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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

#91

Post by tprice7 »

samirmenon wrote: post #46
nilved wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're fully missing the point of the article. The problem is people's one-to-one connection between schools and education. No such connection exists. A school is not the only place to get an education, and for many people no education occurs there. You can learn math, science or history on your own accord and in a way that is suited to how you learn.

Absolutely nothing in the article implies that this father is attempting to expose his children to books or other resources (the internet, perhaps?) about math, science, or history.

It looks like there was a misunderstanding here. It's ambiguous from your original post whether you oppose unschooling in general or the specific approach of the author of this article. It's clear now that you meant the latter and as someone who generally supports unschooling, I do see your point. If I had kids to unschool, I would try to encourage them towards more intellectual pursuits. And if they were anything like I was as a kid, they would enthusiastically take part without coercion (unless I required them to conform to a rigid educational program, in which case coercion would be required frequently).

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

#92

Post by phaemon »

JDDunn9 wrote: post #17

Seriously? If unschooling were so great 3rd world countries would be dominating the world. Creativity is domain specific. Walking around the woods won't help you be creative in solving math/engineering/science problems. You need a strong background in the subject, and to see how other people solved similar problems. I feel bad for these kids as their future is being pigeon-holed. Who's going to hire someone who's edu…

> someone who's educational experience is walking around the woods unsupervised?

That would be "whose".

Nobody cares about education before degree level, so I suspect they'll be fine.

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

#93

Post by jiggy2011 »

glenra wrote: post #89
jiggy2011 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if self-direction is really a good idea. When I was a kid I would have directed myself towards video games and cartoons. I probably would not have independently developed an interest in english grammer and math.

Video games and cartoons can be valuable learning experiences. We learn a lot through play. If you got into minecraft you'd be doing engineering. If you got into Wildstar or WoW or some other guild-based combat system you'd be learning leadership and social dynamics - how to keep a team together and happy - and also a certain amount of math. If you got into Quake-like games you might discover the modding community an…

I think it might be wishful thinking to imagine that kids left to their own devices will identify and persue useful skills without adult guidance. Even if every kid who watches cartoons develops an interest in stop motion animation, how many stop motion animators do we need? How would you even understand how to start with quake modding without knowing basic math and reading comprehension?

When I was at school there were kids who would frequently "unschool" themselves by skipping class, the interests they developed were mostly related to vandalism and other petty crime.

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

#94

Post by aianus »

learc83 wrote: post #16
fred_durst wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a lot of evidence that learning to read early can be detrimental in the long run. More and more of the educated parents I know are no longer focusing on teaching their preschoolers to read. That's horrifying. Can't wait for the rest of us to have to clean up their experiment.

What are you basing that on? There is evidence that not teaching children to read until age 6 or 7 has an overall net benefit. Many countries ranked very well for education, don't start formal education until age 7 (Finland and Sweden for instance). The children in these countries are taught to read later than in the US, but they do just as well or better on reading tests later in life. Children in the US weren't tau…

Why wait for the state to teach your kid to read? I wouldn't trust an elementary public school teacher to build IKEA furniture let alone teach my kid the most important skill he'll ever learn.

Most importantly, once they learn how to read they won't have to wait for or trust the state to teach them anything ever again; it's all there for free on the internet and in library books.

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

#95

Post by OmarIsmail »

samirmenon wrote: post #82
OmarIsmail wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm actually quite hurt by this comment. Firstly, I have worked for the past three years as a software developer. I've had to deliver things to a manager, figure out exactly what a client wants, and work collaboratively. I think that I've at least had a taste of the "real world". Secondly, the idea that I lack some kind of mental capability to "understand or imagine what is possible outside of the school" is deeply f…

Doing all of this at 16 how do you compare to your peers? Are you atypical or ordinary? If ordinary then maybe things have changed in the 15 years since I was in high school.

And if you're responsible for your own major bills and expenses like housing, food, clothes and transportation then even more kudos to you. I'd be extremely surprised if that was the typical situation of an average 16 yo American.

