Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not only do you get the Calvin's Dad effect, but your children also lose out on learning to deal with structure. It doesn't matter how academically advanced you are if you have never had any real authority to deal with (not necessarily to obey, but at least to learn how to manipulate) or discipline in your life. And let's face it, parents who think they are the best combined teachers and child psychologists their children will have an opportunity to learn from tend not to be the greatest at being authority figures or disciplining their children. This is a Bad Idea(TM).
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.]
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
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.