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Would You Unschool Your Child?

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Re: Would You Unschool Your Child?

#61

Post by petercooper »

Because the article mentioned not memorizing the alphabet, I thought I could ask a question I've been pondering on a while.

Beyond looking at print indexes and dictionaries, is there any compelling reason to learn the order of the alphabet anymore? Lists are often in alphabetical order but it's not a strict requirement to know the ordering to use those lists, and most datasets online have search. As do digital dictionaries. Could the relentless switch to all-digital content make the alphabet only a cute, optional thing to memorize?

Re: Would You Unschool Your Child?

#62

Post by edanm »

tommynazareth wrote: post #24
andrewce wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent my summers (as a child) doing more or less what you've described. Looking back, my parents did a few major things that helped make this a successful venture (or so I like to think, given my belief that I can do the things you've outlined in your last paragraph): 1) So long as we were learning, they didn't mind too much what (though it was always grounds for discussion and debate). If I wanted to read about di…

I also think it is a fantastic plan. I like you're first point. If a teacher is resourceful enough, than any topic is worth exploring and there is no limit to the breadth or depth of the exploration. Also, any learning activity can be a valuable experience in developing transferable skills.

Steve Jobs made a similar point in a speech to a graduating university class. He mentioned how he popped into classes just because they looked interesting, even if they weren't part of his curriculum, and said it's a great thing to do. He gave one example: he went to a class on typography just cause it sounded fun. As he put it, the only reason Macs have decent typography is because of what he learned in that class.

Re: Would You Unschool Your Child?

#63

Post by sp332 »

petercooper wrote: post #61

Because the article mentioned not memorizing the alphabet, I thought I could ask a question I've been pondering on a while. Beyond looking at print indexes and dictionaries, is there any compelling reason to learn the order of the alphabet anymore? Lists are often in alphabetical order but it's not a strict requirement to know the ordering to use those lists, and most datasets online have search. As do digital dictio…

A binary search on a sorted list can only work if you know whether the item you're looking for is earlier or later in the sequence. Not knowing the order of the alphabet is like not knowing the order of the numbers 0-9. You have to fall back to a linear search, which is prohibitively slow for many day-to-day operations.

Re: Would You Unschool Your Child?

#64

Post by sp332 »

absconditus wrote: post #34
marknutter wrote: post #23

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.

Can you describe what you mean by socially awkward? I am not entirely convinced that what is considered social by most people is desirable.

Not being socially awkward is pretty basic stuff, like: making friends easily, making small talk with strangers (to pass the time or to be polite when meeting friends of friends), knowing what kinds of questions to ask to keep a conversation going, knowing what topics make people feel awkward or offended.

Edit: I'm not the one claiming that all home schooled kids are like this. I'm just answering what social awkwardness means.

Re: Would You Unschool Your Child?

#65

Post by philwelch »

tomjen3 wrote: post #25
DuncanKinney wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thats kind of funny, until you realize he is actually right. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris would not have been serial killers if they had not be so mercilessly bullied in school. Granted most people don't end up as serial killers, but they do end up pretty ruffled and with psychic scars for the rest of their life. The irony is that if geeks actually did kill more people they would have women falling all over them in…

Technically they weren't serial killers at all--their killings were not really in series so much as all at once. They were "parallel killers".

Re: Would You Unschool Your Child?

#66

Post by j_baker »

SandB0x wrote: post #20

Wait wait wait. I don't understand this. Unschooling simply seems to mean "being a good parent". Can someone explain the distinction? The Unschooling website doesn't help me either: "Unschooling is following your children's lead...Unschooling isn't a method of instruction, it's a different way of looking at learning..." Outside of school, my parents encouraged and helped me to learn interesting subjects, play musical…

I think you're thinking about the parents when you should be thinking about the kids. Let me explain.

As a kid, I spent all my free time reading the encyclopedia. I'm naturally curious, and could probably have learned more researching on my own than going to school. Of course, I'm atypical, but the point is that I didn't so much need instruction as I needed guidance. There are many kids who are like that and will even be held back by traditional methods of education. These kinds of kids deserve a different approach that our current educational system simply doesn't provide.

Re: Would You Unschool Your Child?

#67

Post by kls »

We Homeschool, My wife is a full time mom, she was a practitioner so has a lot of Bio background. I Freelance, and generally work from home. I have a friend here in my home town that came back from the valley after a successful exit who introduced us to the concept of unschooling.

I was extremely skeptical of homeschooling in general, when my wife decided that we should do it. But with the gangs, drugs and actual lack of eduction being taught in schools I decided that we would probably be doing them no harm.

