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Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

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Re: Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

#61

Post by rodgerd »

tatterdemalion wrote: post #45

I don't understand how, on a site called "Hacker News," so many people seem oblivious to how damaging the primary educational system is to young peoples' minds and methods of thought. Unschooling doesn't mean not teaching children: that's what happens in schools.

> I don't understand how, on a site called "Hacker News," so many people seem oblivious to how damaging the primary educational system is to young peoples' minds and methods of thought.

I don't understand how, on a site called "Hacker News," so many people seem happy to upvote mindless, sweeping, and ignorant statements about a specialist topic from people obviously largely ignorant on said topic.

Re: Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

#62

Post by learc83 »

samirmenon wrote: post #58
indlebe wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private school, well off neighbourhood?

Public school, but fairly wealthy. What's your point?

Since schools are primarily funded locally, your experience is likely vastly different from someone who went to school in a less affluent area.

Re: Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

#63

Post by llllllllllll »

samirmenon wrote: post #44
fchollet wrote: post #13

The fundamental problem with the elementary school system in the west is that kids are given no room for self-direction whatsoever; school for them is de facto a part-time prison or "labor" camp. As a result they are trained by association to dread to that which the system purports to champion: learning, culture, reading, knowledge, even any demonstration of intelligence. It takes a combination of luck, will and posi…

Perhaps I am clouded by my own positive experiences with school, but I disagree on two levels. Firstly, your use of the phrase 'in the west' implies that outside of the 'west' there is some different, better elementary education system. This has not been my experience in India, where capacity for rote memorization is regarded as equivalent to intelligence from an early age. What countries fit your boundaries of 'the…

In fact, I think the social interaction with other children of similar age is extremely important to developing social skills and friendships.

And unfortunately social interaction is severely restricted and punished in K-12 education (in the US, which is the extent of my familiarity).

I volunteered at an elementary school for a year, and the kids there had little opportunity to socialize freely. Recess and lunch were limited to a combined 40 minutes, including transition periods to and from the classroom. Gym/physical education was a "unit", only attended one week out of every three, and much like I remembered from my own schooling, more than half of that time is spent explaining the rules to some highly-structured, barely-constitutes-exercise activity.

Re: Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

#64

Post by fchollet »

rodgerd wrote: post #59
fchollet wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not imply anything about school systems outside the western world, I used the term simply because I know close to nothing about education outside the west and therefore did not want to include it in my description. I also certainly did not imply that children should be educated in isolation. I agree that social interaction with other children is fundamental to kids' development throughout elementary education.…

> I did not imply anything about school systems outside the western world, You obviously don't know anything about the plethora of different systems inside the Western world, either.

Hey, thank you for this sharp and insightful one-liner.

I am keenly aware of my own ignorance, and always looking for opportunities to learn. Care to enlighten me?

Re: Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

#65

Post by barry-cotter »

samirmenon wrote: post #44
fchollet wrote: post #13

The fundamental problem with the elementary school system in the west is that kids are given no room for self-direction whatsoever; school for them is de facto a part-time prison or "labor" camp. As a result they are trained by association to dread to that which the system purports to champion: learning, culture, reading, knowledge, even any demonstration of intelligence. It takes a combination of luck, will and posi…

Perhaps I am clouded by my own positive experiences with school, but I disagree on two levels. Firstly, your use of the phrase 'in the west' implies that outside of the 'west' there is some different, better elementary education system. This has not been my experience in India, where capacity for rote memorization is regarded as equivalent to intelligence from an early age. What countries fit your boundaries of 'the…

>Secondly, school serves as a valuable social and educational center to most children. Even though elementary education is imperfect, it does not mean that a viable solution is to simply do away with it. In fact, I think the social interaction with other children of similar age is extremely important to developing social skills and friendships.

Great, let's make primary school a place to park children so their parents can go to work where children can do whatever the hell they want. These exist. They are called Sudbury or democratic schools.

While I have your attention, some links.

Teaching arithmetic to children below sixth grade has either no effect or negative effects, seeing as the extra education makes them worse at word problems.[0][1]

Homework has no positive effects on learning in any non-mathematical subjects and no positive effects whatsoever before middle school.[3]

[0]http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/whe....

[1] L. P. Benezet (1935/1936). The teaching of Arithmetic: The Story of an Experiment. Originally published in Journal of the National Education Association in three parts. Vol. 24, #8, pp 241-244; Vol. 24, #9, p 301-303; & Vol. 25, #1, pp 7-8.

[2]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775711... Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science (Impact Factor: 0.46). 06/2011; 43(3):195-202. DOI: 10.1037/a0022697 ABSTRACT Although homeschooling is growing in prevalence, its educational outcomes remain unclear. The present study compared the academic achievements of homeschooled children with children attending traditional public school. When the homeschooled group was divided into those who were taught from organized lesson plans (structured homeschoolers) and those who were not (unstructured homeschoolers), the data showed that structured homeschooled children achieved higher standardized scores compared with children attending public school. Exploratory analyses also suggest that the unstructured homeschoolers are achieving the lowest standardized scores across the 3 groups.

Re: Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

#66

Post by fred_durst »

learc83 wrote: post #43
crucifiction wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to cite some of this evidence? I was just reading about this and found zero evidence its somehow harmful and only anecdotal evidence that it is not beneficial and "evens out" later.

Children in New Zealand who began learning to read at age 7 had better reading comprehension than those that started at age 5 by the time they were 10. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200612... Children in Germany who started school at age 7 performed better on standardized tests than those who started at age 6. http://ftp.iza.org/dp1827.pdf

Even if that were true, I would have learned much less as there were many things I and many children learned via reading far before the age of 11. So while they supposedly caught up on reading, they had missed out on several years of learning when the brain is most capable of doing so.

