Comment by gregjor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gregjor | Hacker News Reader

Every time the subject of homeschooling or unschooling comes up in HN the same tired arguments get trotted out: Kids will suffer socially, most parents aren't qualified to teach. There's some irony in the usually libertarian-learning HN audience defending schools, which are a system designed to deprive individuals (children) of their freedom and to limit their opportunities.

These arguments are not supported by evidence or history. They are based on misconceptions about homeschooling/unschooling, and a limited frame of reference because most of us went to school and have no experience with alternatives. Unschooling does not mean locking kids up at home, depriving them of friends or opportunities to learn. It means letting children follow their own interests, at their own pace, and allowing them to participate in the larger world rather than getting locked up for 7 or 8 hours a day in a rigid and coercive environment where critical thinking and discovery are actively discouraged. It means supporting and encouraging education tailored for the child rather than forcing them into 12 years of government-mandated curriculum, standardized tests, strict regimentation, surveillance, and an often toxic environment that resembles jail more than living in the real world as productive adults.

These worries strike me as similar to the argument that people can't live moral lives without religion. We know that simply isn't true. I suspect many more people on HN grew up morally without religion than grew up educated and socialized without school, so maybe some of the critics can step back a bit and examine their assumptions, and ignorance of unschooling, before posting the usual objections.

^ This!

In all my travels I've only met a handful of people who were not at least skeptical or downright disparaging of home schooling, at least until they learned about my background and either politeness or exposure to contrary evidence required backtracking.

I often encounter a kind of reverence toward teachers in particular and our educational establishment in general which is woefully misplaced. The structure the American education system (and maybe in other countries although I only went to school in the US) is in direct opposition to the formation of qualities like curiosity, independence, auto-didactic inquiry, and skepticism that are as vital today as literacy was a century ago.

I was lucky to be raised by parents who had no respect for the establishment and chose to live in a state that did not force them to educate their children in accordance with government mandates. As a result they were free to bring us up in the way that they hoped was best for each of us. For me that ended up being unschooling.

I think there's a confusion of goals that has become so embedded in our thinking (after almost 200 years of public schools) that we have a hard time imagining alternatives. Unschooling at its core seeks to teach children how to learn on their own, which is more valuable over a person's lifetime than any subject or class they might take in school. Unfortunately self-directed learning, curiosity, and critical thinking interfere with the program of formal compulsory schooling, and we can see the results all around us, every day.

As a parent of three I viewed my main responsibilities as making sure they survived into adulthood, and grew into self-sufficient productive adults. Part of self-sufficiency is taking responsibility for yourself, not relying on parents or schools or government to decide everything for you and solve all of your problems. Taking responsibility for yourself also means having the confidence and skill to learn something on your own, which may involve tutors, mentors, classes, practice, but the key skill is the ability to learn something on your own rather than believing formal schooling is the only way to learn something.

The goal of public school comes down mainly to enforcing conformity. That happens through standardized curriculum, regimented classrooms sorted by age, rigid rules, clocks, tests, grades. That process may also educate children but that's almost more of a side-effect. We've all had standout teachers who actually engaged us and taught us something, but they stand out in our memories because they are the exceptions. Imagine having access to many more adults and older children who could give that experience. That's what unschooling is about.

Homeschooling can and does fail for some kids. As a long-time participant in the "homeschooling community" I saw the failures mainly resulting from parents trying to brainwash their kids or actively keep them away from ("safe" from) the "real world," often for religious reasons. Public schools also can and often do fail, both in terms of providing a useful education and in terms of enforcing conformity and obedience. Nothing is perfect, but it doesn't make sense to limit your choices, or your child's opportunities, out of a misplaced loyalty or blind belief in public schools, their mission, their competency, on the off-chance your child will get nothing but great teachers.

Great to read your success story. My own kids have similar experiences, and none of them think I deprived them of anything by not sending them to school.

Two of my three children easily got to self-sufficiency. My youngest, 21 now, has not. Ironically that’s mainly because he chose to go to school, first public high school and then college. He has slowed his path to self-sufficiency by putting himself in a system that imposes arbitrary requirements (credits, tests) and timetables for graduation geared to group conformity and performance. And he still has to work hard on his own to actually learn anything. I support his decisions (and pay for them) but I can’t help but think he could be self-sufficient already, more or less, if he hadn’t added the drag and friction of school to his life. I would understand if he needed credentials for medicine or law or teaching, but I think he could have learned Spanish faster by living abroad for a couple of years rather than going to classes. I did suggest that but I have to eat my own dog food and respect his choices, at least for another year or two.

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