. Proponents also claim that individualized, child-led learning is more efficient and respectful of a child's time, takes advantage of a child's interests, and allows learning and deeper exploration of subjects than what is possible in formalized education. The subject matter is less important than the child learning 'how' to learn. This ability to learn on one's own makes it more likely that later, when the child is an adult, he or she can return to any subject that they feel wasn't sufficiently covered and learn the material.

The term unschooling was coined by John Holt. An author of 10 books on education, John Holt founded the unschooling magazine Growing Without Schooling.

A model similar to unschooling, using the child-led learning approach, is sometimes used in schools, such as the Sudbury Valley School.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. all I got was a silly ad. Which pretty much proves your point, I guess.

schooling by inexperienced untaught illiterates? The lunatics have truly taken over the asylum. Except in Kansas, where they have been in control for a generation.

[Orrin_73]

4. They are throwing their childrens future away

I wonder would an employer also be so flexible to allow those unschoolers to work when they want????

[JCMach1]

17. Isn't Bush already pushing UNWORKING

:)

[Katherine Brengle]

42. Are you serious?

I don't think you are taking this discussion seriously at all. It isn't about a lackadaisical approach to education--it's about allowing a child to discover the world and discover knowledge at his/her own pace and driven by interests, not curriculum.

I think unschooling has the ability to instill a strong sense of self-worth and independence in a child. As adults, we are allowed to be driven by our own interests and concerns--why do we refuse to give the same opportunity to our children?

[Orrin_73]

82. The most important thing for a child is

to have a discipline in live. The things they are teaching in school could also be taught at home but a person should have a certain discipline to succeed. The younger they learn that the better it is for them. If these children ever go to college or work they will see that that they can not do as they want they have to have some discipline. Do these kids ever socialize with other kids that is also very important.

[tanyev]

3. Good luck on the SATs.

[coffeenap]

20. How's 1290 at age 10? I know one who did this. The parent had

the kid take the test to see what subjects to work on. That said, I think only certain kids can benefit--they have to have a thirst for learning and the guiding parent has to know how to get the job done.

[Katherine Brengle]

43. Agreed.

Without a parent or parents who are engaged in the process, unschooling cannot be successful.

But if parents are serious about fostering their children's intellectual development, there is merit to the process.

[northzax]

73. one, big deal

frankly, anecdotally, Einstein taught himself everything, so that method's better.

anyone who gets a 1290 on their SATs at age ten is out of the mainstream intelligence wise by any standard (I got a 1350 at 11, and I went to regular schools, so my way was better?) let's look at averages and see who succeeds.

[MadMaddie]

50. Wasn't there an article last week..

That said the * Cabal was considering proposing standardizing testing in colleges? Kinda like their "No child left behind" except at the college level!!

They are dumbing down America and they are doing it intentionally!

[acmejack]

5. I would have liked this when I was eight.

I'm not sure it would have done much to prepare me for a productive future in anything other than the infantry. Oh, I get it.

[ProfessorGAC]

14. LOL! Very Good Jack

"Oh, i get it!" Very nicely done!
The Professor

[fishwax]

58. how would it have prepared you for the infantry?

the regimentation of the school day does a rather effective job in teaching us to respect authority, to be on time, to answer (in some classes even to a number rather than a name), etc.

[Fridays Child]

6. I think we have an unschooler here, on DU, who goes by the user name of...

...unschool. Maybe he or she can enlighten us on the topic. I'm willing to keep an open mind.

[rucky]

8. Here's the thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=219&topic_id=2854&mesg_id=2854

It sounds interesting, and seems to work for the right kind of family.

[pmteet]

11. Unschooling

While I do not UNSCHOOL, I homeschool. Unschooling' according to SAT and ACT's' is an acceptable way to educate. While kids will often learn to read later in life, they do not stay "behind" for long.

I do not particularly feel comfortable with doing things this way. But statistics will tell you it works. In MY opinion, many go TOO far.
Some of the kids do not sit and play games all day but some do. The parents are VERY active with them. They will do things I consider schoolish. They just let the child lead the way.

Michelle

[LSdemocrat]

7. I believe this was popular among upper classes in the 1800's in England

If I recall correctly, this was advocated briefly among philosophers in the 1800's, but was quickly abandoned because the kids obviously knew nothing by the time they became adults. I believe I saw it in the documentary "A History of Britain" featuring Simon Schama. I believe there is also a book out there by Schama of the same name if someone really wants to look it up.

[Coyote_Bandit]

9. Then again

the value of education is highly overrated in our society. It was important to the success of the baby boomers - but has been becoming increasingly irrelevant since they came of age. Our workforce is far better educated now than it has ever been. But in most fields of endeavor, education is mostly unrelated to job success. It is the tradesmen who have practical skills and who can always work for themsleves who have the most options. I have ten years of college, three graduate degrees, two professional licenses, good references and a respectable work history - and I have now been unemployed for over 3 years. I would definitely not invest the time, effort and money to do it all over again. I'd go to trade school.