And honestly, that study is so loose. It reminds of the good ol' days of Whole Word learning and how many kids lives they screwed up with that experiment gone bad.

http://www.readinghorizons.com/research/whole-language-vs-ph...

EDIT: Apparently, I need to clarify loose. Sample size: 267

Re: Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

#67

Post by fred_durst »

pyre wrote: post #29
fred_durst wrote: post #3

> At the time, my father—who earned his undergraduate degree at Cornell and his master’s at Johns Hopkins Nothing cooler than rich kids taking all their advantages they were given and use them to live like paupers with zero concern for the the world around them. > I can report that Fin and Rye both learned to read and write with essentially zero instruction, albeit when they were about eight years old, a year or so l…

> I shouldn't be so sarcastic about child abuse What does it say about you if you feel that this is child abuse, but do nothing? Also, by claiming that this is child abuse, you are grouping it with things like sexual and physical abuse. Are you sure that you are attempting to make such a strong statement?

The other reply to this talking about depriving your child of an education etc, is exactly what I would say. And absolutely, yes I feel that this is definitely child abuse.

Re: Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

#68

Post by OmarIsmail »

samirmenon wrote: post #50
tatterdemalion wrote: post #45

I don't understand how, on a site called "Hacker News," so many people seem oblivious to how damaging the primary educational system is to young peoples' minds and methods of thought. Unschooling doesn't mean not teaching children: that's what happens in schools.

Is the elementary educational system truly "damaging" to young minds? I think of my elementary education (which, mind you, was only 6 years ago) as perhaps boring or tedious in some areas (like math, for me), while also exciting and rewarding in others (science, learning to make friends, deal with gossip, etc). I certainly don't think I have a very 'damaged' method of thought now because of my elementary education. I…

Not sure how accurate your profile is, but if you're still 16 and thus in high-school you may not appreciate just how different the real world is. And that exactly is why it is so damaging.

In school there are a small number of people that are given authority over a huge swath of your life completely arbitrarily. This affects how you act and spend your time. This is completely opposite to how things work in the real world.

Another issue is that you're surrounded primarily with people of the same age. That is children/teenagers that similarly have little to no external life experience. In the real world you are surrounded by people of many demographics (age, ethnicity, background, etc).

Physical violence in white-collar workplaces (which is what I imagine most readers here would be working at) is near non-existent vs being at school where it's a very real threat for many people.

The concept of responsibility and bills. This is not directly about school, but often a result of school. Because you're in school you don't really have any bills of your own. You're placed in an artificial construct where your parents take care of most of your major bills (housing, food) and you are not forced to make your own income - and in fact many people are discouraged from finding employment during their school years because it may "impact their studies". So the essential life skills of managing a budget, balancing income and bills, etc don't get learned at all.

You don't see yourself as "damaged" because you don't understand or imagine what is possible outside of the school environment. While you can communicate with your peers, how well can you communicate to managers in a company? Can you sell a service or product to someone? Can you ask the right questions to find out what someone's true pain point is and not get distracted by their proposed solution?

If you left school right now (or 5 years ago) and had to make it on your own, you'd obviously be a very very different person today. Is that person better than you are now? Obviously that's impossible to say. But if that person is/would be better, then you can argue that your current self is damaged relatively speaking.

Re: Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

#69

Post by Jormundir »

tatterdemalion wrote: post #45

I don't understand how, on a site called "Hacker News," so many people seem oblivious to how damaging the primary educational system is to young peoples' minds and methods of thought. Unschooling doesn't mean not teaching children: that's what happens in schools.

These types of handwaving "this is broken", "that is broken" statements are really starting to bug me. I'd expect better from a site called "hacker news".

As someone who hated school growing up, I don't think the system is broken or "damaging". Our education system is an old structure, evolved mostly in a time without computers, large scale data analysis or widespread real time communication. The deficiencies of the system (especially the more recent industrialization of education) are popping up as if they were obvious all along.

You underestimate the scale of the education system, and how much effort it takes to change and evolve over time in a way that is reasonably fair (filling air with whiny noise doesn't count).

There are countless initiatives underway to find ways to improve the education system. There are people working really hard to change the giant machine that is our education system. There are plenty of problems that have been brought to light (administrative bloat, memorization over critical thinking, authority over freedom), we know.

Can we as a community start putting votes to people who are acting, rather than people who dramatically whine with ideas that really aren't practical? Exchanging ideas is awesome, I just get tired of the whiny peanut gallery with inexperienced dogma.

Re: Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild

#70

Post by barry-cotter »

capkutay wrote: post #56
fchollet wrote: post #13

The fundamental problem with the elementary school system in the west is that kids are given no room for self-direction whatsoever; school for them is de facto a part-time prison or "labor" camp. As a result they are trained by association to dread to that which the system purports to champion: learning, culture, reading, knowledge, even any demonstration of intelligence. It takes a combination of luck, will and posi…

This is partly attributed to 'No Child Left Behind'. The fact that public funding for schools is strictly determined by each school's performance on rigid, standardized tests is a huge issue. How can schools allow free-flowing learning, culture, exploration, and self direction when they HAVE to perform well on standardized tests?

This is bullshit. Sit down, shut up and do as you're told has been the primary and secondary school curriculum in most every mass school system everywhere. John Taylor Gatto wrote Seven Lessons long before No Child Left Behind.

http://the7lessonteacher.com/

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