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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

#341

Post by leetcrew »

abfan1127 wrote: post #326
leetcrew wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

this is actually a good example to demonstrate my point. you don't explicitly say when the first practice is, only that they recur every tuesday and friday. the "see you next tuesday!" strongly implies that the first practice is the tuesday that immediately follows, but the reader doesn't get this needed context until the very end of the email. I bet if you put something like "starting next tuesday (dd/mm/yyyy)" in the Practices section, you would get fewer of those questions.

all the information is there for an active reader to figure out what they need to do, but I can see how a linear reader (who isn't holding all the information in their head to begin with) could miss it. I had to reread the email to know exactly when the first practice would be. an extremely pedantic reader might be unsure whether "see you next tuesday!" refers to a second informational meeting or the first actual practice.

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

#342

Post by throwawaygh »

rvba wrote: post #67
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…

In my opinion the conclusion is much different: "Unschooling" works as long as you can find a job in IT. What is much harder now due to tons of people doing those bootcamps.

Exactly. Careers with a low barrier to entry will eventually settle on low wages. Despite what many believe, programming has a quite low barrier to entry. Supply was artificially suppressed because college was the only place someone would teach you to program, so programmers either had college degrees or were self-starters (comparatively rare).

But the trade schools are finally catching up to demand. The era of 160k dev jobs without very advanced/complementary skills/knowledge are quickly coming to an end.

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

#343

Post by pokoleo »

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…

Agreed with this!

Survival bias fills this thread with people for whom homeschooling worked. Consider that those didn't experience success might be under-represented in the dialogue you consume.

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

#344

Post by somethoughts »

sfink wrote: post #120
somethoughts wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I agree - homeschooling by parents who are able to, experienced and motivated is by far the best option. Not all parents have that ability/motivation.

I think the key is to not have it get into a 7 hours of structured school plus 4 hours of structured after school extracurriculars (i.e. sports, piano or any other competitive zero sum activities etc.) where an 'adult' is telling what activities to complete. Basically in such a schedule in no part of the day has the child done any activity where they thought for themselves.

Would much rather give them time in their remaining 4 hours to provide some structure on how to research an area/project for focus and create something self directed.

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

#345

Post by somethoughts »

dgentile wrote: post #150
sfink wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

High Schooler here. I've been teaching myself Vulkan and am writing a videogame, but I'm so exhausted on weekdays from my course-load that I only work on it on weekends and breaks. I wish I could put more time into it but trying to program after 6+ hours of school and then homework is a nightmare, and that code usually ends up being buggier than my normal output, with low productivity.

That's awesome - I think that would be the ideal as it pretty much replicates life after you graduate from college as a software engineer.

As the other two comments allude to, I think the keys are using it as a learning process to learn time management (i.e. avoid burn-out and over committing) and how to make it social (i.e. find other classmates to work on it with you).

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

#346

Post by phobosanomaly »

jkhdigital wrote: post #303
phobosanomaly wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough dude. I'm sorry you feel short-changed by the public school system. I'm sorry you weren't able to see the point of my anecdote. I'm sorry this conversation has become so confrontational. I don't think it needed to go that way. Best of luck.

Yeah that went south... but anyway, I think a better response is that you have no way of knowing if you succeeded because of public schooling, or in spite of it. And the same can be said of almost any human... we just don’t know how effective our current school system is compared to the vast diversity of alternative models that could exist. Sure, kids generally learn to read and perform arithmetic, but at what cost?

Absolutely, 100%.

I don't think our system is the best, most effective, or even, in many cases anything above the bare minimum. There are probably a lot of interesting alternatives out there, and I would love to see some sort of change because I absolutely despised high school.

But, the bare minimum is good enough to get kids prepped to continue within the public higher-education system, and they can more-or-less take it from there.