[northzax]

21. you are wrong, I think

I would posit that education is undervalued in our society. Learning by rote is over-valued, no doubt, but the entire idea of universal public education was to create a larger group with an investment in society and the tools to contribute to civil society, beyond simply working.

[Coyote_Bandit]

30. Then let me state it this way

Education as a means to enhance one's earning capacity and career is highly overrated in our society. Well over 50% of all college grads never work in the field they study. That means that their education is largely irrelevant to their career. But that higher education does serve at least three purposes: (1) it keeps a significant percentage of the population out of the workforce for an extended period of time - usually four or more years; (2) it supports institutions of higher learning which are largely operated as businesses rather than educational institutions; and (3) it produces many graduates who carry significant amounts of debt - the effect of which (a) profits financial institutions either directly through receipt of interest payments or indiectly through the necessity that the poor graduate take on additional debt and (b) restricts the ability of the poor graduate to innovate, become self-employed, or otherwise compete with established businesses due to lack of capital.

Education for the sake of, well, being well read, knowledgeable, well informed and having the ability to think critically is undervalued. But this is the sort of "education" that anyone with basic literacy skills can acquire through personal effort. It does not require formal education or credentials. Indeed, formal education for this purpose can easily be abused to indoctrinate students (think Christian school) rather than encouraging and enabling them to think critically. It should be noted than even folks with significant amounts of formal education often lack these skills (consider many of the creation scientists and fundie ph.d.'s and attorneys). I would suggest that the issue is better defined in terms of personal attitudes and apathy than formal education. All members of society - educated or otherwise - are invested in that society whether they recognize it or not. I've known several folks that had no higher education that were well read, well informed on a wide variety of topics, and quite capable of critical thinking. And I've known more than a few well-educated folks that paled in comparison.

[northzax]

32. well, yes, that I agree with

we are teaching the wrong things, and testing on the useless.

[Coyote_Bandit]

38. We don't distinguish

between career skills and education in the traditional sense. The two are separate and largely unrelated. But then making education freely available does not compensate for unmotivated, apathetic students. People are well read and knowledgeable and have the ability to think critically because they choose to do so. People master a skill or a field of knowledge and endeavor because they take the information that is available and make it their own. And that is a process that has a lot more to do with attitude, interest and desire than with formal education. Students often fail to learn because they either cannot see a better future (i.e. lack of opportunity) or because they cannot see the need to better themselves (i.e. they have become lazy because everything they need has been provided to them).

Unfortunately, as a society we need for the educational system to serve multiple purposes. I really think education should be better compartmentalized - with students passing from one level to another within various compartments (i.e. subject knowledge, life skills, career skills). Students should be required to have a certain minimal level of literacy (and that would include math and science literacy as well as language skills). They should be required to obtain certain life skills - which would include everything from critical thinking to personal expression to basic finances to household management to health and nutrition to sex education. They also need career skills - and I personally think that to be successful this must include early considerations of interests, aptitudes, student desires, resources and available opportunities. It is a better use of school, student and family resources. Often, it is simply too late to be identifying these career factors when kids are in high school.

[phylny]

80. Eesh, I don't know.

I'm employed in a field that requires a Masters degree and post-grad certification, and I'm in a very depression-proof career. In fact, I have people calling me for employment constantly, and job offers from other places monthly.

I was fortunate enough to go back for schooling in this career, after making a very careful choice, and chose well.

[Coyote_Bandit]

83. Congratulations

I would suggest however that your experience does not reflect that of the masses of college grads today.

Not every kid gets to be an astronaut when they grow up. Most invest thousands of dollars in interest paid on student loans which were incurred to study something completely unrelated to the field in which they finally work. Statistically, less than 50% of college grads ever work in the field in which they studied. That in and of itself indicates that higher education is largely irrelevant to career success.

[phylny]

84. Congratulations not necessary, and I'm not an astronaut either :)

However, I worked in both fields that I studied, which were totally separate fields.

My education happens to be directly related to my success, but it's not limited to that. I embarked on a second career by doing careful research on what fields that I thought I might enjoy would have a greater demand for services than supply. It took me six years to get a second bachelor's and a masters, and I started back to college again when my youngest was 18 months.

My husband is not directly related in the field he studied, but that college degree gave him a broad base of knowledge, and enabled him to be hired. He's fortunate to have been employed with a very large corporation for almost 25 years.

Yes, we're fortunate and lucky. I understand that many people aren't.

