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Schooling, Homeschooling, and Now, "Unschooling"
ciaohound writes "The Baltimore Sun has a story about 'unschooling,' which is like homeschooling except, well, without the schooling. '...unschooling incorporates every facet of a child's life into the education process, allowing a child to follow his passions and learn at his own pace, year-round. And it assumes that an outing at the park — or even hours spent playing a video game — can be just as valuable a teaching resource as Hooked on Phonics.' If you have ever been forced to sit in a classroom where no learning was taking place, you may understand the appeal. A driving force behind the movement is parents' dissatisfaction with regular schools, and presumably with homeschooling as well. Yet few researchers are even aware of unschooling and little research exists on its effectiveness. Any Slashdotters who have experience with 'unschooling?'"
Sounds like a fancy name for goofing off, skiving and truancy.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Old fashioned good parenting. At dinner time, I'd make a game of learning, with Q&A, and they loved it. It's taking the time to answer your kids' questions and satisfy their innate curiosity, rather than stifling it like the public school system does. A walk in the park CAN be a learning experience.
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These parents are in for a nasty shock when their precious snowflakes head off to university and can't get in. What you will discover, and many homeschooling parents have already found out, is that they don't care how good a job you think you did or how proud you are. You pass their various admissions tests, or you go somewhere else. They are not at all interested in your ideas of how education should be. Your reading comprehension, writing, and math skills had better be up to spec or you are sent packing.
Once they graduate from unschooling then they can master unworking so they can earn their unhome that goes with their unspouse.
This is sort of an interesting idea, but it's obviously a bit too unstructured, I think. What you need is intervals of self-directed learning punctuated by short periods of guidance from a teacher with a reasonably broad range of knowledge. In sum, I'd bet on Montessori over this any day.
The kid is only in school for 6 hours in the day. Use the other 8-10 of their non-sleep hours to do this stuff. School isn't a substitute for parenting, and it shouldn't be their only source of learning.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
If children don't spend hour after endless hour sitting behind a desk in the classroom, how are they going to adapt to spending hour after endless hour sitting behind a desk in the cubicle?
"Unschooling: For those kids who aspire to be the dish washers of the future"
But seriously, is there any less way to be prepared for higher education (higher, meaning anything from 3rd grade on up)?
Given the number of children in the current system that aren't remotely prepared...?
Good parents would do well with this, poor parents terribly. If only there were a way to decide who gets to do this.... but then who gets to decide? We can't, that's who.
I've taught before, I know there are both kinds of parents out there. If you're pessimistic about this you probably had the bad parents, optimistic you probably had the good ones.
Think of how the kid feels - learning what's needed and being interested in what's being learned. The only fear I have is that lots of kids are forced to take certain classes, learn that they actually like it, and have a happy and successful career. We just need a guarantee that the students will be exposed to more than just their interests, and then I won't have a problem with this.
actively use everything as a teaching tool, then fine, otherwise it's just creating a steaming pile of ignorant burger flippers.
Of course, if they were already doing that, then the school system would be fine.
Most homeschoolers I know are people who aren't sociable and just don't want to deal with the daily social 'grind' of dealing with people. Also they ahve some fear the child will be exposed to something outside there own beliefs. Political or theological.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, but it might be great for actually learning something. I don't know about the majority of people here, but I learned despite my school, not because of it - every skill I now use professionally is a skill that my school took great effort to teach glacially, incorrectly, and uselessly.
On the other hand, the year in which I basically dropped out of high school, I learned a huge amount.
I don't know if this will be better than conventional education, but, honestly? It'd be hard for it to be worse.
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And they want their personal tutors back.
No seriously... Throughout history, back before established private schools and universities, the well to do would hire a educated person to basically follow their child around and given them instructions pretty much all the time.
You know... Socrates and Alexader the Great
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I know plenty of dishwashers who graduated high school and several, in this economy, have college degrees. At what point do we say that no matter how you progress through school, there may come a time when you are at the bottom rung for one reason or another?
I should have added the disclaimer that I was a dishwasher for years in my teens. I was also damned good at it, and I think that part of the reason was the learned discipline to focus on a boring and unpleasant task. And while that's a backhanded compliment at formal education, it's a real and tangible benefit.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
And my sister! And our daughter!
There are some famous examples of this working. But only because the parents had time, money, and high standards.