Even if you go to a terrible high-school, it is generally functional enough for you to enter a community college, no SAT required. From community college, you can transfer to a good state school. The mechanism exists to take kids from mediocre schools, get the ones who are interested up-to-speed in a less chaotic environment, and put them into a state university, without them being super-geniuses or 1,000% intrinsically motivated or something.

It's not perfect, but it's a government program that gets millions and millions of kids who'd rather be playing Fortnite or hanging out at the skate park to at least learn the bare minimum in a somewhat standardized way.

The socioeconomic limitations on kids trying to progress through that system is a different thing, and that's a hurdle that I don't know that we have functional systems in place to deal with.

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

#347

Post by marcus_holmes »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #337
marcus_holmes wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up before screens, and we didn't have crazy skills.

TV has been there as a main parenting tool from at least the 80s. Unless your parents were mixing alcohol with your milk, you had better skills than this current era one.

I grew up in rural UK in the 70's - TV was only available for ~4 hours per day (total - no breakfast TV, no daytime TV, just in the evenings). And because of where we lived, half of that was in Welsh, which we didn't understand.

I watched maybe half an hour of TV per day, at most. And that would have been "educational" programs like Blue Peter. I remember coming home from school and waiting for TV to start broadcasting - staring at that weird test pattern with the girl and the clown head, willing it to start quicker. Though we did get The Clangers and Magic Roundabout, and weird stuff like The Tomorrow People that I never understood.

I spent my days riding my bike up and down the lane, building treehouses, rambling through the countryside, playing with Lego, plastic Airfix kits, all of that.

Still no superpowers.

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

#348

Post by abfan1127 »

leetcrew wrote: post #341
abfan1127 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

this is actually a good example to demonstrate my point. you don't explicitly say when the first practice is, only that they recur every tuesday and friday. the "see you next tuesday!" strongly implies that the first practice is the tuesday that immediately follows, but the reader doesn't get this needed context until the very end of the email. I bet if you put something like "starting next tuesday (dd/mm/yyyy)" in t…

This is a great point. If I may, I get 2 types of questions on this specific point. "When is first practice?" which is a good question as you point out. I also get " when are practices" which is pretty clear unless they have poorly phrased "when is first practice" with this question and now we've both committed the same error.

Good point either way.

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

#349

Post by phobosanomaly »

waterhouse wrote: post #316
phobosanomaly wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've obviously looked into the history of the system to a deeper degree than I have. I not only appreciate the effort, but I respect your opinion as to my point. Do you figure I'm making a good point, or do you disagree? If I'm wrong, what is the point of school? Why does every country do it? Again, curious to hear your thoughts.

Based on Rothbard's description... The educationists who pushed for it were not a completely homogeneous group, although they were reasonably well organized. Some simply thought education was good and weren't bothered by the coercion. Some subscribed to the absolutist State view going back to Luther and Calvin—people saying things like "in these schools the precepts of morality and religion should be inculcated, and…

Maybe if I limited my concept of the 'point' of school to more specifically describe the average incentives driving the average parent in the current decade to send their child through the formal education system, rather than homeschooling?

Would you then consider it possible to draw a link between that and a tractable concept of the 'point' of school.

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

#350

Post by dang »

cheschire wrote: post #267
phobosanomaly wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As bad as you make it sound, they are teaching kids stuff, even at less-than-wealthy school districts. Adult Literacy in the United States: https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp It's not perfect, but from the most remote deserts of Arizona to rural Appalachia, to Compton, to rural Colorado, our public school system chugs away. By hood or by crook, or by underfunded inner-city/rural public school, we're teaching…

That's a lot of words to support your pedantry. What did your own personal anecdote add to your point? I suppose you prefer I use lots of words in place of the hyperbolic word "only" to satisfy your need for an equal level of granular evaluation of the unsuccessful education of kids in inner city locations. What you've described as successful teaching describes learning through about 3rd grade. So one would hope that…

Personal attacks will get you banned on HN, so please make your substantive points without that, or name-calling.

And please don't post in the flamewar style to HN generally. We're trying for something different here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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