[JusticeForAll]

10. It was an interesting video

Not learning to read until age 9 seems a little too supportive of allowing a child to direct his or her own education, yikes. - but, what really impressed me was the very well-spoken nine year who can piece together her ideas and thoughts better than most of my college educated co-workers.

Depending on the child and the family this seems like it could be a viable plan. Everything in life is an experiment..do we truly have all the answers?

[Orrin_73]

12. What I dont understand is should a 9 year old child be

researching and reading politics at that age. The corrupt politics of our age is not a good example what I would teach my children.

[aikoaiko]

63. Is this a reiteration of SummerHill?

Sorry, I meant to respond to the original post, not yours.

[pmteet]

13. In reality...

If you take two twenty year olds, ONE learned to read early at age 4 and the other at age 9, you will not be able to tell the difference.

Like I said above, stats show it CAN work. I,do not feel comfortable with it. But it can work for some kids.

Michelle

[undergroundpanther]

15. I would have loved it

but than again I read at a college level in 3rd grade and the only kid able to read in my kindergarten.

I had the natural curiosity and my school did all they could to kill it.
In the 70's gifted,curious,sensitive,non conformist, creative kids were seen as problems.

[Occulus]

24. In the 80s too. n/t

[KurtNYC]

22. Many interesting studies have been done in this area

Some with children who were raised by animals (hey I said "interesting"). What they looked at was the age after which children could NOT develop language skills. In their research 9 YO would be way too late.

More: http://www.feralchildren.com/en/critical.php

Another school of thought holds that your average 2 year-old has an IQ of about 180 points. IQ is not, as many believe, the ability to retrieve trivial facts from your own brain, but rather the ability to process and integrate new information. A 2YO is learning language, socialization, coordination, on and on. It is all down hill from there. Children are wired for learning but they need structure and stimulation. I have to believe that a child who has not learned to read by age 9 is at a serious disadvantage in this world and may never develop the language skills they may have had if they started during their peak potential.

[pmteet]

26. Feral children are different

Feral children are different. Kids raised by animal can not for some reason learn to speak. They can however become "socialized"

My brother learned to read LATE. We went to catholic schools in the 80's. I learned to read at about 4. By the time Jr. High rolled around you could not tell which of us learned early. While he had speech problems, his ability to communicate were equal to others his age.

I do think SOME kids learn better with structure. My oldest does. She DID however, teach herself to read at 4. She would ask the different sounds and put the words together. I was there as a sounding board.

Most studies that compare LATE and EARLY readers show they eventually, around Jr High, read at the same level.

I do not necessarily feel comfortable with doing this but would not tell others they are wrong. There is evidence that later MAY be better.


Michelle

[Igel]

33. "Wild children" don't learn to speak

early because they have no appropriate stimuli.

They don't learn to speak, if the "critical period" hypothesis is right, because they start too late: the neural connections needed for language processing, since they're not used, are largely pruned. After a certain age, they can no longer form. There are critics of this hypothesis, but they only deal with second language acquisition, not L1 acquisition.

[pmteet]

34. However

they do learn to communicate. NOT in human terms but in animal "speak"
They pick up the sounds of the animals they are with.

Michelle

[phylny]

81. Interestingly enough (and I hope on-topic enough) not only are those

connections pruned, but they're taken over by other sensory neurons. Hearing impaired children will have the auditory part of their brains taken over by more visual pathways, visually impaired kids will lose the visual portion of the brain to auditory and sensory (touch) brain matter.

It's why it's really, really important to get language (any kind of language) into a child YOUNG.

[SmokingJacket]

51. Yeah, except that IQ is norm-based...

every age group has an average IQ of 100; that's how it's defined.

And every IQ test measures something a little different - some give vocabulary greater weight than others, for example. But they all assign scores along a bell curve. Personally, I'm not sure I believe in a pure kind of "intelligence" -- every "smart" person I've ever met is smart in a different way.

I agree that children need stimulation to learn, but I'm not so sure they need structure for *all* kinds of learning. Language is almost always acquired in a really unstructured way. Some kids can learn to play music without any kind of structure, though other kids can not. We have SO much to learn about learning.

That said, I basically agree with you -- learning to read *usually* requires systematic instruction, and probably before nine or so. Then again, I know a handful of people who just picked up reading on their own, and I know one guy who became pretty literate in his forties...

Some kids and some families will no doubt do great with unschooling. I don't think it would work as a model for the education of the whole country, though. (Sometimes I suspect that a lot of these stories are planted as groundwork for the dismantling of public education...)

[Dover]

16. Our educational system is antiquated, built for the industrial age

mentality and value system. For most kids this system fits like a suit that's ten sizes too small.
Experiential learning and alternative, versatile and independent models of education need to be created in a big way. The system needs to fit and be responsive to the evolving needs of kids, not the other way around.

