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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

#171

Post by k-mcgrady »

learc83 wrote: post #167
k-mcgrady wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "So where is the evidence that socialization in a school environment is necessary" Just anecdotal but might help. I had a younger family member who had to miss a few weeks of school and stay home. After a few days he was itching to get back for the sole reason of social interaction. If you don't go to school you see your friends for maybe 1 hour in the evening. If you go you see them for 20mins on the bus to schoo…

>It's a different experience and one that's hard to replicate. I agree that it's different and hard to replicate, but again where is the evidence that the school socialization model is actually beneficial--that we need to replicate it? The studies I've seen from home-schooled children seem to suggest that it isn't necessary for a successful productive adult life. If people are going to argue that homeschooling is det…

I wouldn't argue that home schooled children can't lead successful productive lives. It would be nice to see a study of which children are happier though. Those in school socializing all day; or those at home socializing for an hour or two in the evening. You get to interact with a wide variety of people at school from many different backgrounds. You can learn a lot from that and it can help you in many ways when you enter the real world. Homeschooling you're with your parents or a tutor all day and your social circle would likely be limited to those who live in your street. At this stage I think it's impossible to say which scenario is better, there needs to be a lot more research done. Personally though I am very happy I was not homeschooled. I would have been educated well - maybe even better - but I think I would have missed out on a lot of important experiences.

More anecdotal evidence:

When I was 0-8 years old we lived in neighborhoods full of kids. Then we moved to a place with none. I was much happier in the first place because of the socialisation. It didn't matter that the new places we lived were nicer or more convenient for certain things. I think this also hurt my social skills. I was pretty sociable at a younger age but compared with my peers my social skills have lacked since then. This can impact on interview performance, networking, etc.

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

#172

Post by fsloth »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #87
fsloth wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My strong opinion is that educationally, THE most important thing you must do with your child is TALK to them. From the beginning. From year 0. Discuss things with them. Let them soak as much understandable speech as they can between years 0 and 2. This will have a far more profound effect in their life rather than did they learn to read at 4 or 8 years of age. Could you specify what is horrifying about the previous…

> Why would it be more important for a 5 year old to learn to read rather than, say, spend their time building Legos, practice crafts or climbing into trees? The hypothesis that I think should be tested is whether there is correlation between being a child prodigy in a technical field (in math, physics, computer science or engineering) and getting to read early. It makes sense theoretically -- if you learn to read by…

> The hypothesis that I think should be tested is whether there is correlation between being a child prodigy in a technical field ... and getting to read early.

It would be cool if all children could be helped to find the thing they are good at and love and let them become the best they can in that field through positive reinforcement and minimum coercion.

> It makes sense theoretically -- if you learn to read by age 8, is there enough time for you to grasp all of high school math and computer science by age 14, like Manjul Bhargava?

I think the most important thing what you can extract from the case of the Field's medalist is that he seems to enjoy what he does.

Usually when lots of parents are really ambituous about their childrens futures they force their children to rote-learn lots of mundane knowledge or repeat tiring exercises... such an approach leads most of the time to lots of sad adults with average achievements. I would much prefer lots of content and happy adults with average achievements.

The prodigies will happen, but it would be really nasty to force all children to try to be prodigies.

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

#173

Post by ScottBurson »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #163

We homeschool our children and for a year we tried unschooling. My wife's cousins were all unschooled. There is definitely merit to the approach, although done right (unschooling) it can be much harder for the parent than it looks. Done wrong it can set your children up for a fantastic career barely making ends meet. So at it's worse it's no worse than compulsory public education. We're much bigger fans of alt-school…

Fantastic comment overall. This surprises me, though:

> Done wrong [unschooling] can set your children up for a fantastic career barely making ends meet.

In a world where many people change careers several times as adults, this seems unnecessarily pessimistic. Okay, maybe their first career won't be that lucrative. Most people don't make that much in their twenties anyway. But that doesn't mean they won't find something better eventually.

