41–50 of 121 posts
While I love the idea of homeschooling and unschooling, I can't quite figure out how people do this while still managing to pay their bills. Wouldn't this, in essence, take up a significant portion of your day, preventing you from working?
We're unschooling, but with backstops on reading. If the kids don't want to read for several days in a row, then unfortunately we're going to have to find a way to compel them to. They're young, and reading is the predicate for everything; if we can get 'em into it, hopefully this unschooling will pick up steam.
http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, one of the ironies of school is that one of its sole conceivable benefits is socialization, which is heavily punished and restricted. I have no idea where it was agreed upon that sitting passively listening to middle-aged people lecture for six hours a day is in anyway helpful to a young person, but whatever.
This socialization comment is one that my coworkers always brings up. "They're breeding serial killers" he half-jokes. I wasn't very well socialized in school. Maybe that's why I was interested in writing this story.
I think pg's essay on why nerds are unpopular has some good insight into much of the "socialization" that goes on in school: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
Tried it. Didn't work for my children. As the article says though, it's not for everyone. My kids are super-smart, but lazy, and unfortunately need structure. I homeschooled them for several years, but both of them asked to go to "real" school eventually, one by the age of 6 and the other by 8 (they were about 2 years ahead of the other kids when they enrolled). I think that it's worth the experiment though, but be p…
Also, as a parent, you have to remember that your issues about school (too strict, too unstructured, too much bullying, not enough recess, whatever) are likely to not be the issues of your kids.
You shouldn't be making their educational choices to compensate for retrospectively-understood mistakes in your own education.
I think that if Amazon.com had existed and someone had given me a $500 gift card to last the duration of my childhood, I would be a lot smarter and better-educated than I am today, having established a better foundation.
My wife and I are expecting in December, and we're planning on some variation of unschooling for our children, starting at an early age. Based on the research we've done, it's a straightforward way to get better educational results for your kids if done properly. We're planning on some variation of the "Robinson Curriculum" ( http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/ ), which in essence is a simple daily structure of (1) a…
I've never met a home-schooled kid who wasn't social awkward. I really hate the current education system, but I also recognize that the social skills developed there are almost as important as the formal education kids get.. perhaps even more so.
If I was unschooled as a child, I think my every minute would have been playing basketball and Atari. It would seem to me, that children need a good deal of direction. I was curious as a child, but I don't think I was curious about math, until I learned about it. And I think this actually gets worse in high school. Where I'd probably do math/programming 24/7 and never read another non-technical book. Or study any his…
My wife and I are expecting in December, and we're planning on some variation of unschooling for our children, starting at an early age. Based on the research we've done, it's a straightforward way to get better educational results for your kids if done properly. We're planning on some variation of the "Robinson Curriculum" ( http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/ ), which in essence is a simple daily structure of (1) a…
I've never met a home-schooled kid who wasn't social awkward. I really hate the current education system, but I also recognize that the social skills developed there are almost as important as the formal education kids get.. perhaps even more so.
In theory, homeschooling allows these kids to develop their social skills in an environment with less risk of serious teasing/bullying. In practice, it depends on how the parents approach things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never met a home-schooled kid who wasn't social awkward. I really hate the current education system, but I also recognize that the social skills developed there are almost as important as the formal education kids get.. perhaps even more so.
As a point of comparison, I've met several hundred who are not in the least socially awkward.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with the type of unschooling you're describing is that children don't have the experience and exposure to make optimal decisions. There is no good reason to be an absent parent. The style of education I'd like to provide is what I imagine a PhD program is like: plenty of guidance and advice that ultimately enables the student to take responsibility for themselves and make original contributions. It sounds…
> children don't have the experience and exposure to make optimal decisions. The argument here is, I believe: "What is the best way to get children experience and exposure? A. Experience and exposure B. Lectures about A.