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>This thing is full of gems. I shouldn't be so sarcastic about child abuse, but I just can't help it. I've met far too many of these clowns in my life.

If you actually believe these children are being abused I'm sure that you can call CPS on their parents. If not, the only way you could make a "joke" in worse taste would be to imply paedophilia.

>Nothing cooler than rich kids taking all their advantages they were given and use them to live like paupers with zero concern for the the world around them.

"Everyone we know who unschools, in fact, has chosen autonomy over affluence. Hell, some years we’re barely above the poverty line."

Doesn't sound like they're living like rich kids. Nor are they living like paupers. They own their farm and they're not even using as many public services as a normal family with two children would.

> They own their farm

> barely above the poverty line.

Doesn't really add up. Any guesses on how much a farm in Vermont costs? It's not cheap. Big hunch the money for that farm came from someone else. Most likely an inheritance.

An asset is not necessarily liquid; also plenty have people have negative net worthy.

> Nothing cooler than rich kids taking all their advantages

The author's father worked for the state department of education and his mother was a substitute teacher. What evidence do you have that they are rich as you claim?

> I shouldn't be so sarcastic about child abuse

Child abuse is a serious accusation. Please state the evidence you have that there is child abuse and the steps you have taken to report your personal knowledge of the situation to the state authorities.

I absolutely disagree that this type of "home schooling" should be legal. I do believe it is child abuse. These people should be treated just any parent that does not enroll their child in school. And I think they should have their kids placed in state custody and not even considered letting their children back in their care until they have had a full psychiatric evaluation.

It's true that these parents are likely sick and need mental health treatment. Maybe I should have more sympathy for them, but I think about the poor kids and about how lucky I was to have parents who cared more about their children than some crazy ideology.

>I think they should have their kids placed in state custody and not even considered letting their children back in their care until they have had a full psychiatric evaluation.

I can almost guarantee that these kids will turn out better with their parents than if they are raised in state custody. Outcomes are far far worse for foster kids than for unschooled kids.

Where do you draw the line. What about parents who don't pay attention to their kids, sit them in front of the tv and provide no education or emotional support other than putting them on the bus in the morning?

These kids can read and write, there are many kids in public school who can't. There are way more kids living in bad school districts with uninvolved parents who spend less than the 2 hours a month studying that these kids do.

I find absolutely no reason to believe those people have any sort of psychological problems. The guy writes eloquently and coherently. The arguments he makes are rational, albeit, in my opinion, not compelling.

The question is: How much freedom do parents have to influence their children's upbringing. This is clearly a political issue, and seems to have been settled in the US in a way that gives parents a lot of choice. To label somebody who actually uses these liberties as mentally ill is absolutely disgusting.

The existence of people like you---someone who would endeavor to rip children from their parents for trying an alternative education plan---is absolutely terrifying. It's the kind of terrifying that sinks deep into your bones and gives you a chill.

Coupled with the power of CPS, it's actually something that gives me some serious concerns about having children in the first place. Imagine, some nut and his insistence on conformity is enough to, at the very least, make my life a living hell.

> need mental health treatment.

That's a fantastically stigmatising view of mental illness.

I've got 4 kids, 16-7, none of which have ever been to school. The only thing we require them to do is read and learn. The subjects don't matter. The oldest likes philosophy and science. My 12 year old enjoys video production and 3d animation. My 9 year old really loves comic books and cooking. My 7 year old loves crafts and writing adventure stories.

We unschooled when I was making $10/h.

They all have big groups of friends, with an incredible level of diversity. They spend a lot of time with them, and enjoy unstructured, uninterrupted play.

Beyond that, they all love organized sports, field trips, traveling when we want.

The older children always have the option of going to school, and choose not to.

With regards to learning to read. Our oldest was reading at 4, one read at 9, and the other two around 5/6. It doesn't matter.

Your fear and ignorance is understandable. It's "radical", and certainly not for everybody. The suggestion of "child abuse" is silly, and totally unfounded. I've actually met many of these "clowns", and can attest from experience that you're not only wrong, but out of line.

Experiencing life with our children is wonderful.

> I shouldn't be so sarcastic about child abuse

What does it say about you if you feel that this is child abuse, but do nothing?

Also, by claiming that this is child abuse, you are grouping it with things like sexual and physical abuse. Are you sure that you are attempting to make such a strong statement?

The other reply to this talking about depriving your child of an education etc, is exactly what I would say. And absolutely, yes I feel that this is definitely child abuse.

Then, are the Amish 'abusing' their children? What about the Inuit[1]?

[1] http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-pol...

