Would You Unschool Your Child?
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My whole goal of becoming financially independent is based on my desire for two things: the freedom to continue my own 'unschooling', and the ability to invest all of my time and energy into my family. Sending my children to a detention center five days a week is incompatible with the sort of family life I'd like to have.
The biggest argument for sending kids to school is that it gives them an opportunity to socialize. I'd agree with this in a limited sense. Yes, they get to be surrounded by other children, but socialization outside of sanctioned time periods is punished (I spent a lot of my time in school sitting in 'timeout' in the hallway), and the socialization that occurs in such an unnatural setting is probably not optimal - in fact, it's common in America to refer to immature social settings as being 'high school'. I have friends who were home schooled, and they had no trouble meeting friends during their school age years.
I'd let my kids go to school to see what it is like, provided they know enough not to buy in to it, and they are going just to have fun and make friends.
* I'm a little reluctant to make this claim, since I am not yet a parent, but it all boils down to this: there is no way in hell that anyone cares more about my children's education and personal development than I do, so I am the best candidate for assuming that responsibility.
But no such thing exists.
Instead we must compare real schools to homeschooling. Yes, the same real schools that feature in the news for their sinking curriculum, over medicating, lowering standards, increasing bureaucratization, etc etc. And yes, there are good aspects to it as well, but my point is that it's not fair to pretend our schools are shining exemplars of knowledge and wisdom when we all damn well know that's not true. It's disingenuous.
I also aggressively mock the idea that school is the only place to learn socialization skills. School teaches you how to deal with other children of the exact same age in the artificial environment of a school. This is an exceptionally poor environment to learn socialization in. It is only one notch better than being totally isolated; parading this around like it's some sort of advantage only serves to highlight just how low the standards schools are held to are. Meanwhile, homeschoolers should not be totally isolated, if they are, you're just plain doing it wrong, and I rather strongly suspect that by any rational measure your average homeschooled kid is far more ready for adult life than your average school kid. And as far as I'm concerned, that's what really matters.
Being placed into a group of peers (some of whom you wouldn't voluntarily associate with) in a structured environment with people telling you what do do sounds like a pretty realistic preparation for adult life to me. Even learning to memorise and draw Annie Apple and Clever Cat some time after my parents had taught me to read illustrated a rather more important perspective; the real world doesn't always run at your own pace.
Absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt. I am happy to engage in fair discussions of the tradeoffs between real schools and real homeschooling. I'm also happy to discuss the tradeoffs between what schools can become in the next 20 years with technology vs. what homeschooling can become with technology in the next 20 years, which I believe leads pretty inexorably to a mix-and-match situation. I only regret that my children will at best pick up the tail end of that transformation since entrenched interests will be holding back schools as hard as possible over the next ten years.
I'm objecting, in both directions, to holding up an ideal on one side and a strawman on the other.
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
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 prison.
Causation for that has not been rigorously demonstrated. But, agreed, the school social environment they were in is described by press reports as having been toxic even before they brought their weapons to the school.
School's benefit, I think, is that it exposes you to a ton of topics that aren't your primary interests (or your parents' primary interests). How many people have taken a class because it had a cool name or their friend was taking it or they needed the credit and it turned out they loved the subject?
Thanks for the comment.
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.
But the best part is, this hasn't sunk in yet. So few people understand that the world has gotten to a stage where you can get a university-level education by yourself, based on what you feel like learning, from the comfort of your own home.
I love this for two reasons. Firstly, I imagine that 20 years from now, when this fact starts changing the world, that the world will be a much better place for it. And secondly, as a person involved in tech (and entrepreneurship), I have the ability to take part in the creation of this brilliant future. A great time to be alive, I think :)
But you can't, at least not in the biological sciences, unless your home has an autoclave, ultracentrifuge, laminar flow hood, etc. Same could be said for civil engineering, chemistry, or any other discipline with a lab or field component.
You'd need some formal training on safety issues but maybe you could get educated a lot more cheaply then with the full university system.
Books are ok, but you need practical experience too, and some things are too expensive to buy yourself, needs to be shared someway.
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.