I'm always pleased to see any attempts to remedy this situation. I wonder if all the issues associated with finding the proper learning environments for what we label "gifted" or ADD children isn't a result of this antiquated system.

[stevietheman]

28. Yes and no.

We need to be careful about buying into the right-wing meme that "public school systems are antiquated". Instead, it's the teaching methods within them that need revising. Let's not throw away the baby with the bath water.

Our cry should be "Revise the teaching methods!" while chanting "Keep the public schools!"

[Dover]

29. No and no

That's not how I see it. And my ideas are not informed by 'right wing meme's", although the homeschooling movement is just one more element applying pressure to a system that NEEDS reforming and perhaps eventually being phased out completely. The problem is hardly limited to teaching methods. It is the system itself which doesn't 'fit' because it cannot respond to the needs of our changing times.

Many of our institutions (not just educational but governmental, etc.) are woefully inadequate to deal with the increasing complexity and diversity which the information age is requiring us to respond to. We need to think outside the box of our industrial past to find solutions.

[stevietheman]

49. Keep the right wing memes coming.

"industrial age" = "bullshit"

[October]

78. Um, the RIGHT WING is in the public schools

Today's public schools are filled with right-wing types. Our district has an extreme right-wing school board, as well as more than a few teachers who don't hesitate spreading their "patriotic" viewpoints.

There are no memes any more. We have parents in our district who want to sue over there not being enough "Christian" decorations during the holiday season, and who are indignant over "Winter" concerts instead of "Christmas" concerts. There are "Meet me at the flag pole" prayer vigils. There is a huge backlash against schools and these parents threaten lawsuits all the time. It's become an extremely successful tool. I've never seen so many scared liberals. (They're the ones whispering in the halls.) When our school had a student art show, they put "objectionable" art behind a curtain and the kids were not allowed to enter without a parent. What was objectionable? A portrait of GWB with a Hitler mustache, a semi-nude, and other political expressions.

We all need to pay attention. Public schools are not necessarily liberal bastions of education.

I used to think all these new versions of "school" were nuts. I did. And now...unbelievably, I'm home schooling. (Secular curriculum)

My son is 8. He doesn't fit into the "cookie-cutter" idea of a student -- and was bored out of his mind with worksheet after worksheet and rules, rules, rules above all else. (They took recess away from 8 year olds!) My son is what's known as a Visual-spatial learner (right-brained), and while he excels at piano, cello, electric guitar -- and being a fine human being -- the principal actually told me "This might not be the best place for your son...he presents differently." Unreal. And, what do I do about that? It's my district, so what are my choices if this isn't the right place for him? They just would not accommodate him. He's not a behavior problem (received a "good manners" award in fact), but he's just DIFFERENT. "His written work does not reflect his intellect" complained his teachers. His IQ is kinda' high, and he is 8 going on 40. if you know what I mean.

So, now, after 4 months of home schooling, my son feels intelligent (for the first time since Kindergarten), loves learning again, and we're all happy and free of the B.S. He never wanted to be home schooled and now he never wants to go back! He's playing Bach, Haydn, Beethoven from memory on the piano. Academically, he's learned about the Middle Ages, Italian Renaissance, and now the Ottoman Empire.

I think, as with most things, home schooling (and unschooling) results are subject to what you put into it.

Did I mention that I live in the northeast?

A lot of progressives home school now. My son is already testing better than ever on those state-mandated "standardized" tests.

Sorry to sound like such a "cheer leader" here, it's just that we all need to open our minds on this!

[LeftyMom]

31. Unschooling is definitely not a right wing thing

Right wingers tend to be school-at-home types with very rigid schedules and a lot of (fundie, creation science, makework intensive) textbooks. Unschoolers tend to be lefties, since conservatives simply don't trust thier children enough.

edit: I do know of a family who unschools and is right wing- but they're definitely not fundies, more like libertarian free market worshipers. Still a rather small subset of the unschooling community. There is a libertarian bent to unschoolers, but most tend to be of the more leftist variety who are more concerned with civil liberties than the corporate ones.

[pitohui]

52. it definitely leans to the right

anything that keeps mom trapped in the home, unable to pursue her own career and her own life, is right wing trending whether we like it or not

the woman -- and it usually is the woman -- has to be sacrificed to homeschool or unschool

what abt her dreams and her career? oh that isn't important, because the child always comes first

to me, that is inherently right wing because it's anti-feminist for structural reasons

the woman trapped in the home as an unpaid (and uncertified, unqualified) teacher is not a woman out achieving her own dreams

[LeftyMom]

54. How many unschoolers do you know?

First of all, unschooling parents frequently work or run their own businesses. Second of all, unschoolers are out in the community, pursuing their interests and interacting with others as often as they're "trapped at home." Third, families unschool because they want to, so if a woman chooses to unschool what's anti-feminist about that? A parent of either sex can choose to stay home and put their family before their career and still be a feminist, the feminist part is for women to have choice, not having one's dreams dictated to them by some dipshit on the internet with more opinion than information.