One of the Rockefellers, the son of John D., wrote that when he was a kid, his father gave him an allowance. He was required to keep a proper set of double-entry books on how he spent it, and the books were audited by an accountant. He didn't get the next allowance payment until the books balanced.
Henry Ford II was promised a car for some birthday. On the appointed day, he was taken out to a garage, and there was the car - totally dissembled with all the component parts laid out. A full set of tools was supplied. Eventually, he did get the car assembled and running.
If you have the resources, it can work.
When my wife and prepared to homeschool our kids back in 2001, we both talked a lot about unschooling (yes, the term was in use that far back and longer). It intrigued us. At one point we may even have convinced ourselves that we were going to give it a try. But a funny thing happened on the way to unschool. By the time our kids were done with their reading and writing and arithmetic lessons, they didn't have much more time for learning through play than any other kids did.
Apparently our common sense was stronger than we gave it credit for. No way were we going to let our kids not learn the three R's. In time, we added the usual history and geography and science and so on, and though we never did subscribe to anybody else's curriculum, ours ended up looking pretty standard.
We did eventually join a homeschool group to give our kids a way to meet other kids, and that group included a few unschooled children. We saw nothing to make us think we had erred in actually educating our kids. The unschoolers weren't unpleasant to be around; they just didn't know much, and even the other kids could see it.
[This is all in the past tense because our kids started public school this year -- eighth grade. They're on par with the kids in the AP classes in English (excuse me, Language Arts), and algebra. The other classes aren't tracked (grouped, stratified, whatever), so kids of all abilities are in the same classes, and ours are ahead of many of their classmates in those areas. They're experiencing a bit of culture shock, but overall we're pleased with how it's going. FYI.]
The trouble is "guidance". I agree that a committed, competent, organized parent could probably pull this off, and end up with a very well-rounded and well-educated child. After all, the parent-teacher ratio is fantastic, and there are no discipline problems with "you're not my Mom, I don't have to do what you tell me to".
But, to succeed (at either college admissions or finding a desirable non-college job), a student has to have a balance of useful skills. If the parent lacks those skills, lacks the tools, or lacks the commitment to teach and promote those skills within their child, this could turn out really badly for the child.
There are lots of parents who are smart and organized enough to do this. There are a bunch who are ambitious enough to do it. There are some that are even committed enough to see it through. There are a few that have the time to do it. Unfortunately, there are just a small number with all four traits. We pay for Waldorf school for our daughter because I feel the method of education is worth the cost. I don't think we could take on this kind of task ourselves, though, which is why we chose what we feel is the best method then "hired experts" to do the heavy lifting.
I'm not saying home/non-schooling should be disallowed, but it's in society's best interests to educate as many kids as we can to the highest level we can reasonably achieve. So if a parent wants to do this, I'd say they should have to demonstrate the skills and commitment, then they can receive support, assistance, and above all constructive progress monitoring and feedback.
After all, if a parent succeeds, they've saved the school district a significant amount of money. It's well worth taking the parents who are willing and able to do this and supporting them as a volunteer force to take care of their own kids.
But if they fail, they cost society an even more significant sum. So the overarching priority is - is the parent accomplishing the task they have taken on? If they start faltering, intervene with assistance and constructive advice. If they start having real trouble, then the child should go to school.
But, I guess if there is a state-established guideline and monitoring, it becomes "home schooling" again, doesn't it?
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You must unlearn what you know, before you can, uh, know what, uhm, you've unlearned? No, wait. When you unlearn what you think you know, you unthink what... crap, that's even worse. Give me a minute here...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I like to call myself a homeschooling survivor. My mother chose to educate my brother and I for reasons that I've never gotten a clear answer on- it was not for religious or political reasons. On the one hand, I actually had an interesting free-form education and I did learn some things better than I would have in a school setting (we did lots of science experiments).
The thing that I missed was the day to day social interaction with peers. I saw kids my own age just a couple times a week and it was normally at my house or theirs. They were always friends. I never had to deal with a conflict with peers because I simply never had them.
The social aspects of school are just as important as sitting in a classroom- you need to learn how to deal with others. I'm 30 and I still struggle when i have disagreements with co-workers.
We need serious school reform in this country, and although there are advantages to homeschooling or unschooling, I think there is still something to be said for classroom learning.
what Mark Twain said - "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education".
