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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

#111

Post by jsnk »

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…

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Were you home schooled by your mother or your father? And whoever was home schooling you, were they working either part time or full time? I am interested in homeschooling as well.

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

#112

Post by sjg007 »

Digital28 wrote: post #75
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…

This sounds almost identical to how I was raised, even down to the age of transitioning between the two styles, and I was doing contract web development work by 13, too, before cramming for the GED and ranking 99th percentile in science. I'm now working in AI with a startup of my own. I honestly can't say I've ever met (or even heard about) anyone with such a similar story -- care to chat sometime?

I went to public school and was fixing computers for $$ at age 12, doing web dev at 16 and running a company installing Ethernet cards in college students computers at 18. That was all outside of school.

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

#113

Post by Proziam »

whimsicalism wrote: post #91
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?

When I moved I arranged to live with some folks I knew through my online esports adventures in Umeå. At the time, I was seriously consider living there permanently and moving my business there. I really enjoyed the place but between family and personal goals it just wasn't destined to be a permanent move the way I had hoped.

Interestingly (to me at least), I had gigabit internet in Umeå and I believe it only cost around 40 USD/m at the time (2011-ish). I didn't get gigabit again until I moved to Las Vegas and I'm currently paying around 3x that amount.

EDIT - Actually I have one big complaint. Trying to learn the language was impossible because every time I would attempt it people would notice I'm not a native speaker and instantly switch to English as if they had been waiting for that moment their entire lives. Lesson: Swedish people are an order of magnitude more considerate than the french folks I've met.

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

#114

Post by iambateman »

I was homeschooled 1-5, private 6-8, public 9, homeschooled again 10-12.

A couple observations:

- homeschooling is efficient. I only needed a few hours per day of school. - homeschooling is a religion for some people (who end up in articles) but there are lots of cool people. - “homeschooling” is often way less “sitting at home with mother learning math” than people think. We took tons of trips, did cooperative school, took college classes. It’s funny to joke about never leaving the house, but most homeschool kids manage to be quite social. - because it’s unusual, it succeeds with the right kid-parent relationship. My sister and mom made each other miserable and it didn’t work. There are lots of kids for whom homeschooling would be problematic.

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

#115

Post by waterhouse »

eloff wrote: post #104
saas_sam wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's impossible to say of course. But I think at the least we would have led more conventional lives. For myself, maybe a darker outcome. I was struggling with peer pressure and getting into trouble. The family that owned our house before lost their daughter to overdose. She went to my school. I wonder sometimes how my life could have been had things been slightly different and we hadn't changed to homeschooling (aft…

I suspect it would depend a lot on whether you were allowed to accelerate academically, and the answer would likely have been "no" or "not much". You might take a look at the following study, and see if it rings true to the school you did experience, or to what you've heard from others you've met:

"The considerable majority of [the subjects: young people with 160+ IQs in Australia] who have [skipped 2 or more grades in K-12] report high degrees of life satisfaction, have taken research degrees at leading universities, have professional careers, and report facilitative social and love relationships. Young people of equal abilities who accelerated by only 1 year or who have not been permitted acceleration have tended to enter less academically rigorous college courses, report lower levels of life satisfaction, and in many cases, experience significant difficulties with socialization. Several did not graduate from college or high school." https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf

I don't know if you're at the 160+ level, but SAT scores are something of a proxy for IQ, and the severity of the social and academic frustration due to mismatch with age-peers can be judged directly.

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

#116

Post by ta1234567890 »

lopmotr wrote: post #98
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 s…

> scrap classes and just divide up my hours on 1-1 sessions with every student for greater efficiency.

If done right, that could be one of the best and biggest revolutions in education. It would be amazing if there was a whole school/system doing it.

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

#117

Post by perardi »

bart_spoon wrote: post #85
saberdancer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My daughter started kindergarten this year and they are teaching reading. She’s 5, but she’s among the youngest in her grade, with the older kids having turned 6 already. Keep in mind this is all very simple books in the “See Spot Run” category of difficulty for the most part. She actually had already started learning some reading at 4 when she was in preschool. It was mostly just sounding out letters but at that poi…

I am getting up there in years, but when I was young, they were also teaching us reading in kindergarten. I can recall, with certainty, these folks…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Letter_People

…and I am fairly sure they had us reading short stories in first grade. (But only fairly certain; I could read short stories halfway through kindergarten, so that could be coloring my recollection.)

turning 25 this week…in base-16.

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

#118

Post by brodouevencode »

numakerg wrote: post #106
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…

> famous sci fi author If it's the same author I found based on a cursory search from your profile, then "famous" is a bit of a stretch. > Where I think it hurt was we didn't do any group social activities and lived in remote places I got a similar feeling reading about Chris Paolini. Homeschooled, raised in a remote place. Fed a lot of his early life experiences, particularly travel, into his novels but felt alienat…

> then "famous" is a bit of a stretch.

That's a bit rude. I did the same cursory search and realized my friends and I are big fans. Just because you don't recognize the name doesn't mean others don't.

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

#119

Post by PeterisP »

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.

Europe is quite diverse, where I'm from, kids are expected to be able to read at least a bit when starting the first grade of school at 7. Of course they practice and improve reading in first grade, and not every child can read on day 1, but the expectation is that for almost everyone the basics of reading should be taught already in preschool or at home before that.

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

#120

Post by sfink »

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.

So you're going to send kids to 7 or so hours of being pressured into paying attention to stuff they're generally not that interested in learning, then some amount of time doing mostly make-work activities, and you expect them to be interested in exploring learning opportunities in the minimal remaining bits of time? (And for older grades, they're also getting up well before their bodies want to.)

Would you be able to sustain enough interest to really delve into something when you're that tired out?

Structured activities still work, because the motivation is largely external. I reserve judgement as to how good that is for the kids doing them, but I will agree that it's a workable setup.

IMHO, you can't go halfway. Either you fill up their time with supposedly educational/socializing opportunities, or you give them enough time and space to explore based on intrinsic motivation. With your "unafterschooling", your kids will naturally use it for playtime or zombie screen time. One, or possibly both, of those is likely to be the best possible use of that time, so that's ok; just don't expect them to pick up new skills when you've stacked the odds against it.

(Yes, I'm biased. I'm homeschooling -- not unschooling -- my kids, and there was a major readjustment period to get free of the "school attitude" before things started to click. We couldn't have done that when school was still in their headspace.)

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