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When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

nytimes.com

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Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#51

Post by morpheuskafka »

ohazi wrote: post #23
t0mbstone wrote: post #7

I was homeschooled until the age of around 10, and then my family adopted a new approach called "lifestyle of learning", which is just another way of saying "unschooling". Basically, I was allowed to skip schoolwork, as long as I was doing something productive. I hated schoolwork, so I started spending all my spare time tinkering with stuff on the computer. I wasn't allowed to play video games (since they aren't prod…

I can see homeschooling being potentially more interesting/engaging for a certain kind of student after the basics are out of the way, but this: > He didn't even learn how to read until he was around 10. to me, is fucking terrifying . All of the people I know who did better on their own than in a classroom were able to do so because they could gobble up half a library in a weekend. I think you need to be able to read…

Agreed, I would expect that early child literacy is pretty critical for this. Now once you get to age 10, you can pretty much just start reading random books (or anything really) and start picking up new vocab and grammar skills quickly, and probably turn out alright. But if you can't read period, that's not going to happen.

If anything, I would say the focus on unschooling when it comes to early childhood should be read early and read often. Interestingly, this seems to play into the larger controversy of intensive phonics instruction vs. the less structured "whole language approach."

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#52

Post by saberdancer »

A lot of first hand experiences here have to be understood as survivorship bias. It's unlikely that "unsuccessful" unschoolers would wind up here.

I don't have a strong opinion either way but I was raised with a strong basic well rounded education and personally I feel it helped me. One thing that should be emphasized is that the material should be challenging enough as having it too easy leads to bad work habits.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#53

Post by AQuantized »

mathnovice wrote: post #5

Learning of (keyword of) concepts and ideas is fun but the reason schools exist is because most learning is a grind. Learning to draw well, learning a language, learning an instrument, and even learning math and logic require going through the grind of learning and repetition. The grind is only harder if you don't have a good book or teacher because the practice you do could potentially be actively harmful (or useles…

I'm of the opinion that while it's a necessary part of learning to repeat exercises to advance your skillset, school is much too focused on this element of learning, and in doing so to an unnecessarily rote extent (I suspect because it's the easiest way to try to get it done).

The problem is that this mishandling gives people a bad taste for associated activities, especially STEM subjects, and it's rare for people to subject themselves to what seems like an incredibly boring process when they're not being forced to. As such, most of the competency they may have been forced to gain is lost, along with potential passion.

Even repeating exercises can be fun when you understand the motivation behind it. For example, if you have a real passion for understanding Newtonian physics, the parts of calculus that might be 'rote' when unmotivated and part of a purely rote process can become some of the most enjoyable.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#54

Post by zepto »

TameAntelope wrote: post #27
zepto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment seems at odds with the current research: “the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

He might be of the opinion that IQ != intelligence, or that IQ is a bad measurement of intelligence.

It doesn’t really matter what he calls intelligence - it’s still mostly heritable:

https://areomagazine.com/2020/09/02/the-nature-behind-human-...

Skills, accurate self-image, and cultural competence. etc, are of course a different matter.

Maybe he’s talking about these things, but they aren’t the same as intelligence.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#55

Post by walshemj »

t0mbstone wrote: post #7

I was homeschooled until the age of around 10, and then my family adopted a new approach called "lifestyle of learning", which is just another way of saying "unschooling". Basically, I was allowed to skip schoolwork, as long as I was doing something productive. I hated schoolwork, so I started spending all my spare time tinkering with stuff on the computer. I wasn't allowed to play video games (since they aren't prod…

Going to be hard in the current time to get through the gate keepers who are looking for a small number of ivy league universities.

Your going to be screened out by a liberal arts graduate with a 2:2 in HR

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#56

Post by wolfram74 »

saberdancer wrote: post #43
walshemj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of nordic countries don't teach reading until 7 or so

When is reading taught in the USA? In Europe, first grade is usually when you are 7 years old, so normally that's when it is taught. Sure, nowadays kids tend to learn it earlier but not through organized means.

