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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

#241

Post by StavrosK »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #203
drevil-v2 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what is so depressing about "cancel culture" and radical redefinition of what is "hate speech". Liberals and the rational center are not defending those ideals which gave us our modern Western civilisation. Even on this website, merely questioning the validity of some of the aspects of the politically correct zeitgeist will get your post flagged and hidden from public consumption.

Free speech as how some people like to define it now (anything can and should be said) was never an ideal, and certainly never reality. It’s funny how the people complaining about “cancel culture” (usually a roundabout way of complaining you can’t say racist things anymore) are completely fine with twisting especially history to benefit themselves.

> usually a roundabout way of complaining you can’t say racist things anymore

As an external observer, this seems to me exactly the problem. Discourse is so polarized, that nobody can say "this thing that started as a reaction to overt racism has gone too far" without people replying "that just means you're racist".

The situation has come to where there are ridiculous abuses going on, and criticizing them is anathema because the initial purpose of the system being abused was to counter a bias.

Hell, even writing this comment, meta-analyzing the situation, I'm semi-afraid will have personal impact to me, which is pretty indicative of the problem.

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

#242

Post by fiblye »

fierarul wrote: post #220
fiblye wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine how much worse it'd be if more people were homeschooled and not exposed to opposing views. If their only source of information was a parent who believed in strange conspiracy theories and only associated with friends and family who had similar views. School's greatest purpose is putting kids in a room with a couple dozen other kids that they may disagree with or even hate, and forcing them to learn how to…

Were you discussing high politics in the 5th grade or something? Because there's little opposing views in school up to say senior high school years! So now school's purpose is no longer critical thinking but just socialisation with all social strata.

>Were you discussing high politics in the 5th grade or something?

Yes? We talked about the news and recent events in class around that time. It wasn't anything profound, but our classes definitely talked about it. This was also in the years following 9/11, so it was an unavoidable topic. We even had mock elections where we'd "vote" for real, current politicians.

If I'd only heard about the news and world happenings from home, I'd have a very different and far narrower view of things.

And it's not just politics. No clue why you assumed that. Schools put you in a room with kids from different backgrounds, different interests, different likes and dislikes. I see a lot of praise about homeschooling on HN, but the ones I've encountered (including cousins in my own family) mostly come from very isolated religious families seeking to shield their kids from the outside world. Maybe it's different for very wealthy people growing up in the valley or with other great resources provided to them, but most of the homeschooled people I've been around have had trouble acclimating to a world that isn't sanitized for their existence.

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

#243

Post by 3131s »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #226

I’m surprised this was printed. Usually NYT is negative, or at best tepid, towards homeschooling. There’s a diverse set of homeschool/unschool lived experiences. There’s a diverse set of challenges and opportunities that change on a family by family, child by child basis. Homeschool proponents aren’t trying to take anything from you, they just want the option to do things their way, in the privacy of their own home a…

I attended public schools for 12 years and you could not be more right! If the school had put me alone in a room with some textbooks all day with the option to go outside and exercise occasionally, I would have vastly preferred that to the painful boredom of being forced to sit in a chair 8 hours a day without movement or socialization.

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

#244

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#245

Post by colechristensen »

People need to stop turning their preferred X into replacements for the lack of religion. Apparently some people are just built to need this sort of thing and in absence of a compelling religion they turn whatever interests them into one, with all the obnoxious traits that made people go atheist in the first place.

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

#246

Post by watwut »

cyberdrunk wrote: post #230
watwut wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of Germany being highly educated is overdone. The country was also heavily militarized, violent and generally massive mess. Hitler was not representing educated elite, quite the opposite. Part of that all was backslash against modernity, against arts etc. In Russia, peasants were largely illiterate. As in, unable to read and write. The revolution did came from people who were able to read and write, obvious…

> The revolution did came from people who were able to read and write, obviously, it is kinda hard to coordinate without that. The did much more than coordination. The intelligentsia was basically 100% responsible for the revolution in every aspect, starting from conceptualization (peasants would never come up with the idea of trying to apply Marxism to the real world and wouldn't even be able to imagine world other…

And very little of what they did would be possible without writing and reading. Peasants did not entered Russian politics in meaningful way at all. Simply, being illiterate to the point where you cant even improve on super behind farming also makes you pretty crappy at anything politics. Peasants attacked local rules here and there, then being bloodily suppressed wherever things got tight. That was it.