But that's largely because of your particular character another child (as you were) would have benefited little from the same books and been disengaged and miserable. Instead they might benefit from a bench, tools and materials that would lead them to gain skills that could bring them later into construction or engineering or something practical.
That said, I think that encouraging a ton of reading of something is almost definitely going to be a good idea. Everyone with a mind should be reading.
My wife was not interested in reading (apparently) at school, indeed she only really started reading for interest after we got married.
We both have science degrees.
>Everyone with a mind should be reading.
I'd find it strange, but I don't think this is absolutely necessary. I find nothing wrong with the idea a blind tetraplegic (who can't read braille or text) could be a great scientist, philosopher, ...
"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 instruments, paint, build things with Lego, play sports. When I asked my dad about computers he taught me Pascal. They did all this not because school was bad (it was great actually), but because they wanted to support me. I thought that's just what good parents are meant to do. What do the Unschooler people think parents do by default?
My parents sound a lot like yours - learning was a major part of life, and they did many things to support learning more about my interests.
We're the lucky ones. Many parents do not - they assume that their child's education is "taken care of" and abdicate responsibility.
I think this might get tricky because "unschooling" is a new-ish term, and is pretty overtly trying to pick up steam as a "movement" or a "sensibility" or an "ethic" and is deliberately being inclusive; no doubt someone on HN is going to chime in and say they're an unschooler who sends their kids to public K12.
"Unschooling" does away with most of the conventions of traditional schooling, and tries to give kids as much freedom as possible to explore and learn on their own, under the assumption that kids learn better that way.
There may be more or less structure involved, at the discretion of the parents, but the parent is more of a facilitator and less of an teacher. The theory is that the trappings of school get in the way of actual learning, so unschooling tries to remove as many unnecessary obstacles as possible.
My point is just that unschoolers aren't sending their kids to a big brick building full of professional teachers.
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.
From what I can remember, I generally read the required textbooks, fill out the workbooks, and by mid December and was left to my own devices the rest of the time. I suspect things where slightly more structured than that, but my mother has a double doctorate in education and was more than willing to let me be most of the time.
I suspect the second half of the year was probably more productive, I generally watched MPT (Maryland Public Television) all day until cartoons started at 3pm. After that I would read books or do some computer programming. Toss in some trips to DC area museums / area historical sites and I learned a lot while having fun.
PS: The other option would have been to accelerate things and finish HS by 14 etc, but I don't think there is much value in that path. So, once a homeschooled child is ahead of the curve, letting them explore their interests seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Required by whom?
Edit: I also had the teacher’s editions so it was easy to self test on most of the material. I don't think most students would have been as successful with a minimally structured environment, but the standard approach is incredibly inefficient for the top 1%. I can easily see those more capable and motivated benefitting from even less structure, also for the less capable or motivated there is still plenty of room before you hit the standard top down classroom.
PS: Apparently it is fairly common for above average homeschoolers to finish by January, and for those behind the curve to spend all year "in school".
Now imagine that you are doing that rather than attending an institution, and also your father is not worried about you having to cover any particular subjects at all because he knows that eventually your natural interests will branch effortlessly into all needed fields of knowledge and skills.
And then imagine, that after 10 years of this you apply to the college of your choice, get in easily, and ace all your classes because you already know what it is to be a self directed learner. Or perhaps rather than go to college, you start your own business, or maybe you move to China to teach English. One thing you probably aren't interested in though is working for a corporation and being told what to do every day without questioning, which is what traditional schooling would have tried to indoctrinate you to accept.
The difference is that Unschooling parents do that without sending their kids off to school. I'm glad you had a good school experience, though mine was pretty poor, so for me Unschooling is tempting, at least in theory.
A metaphor I've read is that schools force-feed information into kids that they're not interested in, so they frequently come home feeling "stuffed." Not a lot of room is left over for natural, self-directed learning and creative exploration. It doesn't matter if it's the most interesting thing in the world--if school has been torturing you with trivia you don't care about, you aren't as likely to pursue it on your own.
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 daily math lesson, from the Saxon math series or similar, (2) daily reading, based on their interest but with a few recommendations, and (3) daily writing about any topic that interests them, which is then proofread and corrected by the child.
