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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

#321

Post by bryanwb »

background: I worked in edtech for about 5 years

Start w/ smart kids w/ relatively affluent parents and any educational strategy succeeds. The kids will do well no matter what. Start w/ less innately intelligent kids w/ uneducated, poor parents and that is where you see what really works. Virtually all studies/articles about unschooling/less schooling approaches and they don't control for this variable.

Show me homeschooling/unschooling/Waldorf/Montessori/Reggio works for poor kids w/ uneducated parents. Until then, I don't give a shit.

I have worked w/ a lot of autodidacts, including a couple better known ones in the software world. They all had professor parents and comfortable upbringings.

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

#322

Post by jjk166 »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #291
philwelch wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What better way to manipulate a population than by “educating” them?

Yet if you don't know math, you can be ripped off. If you can't read the contract or understand law at all, you can be manipulated.

Which would be a compelling argument if there were no other way to learn math or law.

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

#323

Post by whimsicalism »

Proziam wrote: post #167
peterwoerner wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know an older German fellow who ran away from home as a child and ended up in France for quite some time. The way he tells it, the French would show no mercy as he would struggle to communicate. My personal experiences haven't been quite so terrible, thankfully. At least the old man got some stories out of it!

> the French would show no mercy as he would struggle to communicate

I have experienced this (in Paris only, the rest of France seemed chill), and I don't even think my french was that bad at the time.

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

#324

Post by guidoism »

mgh2 wrote: post #162
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…

Yeah, I won't deny that even the educated can be manipulated- look at our generation affected by corporate and political agendas. Yes, totalitarian states have used education to indoctrinate masses to maintain order and power. Depends on who does the teaching and how it is taught, that is why critical thinking is key. Given this prerequisite, is an educated population easier to be manipulated than an illiterate one?

I would like to point out that in our current world it would be very very difficult to end up illiterate under just about any circumstance. Reading and writing don’t need to be explicitly taught unless you are under extreme time pressure (like the need to get the pupils to be able to read their texts on their own so you can increase class sizes and decrease the cost of schooling).

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

#325

Post by guidoism »

jjk166 wrote: post #322
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet if you don't know math, you can be ripped off. If you can't read the contract or understand law at all, you can be manipulated.

Which would be a compelling argument if there were no other way to learn math or law.

Indeed.

And the math schools concentrate on isn’t particular useful in the context of a modern society. So what that you once memorized a geometric proof long enough to take a test if you don’t understand how interest works and how credit card companies take advantage of you.

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

#326

Post by abfan1127 »

leetcrew wrote: post #101
abfan1127 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

having met a ton of fully grown adults who have offspring, near as I can tell, most people are functionally illiterate. While they probably can read, most choose not to read anything longer than a tweet. I coach in a local sports league. I send an email at the beginning of each season with nice bulleted sections about schedules, uniforms, etc. After I send that email, I spend the next week answering questions to resp…

I'm sure some of the parents are just refusing to read your email carefully, but I think people also overestimate how clear their writing is. I do read written policies very carefully, but I often misinterpret things because I read more literally than the author expected. if it's something important (eg, specifications at work), I will rewrite the ambiguous passage in my own words and ask the author / person in charg…

I'm certain they are refusing to read it. I try to be sensitive to thinking I'm being clear when in reality I'm not.

Here is a screen grab of a typical email. https://imgur.com/5d36jpq

The first questions I get are "when is first practice".

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

#327

Post by abfan1127 »

epr wrote: post #144
abfan1127 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

having met a ton of fully grown adults who have offspring, near as I can tell, most people are functionally illiterate. While they probably can read, most choose not to read anything longer than a tweet. I coach in a local sports league. I send an email at the beginning of each season with nice bulleted sections about schedules, uniforms, etc. After I send that email, I spend the next week answering questions to resp…

> All answers are in that email they are responding to. My gf works in inside technical sales for an industrial instruments rep/distributor, and therefore a large part of her job is passing information between customers and manufacturers while trying to keep both happy and process orders. On a good day, she probably is forced to send the same requests for information at least two or three times on average before fina…

Your GF is a saint. This is a good place for AI to read the original email, and reply with snippets. If the AI isn't very good, it doesn't really matter because they probably aren't reading it anyways. :|

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

#328

Post by guidoism »

srg0 wrote: post #206
ornornor wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you were downvoted: the traction fake news, anti 5G, and anti vaccine movements get clearly show that there is an issue where critical thinking is concerned.

I'm afraid that unschooling correlates to parents being antivac, anti 5G, etc.

Source? We do unschooling and know a lot of families who unschool and exactly zero of them are antivaxers or antimaskers. We tend to end up here exactly because we believe in the scientific method.

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

#329

Post by helen___keller »

My main concern with the thought of homeschooling / unschooling as a future parent: I feel fairly confident that I could get my kids far ahead of the standard school curriculum, with stronger fundamentals. But I think the school system serves more purpose than just education, and I'm not convinced my home would be a better school for everything else:

Making friends, learning multiple perspectives, learning conflict resolution, learning about diversity, making mistakes and dealing with failure, learning to deal with authority[0]. These are all lessons that I personally would attribute to going through a public education.

[0] Just to be clear, dealing with authority isn't the same as blind respect for authority. While school tries to teach you blind respect for authority, every student builds their own relationship with authority, probably in combination with the values they learn at home.

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

#330

Post by cabalamat »

kmlx wrote: post #275
cabalamat wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not relate with either Tories or Labor Nor do most voters. They have to keep FPTP because they know that otherwise, most people won't vote for them; the last 4 times the UK had nationwide elections held under a more proportional system, most voters voted for parties other than labour of the Conservatives. > I don't think either has my best interests at heart. Most people agree with you!

1. we already had a vote on proportional representation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternat... 2. everyone thinks proportional representation is excellent. the reason is usually a misunderstanding of the voting process. in reality it has drawbacks, same as first past the post. before the UK referendum a study was commissioned exploring the various types of voting. the conclusion was that all…

> we already had a vote on proportional representation

No, because AV is not a proportional system

> in reality it has drawbacks

There are lots of proportional systems, so it does not make senser to say "it has drawbacks".

> all these systems are similar

That's not true either.

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