After a few years of homeschooling and the return of my friend who was unschooling his children we decided to give unschooling a try. Before homeschooling there is no way that you could have convinced me that some hair brained idea like let you kids choose what they want to do would ever work.

It has changed my perception of how children learn now. My 4 year old is putting together robots and working out logic with a Lego Mindstorm, set and my 12 year old is well into Algebra and rivals any professional graphic artist or digital media professional I have ever seen.

Most of the kids that we know in the homeschooling and unschooling social circles enter into collage at between 14 and 16 years of age. Something is obviously working here.

Re: Would You Unschool Your Child?

#68

Post by joshkaufman »

fr0sty wrote: post #51
joshkaufman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a child's social skills are very influenced by the type of environment at home. Many families homeschool because they want to intentionally "protect"/isolate their children from the mainstream. This is very common with religious families that choose to homeschool so their kids (1) are exposed to the family's values and belief system to the exclusion of others, and (2) aren't corrupted by the evils of the outs…

This is just as unfair a characterization of home-schoolers as the GP.

What part do you think is an unfair characterization - that some parents prefer to isolate their children for religious/moral reasons, or that doing so can lead to social awkwardness?

According to a 2001 U.S. Census survey, 33% of homeschooling households cited religion as a factor in their choice, 14% objected to what the school teaches (i.e things like evolution), and 9% cited morality. (See data at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/... and http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/...)

In a 1999 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, only 48.9% of US homeschooling parents cited "Can give child better education at home" as the primary reason for homeschooling. That means 51.1% of homeschooling parents in the US think their kids would get a better education at school, but choose to homeschool for other reasons, which are primarily religious/moral in nature.

I'm not saying all homeschooling parents (which includes all religious homeschooling parents) want to isolate their children. The point is that, for a non-trivial percentage of parents, removing their children from the mainstream is a primary motivation for homeschooling.

Re: Would You Unschool Your Child?

#69

Post by Alex3917 »

crpatino wrote: post #58
Alex3917 wrote: post #21

"The current K-12 educational system exists, generally speaking, for two primary reasons. First, its scalability makes it easy for the state to educate its citizens, and second, it gives children and teens a shared public space where they learn to interact with others and hopefully pick up some societal norms." This is completely wrong. The five functions of school are generally recognized to be Training, Sorting, So…

I would down vote you if I could. 1) The article does not say that the main function of K12 system is to be scalable. It says that scalability was an important concern on how the system was designed to accomplish its functions. You are comparing apples to oranges. 2) What is FRPL in the first place? or your full 5 list for the matter. Most of your audience is not a M.Ed. but most are smart enough to follow your argum…

1) I was sort of ignoring the scalability part and responding as if it just said education and socialization. The author never mentions scalability again in the article, so it's not even clear why it's there.

2) FRPL is free and reduced price lunch. One of the main reasons why schools exist is to feed children whose parents wouldn't otherwise have enough money to feed them. In many parts of the country kids gain weight throughout the spring and fall, and then come back a lot thinner after winter and summer break because they don't get very much food at home. But designing schools to fulfill has a huge effect on the pedagogical and other functions of school.

3) I'm not criticizing the author for lacking the proper credentials, I'm criticizing him for being wrong.

Re: Would You Unschool Your Child?

#70

Post by vyrotek »

edanm wrote: post #60
mquander wrote: post #45

My contribution: If you're doing this, and you have a smart kid, for God's sake, buy a lot of books, buy every book you can think of and put it in your house. I can point at three quarters of my interests and trace them straight back to books I picked off the shelf when I was 10. My parents had a lot of books, but even so, I ended up having to re-read the ones that were interesting to me instead of pushing further an…

This is the thing I'm most excited about for the future of the internet. Forget Amazon - anyone with an internet connection has access to audio and video lectures, notes and classwork from Harvard, MIT and others. Almost anything you want to learn can be picked up online, and (illegal though it is) any book you want to read can be found online. But the best part is, this hasn't sunk in yet . So few people understand…

While I agree, I still think there's an important part missing. Testing and Application. While studying topics that you have chosen out of interest is fun, I don't think most people have the discipline to really learn something. That is, until there is an expectation that their knowledge will be tested in some way.

There is lots to learn out there, but I wish there were better metrics to help even just myself understand if I really have learned what I claimed to have been 'studying'.

Perhaps there's an idea in here somewhere. A wiki of tests and exercises which you can use to self-measure your knowledge? You could allow anyone (newbies to experts) to submit tests. Then you could be Vyrotek certified for under-water basket weaving. Not that it would be worth anything to anyone besides yourself.

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