[pitohui]

55. i know quite a few and the sacrifice is real like it or not

however the situation being that they're ex-pats and it's the only way to get english language instruction

it does mean the wives have lost their jobs and their careers to the homeschooling

maybe it's necessary in their case but it is still v. sad and it is indeed anti-feminist

no husband has sacrificed his career to it, only the wives, who are now all housewives, who cannot now ever hope to get career-type jobs again after the missing time in their careers

the sacrifice is real

after 18 yrs of home-schooling yr child come back and let us know what great career-type job you are offered or how impressed employers are with your sacrifice, one of my relatives was quite sad and distressed that i haven't been able to earn one penny for years, i'll never earn again, it's a feeling of helplessness i can only imagine

disrespecting what these women have sacrificed is right wing in my view since it is the right-wing that traditionally figures the woman's time and labor is worthless anyway, i'm sorry to see the same view among progressives

misogyny is a hard one to root out and it is usually excused when the child is offered as the excuse

[LeftyMom]

56. I'm unschooling my child and working

It's not necessary for a parent to stop working to unschool, it's not necessary or even normal for one parent to do all the work in two parent households and in any case there's nothing wrong with a parent choosing to stay home with their children.

If you don't want to do it that's just fine but don't make assumptions and accusations about those of us who choose to unschool.

[proud2BlibKansan]

59. How do parents who work manage to homeschool???

[LeftyMom]

62. I work from home

So I multi-task. Other people tailor thier work schedules around the kid's needs, work opposite shifts from the other parent or do the bulk of thier instructional time in the evening.

One nice thing about homeschooling, whether by unschooling or a more school-like methodology is that it's much less time consuming than institutional school because there isn't so much time taken up with passing periods, classroom management, waiting for other kids to catch up, etc. School-at-home style families (the ones who sit at the table and work out of textbooks and whatnot) typically spend 4 hours or so on instruction and work, less for lower grades and more as the kids get older. It's harder to work up a figure for unschoolers since the whole idea is to make life educational instead of separating learning and life.

[proud2BlibKansan]

67. I had a student who had been homeschooled by a mom who went to work

every day. He sat home and played Nintendo. Mom finally realized himeschooling wasn't working after a year and put him in public school.

[LeftyMom]

72. I don't mean this to be snarky

but why would the kids whose homeschooling is working wind up in your classroom? Of course teachers see the failures, except in cases where life circumstances dictate otherwise (I know of a family who enrolled the kids when the mother became very ill, for example) the surceases are still at home or off at college, or working. Well, some families prefer to send the kids back into the system for the higher grades so high school teachers would see a fair number of successful homeschoolers whose parents didn't want to deal with upper level courses, but I seem to recall you're teaching upper elementary kids? (I think? I apologize if I'm wrong.)

Certainly some parents find homeschooling doesn't work for them because of temperament or logistics, I'm glad they tried something else if it wasn't working. Were they homeschooling by choice or for some other reason? I'm not dogmatic. Unschooling is the best choice for *my* kid, but it's not foe every child or every family.

In my observation, most of the problems are with families that are pushed out of schools or avoiding social issues and problem teachers by HSing for a year or two (or raving fundies, but that's another post and has more to do with how fundies parent than how the teach.) I saw a study someplace that showed a pretty direct correlation between achievement and the length of time a family intended to homeschool, with the families that intended to HS through high school having the most successful kids and the families that pulled the kid from school for a year or two doing the worst.

[proud2BlibKansan]

76. Clearly homeschooling or unschooling is not an option available to most

families. We need to promote good public schools, as that is where the majority of our kids are educated. Parents have the right to choose to homeschool but as a society, strong public education will benefit us all in the long run. For this reason, I do not encourage families to homeschool. And I will continue to promote our public schools. If they are broken, they need to be fixed, not abandoned.

And you are right, every kid I have known at school who was homeschooled had a poor experience, hence they returned to public school.

[Beelzebud]

18. Sounds more like "Spoiled Rotten".

Good way to ruin your kids...

[fishwax]

60. except that it works

and can result in intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate young adults, who are anything but spoiled rotten.

[LeftyMom]

19. I unschool my child

If you want to understand how and why it does work, the best place to start is to read a lot of John Holt's work. Personlly following the evolution in his thinking from a classroom teacher who just wanted to make classroom teaching more effective to somebody who believed that children learn best when self-motivated at home really shaped the way I saw the whole idea of education.

If anybody has a specific question I can do my best to answer. Just tack it on to this post so I'll see the reply, please.