"Socialization" is pretty much a non-issue, as far as I'm concerned. The above structure takes a few hours a day, so there's more than enough time for play and structured activities like sports or music if they're interested. As tommynazareth commented, the socialization in schools is mostly negative.
The key seems to be striking a balance between a clear and simple structure and letting your child follow their interests. It also requires some self-control by the parents - it's better to let your kids struggle at times when they find hard problems than immediately jump in and help them. The parent isn't doing the teaching - they're helping the child learn to self-educate, which is a major difference.
I want my children to be able to think clearly, learn essential skills, and be able to teach themselves anything they're interested in learning. I don't believe the public school system is capable of doing that, which is why we're looking to do it ourselves.
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 dinosaurs, that was valued just as much as reading about history or politics or engineering.
2) If we were struggling, they'd start by giving me a small hint, then a slightly larger one, and so on until I either understood it or asked for a demonstration. Nothing wrong with the latter, as there are a lot of things that aren't immediately intuitive, but better to build intuition first.
This is an extended way of me saying "I think what you are planning to do is fantastic, and would like to offer these two things I remember from my experience."
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.
From the transcript of Jobs' speech (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html ):
"Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later."
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 outside world. That's a perfect recipe for social awkwardness.
Isolation is not a primary component of the homeschooling/unschooling approach. In fact, if your goal is to expose your kids to as many cool things and people as possible, more unstructured time doing things in the real world may actually make them more socially skilled than their peers.
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.
No, that's not what it means.
It means 48.9% thinks "better education" is their main reason for homeschooling. For the other 51.1%, "better education" is not the main reason, but may still be on the list.
It's true that a non-trivial percentage want to isolate their children from the mainstream, but please do not misrepresent the statistics to make your point.
That means that 51.1% of parents surveyed did not mark "quality of education" as a reason they chose to homeschool - it was on the list as an option they could have marked, and they chose not to pick it. That's pretty telling, IMO.
Because they don't list that their motivation was that they can do better than a public school does not mean that they believe they will do worse.
Consider the case of someone sending their child to a French immersion school. Most would not say that the immersion school is better than all other schools, but that doesn't mean they believe they believe it is worse. Likely they are sending their children there because they want them to learn to speak French fluently, not because they believe other schools are worse.
Here's a more recent study from the US Department of Education:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/TableDisplay.asp?Tabl...
This 2003 study is considered to be far superior to the 1999 one cited for reasons discussed in this article:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/parentsreasons.asp
For example, on the 1999 study two flaws listed are "when faced with an open-ended question, parents may not have recalled or responded with all of the reasons for homeschooling that were applicable to their situation" and "parents were not specifically asked to report their primary reason for homeschooling".
As you can see the 2003 study addresses these procedural errors and breaks out factors cited at all separately from those cited as primary concern.
The most listed factor for both was environmental factors in other schools, meaning "safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure". This was a concern of 85.4% of families, and the most important factor for 31.2%.
Dissatisfaction with academic quality of other schools was a factor in 68.2% of families, but a primary reason in only 16.5%
Regarding the assumptions made previously that any included component of religious or moral instruction implies isolationism and a lack of socialization, that claim is not supported by studies.
Unless you go around asking people about where they went to school all the time, unless someone is so socially awkward that it causes you to question whether they had some sort of "different" upbringing, you'd never know whether someone was homeschooled.
It may be that a lot of socially awkward people were homeschooled, but that doesn't necessarily indicate that the other way is true. A kid who is struggling and obviously hating traditional school might be more likely to get pulled out and homeschooled by their parents, or families who are isolated for other reasons (politics, religion, etc.) may homeschool, but none of these demonstrate a causative link between homeschooling -> poor socialization.
I guess you haven't met any of the hundreds of homeschooled kids I have met. To most parents who closely observe the social environment at many schools, it's easy to set up better situations for social learning through a family's own active social interaction with neighbors, friends, teammates, and colleagues in the community. Many homeschoolers, when they are asked, "What about socialization?" respond by saying, "It's one of the reasons I am happy I homeschool."
We weren't just kept to ourselves, though. We had weekly get-togethers with other homeschool families in the area, and in the summer we all were in various Parks & Rec sports leagues. Those probably helped us a lot.
