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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

#11

Post by eurleif »

socrates1998 wrote: post #4

There are a lot of things I like about this, but I am do see some issues. I think the boys are learning a lot of very interesting skills, but I think they would struggle a lot with becoming lawyers and doctors like the author claims. My biggest concern would be their reading skills, and later, their advanced math skills. He says they read fine, but reading is something that must be done almost every day for years to…

For what it's worth, I was unschooled, and I scored a perfect 800 on the critical reading section of the SAT. I didn't spend nearly as much time outdoors as these kids, though; I gravitated toward computers from a young age.

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

#12

Post by droithomme »

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…

> Nothing cooler than rich kids taking all their advantages

The author's father worked for the state department of education and his mother was a substitute teacher. What evidence do you have that they are rich as you claim?

> I shouldn't be so sarcastic about child abuse

Child abuse is a serious accusation. Please state the evidence you have that there is child abuse and the steps you have taken to report your personal knowledge of the situation to the state authorities.

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

#13

Post by fchollet »

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 positive external influences (good parents, a mentor) to overcome that. But most kids don't.

Which is why it seems to me that "setting kids free", in the sense of giving them significant latitude for self-direction in their activities and education, is a great principle. The key problem of education is motivation. Most kids are smart and fast learners, the only difficulty in getting them to learn is to get them interested (even better: passionate). The only way that can happen is by giving them choice, freedom. The opportunity to exercise free will. Let's guide kids, not force them to sit and listen passively (they won't).

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

#14

Post by trentmb »

rdtsc wrote: post #5

> Everything I learned felt abstract and standardized. It was a conditional knowledge that existed in separation from the richly textured world just beyond the school’s plate-glass windows, which, for all their transparency, felt like the bars of a prison cell. Tell that story to a kid in Africa who has to walk miles to get to school and the school might not have electricity or water and so on. They would say "So, yo…

> I can't shake the feeling that this is elitist.

It's not elitist to acknowledge the faults of a current system even thought it might be better than others.

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

#16

Post by learc83 »

fred_durst wrote: post #10
learc83 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm pretty sure that's closer to 4 or 5 for most kids who grow up in families from the Cornell / John Hopkins pedigree 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. Edit: see my comment further down this reply chain for links to evidence.

> 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 taught to read until first grade a few generations ago. Hell, when I was in kindergarten, 25 years ago, we spent the whole year learning the alphabet--now kids are expected to know the alphabet by the time they enter kindergarten. There is no evidence that this is beneficial and plenty that it is harmful.

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

#17

Post by JDDunn9 »

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 educational experience is walking around the woods unsupervised?

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

#18

Post by prestadige »

eurleif wrote: post #11
socrates1998 wrote: post #4

There are a lot of things I like about this, but I am do see some issues. I think the boys are learning a lot of very interesting skills, but I think they would struggle a lot with becoming lawyers and doctors like the author claims. My biggest concern would be their reading skills, and later, their advanced math skills. He says they read fine, but reading is something that must be done almost every day for years to…

For what it's worth, I was unschooled, and I scored a perfect 800 on the critical reading section of the SAT. I didn't spend nearly as much time outdoors as these kids, though; I gravitated toward computers from a young age.

My daughter is unschooled and taught herself to read and type mostly from the web browsing.

Most people somehow assume that because they learnt to read and write at school that one cannot do it out of school, and more efficiently. This despite the fact that they themselves didn't get good at reading until they found books they were excited about and wanted to read for their own reasons (reasons, btw, that might include hunting and fishing).

And if they think about it they'll correctly predict that asking adults on the street what 7 times 8 is will yield the wrong answer, or no answer at all, despite many years of compulsory arithmetic and socialization. Yet the commonly proposed solution to this deficiency is more compulsory education rather than less.

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

#19

Post by barry-cotter »

rdtsc wrote: post #5

> Everything I learned felt abstract and standardized. It was a conditional knowledge that existed in separation from the richly textured world just beyond the school’s plate-glass windows, which, for all their transparency, felt like the bars of a prison cell. Tell that story to a kid in Africa who has to walk miles to get to school and the school might not have electricity or water and so on. They would say "So, yo…

>Tell that story to a kid in Africa who has to walk miles to get to school and the school might not have electricity or water and so on. They would say "So, you're telling me, you have free transportation to school, teachers, computers in ever classroom, air conditioned rooms, and you choose let your children learn to carve 'beautiful long bows' instead?

Why not? Teaching arithmetic appears to be a waste of time at best before sixth grade[0][1]. Children who receive no formal instruction in arithmetic catch up with their agemates who have been receiving that instruction and are better at word problems. If the most unnatural skill we teach in primary school shows no benefits from earlier instruction I sincerely doubt something that comes much easier, like reading, will show any long-term negative effects.

>At the end of the day they are dooming these children to live in an isolated sheltered bubble. Which would have worked great in early settler days. Not today. Today unless they keep in that bubble they will be controlled and owned by those that understand how compounding interest rate works, how computers works, how the legal system works, how lobbying works, how quarks work, how genes work and so on.

Those children learned to read. The only research I've been able to find on unschoolers suggests they function about one grade level behind[2]. I really doubt that has much of an impact on their long-term prospects and if it does...

They can still probably skip primary and middle school to little effect.

[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]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

#20

Post by Hytosys »

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…

>I feel bad for these kids as their future is being pigeon-holed.

For what it's worth, your opponent's argument shares the very same sentiment. After all, the schools in question all offer little appreciation for self-directed specialization.

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