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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

#91

Post by whimsicalism »

Proziam wrote: post #19

I attended brick and mortar schools until 8th grade and then basically did zero actual school work because I was too busy starting my own business among other activities I found interesting. I eventually crammed for about 2 weeks to get my high school diploma at my mother's request, then I moved to Sweden for a while (on my own, as a teenager). My school experience was abysmal and doing things my own way allowed me t…

> I moved to Sweden for a while (on my own, as a teenager).

How were you paying rent in Sweden?

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

#92

Post by saas_sam »

eloff wrote: post #87

My brother and I were homeschooled, but it was quite structured and we wrote the same provincial exams as every other grade 12 kid. My brother did the SAT as well. We had excellent scores. We both dropped out of college with near perfect GPAs. Today I'm a successful self-taught software engineer now starting a SaaS business. My brother is a famous sci fi author. He makes even more than I do. I think homeschooling let…

Fascinating. Do you think things would've turned out differently for you and your brother had you attended public school? Private?

I went to a truly terrible rural public school and I see many areas where that has held me back. Success was something to be ashamed of there. Loserthink was king.

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

#93

Post by brigandish »

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…

A friend of mine had children that went to Steiner schools and they weren't taught to read until they were 7, and he said they could read adult level books by 9.

It appears there's evidence that this is true in general[1] (though the author suggests they could go even faster if they updated their methods further)

I also remember reading in a Tony Buzan book his speculation that learning to read too early interfered with the, what he claims, is the natural eidetic memory potential in children. I don't have any of his books here to find the reference, unfortunately. Perhaps there's something in it, perhaps not.

[1] https://theconversation.com/steiner-schools-should-adopt-mod...

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

#94

Post by beachy »

somethoughts wrote: post #78
ohazi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think a safer approach would be "home after schooling" or to follow this new terminology "unafterschooling". Basically give kids time for unstructured learning using the hours after school/after homework study time that are currently effectively used up toiling at zero sum, super structured activities strictly aimed at getting into college.

In other words, a 1970s childhood.

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

#95

Post by gamechangr »

joncp wrote: post #13
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…

It sounds like you and your brother are highly intelligent and maybe didn't really need school to absorb the stuff you needed. I wonder how that approach would work with a more average child.

I was home schooled in grade school (1-6th) and went in Junior High. There was kind of like a large group of home schoolers, all of them tested very high. My test scores for a private Catholic School at the end 6th grade, they wanted to put me into Sophomore in High School. Thank god my parents understood socially it would have been hard.

There were 80 kids in my home school group that were in my grade, maybe half skipped a year when they went to school. That's a small sample size, but not that surprising as most home school parents highly value education.

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

#96

Post by whimsicalism »

fxtentacle wrote: post #44

My impression has always been that "unschooling" is mostly an indicator of wealth, and so it'll correlate well with future success. If both parents have to work a regular day job, there's nobody at home to teach the kids so unschooling is not possible. And if only one parent stays at home, they will also yearn for some free time and push for getting the kids signed up for school. The only situation where I can imagin…

The NYT article claims that 'the psychologists Peter Gray and Gina Riley published a 2013 survey of about 230 unschooling families, they found “a wide range in terms of socioeconomic strata.”'.

I followed the link and the source is... flimsy at best. The lack of numbers here is conspicuous, especially when combined with the fact that most of the respondents were stay-at-home moms, not something super common among the American working-class.

I do not think the rise of this phenomenon is unrelated to the increasing number of affluent, young white parents raising their children in urban cores while remaining afraid of the school system.

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

#97

Post by waterhouse »

TameAntelope wrote: post #69
zepto wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"It's still mostly heritable" -- this statement is confusing to me. If we aren't sure what we're talking about in the first place, how are we sure "it" is heritable?

If you've heard 5-10 plausible meanings for "intelligence", and every one of them is heritable, then you can be pretty sure that "intelligence" is heritable even if you're not sure which particular meaning someone is using.

And the article says: "on average, psychological traits are extremely heritable, at around 50 per cent." It's hard to argue for a definition of "intelligence" that wouldn't be a psychological trait.

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

#98

Post by lopmotr »

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'd say for most students, the vast majority of time they spend in school, they're not learning anything. The content of curriculums are usually quite short and can be crammed in a few weeks by a dedicated and intelligent enough student. For students that need more time, they often disengage anyway and all the time in the world won't help them learn using the same techniques.

I used to be a math teacher, and when a student failed the final exam, I'd spend a few hours one on one, then they could take another exam. The students that pissed around all term and bombed the first attempt often quickly picked up most of it in the 1-1 sessions and passed the 2nd attempt. I jokingly suggested to my boss that maybe we should scrap classes and just divide up my hours on 1-1 sessions with every student for greater efficiency.

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

#99

Post by gamechangr »

Goronmon wrote: post #10
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…

What about careers other than software development though? I'm definitely not criticizing your choices at all, but its interesting to me that both your brother and yourself ended up doing software development. Do you feel you would have a different option of "unschooling" if you had tried to be successful in a different career path?

I was home schooled 1-6th grade, then went to Junior High. I was WAYYYYYY ahead. I think most home school kids are at least a grade ahead.

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

#100

Post by claudiawerner »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #86
radu_floricica wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? I'm pretty sure intelligence is well over half hereditary. AFAIK, most of what we can do to increase people's intelligence is make sure they get proper nutrition as kids. Over that, we can at most spend lots of money on educational programs for really small increases in IQ (though of course education is not just about IQ).

"Heritability" is a funny concept which is easy to misunderstand. http://bactra.org/weblog/520.html > Heritability is a technical measure of how much of the variance in a quantitative trait (such as IQ) is associated with genetic differences, in a population with a certain distribution of genotypes and environments. Under some very strong simplifying assumptions, quantitative geneticists use it to calculate the chang…

In addition, heritability, what claims can be inferred from its measures, and the meaning of those claims in discussions like in this thread are also a tricky concept when investigated from a philosophical standpoint[0][1], and some measures (and of course proposed solutions) have been controversial among sociobiologists, evolutionary biologists, and philosophers alike.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heredity/#PhilIssuArisTwi...

[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/beyond-versus

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