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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

#301

Post by bradleyjg »

waterhouse wrote: post #115
eloff wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to say of course. But I think at the least we would have led more conventional lives. For myself, maybe a darker outcome. I was struggling with peer pressure and getting into trouble. The family that owned our house before lost their daughter to overdose. She went to my school. I wonder sometimes how my life could have been had things been slightly different and we hadn't changed to homeschooling (aft…

I suspect it would depend a lot on whether you were allowed to accelerate academically, and the answer would likely have been "no" or "not much". You might take a look at the following study, and see if it rings true to the school you did experience, or to what you've heard from others you've met: "The considerable majority of [the subjects: young people with 160+ IQs in Australia] who have [skipped 2 or more grades…

The SATs have a ceiling well below four standard deviations above the mean. I’m skeptical that any test is properly calibrated at that level—-even with oversampling it’s very difficult to do properly.

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

#302

Post by wastedhours »

waterhouse wrote: post #273
wastedhours wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the parts of school that are social are not necessarily good Most definitely - however it's also worth bearing in mind that if you happen to fall into a more traditional life path afterwards, those social elements will rear their heads again. The sink or swim mentality of school social interactions sadly mimics quite a lot of interactions post school as well. In an ideal world my shitty experience at school wouldn'…

It's a good thing you responded well to that situation. But can you imagine others in your situation not learning the lessons you did, or learning to emulate the toxic behavior, or becoming withdrawn or callous or misanthropic, or otherwise developing bad coping methods? It's very common for people who admit that school sucked, to then defend it by saying "it taught me to deal with it". I say, if you really wanted to…

Oh most definitely - it's neither an efficient or ideal way to learn those things. Unless there's dedicated thought to teaching them though, it could be an issue as well.

I'm certainly not defending the way it worked out, but we focus on an idealised education from the perspective of the learner (i.e. curiosity, passion, zest for self improvement), it might not prepare them if they end up in more traditional scenarios. Fully support the notion of it being taught like a traditional subject, just that it's important those lessons don't get lost (which I can foresee happening).

If the light behind your eyes hasn't been diminished by the experiences at school, it's likely it'll be extinguished in less than ideal real-world scenarios. I'd hate to see the joy of someone who genuinely has a zest of learning and curiosity to be crushed the minute they come across the things a lot of us deal with on a daily basis.

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

#303

Post by jkhdigital »

phobosanomaly wrote: post #269
cheschire wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

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

#304

Post by pritovido »

freshhawk wrote: post #192
mgh2 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I won't deny that even the educated can be manipulated- look at our generation affected by corporate and political agendas. Yes, totalitarian states have used education to indoctrinate masses to maintain order and power. Depends on who does the teaching and how it is taught, that is why critical thinking is key. Given this prerequisite, is an educated population easier to be manipulated than an illiterate one?

Obviously that depends. Here is another way to phrase your question: You spend 10 years telling John some stuff every day for hours and Jane is someone you just met. Which one is easier to lie to? Sounds to me like it completely depends on a lot of different things, but if you know what lie you want to tell ahead of time: obviously John is easier to lie to.

It is interesting because for me it was obvious that Jane will be the easiest to lie to by far. John knows you much better.

Usually psychopaths and sociopaths are always moving so people don't know who they are and they can fool them easily.

What you are saying is if someone does trust you, you can lie to her easier, which is true, but then you will loose the trust and bond that took a long time to get.

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

#305

Post by username90 »

watwut wrote: post #294
username90 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men are more likely to be anti mask in USA since in USA right wing tend to be anti science. In many areas of Europe right wing is more pro science than left wing though, so the roles becomes reversed.

I live in Europe and our right wing is taking clues from American right wing. They are more anti mask then average. The German demonstrations against masks were right wing for example. Where were left wing people in Europe more strongly against masks then center or right?

Isn't German right wing in large parts religious so it is closer to USA than many other European right wing parties? I live in Sweden and right wing is much more pro mask here.

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

#306

Post by tallanvor »

fierarul wrote: post #220
fiblye wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine how much worse it'd be if more people were homeschooled and not exposed to opposing views. If their only source of information was a parent who believed in strange conspiracy theories and only associated with friends and family who had similar views. School's greatest purpose is putting kids in a room with a couple dozen other kids that they may disagree with or even hate, and forcing them to learn how to…

Were you discussing high politics in the 5th grade or something? Because there's little opposing views in school up to say senior high school years! So now school's purpose is no longer critical thinking but just socialisation with all social strata.