No, a fairer grouping would be with refusing to let your child attend a school, read books, or use the Internet.

>I'm pretty sure that's closer to 4 or 5 for most kids who grow up in families from the Cornell / John Hopkins pedigree

There's a lot of evidence that learning to read early can be detrimental in the long run. More and more of the educated parents I know are no longer focusing on teaching their preschoolers to read.

Edit: see my comment further down this reply chain for links to evidence.

> There's a lot of evidence that learning to read early can be detrimental in the long run. More and more of the educated parents I know are no longer focusing on teaching their preschoolers to read.

That's horrifying. Can't wait for the rest of us to have to clean up their experiment.

What are you basing that on? There is evidence that not teaching children to read until age 6 or 7 has an overall net benefit.

Many countries ranked very well for education, don't start formal education until age 7 (Finland and Sweden for instance). The children in these countries are taught to read later than in the US, but they do just as well or better on reading tests later in life.

Children in the US weren't taught to read until first grade a few generations ago. Hell, when I was in kindergarten, 25 years ago, we spent the whole year learning the alphabet--now kids are expected to know the alphabet by the time they enter kindergarten. There is no evidence that this is beneficial and plenty that it is harmful.

Why wait for the state to teach your kid to read? I wouldn't trust an elementary public school teacher to build IKEA furniture let alone teach my kid the most important skill he'll ever learn.

Most importantly, once they learn how to read they won't have to wait for or trust the state to teach them anything ever again; it's all there for free on the internet and in library books.

Care to cite some of this evidence? I was just reading about this and found zero evidence its somehow harmful and only anecdotal evidence that it is not beneficial and "evens out" later.

Children in New Zealand who began learning to read at age 7 had better reading comprehension than those that started at age 5 by the time they were 10.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200612...

Children in Germany who started school at age 7 performed better on standardized tests than those who started at age 6.

http://ftp.iza.org/dp1827.pdf

You have to be careful with these studies - it's possible (and the authors of the research article are worried about this) that the later learners had parents who consciously chose to teach them later.

This sort of decision implies a level of involvement in a child's education that might, on its own, lead to better reading comprehension.

Even if that were true, I would have learned much less as there were many things I and many children learned via reading far before the age of 11. So while they supposedly caught up on reading, they had missed out on several years of learning when the brain is most capable of doing so.

And honestly, that study is so loose. It reminds of the good ol' days of Whole Word learning and how many kids lives they screwed up with that experiment gone bad.

http://www.readinghorizons.com/research/whole-language-vs-ph...

EDIT: Apparently, I need to clarify loose. Sample size: 267

>So while they supposedly caught up on reading, they had missed out on several years of learning when the brain is most capable of doing so.

Reading is not the only way to learn, and before a certain age it looks like it's not the most effective. There are many more studies that show that a play based education up until age 7 is superior to a rigorous academic education at the same age.

The evidence shows that it is very likely that spending an extra 2 years playing, and exploring is better than spending that time in the class practicing reading picture books.

Older children also progress faster, so an 8 year old who started learning to read at age 7 is reading much more sophisticated material than a 6 year old who started at age 5. It's not like there is an equivalent 2 year loss of reading time.

>And honestly, that study is so loose.

Care to offer some meaningful critique.

>how many kids lives they screwed up with that experiment gone bad.

In this case starting school later is not the experiment. It was the way things were for most of human history.

Schooling at 4 and 5 years old is a very recent invention--the data doesn't back up its effectiveness--so we should eliminate it.

Edit: In response to the above edit. There is nothing inherently wrong with a sample size of 267. That's actually a fairly large sample size for studies like this. My brother is a grad student in applied linguistics. He'd kill for 267 study participants for his second language acquisition research.

That's because the children that learned at age 7 weren't educated enough to understand that cramming for a standardized test was a waste of their lives.

Do you have evidence that teaching a child to read at 7 years of age is a significant detriment to their overall learning? Do you feel like the parent post that not teaching them to read at 4 years old is 'child abuse?'

My strong opinion is that educationally, THE most important thing you must do with your child is TALK to them. From the beginning. From year 0. Discuss things with them. Let them soak as much understandable speech as they can between years 0 and 2. This will have a far more profound effect in their life rather than did they learn to read at 4 or 8 years of age.

Could you specify what is horrifying about the previous post? Why would it be more important for a 5 year old to learn to read rather than, say, spend their time building Legos, practice crafts or climbing into trees? Like another poster stated, most kids in Finland do not start to formally learn to read until they are 6 (preschool, if the parents want so) and at the latest when they enter primary school (7). I would claim Finland has a pretty good public primary education system.