Do you ask every non-awkward person you meet whether they were home-schooled? Do you ask every awkward person you meet whether they were home-schooled? Do you keep a running count?
Sounds like sample and/or confirmation bias.
I've seen this a few times. I assume you mean anecdotes told by liars? Surely a plurality of true statements constitutes data? The strength of that data for interpretation or prediction is limited by the number of data points, for sure, but I don't really get why this aphorism is supposed to be true.
Anecdotes are isolated instances, things people remember and tell because they are interesting. They lack any sort of statistical control or rigorous documentation. If you have a bunch of anecdotes about socially awkward homeschoolers, you don't have any actual data on the incidence of social awkwardness among homeschoolers. You just have have a bunch of anecdotes.
Anyway, I digress, anon.
Edit: I'm not the one claiming that all home schooled kids are like this. I'm just answering what social awkwardness means.
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.
The few I've met who are I've tended to find a bit autistic. I know kids from several families (I'm not in the USA) that homeschool and the kids tend to interact a lot better than state-school kids with different age groups - toddlers through to adults.
However, none of those I know are single children AFAIR.
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.
"Last year Shea’s son wanted to do more math so, deviating from the strict un-schooling line of thought, they placed him in an online math course."
This sentence struck me as odd. This could only be construed as "deviating from the strict un-schooling line of thought" (whatever that means) if they placed their son in the course against his will. But the article explicitly states that he was interested in learning more math. Many of the unschoolers I know take take formal classes in subjects that interest them.
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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.
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John believed in children very much -- believed in the wisdom of the natural unfolding of their interests and abilities. And he encouraged parents to believe in them too. My recollection is that it was not common for parents who had read his books and were corresponding with him and one another through his newsletter (Growing Without Schooling) to have kids turn out in the manner you describe; quite the contrary. While I'm wary about putting words in John's mouth, I suspect he would have agreed that there's something wrong in this situation, even if he might not have completely agreed with you about what it is.
I do recall occasional stories of kids who showed no interest in reading until they were quite old -- around 10, as I recall. But the usual ending of the story was that at some point they did become interested, not just casually but quite voraciously, so that they more or less caught up with other kids their age.
As for the "manipulation" -- I certainly don't think reading to your kids, to take an important example, would be outside the bounds of unschooling as I understand it. I don't think unschooling is supposed to be like the Prime Directive in Star Trek, where one has to strive to have as little impact of any kind on one's children as possible. That's nuts and I don't think John would ever have endorsed it.
To them, it's not quite about being inattentive to your children; quite the opposite. It's about giving them whatever they want. It would not be hyperbole to say that, in their view, a parent should serve the child much like a valet. So it's not that they ignore their children, it's just that they have infinite trust in their children to decide for themselves what is best. So, if they don't want to go to the doctor to get a shot, they don't have to. If they want to eat candy for supper instead of a nutritious meal, candy is what they'll eat. If they want to play instead of do chores, then they will play. They are never asked to do something that they don't want to do, because a parent is not allowed to impose their will upon the child. As such, the parents often run themselves ragged trying to keep up with their child's demands, and the children end up very spoiled and totally unprepared for adulthood.
From what you've described of John Holt's writings, it sounds like he and I would agree on a lot of things. I definitely believe in listening to your child's cues. I also believe in manipulating the situation so as to foster an interest. I'm not sure if he would agree with that or not. I call it a 'manipulation' because it's indirect: instead of directly insisting and pushing my child to read, I try to indirectly entice her into taking the initiative by showing that reading can be fun and rewarding.
In any case, I wouldn't put it past my relatives to misconstrue the true foundations of the unschooling movement, which is why I am always careful to add that I might not be understanding it correctly.
Supposedly in Finland they don't start school to learn to read until age 7 and their country is ranked #1 worldwide in education.
Among unschooling circles, one hears about children who have no interest in reading until age 10, then suddenly learn to read and go on to be an english lit major at a reputable school or such.
I believe I read that Jessica Watson, the Australian young woman who recently broke the record for youngest solo nonstop circumnavigation, learned to read at age 10.
(Your aunt isn't S.D. is she?)