In the economy of the 21st century, I think pursuing one's own passions is a likelier route to success than trying to follow the well-worn paths. No, there's no guarantee of success that way, but the well-worn paths offer no guarantees either. What I think is important in childhood and adolescence is to spend enough time and effort on something to come away with a sense of mastery, so that you feel that you can master anything else that you care to, and you have some idea of what's required to do that. But it doesn't matter what the "something" is. It's the experience that counts, not the information; information is free now.

Still and all, I agree partially with what you're saying. If I had kids, there would be things I would want them to know. (Many of these are not taught in any school, like how to deconstruct advertising -- an essential skill in modern life -- but that's another discussion.) I would certainly try to interest them in many topics. But I would try to do it at the right moment -- if they have no interest, it's not the right moment -- and I would also very much try to support them in developing their own interests.

I guess the unschooling idea could go too far if parents took it as devaluing their own potential contributions to their children's learning opportunities. Maybe some of that tends to happen. I don't think John Holt meant it that way.

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

#174

Post by glenra »

learc83 wrote: post #166
glenra wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In addition, the human brain doesn't fully develop until around 25, so your judgment at 16 is fundamentally flawed. Even if the premise is true, that seems an unreasonable conclusion. On what possible basis could one describe the judgement of a pre-25 brain as "fundamentally flawed"? What makes you consider an old, decrepit, no-longer-developing brain optimal ? "Finished growing" doesn't mean "best", it just means…

Specifically the undeveloped part of the brain, is believed to be the part that evaluates risk. Meaning that 16 year olds are less likely to account accurately for the consequences of their behavior. There are advantages to this for society and for the individual teenager. But there are disadvantages as well--they are more likely to commit crime, are easier to convince to go off to a foreign land and fight in a war,…

> Specifically the undeveloped part of the brain, is believed to be the part that evaluates risk. Meaning that 16 year olds are less likely to account accurately for the consequences of their behavior.

Again, you seem to be assuming that when the brain STOPS developing, it does so because it has achieved perfection. It is pretty easy to support the view that adults are far TOO risk-averse, too unwilling to let teens take chances that would benefit them. To claim adults account "accurately" is going a bridge too far. Adults account for risk "differently" and do so in a way that other adults are likely to agree with, but that doesn't make it more "accurate".

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

#175

Post by JoeAltmaier »

glenra wrote: post #174
learc83 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically the undeveloped part of the brain, is believed to be the part that evaluates risk. Meaning that 16 year olds are less likely to account accurately for the consequences of their behavior. There are advantages to this for society and for the individual teenager. But there are disadvantages as well--they are more likely to commit crime, are easier to convince to go off to a foreign land and fight in a war,…

> Specifically the undeveloped part of the brain, is believed to be the part that evaluates risk. Meaning that 16 year olds are less likely to account accurately for the consequences of their behavior. Again, you seem to be assuming that when the brain STOPS developing, it does so because it has achieved perfection. It is pretty easy to support the view that adults are far TOO risk-averse, too unwilling to let teens…

I think experience pretty much explains it. A 16-year-old hasn't learned yet to judge when its safe to turn left across the highway - is the truck too close? is it going too fast?

Witness ANYBODY learning a new computer game. We all have to play a while to learn the controls on that star fighter.

Teenagers are just newbies to life. Nothing to do with neurology.

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

#176

Post by rapind »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #111
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…

I'm all for making school more fun. But self-direction? Don't forget: these are children. Most (and certainly enough) of them won't have any natural inclination to learn even reading, writing and math. The whole point of having schools is to give an external sense of direction. I think schools need to be optimized and tuned, but please, please stop these extreme experiments.

I couldn't disagree more. My kids are only 2 and 3, but what they've learned has been entirely driven by their own interests. They learned to talk because not being able to communicate well is frustrating. They learned to walk because crawling everywhere is frustrating, etc. Not because I sat them down and said "OK, now it's time for our talking lesson".

Why would this suddenly change? As a parent I think it's still your job to evaluate the things that are positive and negative and try to limit the negative influences, like TV or intentionally addictive video games (farmville, wow, etc.), but I don't see how this is at all related to school. School shouldn't be exempt from being scrutinized for it's positive or negative effects.