Pushing kids to do too much too soon has no advantages, imho. There are skills that are best started acquiring at a youngish age but you will have to convince me pretty hard that reading is one of them. Kids have this natural curiosity to an amazing variety of things. But what those things are can be quite random. The best way to have them learn something is to apply this natural curiosity - i.e. find what they are interested in - and the support them in this activity. This does not mean allowing them play videogames or watch cartoons whole the whole day.

I would say if the kids like it and want to then sure, teach them to read. But before 7, I would claim it is more valuable to find those things that they are really keen into and let them practice those. This creates a positive association to knowledge acquisition (the love of learning). And at that age they soak information and skills like sponges if they are motivated and have the mental capacity to grasp the concepts.

> Why would it be more important for a 5 year old to learn to read rather than, say, spend their time building Legos, practice crafts or climbing into trees?

The hypothesis that I think should be tested is whether there is correlation between being a child prodigy in a technical field (in math, physics, computer science or engineering) and getting to read early.

It makes sense theoretically -- if you learn to read by age 8, is there enough time for you to grasp all of high school math and computer science by age 14, like Manjul Bhargava?

While I can imagine my hypothesis being true, that doesn't make it into an argument against later reading age. It just means that for a group of kids this might not the best decision. (And since most of us think of themselves as the "smart kids", maybe that's why a lot of us here are opposed to it.)

> The hypothesis that I think should be tested is whether there is correlation between being a child prodigy in a technical field ... and getting to read early.

It would be cool if all children could be helped to find the thing they are good at and love and let them become the best they can in that field through positive reinforcement and minimum coercion.

> It makes sense theoretically -- if you learn to read by age 8, is there enough time for you to grasp all of high school math and computer science by age 14, like Manjul Bhargava?

I think the most important thing what you can extract from the case of the Field's medalist is that he seems to enjoy what he does.

Usually when lots of parents are really ambituous about their childrens futures they force their children to rote-learn lots of mundane knowledge or repeat tiring exercises... such an approach leads most of the time to lots of sad adults with average achievements. I would much prefer lots of content and happy adults with average achievements.

The prodigies will happen, but it would be really nasty to force all children to try to be prodigies.

> I'm pretty sure that's closer to 4 or 5 for most kids who grow up in families from the Cornell / John Hopkins pedigree.

If you met two 10 year olds, one learnt to read at age 4 the other at age 8- do you think you could tell the difference? Would it really matter?

Actually more than likely it would- the one who learnt at age 8 is more likely to read for pleasure. An overly formal approach in the early years can be counter productive, and often damaging. Not to mention the fact that all the time spent at age 3-4 learning to read, is time missed doing the stuff they should be: learning social skills, problem solving, independence...

See some of the vast amount of research on this by reading the section on reading for pleasure pages 16-19 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/c...

Thanks for linking to an article that at least mentions research - it's easy to go off of general feelings in conversations like this.

I just want to point out, however, that pages 16-19 do not conclude that children who learn at 8 years old have a greater pleasure than children who learn at 4. The conclusion, which isn't a hard one to agree with, is that teachers should find ways to make reading more exciting.

Agreed- just think it is worth pointing out that there is no proven advantage in teaching children to read early,that there can actually be some concerns with teaching reading at an early age, and that there are also no disadvantages to learning to read later. These are worth a read to:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029435.000-too-much-...

http://www.otago.ac.nz/news/news/otago006408.html

> with zero concern for the the world around them

How do you figure that?

Just fair warning, most of the people who are responding to you in disagreement have never actually met a un/homeschooled person / person's parents in real life.

The reason why unschooling is so bad is entirely social. Homeschooled kids are crippled socially.

It sounds good, feels good, etc. but once you actually see it with your own eyes it makes sense why this hasn't caught on.

> It sounds good, feels good, etc. but once you actually see it with your own eyes it makes sense why this hasn't caught on.

I doubt that. To me a more plausible and equally good explanation is that schools are primarily places where parents can drop their kids off for half of the day to be able to go to work. Homeschooling requires someone to stay at home and do the schooling, which is becoming less and less affordable for most of the people.

Yeah.... no. I know people who were more than financially able to do this, and the kids still ended up messed up.

To reiterate, if you actually haven't seen this first-hand, it's best to keep your mouth shut. Confirmation bias only makes this whole thing worse.

If by 'socially crippled' you mean unscarred by bullies, unbored by mass indoctrination lectures, and untutored in vandalism and cheating, then sure.

I've met plenty of homeschooled people/parents. What on earth do you mean by socially crippled? If anything, these people have been the most socially apt people I've met.

Maybe that is because I value different social traits than you do.