I'm not sure how you define "high politics", but certainly students discuss politics at younger ages than that. I would be surprised to find a school that doesn't include discussions on current events at pretty much every age level. Obviously the teachers had to be careful because even though they may feel strongly about an issue, most of them don't want to consciously bias the discussion.

I can even remember a teacher having us write a letter asking that a government facility in our region not be closed down because it would affect people in our class. I was probably in 3rd or 4th grade at the time. In 5th grade we had to write letters to soldiers fighting in the Gulf War - something that I have very mixed feelings about today because I do feel that supporting troops fighting in a war overseas is a highly political act.

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

#307

Post by zimablue »

kmlx wrote: post #275
cabalamat wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not relate with either Tories or Labor Nor do most voters. They have to keep FPTP because they know that otherwise, most people won't vote for them; the last 4 times the UK had nationwide elections held under a more proportional system, most voters voted for parties other than labour of the Conservatives. > I don't think either has my best interests at heart. Most people agree with you!

1. we already had a vote on proportional representation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternat... 2. everyone thinks proportional representation is excellent. the reason is usually a misunderstanding of the voting process. in reality it has drawbacks, same as first past the post. before the UK referendum a study was commissioned exploring the various types of voting. the conclusion was that all…

No we didn’t, that system wasn’t proportional representation by any definition, please do not make posts that are not true, other readers might be misled.

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

#308

Post by username90 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #301
waterhouse wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it would depend a lot on whether you were allowed to accelerate academically, and the answer would likely have been "no" or "not much". You might take a look at the following study, and see if it rings true to the school you did experience, or to what you've heard from others you've met: "The considerable majority of [the subjects: young people with 160+ IQs in Australia] who have [skipped 2 or more grades…

The SATs have a ceiling well below four standard deviations above the mean. I’m skeptical that any test is properly calibrated at that level—-even with oversampling it’s very difficult to do properly.

Many IQ older IQ tests doesn't use 15 points per SD, so when you hear people talk about enormous IQ's like 160 it almost surely doesn't use a modern scale.

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

#309

Post by username90 »

freshhawk wrote: post #192
mgh2 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I won't deny that even the educated can be manipulated- look at our generation affected by corporate and political agendas. Yes, totalitarian states have used education to indoctrinate masses to maintain order and power. Depends on who does the teaching and how it is taught, that is why critical thinking is key. Given this prerequisite, is an educated population easier to be manipulated than an illiterate one?

Obviously that depends. Here is another way to phrase your question: You spend 10 years telling John some stuff every day for hours and Jane is someone you just met. Which one is easier to lie to? Sounds to me like it completely depends on a lot of different things, but if you know what lie you want to tell ahead of time: obviously John is easier to lie to.

Here is an even better way to phrase the question with respect to schooling:

You spend 10 years telling John and Jane some stuff every day for hours. John also gets told stuff for hours by a third party while Jane gets all information from you. Which one is easier to lie to?

School adds a third party so that the child isn't reliant on things taught by their parents.

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

#310

Post by radu_floricica »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #86
radu_floricica wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? I'm pretty sure intelligence is well over half hereditary. AFAIK, most of what we can do to increase people's intelligence is make sure they get proper nutrition as kids. Over that, we can at most spend lots of money on educational programs for really small increases in IQ (though of course education is not just about IQ).

"Heritability" is a funny concept which is easy to misunderstand. http://bactra.org/weblog/520.html > Heritability is a technical measure of how much of the variance in a quantitative trait (such as IQ) is associated with genetic differences, in a population with a certain distribution of genotypes and environments. Under some very strong simplifying assumptions, quantitative geneticists use it to calculate the chang…

If I had a lot more time I'd like to take a longer look at that link and make a list of all the fallacies and dark patterns it uses. As it I just managed to glance that it first sets up a narrow, technical definition of heritability which then proceeds to criticise. That's a pretty standard dark pattern.

Whatever his definition is, what we mean in this conversation is that smart parents tend to have smart children, and dumb parents tend to have dumb children, and that there's little one can do with the environment (besides minimum nutrition) to change that.

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