This being HN, I suppose another option would be for one parent to run some sort of e-business that allows them to have an opposite schedule and take turns working vs being with the kids.
If you chose not to look after them then I guess your question still stands.
Some freelancers will take the kids with them as they travel about the world on assignment. That's an education in itself.
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.
I like this article. It's an explanation of one of the many ways in which people are decentralizing their lives (Other ways include the returns and growth of local food and entrepreneurship).
Of course, decentralization of education means that parents and/or local communities have to be more involved in their children's educations. But I think the larger point is that in order to do that, people need to be less involved with other things. I hope I live long enough to see the culture shift towards smaller lifestyles with an emphasis on more diversity and creativity.
Within the context of child-initiated learning, it's certainly worthwhile to have someone introduce a child to new topics, inspire them to learn, and provide answers to their questions. Some amount of structure and some amount of teacher initiation is useful.
With my own children, I plan to be somewhere on the un-schooling-to-Montessori end of the spectrum. Figuring out where will be a learning experience for me, too.
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 history, biology, chemistry, music, etc...
Seems like you need a good balance. The parent needs to be more than simply a resource. The parent needs to be... well a parent. Someone who guides the child to areas that they might be interested in, even if the child doesn't know it. And in some cases pushes the child.
So far my eldest lad hasn't, perhaps for one day, I think it's because I kinda overload him with questions and suggestions as to why things might be, trying to stimulate him to think of possible answers.
He does come up with some humdingers though - "how do we move our arms", "what's water made of" were two of his most recent. I'm not sure that he took in all of the info on motor-neurons or realised that he should be surprised that H and O gases combine to a room temperature liquid.
Re your last sentence, I always loved sport but (despite doing Maths at Uni) have never been in the least bit interested in statistics related to it. Horses for courses, or something.
I think you're arguing that children need to be stimulated. And I think this requires a fair bit of direction. And I think w/o a good deal of direction, most children will not learn things they need to. I suspect math and writing/grammar being two big areas that most children would neglect. Not all, but a huge number, crossing or approaching 50%.
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?
I was unlucky enough when I was a young kid (5 or 6) to be enrolled at a school for a few weeks during the start of the year while my parents were moving. (We were staying with family in a different town than the one we were moving to).
The teacher started the year by helping us learn to read. I could already read a little at this point, some of the other kids couldn't yet. She went through this process by teaching random letters from the alphabet. x, b, and k one day, and g, p, s the next.
This confused the hell out of me. It also did no service to the other kids who were trying to learn. After a couple of weeks of me telling my parents about it seeing my reading comprehension actually getting worse, they pulled me from the school for the last week until we moved, if I remember correctly.
And to put this all in perspective, I have always been a voracious reader. There was barely a moment growing up that I can remember not being with a book. In school I was always at least 2-3 years ahead of most of my peers when it came to reading, language, etc. I'm lucky I didn't have to keep that one backwards teacher.
I agree. I was doing a little thought experiment, though, to analyze why that is. I don't like believing something without knowing the value of believing it ;-)
And whatever you do, don't mix up the letter order.
This, though, I am unsure about.
I appreciate hearing your experiences but I'm not convinced one teacher's approach invalidates the technique. With the synthetic phonics approach that's common here in the UK, the focus is typically on learning letters in relation to their use in simple words (like 'cat'). The order of the alphabet isn't ignored, but this is left till later when the names of the letters are covered (this comes after learning all of the "sounds").
I still need to do a lot more reading into this, but my own daughter's approaching the stage where she'll be interested in specific letters and I was planning to focus on the sounds she takes an interest in and their associated representations and worry about the "alphabet" somewhat later on. Phonics is not without its detractors though so, as I say, I need to do more reading ;-)
Not knowing the order of the alphabet is like not knowing the order of the numbers 0-9.
This is where I'm unsure. In relation to literacy, is not knowing the order of the alphabet as severe as not knowing the order of digits in numeracy?
It's hard to imagine not knowing the order of the alphabet, but I don't think it would impede most of my day to day speaking and reading, whereas not remembering the order of 0-9 would basically render my numeracy skills useless since digits are inherently ordinal whereas the order of the alphabet could be entirely different and still work (if we all agreed on the new order).