[coffeenap]

23. You go girl--I've never said that before--lol. I think this subject is an

anomaly--one of the few areas of bias left here in this wonderful community of progressives. Unschooling can be the most progressive form of education--a welcome alternative to the standard options available today in the US.

[northzax]

36. yes, when the parents have high levels of education

and time to spend with the child, and the child is taught to be inquisitive. After all, I'd say that the concept of unschooling is working brilliantly in say, Sierra Leone, right? All those kids without schools are really kicking some butt, aren't they?

'unschooling' is a luxury of wealth, education and/or time. to pretend otherwise is just silly.

[ProfessorGAC]

45. Well Said

My wife and i could have "unschooled" our kids. We have 6 college degrees between us, in 5 different fields! But, the idea that kids will learn better without some SERIOUS dedictation, guidance, and fundamental knowledge is, as you said, silly.

How much better off, to broach another example, were the women under The Taliban? They didn't have to be bothered or encumbered by going to school. Somehow i think their intellectual development would have been far superior by formal schooling.
The Professor

[pitohui]

53. thank you, northzax

a note of sanity

the whole theory is suspect to me, in nature, few animals are "naturally" inquisitive because it is risky to be inquisitive, only a minority have that gene or inclination to be curious, to assume that your child will be one of the minority born who is naturally curious and self-motivated is really rolling the dice

[northzax]

68. you can certainly train a child to learn

but 'unschooling' is not a real good term, it is just as, if not more, labour intensive as more traditional education. But everyone wants to think that their child is Einstein, teaching himself Calculus, if only the schools didn't get involved.

[Bridget Burke]

65. Yes, what happens in single parent families (without trust funds)?

Or families where both parents work--either out of necessity or the desire to have serious careers? Should an MD stay at home to educate his/her child?

What if the parents are not highly educated & want better for their child?

Sounds great for upper middle class ladies who would rather not work outside the house!

[countingbluecars]

77. Bias?

Perhaps there are many in this wonderful community of progressives who are thinking about children other than their own. Would unschooling work for the child who comes to school having never been read to? How about the child who has never been to a museum or on a vacation? Would unschooling work for the child who gets the only nutritious meal of the day at school? How about the child whose parent has to work two jobs to make ends meet? It seems only natural to me that a community of progressives would support and work to improve public education.

[Katherine Brengle]

41. Questions here!

Hey LeftyMom,

My daughter is almost 2, and I have been seriosuly thinking about homeschooling/un schooling her instead of shipping her off into the public school machinery--any advice other than what you have already offered?

Thanks!

[LeftyMom]

46. Hiya!

I think my biggest reccomendation would be to follow your own instincts and experience rather than experts and all the things you supposedly should be doing. LeftyKid is an extremely active little boy and as a toddler I could not get him to sit still. I felt bad because we weren't often sharing the snuggling moments with a book that were a big part of my image of unschooling a young child. He would sit with books on his own and look through them, but would not let me read to him on a regular basis until he was four. At four and a half, to my surprise, he read a whole book by himself. He turned his attention to reading when he was ready.

I think unschooling is a much better match for my child, because I'd go crazy if we had to deal with the emphasis on consumerism and conformity in the typical public school (not to mention logistical stuff like making sure his dietary needs were being met.) If I wasn't able to keep LK at home for some reason I'd look for a school on the Sudbury model, since what they do is very similar to unschooling. :) I like some aspects of Waldorf schooling but there are just as many that concern me greatly and the emphasis on animal products in crafts (wool felting, beeswax crayons, etc) is definitely not a match for my family and I'm guessing (I'm gonna go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out on a limb here) it's not right for yours either.

There are some good articles on Unschooling and Homeschooling in general in Mothering magazine (some may be on thier website) but my highest reccomendation for a unschooling friendly periodical is Home Education magazine. If you read some John Holt (try How Children Fail, How Children Learn and Teach Your Own to see the evolution of his thought process) to get into the unschooling mindset ande Home Ed to keep up on laws and get practical advice, you'd be very well prepared to unschool your child.

[MountainLaurel]

48. Have you visited the DU homeschooling group?

There are some great resources listed there. Also, as someone else mentioned, Mothering magazine is a good source for information, as is their discussion forum, which includes "sticky notes" of reading material.

[proud2BlibKansan]

61. John Holt wrote a lot about how to teach kids in a classroom

in a regular school too. It is dishonest to paint him as strictly an unschooler.

[LeftyMom]

64. Yes he did,

but as time went on he became increasingly disenchanted with classroom education. That's very clear from his writings in Teach Your Own and Never Too Late, as well as his magazine Growing Without Schooling, which he started in the 70's. He founded Holt Associates to publish his stuff and promote unschooling and entrusted it to Pat Farenga, an unschooling father, when he died.