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

#96

Post by glenra »

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…

Have you read The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher? I recommend it to you and would be curious what you think of it. Here's a Cliffs Notes abbreviated version, just listing what the seven lessons are:

http://www.athenstalks.com/node/179729

And here's the whole essay (which is still pretty short):

http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

Of the "seven lessons", I think the lesson of the bells was the one I found most damaging. When I get interested in a subject, I would want to study that subject deeply, intensely, to the exclusion of everything else. Having to learn a subject like math divided into TINY LITTLE CHUNKS, mere drips and drabs spread out over an entire YEAR, takes something that could have interesting and makes it infuriating. Being expected to turn your interest on and off like a light switch when bells ring at arbitrary intervals...just didn't work for me.

I'm sure it depends on the student. Kids are resilient; I think most manage to learn a fair bit despite their schooling and some learn a bit due to it. For myself, I'm pretty sure school damaged my intrinsic motivation and wasted my time; I feel like I learned much more despite school than due to it.

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

#97

Post by glenra »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #93
glenra wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games and cartoons can be valuable learning experiences. We learn a lot through play. If you got into minecraft you'd be doing engineering. If you got into Wildstar or WoW or some other guild-based combat system you'd be learning leadership and social dynamics - how to keep a team together and happy - and also a certain amount of math. If you got into Quake-like games you might discover the modding community an…

I think it might be wishful thinking to imagine that kids left to their own devices will identify and persue useful skills without adult guidance. Even if every kid who watches cartoons develops an interest in stop motion animation, how many stop motion animators do we need? How would you even understand how to start with quake modding without knowing basic math and reading comprehension? When I was at school there w…

One develops reading comprehension by reading, including texts, blogs, and videogame chat - and time spent sitting at a desk being talked at takes away from the time you could be using to do that. Realizing you want to do something that requires basic math gives you a reason to learn basic math, which makes learning that basic math easy. (Me, I learned trigonometry because it was helpful to draw cool patterns on a computer)

I think you're suffering from status-quo bias. Read the link I gave you above.

One of the biggest secret weapons of homeschoolers and unschoolers is age-mixing. Standard schools artificially segregate kids by age and force them to learn in a specific order. This guarantees that no kid in the room knows much more than the other kids. In the real world, on just about any subject at all you can find people who know a little more than you and learn from them or find people who know a bit less and teach them. Kids teach EACH OTHER how to do cool stuff like use a computer or mod a video game.

The hardest and most important thing to figure out in life is "what do I want to learn and how can I learn it?" When schools decide on a specific curriculum and spoon-feed it to kids, they destroy the intrinsic motivation to solve that question for yourself; you can just passively accept what is being force-fed to you by your teachers. But then when school is finished, what do you do THEN? Over a dozen years or more you haven't PRACTICED setting your own goals or figuring out how to fulfill them! Mightn't it be better to do that starting much earlier in life?

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

#98

Post by pyre »

fred_durst wrote: post #67
pyre wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Then, are the Amish 'abusing' their children? What about the Inuit[1]?

[1] http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-pol...

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

#99

Post by ThomPete »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #93
glenra wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games and cartoons can be valuable learning experiences. We learn a lot through play. If you got into minecraft you'd be doing engineering. If you got into Wildstar or WoW or some other guild-based combat system you'd be learning leadership and social dynamics - how to keep a team together and happy - and also a certain amount of math. If you got into Quake-like games you might discover the modding community an…

I think it might be wishful thinking to imagine that kids left to their own devices will identify and persue useful skills without adult guidance. Even if every kid who watches cartoons develops an interest in stop motion animation, how many stop motion animators do we need? How would you even understand how to start with quake modding without knowing basic math and reading comprehension? When I was at school there w…

You can't compare the schools you went to with the Sudbury system. The skipping class happens exactly because you are trapped, because there is something you rather will.

But why skip class if you can do what you want?

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

#100

Post by peterfirefly »

barry-cotter wrote: post #65
samirmenon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 parent…

Got a newer reference than Benezet 1936?

Got a reference where they tested it with good math teachers?

Has the study been replicated in a country with a different (better) math tradition, such as France?

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