Schools theses days are about indoctrinating and conforming to useless standards, not about learning. If you want to learn, you have to do it outside of school.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
This is fucking ludicrous. A large part of the failure of school is because the parents don't get involved. Studies have consistently shown that schools with high parent involvement produce better-educated children, and parents who engage their children outside of school produce better-educated children.
If parents aren't getting involved in education when the bulk of the burden is on someone else, why would they take any more time to do the whole thing themselves?
Schools are necessary. Very few parents have the necessary knowledge or experience to properly educate a child. If there is a problem with the school system here in the states, it's up to us to fix it.
I certainly don't want a society full of uneducated twits. We have enough of those now.
I knew our society was starting to distrust intelligence and education, and making ignorance a virtue, but this is fucking ridiculous.
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Sounds like 'uneducation' to me. The problem with learning at your own pace is that not all students are naturally curious, and even those who are are most likely not naturally curious about every subject that needs to be taught in the world. Learning should be fun whenever possible, but not all things are pleasant, and children need to learn that some things require work and discipline. Outside of research labs, very few individuals in life are able to do or think about just what they want to do.
From a cynical point of view, it sounds an awful lot like the people I know whose parents had them home schooled but then didn't actually spend any time teaching them anything. They didn't end up learning anything and now aren't really prepared to get a job that pays the rent.
I don't think it's impossible to make it work well, and for a certain kind of kid I think it would be fantastic. Unschooling would require a lot of involvement from parents, though, probably a lot more than public school would, and I expect that some portion of parents aren't willing to provide that involvement. I'd worry that those parents will latch onto unschooling as a way to justify letting their kids do whatever they want without any supervision.
You forgot that most of high school teachers cannot answer these questions either. Outside of the things there were taught, they tend to be like your average slightly more educated person on general knowledge
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
It's funny how things change. When I was young, we didn't have the term "unschooling." Back then we just called it "dropping out."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Higher education" is really a medieval style guild system, and it has no place in modern society. With ubiquitous internet access anyone with sufficient talent and motivation can teach themself any subject to any level. The only remaining step is to decouple the certification from the training.
It's true that some people will learn better with a teacher and fellow students, but there's no reason this has to be within academia. Students could save a lot of money by cutting out the middle-men and hiring teachers directly.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north748.html
The parents are usually the ones who barely got out of 9th grade, couldn't now pass the sixth and think they're more qualified to teach K-12, start to finish, than a dozen people who collectively have more years of tertiary education than said parents have walked the earth.
Textbook cases of...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
Besides, a major component of schooling is in fact /just being in school/ so you'll be, hopefully, a vaguely functional human being who can navigate all the various and sundry organizations of life and put up with all the other dysfunctional members of the species with a minimum quantity of blood spilling.
Parents who can and will take the time to teach their children about the world around them and how to act and interact within it will, more than likely, end up with children who are well-adjusted, relatively well-educated and prepared children. Parents who believe that it's someone else's job to do all of those things will more likely end up with entitlement babies who will be leeches on society.
Some kids will be well-educated because of our public schools, and some will end up well-educated in spite of them. The same can be true of any other learning environment, if poorly and carelessly administered. My 15 year old, who none of us think is a genius, scored as post-high school in almost every subject. My son, who is very smart, started college at 16, because we had nothing left to teach him. Both would have been bored in public school, as I was.
The point is that parents should have the ability to choose that which works best for their children, so long as that choice produces acceptable results.
Once they graduate from unschooling then they can master unworking so they can earn their unhome that goes with their unspouse.
unschooling ~ Like school, but not boring.
unworking ~ Like work, but not boring.
unhome ~ Like home, but not boring.
unspouse ~ Like a spouse, but not boring.
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Because you asked...
I am an example of an individual who grew up with under this exact educational philosophy and I beg to differ on the outcome most of the above commentators anticipate.
Unschooling is a set of principals and ideas about learning in general which emphasizes the individual's instinctual intellectual desire and capability over institutional time based curricula. It's in no way a new concept, with people like John Holt and Ivan Illich establishing most of the modern ideas in this educational arena several decades ago.
Though purely anecdotal, my own case is evidence that the method does indeed work, at least in my example, and I would argue it works quite well indeed.
