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

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

#151

Post by xtagon »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #130
xtagon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My story is similar to that of the parent comment and I would say the most important thing is to be supportive of the activities and interests that your future children are driven towards. If they're into computers, let them tinker with computers. If they like to take things apart, give them your old electrical components and teach them about electrical safety and soldering. If they like making things, show them some…

It's not that simple for the parent-teacher. For 90% of kids, their "interests" are video games, playing with toys, and TikTok if they're older. The hard part is getting your kids interested in things that can lead to an actual education. If you are waiting for your kids to become interested in History in order to teach it to them, most of them would never learn it. You have to do the hard work of making it interesti…

You're right that it's not that simple, but to be clear, my parents did teach me stuff like history and they did their best to make it interesting. It just so happened that I enjoyed some topics and activities more than others, and homeschooling can allow for more freedom to adjust to that than would be the case with a strict curriculum.

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

#152

Post by mgh2 »

vivekd wrote: post #141
mgh2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. 2. Not everyone is self-motivated to learn. Children, at critical developmental ages, are more prone to…

That sounds good in theory but research seems to suggest that homeschoolers overwhelmingly perform better on every single metric. Although I'll grant that there may be data bias in that smarter and more devoted parents are more likely to homeschool. https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/#:~:te... .

I just quickly checked its references: two journals that compromise a big chunk of the cited sources have very low impact factors.

Unless they are using a diff. metric for education journals or they are relatively new, I would not consider this a reliable report

1. https://www.resurchify.com/all_ranking_details_2.php?id=7414

2. https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-Factor-IF/Peabody-Jo....

3. https://www.scijournal.org/articles/good-impact-factor#:~:te....

This is a better study: https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S010...

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

#153

Post by barry-cotter »

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…

> to me, is fucking terrifying.

Why? It takes 40 contact hours to teach a nine year old to read, according to John Taylor Gatto. You can teach all of primary school Math in the same time to a 12 year old. What’s the point of doing it earlier? There are little or no compounding gains from doing so. Countries that start teaching reading at 4 don’t do better than those that wait until 7. See France versus Germany or Finland.

The entire point of the zone of proximal development is that you can spend weeks teaching something to a six year old that a nine year old will pick up in an afternoon because they’re just more developed.

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

#154

Post by 1123581321 »

mgh2 wrote: post #133
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…

This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. 2. Not everyone is self-motivated to learn. Children, at critical developmental ages, are more prone to…

What is the basis for thinking public education is the best option for education or for political freedom? Must that always be the case if it once was true?

Who would be letting a child go astray in a home education environment? Why would a reasonable parent in #3 not conclude that education can be provided via multiple potentially sources, including themselves and a good curriculum?

Why would you not say homeschooling disseminates knowledge, teaches critical thinking and aids democracy?

Your aims are excellent here.

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

#155

Post by dboreham »

saas_sam wrote: post #92
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.

And in the past four years it has become government policy.

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

#156

Post by MisterBastahrd »

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…

I'm pretty sure that if local officials were aware of this, they'd straight up take the child out of the home in most US states.

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

#157

Post by Nasrudith »

brigandish wrote: post #93
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…

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 w…

I personally learned to read as early as I could recall (around four) but lacked much attention span to actually crack open a book then and found being read to more fun. Not as a matter of personal bragging but to point out that kids in absense of formal teaching methods may absorb many things.

Immersion learning is used and studied mostly for foreign languages but I wonder about how effective it proves in general for small children given vs trying to teach them actively and leaving them to observe it. It may be a fringe case technique when directly teaching them is ironically less effective or even more effective when it does work but unreliable.

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

#158

Post by barry-cotter »

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…

Why is forcing people who don’t care about learning to do so any more moral than forcing nerds who don’t care about sports to do physical exercise? Most people have no intellectual interests, just as watching sports bores me. Exercise and learning both have pay offs in terms of physical and mental health and earning power respectively, for those who enjoy them and those who don’t.

Why is forcing people to read books they don’t care about good enough to warrant the intrusion on their autonomy necessary to get them to do so?

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

#159

Post by eloff »

an_opabinia wrote: post #134
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…

> it was quite structured and we wrote the same provincial exams as every other grade 12 kid This has been touched upon elsewhere by other commenters. But to at least ask you personally, would you concede that if you were doing well on tests despite the absence of the kind of cramming / teaching-to-the-test that the average schooled student receives, you could have done any kind of education, and in many ways, there…

There is no question that tests are terrible, are gamed, and get in the way of actual learning. How to replace them with something better and still measure performance is an open question.

However I think the biggest benefits of homeschooling are being ale to get customized 1 on 1 attention, and learning how to learn. That is the meta skill of being self driven, self disciplined in acquiring new skills. A lot of people that go through the public school system seem afraid of that or unable to do that. They were the people most likely to wash out of college in the first year, because they couldn't deal with the relative lack of structure compared to high school.

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

#160

Post by peterwoerner »

Proziam wrote: post #113
whimsicalism wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 aro…

My dad said when he went to France for work (outside of Paris), they were no longer embarrassed by their poor English, once he shared his abysmal French.
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