This is completely wrong. The five functions of school are generally recognized to be Training, Sorting, Socialization, Caretaking, and FRPL. The author doesn't even get partial credit, because each function affects how each other function is implemented. So a school system whose only roles were teaching and socialization would have essentially zero in common with our school system today.
"Influential books in the un-schooling canon include Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich"
The thesis of Illich's book is (IIRC) that one of the biggest flaws of society is that each area of life is dominated by only a few major schools of thought, and these schools of thought tend to favor the elites. The book isn't even about education, let alone unschooling, albeit a lot of his examples are about education merely because it turns the title into a clever pun.
In any event, do you really want to be taking advice from someone whose clearly never actually read a book about education, or any of the vast amounts of research?
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 argument if you take the time to present it. Please spare us the letter soup.
3) The idea that only the pundits and experts have the right to express an opinion about the subject is not one very favorable in this forum. Do not disqualify the argument because it lacks the "proper credentials".
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.
He's wide ranging, but his whole point in writing the book is to discuss why the current institutions devoted to education are inappropriate and even destructive (http://adambachman.org/illich_03.html). He goes on to suggest what an appropriate, human centered replacement could look like. (http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/chap6.h...)
I think you could reexamine your assumptions.
In between there are parents who allow their children to play in meadows each day as Rousseau recommended, to run their own private web business at age 11, as well as those who feel that watching TV and playing video games for several hours a day is educational.
Overall, most unschoolers produce kids more educated and capable than public school graduates.
This is mostly possible due to the poor state of public schools in general, which comes from trendy theories and government muddling rather than any lack of funding or talent.
People love to malign the public school system, but the truth is that in most places in the western world children have the opportunity to get an excellent education. The problem is that more and more parents don't seem to take the time to teach their children to respect others, be it authority figures, peers, or anyone else. Children who are taught by their parents that it's fine to be disruptive (at inappropriate times, at least), ignore their responsibilities, and generally think it's ok to do whatever they want make it harder for the other children to learn.
The field of education has evolved over hundreds of years, and there are plenty of researchers working hard to find better ways to teach children. I certainly don't agree with all the methods they are trying today, but that doesn't mean that I feel many parents can do a better job.
The system tends to reinforce the behaviour by not ejecting those who are disruptive to the severe detriment, IMO, of those others who are not.
http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...
When I was in elementary school, I was identified as a "gifted" pupil. Once a week, I was removed from regular class for a few hours and sent to the GATE program (Gifted And Talented Education). It was run in a way that my natural curiosity led me to learn things that were considered above my level. For example, one of the activities that GATE provided was being able to draw pictures by plotting coordinates. You would be given a set of instructions that looked like:
(2,2)
(2,6)
(6,6)
(6,2)
(2,2)
STOP
(2,6)
(6,2)
STOP
Later, in 4th and 5th grade, I was put in a full-time GATE class. This was a regular class in elementary school, which was comprised entirely of "gifted" pupils. It wasn't free-form like the weekly GATE sessions, but it was structured in a way that helped gifted pupils more than a regular classroom. I think the GATE program is partially responsible for me excelling in math. When I arrived at junior high (6th grade), I was placed in the advanced 7th grade math--honors pre-algebra.
There's a little bit of information about the GATE program here: http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/gt/gt/, but that resource is mostly bureaucrat-speak.
Another resource that helped me excel in math was my 2nd grade teacher. I was picking up math faster than the other students, so my mom suggested that I ask my teacher for something more challenging. I did, and my teacher gave me a different assignment from the rest of the class. (I don't remember today what those assignments were--probably double digits when the rest of the class was learning single digits.) I remember during a car ride home asking my mom and older sister how to multiply double digit numbers. They explained it to me and wrote down a few problems for me to work out.
The tl;dr version of my comment is: I completely agree with the premise that a child's natural curiosity is an excellent catalyst for learning. If you're lucky, you might find a resource that nurtures your child's curiosity, even in the institutionalized school system.
Maybe not "the most qualified", but you sound pretty smart to me, and there are a lot of thoroughly unqualified teachers in the school systems. I think you'll find you can pick up anything you need to know pretty quickly.