I grew up without school until the 12th grade, and decided to enroll as a senior in an area High School mostly out of a desire to test my knowledge and socialization prior to venturing out to the greater world the following year. I was presented with a series of intensive placement tests and tested into the top levels of the senior class, where I completed the year and graduated at the statistical top of my small class without much trouble at all.
Since graduating a dozen years ago, I attained a roll as a senior software engineer at a major financial firm where I continue to design and implement technical solutions to complex problems which interest me. I'm also considered by some a bit of an expert in political strategy and consult a number of elected officials.
All this while declining to pursue higher education and instead learning from the experts in the fields which interest me.
I find that learning from those who do is much preferable to learning from those who decide to teach instead.
Additionally, the most crucial ability a critical thinker can have is the desire for and access to written knowledge and history.
The sad state of affairs which our educational system finds itself in is one which can obviously be improved. I would think that an open system with 100% subsidy which is open to the learner to take desired courses when they see fit would benefit society immensity.
Cost of such a system would indeed be high, but quite a bit less than dealing with the problems which a lack of self-motivated education hoist upon the systems of our limited resources. In a light improvements in our system to produce better learners could be viewed as the most cost-effective move we could make.
I have heard about unschooling, and there are some aspects of it that I find appealing. The appeal has to do with my philosophy about the role of education.
Our schools are presently designed to help kids be successful in the context of economy (as we understand economy today). American schools are beginning to fall behind in this aspect, but the point is that they are designed to produce kids who work well together as managers, employees, businessmen, etc. We want our kids to get good jobs, be competitive, and become wealthy (or "successful"). This kind of system was imported from Europe, where it continues to enjoy good success toward these ends. There are a lot of amazing things that can be accomplished when people work together this way, there is no doubt about it.
On the other hand, people like me don't buy into the economic argument for schooling. I'm interested more in the educational, or intellectual aspect that Thomas Jefferson advocated. Schools should seek to build character and create men and women who are suitable for democracy, because they know how to think as individuals and follow their own, unique paths through life. Perhaps there is more emphasis on argument than on cooperation -- I don't know. We do not seek to bend to other people as employees, citizens, etc. Schools should engender the love of learning and help students discover their passion and life's work. The hope is that students will be able to find whatever it is that calls them to action, and then master it. We believe that talent is naturally profuse and must be developed outside of a strict format. This isn't facilitated by the "factory" style public schooling that is operated from the top down. It is more of a ground-up approach, but it could still work as a public system (in my opinion). True, it may not produce massive economic wealth or compete favorably in a capitalistic society, but I am convinced that it can contribute greatly to personal satisfaction and fulfillment.
What I find is that all my kids are autodidacts. I don't remember actively "teaching" the subject of reading, yet we read together all the time and my son quickly became the best reader of his peer group. On the other hand, some areas that he is not interested in still lag behind his friends because we don't force him to improve in those areas. We expect that he will eventually see a need to develop them. Under such circumstances, it appears to take far less time to learn the subjects that traditionally waste years of our time in formal schools. There, everyone must progress at more or less the same pace; not so with homeschool.
I realize that people who step outside of the accepted social norm, like I have done with homeschooling, can be feared by others. What if we are too dumb to raise our own kids? For instance, I am lucky to have a high-school diploma, yet I teach my own children. To some, that sounds like madness. What if we ruin the social commons by producing dysfunctional adults? Shouldn't our government protect us from that?
It's true that sometimes the plans that other people make for us are superior to our own plans for ourselves and our children. Maybe it can be argued that others really do know better, based on some official standard. What I worry about is the ability of these true believers, some who have posted to this story right here on Slashdot, to eliminate the sovereignty of parents over their families. In America, at least, I believe we still subscribe to the idea that regular human beings are fit to guide their own destinies. For me, that is the appeal of homeschool.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
"The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real. "
"Our official assumptions about the nature of modern childhood are dead wrong. Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive. At the age of twelve, Admiral Farragut got his first command. I was in fifth grade when I learned of this. Had Farragut gone to my school he would have been in seventh."
"The secret of American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way children learn and it isn't supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason's words, "the control of human behavior.""
"Something strange has been going on in government schools, especially where the matter of reading is concerned. Abundant data exist to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent, wherever such a thing mattered. Yet compulsory schooling existed nowhere. Between the two world wars, schoolmen seem to have been assigned the task of terminating our universal reading proficiency."
And so on...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.