I was a pretty rubbish reader until 3rd or 4th grade when Legend of the Seven Stars came out for SNES and my sister eventually got tired of reading the dialogue for me. So that would put me in the 10 year old range.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#57

Post by hereme888 »

lostcolony wrote: post #29
hereme888 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. May I ask what its like for job interviews?

What do you mean? If you mean for entry level service level stuff, like high schoolers would take, I can't speak to it (I couldn't really find anything when I looked, but I think that was attributable to the general difficulty of finding a first job. No one asked me what high school I was attending/had attended), but for post-college, no one ever asked me about high school. As to getting into college, I had to take t…

Ok, I was assuming the entire education was self-taught/unschooled. But in this case it was unschooled until the person chose to go to traditional college and get a certifiable degree. I was wondering about someone who went the whole way without traditional schooling.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#58

Post by lostcolony »

mdorazio wrote: post #46
lostcolony wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of unschooling is predicated on the idea that if you're not forced to learn things, you will be more open to wanting to learn them. Certainly, in my own life that has held true. I learned to read when I was a kid because I saw my parents doing it, and engaging in it taught me to love it. A lot of math I learned early on just as I was growing up (I figured out multiplication on my own, for instance). But by the…

This is a pretty horrible assumption to make and it's a bad idea to use yourself (or any HN commenter) as a good example of the general public with regard to learning curiosity. If you spend much time outside the tech bubble, I think you'll quickly find that the number of people who go out of their way to learn things in-depth instead of spending all their time on entertainment and social activities is a rather small…

Of course the plural of anecdote isn't data. Never claimed it was.

"I think you'll quickly find (etc)" - I think you're thinking about this the wrong way. Who, exactly, are you evaluating? The average adult who grew up in the school system, who learned that 'learning' is all about being told stuff, and who now 'knows enough' to hold down their job and pursue whatever hobbies they have in what little spare time they have? Not sure that's representative of children, or how people grow up under a different system. And even there, you'd be surprised how often those adults still end up looking up information -that is of interest- to them.

I mean, heck, I'm one of those adults - outside of work what I learn is very little, because I don't have the energy. And yet, I still am curious, I still ask questions, I still read things. Certainly, I look for opportunities to learn things as -part- of my work. I am the HN crowd, sure, but I'm also a consummate gamer and waster of time. Heck, I'll even waste my time responding to HN comments. :P

Beyond that, for children, if you're just looking at kids who are already in school...yeah. No kidding. After 5-8 hours in school being 'taught' things, why they heck would someone spend their free time learning things outside of it? It's just like a job. But what about a kid who has hours of free time, and who sees, constantly, that there are people around them who 'know things', and they don't? They'll ask questions. Lots of questions. Encourage that, and you have learning.

I mean, I can't speak to you, the HN crowd at large, or people at large (nor can you), but I can say that given just the spare time the quarantine has given me, my unproductive pursuits very quickly ran dry (not for lack of them), and I've picked up learning a number of new things to fill the time. I don't think that's nearly as uncommon as you might think.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#59

Post by [deleted] »

t0mbstone wrote: post #7

I was homeschooled until the age of around 10, and then my family adopted a new approach called "lifestyle of learning", which is just another way of saying "unschooling". Basically, I was allowed to skip schoolwork, as long as I was doing something productive. I hated schoolwork, so I started spending all my spare time tinkering with stuff on the computer. I wasn't allowed to play video games (since they aren't prod…

[deleted]

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#60

Post by lostcolony »

hereme888 wrote: post #57
lostcolony wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? If you mean for entry level service level stuff, like high schoolers would take, I can't speak to it (I couldn't really find anything when I looked, but I think that was attributable to the general difficulty of finding a first job. No one asked me what high school I was attending/had attended), but for post-college, no one ever asked me about high school. As to getting into college, I had to take t…

Ok, I was assuming the entire education was self-taught/unschooled. But in this case it was unschooled until the person chose to go to traditional college and get a certifiable degree. I was wondering about someone who went the whole way without traditional schooling.

Ah, can't speak to that. Certainly, there are fields you can not work in without a degree, certification, or licensing, even if self-taught. But there are also plenty you can enter with only the knowledge you've learned on your own. Software is a good one; there are plenty of places that will hire a developer even without a degree.
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