Read his books in order and it's easy to see the evolution of his thought from the idea that schools needed reform to teach children well to the idea that schools aren't suited to the way children learn.

[proud2BlibKansan]

70. I have read all his books.

I have been a fan for over 30 years. He has had a significant effect on public education. But I am not sure he ever realized that before he died.

[Harald Ragnarsson]

25. Peasants don't need any kind of education anyway

It just makes them uppity and think they deserve something better.

[Orrin_73]

27. I could not have said it better

[yodermon]

35. Everyone on this thread please read this.

http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Writings/unschooling.shtml

... But the last thing we want our children to be able to do is to live independently of our society. We don't want our graduates to have a survival value of 100%, because this would make them free to opt out of our carefully constructed economic system and do whatever they please. We don't want them to do whatever they please, we want them to have exactly two choices (assuming they're not independently wealthy). Get a job or go to college. Either choice is good for us, because we need a constant supply of entry-level workers and we also need doctors, lawyers, physicists, mathematicians, psychologists, geologists, biologists, school teachers, and so on. The citizen's education accomplishes this almost without fail. Ninety-nine point nine percent of our high school graduates make one of these two choices.
And it should be noted that our high-school graduates are reliably entry-level workers. We want them to have to grab the lowest rung on the ladder. What sense would it make to give them skills that would make it possible for them to grab the second rung or the third rung? Those are the rungs their older brothers and sisters are reaching for. And if this year's graduates were reaching for the second or third rungs, who would be doing the work at the bottom? The business people who do the hiring constantly complain that graduates know absolutely nothing, have virtually no useful skills at all. But in truth how could it be otherwise?
So you see that our schools are not failing, they're just succeeding in ways we prefer not to see. Turning out graduates with no skills, with no survival value, and with no choice but to work or starve are not flaws of the system, they are features of the system. These are the things the system must do to keep things going on as they are.
....
What sells most people on the idea of school is the fact that the unschooled child learns what it wants to learn when it wants to learn it. This is intolerable to them, because they're convinced that children don't want to learn anything at all--and they point to school children to prove it. What they fail to recognize is that the learning curve of preschool children swoops upward like a mountain--but quickly levels off when they enter school. By the third or fourth grade it's completely flat for most kids. Learning, such as it is, has become a boring, painful experience they'd love to be able to avoid if they could. But there's another reason why people abhor the idea of children learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it. They won't all learn the same things! Some of them will never learn to analyze a poem! Some of them will never learn to parse a sentence or write a theme! Some of them will never read Julius Caesar! Some will never learn geometry! Some will never dissect a frog! Some will never learn how a bill passes Congress! Well, of course, this is too horrible to imagine. It doesn't matter that 90% of these students will never read another poem or another play by Shakespeare in their lives. It doesn't matter that 90% of them will never have occasion to parse another sentence or write another theme in their lives. It doesn't matter that 90% retain no functional knowledge of the geometry or algebra they studied. It doesn't matter that 90% never have any use for whatever knowledge they were supposed to gain from dissecting a frog. It doesn't matter that 90% graduate without having the vaguest idea how a bill passes Congress. All that matters is that they've gone through it!
The people who are horrified by the idea of children learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it have not accepted the very elementary psychological fact that people (all people, of every age) remember the things that are important to them--the things they need to know--and forget the rest. ...

[northzax]

37. this ain't the wild west, you know

we can't actually all live independantly of each other, it's a division of labour society, survival is dependant on others. Frankly, I don't want to grow my own food and slaughter my own chickens, I'd really rather pay someone else to.

And let's look at a society without schools, shall we? been to Somalia lately? unfettered capitalism and plenty of 'unschooling' how's that working out for them?

it's a nice luxurious option, but when you are working 90 hours a week to put food on the table, it's not much of an option, is it?

[LeftyMom]

47. There's a bit of difference between a third world hellhole

where a child's education from their parents (to the extent that circumstances allow one) is focused on staying alive and meeting basic needs and that of a first world child with access to educated parents and other role models, books at home and the local library, classes in art, music, languages or an nearly any other interest, educational tv, museums, etc. Just a little difference.

-LMommy, proud overworked semi-broke single parent and unschooling mother.

[northzax]

66. so yes, for well educated fairly well financed Americans

who can provide educational opportunities, leadership, time, and a role model to children it can work. Well guess what? with that level of support and head start, the kid is going to be successful in almost any environment. So you are saying the exact same thing as I am, it is a luxury. You may be 'semi-broke' but you have a place to live, internet access and a computer, so you can't be THAT broke by anyone besides an American's standard.

You live in a place with museums, access to music lessons, art lessons, language lessons and learning supplies. Heck, you have a Television. So if George Bush was born on third base, your child was born on at least first base, where you have a much better chance of success than 80 percent of the world.