The monarchy, the military, the civil service, they were all "intelligentsia" too. "Liberal bourgeoisie" and capitalists were "intelligentsia" too. There were freaking 5 armies in Russia civil war. All 5 were led by people able to read and write. You all make it sound as if "intelligentsia" were uniformly Leninist or something. They were not, that is just the army that won. And I would be even super surprised if communists were the most educated of them all.

Yet also, the Russia monarchy was not exactly stable democratic functioning place until Lenin started revolution by the end of WWI out of nowhere.

I honestly hate when people who are supposedly against communist somehow adopt communist framing in completely absurd ways, down to blaming "intelligentsia" for whatever they perceive bad and down to attributing whole of Russian civil war to communists. I would really like to see someone use the term intelligentsia for like American journalist, teachers, or programmers. Lets all assume that all college educated people in American hold the same opinions. It is that stupid term.

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

#247

Post by wastedhours »

waterhouse wrote: post #110
sharadov wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this with my son who has an ADHD diagnosis. Pre-covid I constantly heard from school, that he was not paying attention, getting distracted. But since Covid, his output has been phenomenal - his reading/math has improved, he does really well one on one, we have a nanny working with him,. And I've never seen him happier. I know homeschool would benefit him immensely in the long run from an intellectual sta…

> am afraid that he will miss out on all the social aspects. Consider carefully and closely what those social aspects are. Check that your perception matches reality. For example, in the classroom, 90+% of the time students are supposed to be quiet, or to interact with the teacher (usually answering a question—in front of, but not with, the other students). Most of the social part of school is interacting with friend…

> the parts of school that are social are not necessarily good

Most definitely - however it's also worth bearing in mind that if you happen to fall into a more traditional life path afterwards, those social elements will rear their heads again.

The sink or swim mentality of school social interactions sadly mimics quite a lot of interactions post school as well. In an ideal world my shitty experience at school wouldn't have been relevant as an adult, but it has actually helped navigate quite a number of toxic situations.

As sad a world as it is, I'm (somewhat perversely) glad I was able to learn how to cope with those as a teen.

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

#248

Post by tasogare »

barry-cotter wrote: post #149
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…

> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Germany was among the most highly educated countries in the world in the 1930s. The Russian Revolution was an elite phenomenon. In a country of peasants the Revolution was of and by the intelli…

> School is excellent at inuring children to boredom, obeying authority and pointless busywork.

Which is an exact mirror of the professional world that most people will face later. School system is here to push a national narrative on people (which is not a bad point per se, as it builds cohesion), and prepare them to be mindless drone in a corporate environment. In short it serves society needs, not individuals.

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

#249

Post by krageon »

StavrosK wrote: post #241
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech as how some people like to define it now (anything can and should be said) was never an ideal, and certainly never reality. It’s funny how the people complaining about “cancel culture” (usually a roundabout way of complaining you can’t say racist things anymore) are completely fine with twisting especially history to benefit themselves.

> usually a roundabout way of complaining you can’t say racist things anymore As an external observer, this seems to me exactly the problem. Discourse is so polarized, that nobody can say "this thing that started as a reaction to overt racism has gone too far" without people replying "that just means you're racist". The situation has come to where there are ridiculous abuses going on, and criticizing them is anathema…

> Discourse is so polarized, that nobody can say

A large part of it is signaling through terminology. If you use terms such as "cancel culture" and "liberals", it's pretty clear you're either a right-wing US citizen or someone who wishes they were one.

There are definitely people that are able to discuss certain social trends becoming a problem without using dogmatic terminology, which is where the conversation becomes interesting for all participants. As opposed to a horrifying journey plumbing the depths of polarised discourse.

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

#250

Post by cheschire »

phobosanomaly wrote: post #176
barry-cotter wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. An educated population is also less prone to fall into totalitarianism. Germany was among the most highly educated countries in the world in the 1930s. The Russian Revolution was an elite phenomenon. In a country of peasants the Revolution was of and by the intelli…

The point of our system is that (as much as is possible) education is not limited to the 'elites' and 'intelligentsia.' Rather, it is distributed in a (relatively) egalitarian fashion amongst not just those who call for war and revolution, but those who rot in the trenches and die upon the bayonet. School is excellent at building the cohesive fabric of a society , including teaching it's boredom, authority, and point…

You must be mostly exposed to those areas where the schools get mid-to-high ratings. Education is absolutely limited based on income level.

At the lower income levels the only thing taught is boredom, authority, and pointless busywork.

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