When I finished school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. School classes bored the crap out of me for the most part, and not because I'm too smart (which I'm not), but because it just wasn't interesting. I had no practical or immediate use of the material being taught. I use to think I was deficient and had an attention deficit disorder. Occasionally a lesson would interest me and I would excel at it, but soon we'd move on to some other boring topic.

Many years later, looking at my own day to day life, I am constantly learning. The things I learn have either a practical and immediate use, or they simply interest me. Many of the lessons in school I thought were boring would have interested me at some point in my life when they were more relevant.

I wish I had started self-learning earlier.

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

#177

Post by ryanmarsh »

ScottBurson wrote: post #173
ryanmarsh wrote: post #163

We homeschool our children and for a year we tried unschooling. My wife's cousins were all unschooled. There is definitely merit to the approach, although done right (unschooling) it can be much harder for the parent than it looks. Done wrong it can set your children up for a fantastic career barely making ends meet. So at it's worse it's no worse than compulsory public education. We're much bigger fans of alt-school…

Fantastic comment overall. This surprises me, though: > Done wrong [unschooling] can set your children up for a fantastic career barely making ends meet. In a world where many people change careers several times as adults, this seems unnecessarily pessimistic. Okay, maybe their first career won't be that lucrative. Most people don't make that much in their twenties anyway. But that doesn't mean they won't find someth…

Thanks. The reason I said that unschooling done wrong can set your children up for not being able to make ends meet was perhaps a bit harsh but based on experience. Out of my wife's six cousins they all regret being unschooled. I don't blame them. Their father didn't do it out if some sense of enlightenment. He is an unintelligent man who made his livelihood working with his hands. Unfortunately it's much harder to make a livable wage these days in a job where you sweat. Other than building a cabin (a very well made cabin I might add) his children are weak at reading and writing and are horrible at math. His daughter wanted to be a nurse but couldn't make it through nursing school, one of his sons is a prison guard, the gregarious one is a fantastic jewelry salesman. His kids have a fantastic work ethic but will likely never come close to their full income earning potential. Had the parents focused more on academics and less on grooming horses they might not have to work in retail, a prison, or be restricted by a spouses earning potential.

The great benefit of unschooling is that you raise emotionally very well rounded kids. I don't know what it is about the outdoors but it sure does work.

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

#178

Post by bayesianhorse »

walterbell wrote: post #137
bayesianhorse wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except if you consider that ADHD is a consistent syndrome with extremely predictable negative consequences. I believe this attitude about ADHD being some kind of "conformity issue" is almost as dangerous as "vaccines cause autism". It certainly is about as wrong...

Do you know how the DSM ("diagnostic manual") is edited, http://www.dsm4tr.com ?

I know about the problems around the DSM. That doesn't make ADHD less of a "thing" though. Turns out that a questionnaire can diagnose ADHD. This diagnosis predicts anatomical, physiological and psychological differences, and on top of that certain negative consequences and suffering on the part of the patient. Treatment reduces that suffering. What more do you need?

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

#179

Post by bayesianhorse »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #143
bayesianhorse wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except if you consider that ADHD is a consistent syndrome with extremely predictable negative consequences. I believe this attitude about ADHD being some kind of "conformity issue" is almost as dangerous as "vaccines cause autism". It certainly is about as wrong...

I don't know. ADHD looks to me like a normal consequence of putting a small kid in a jail and telling to listen to boring stuff for half a day without moving or talking, or else. Think of how you'd behave in such situation as an adult.

First of all ADHD is not a "normal consequence" in the sense of being the majority.

Second, ADHD is so much worse than not being able to sit still and quiet for hours...

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

#180

Post by bayesianhorse »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #143
bayesianhorse wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except if you consider that ADHD is a consistent syndrome with extremely predictable negative consequences. I believe this attitude about ADHD being some kind of "conformity issue" is almost as dangerous as "vaccines cause autism". It certainly is about as wrong...

I don't know. ADHD looks to me like a normal consequence of putting a small kid in a jail and telling to listen to boring stuff for half a day without moving or talking, or else. Think of how you'd behave in such situation as an adult.

First of all ADHD is not a "normal consequence" in the sense of being the majority.

Second, ADHD is so much worse than not being able to sit still and quiet for hours...

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