[LeftyMom]

69. I don't disagree that my child is relatively privileged

but there are plenty of kids in this country with a lot more advantages than he has who are being failed by the public school system. Were he enrolled, he'd likely be among them because bright, active boys frequently don't.

Hell the functional illiteracy rate alone proves that the current system isn't working. A society with a functional educational system doesn't have newspapers written at a fifth grade level.

[northzax]

71. you aren't getting my point

the single most important thing in his education is YOU. Bright, active boys, as you put it, succeed wildly in school, when their parents are involved. You could raise him in a cave, or at the fanciest prep schools, and because YOU are involved, he will be more likely to succeed. don't kid yourself.

oh, and I was a 'bright active boy' who went through some incredibly rigourous, discipline based schools, (think nuns and rulers) and some loose-limbed free education places (think hippies and self education) and it didn't matter, because I knew how to learn from my parents.

[LeftyMom]

74. I know my involvement would help him to do well in school

but I don't think it would make it happen. He doesn't do well in large groups or with a great deal of background noise (he'd almost certainly get an ADHD diagnosis if I chose to pursue it,) so a classroom enviornment would be pure hell for him and whatever adult had to keep him under control. I'd spend more time advocating for him and teaching each year's teachers the ins and outs of LeftyKid (the three million things he's allergic to, how to get him to listen, how to reign him in when he doesn't etc) than it takes to educate him at home.

My sister and I were lucky to have a father who advocated for us and made the school system serve our needs as well as it could. It didn't change the fact that even in advanced classes two grades ahead of my age group I was bored off of my ass most of the time or that my younger sister was a reluctant reader and writer and didn't really have the maturity to handle the work or social aspects of school until high school. We would have been less sucessful without that advocacy, but the system still had only round holes to offer and we were square pegs who suffered for it.

[Katherine Brengle]

39. I actually like this idea. Flame away.

While I believe that every child in this country has a right to a free public education, I also think there is a lot of merit to the idea of unschooling.

Children are naturally curious and open-minded--they WANT to learn. Being fored to learn, as I am sure many of us figured out when WE were in shool, takes a lot of the fun out of it.

The most important things I have learned in my life were not learned in school. They were learned in a spirit of self-education--out of passion and a desire to disover the world in the way I see fit.

For those DUers with young children, I am sure you can see this in your children--they want to know everything, experience everything--do you want our social structures to strip them of their curiosity and independence?

[Katherine Brengle]

40. I actually like this idea. Flame away.

I just wrote this post and I got an error message so I am going to try to recreate it:

I like the idea of unschooling. Children are naturally inquisitive and curious--for many of them, forced education is limiting and discouraging.

I think that the option of a free and comprehensive public education must always exist for the sake of social justice, but I don't think it should necessarily be mandated by the government (i.e., right now your child MUST attend school, or you have to become a legal homeschooler).

Personally, I take great pride in educating myself--and most of the knowledge that I use every day was gained (and still is gained) through a contiuing process of discovery and self-education.

Our public school system sucks the creativity out of many bright, curious children. I grew extremely discouraged by school when I was younger because it didn't offer a serious challenge--it didn't offer the excitement discovering the world for yourself does.

Just my two cents...

[Clara T]

44. Un schoolers-De schoolers-Home schoolers-Alternative Schools are fantastic

Un schoolers-De schoolers-Home schoolers and Alternative Schools are fantastic, any way to keep your children out of the mass indoctrination of the social engineering mechanism called compulsory schooling which is so much as training for the business mills. Read the actual words and history of those who shaped the American Schooling system and you needn't speculate on what the intent is.

First, who decided that filling in dot acronym tests with a number two pencil are in any way a measure of human intelligence. ACT's and SAT's and all standardized tests produce standardized humanoids.

Secondly, maybe we could teach a little more compassion and ingenuity and real life skills rather than what is the current modality of scholastic curriculum.

[phylny]

79. Different strokes for different folks.

I'm glad the "whateveryouwanttodo" schooling works for some. Our three daughters have thrived in the mass indoctrination of the social engineering mechanism called compulsory schooling.

Oh, and they've had fantastic, caring, wonderful teachers in public schools three different school districts.

So, this works for us! :)

[fishwax]

57. except that it works

i think it has to have the right circumstances--parents that are involved, for example--and some kids might not learn better this way. But it can provide an effective and impressive education. I've seen it.

[incapsulated]

75. Thanks for the informative posts on this thread

And the links.

As someone who had a very difficult time adjusting to a school enviroment, I have always been interested in alternative learning systems. As the public school system seems to be turning even more into a test-based, monolithic fact factory I think people are going to start exploring the alternatives in greater numbers.