On Unschooling
Greetings to the Ricochet Community!
The "national conversation" on education today included the Associated Press's cheerful reporting on the reversal of societal norms by parents who 'unschool' their children(read ultra-progressive homeschooling by 'learning through living'). This generated enough of a buzz that the Washington Post, when printing this article, excitedly proclaimed that 'unschooled' children "take the teacher's seat."
While the Post's strange new respect for homeschooling--no longer solely the provenance of those antisocial know-nothing religious weirdos-- is heartwarming, I was nevertheless skeptical. Unschooling seemed to be the latest product of our obnoxious culture of indulging children's "authentic" desires and drives instead of instilling timeless principles and values, excessively emphasizing that they"question authority," and sacrificing knowledge in exchange for idiotic slogans and buzzwords. Unlike homeschooling, which emphasizes parents' roles as teachers, unschooling emphasizes "facilitation." Which of course means encouraging your children to do whatever they want. If reading is not interesting, no problem. Watch a video instead. If kids are not coming to class "juiced to learn U.S. history," why bother with it at all? Keeping your child satisfied is clearly more important than teaching citizenship or cultivating a love for our country. Uninterested in science? Self-actualize in a redwood grove, though that probably won't help you acquire hard skills that will let you excel as an engineer, doctor, or scientist.
Unschooling forgets two important things. Some things are necessary, even if they are not fun. And children don't know enough to be fully entrusted with their own education. If they did, we would let them vote.
But on the other hand, unschooling doesn't seem as stupid at second glance. Kids don't seem to have trouble keeping up with their classroom peers on standardized tests and evaluations(though that doesn't mean much in the era of dumbed-down standards). And our public schools seem more and more to be 'unschools' devoid of adequate instruction. While California's students fall further and further behind in math, science, and English, our legislature comes up with a brilliant solution. Heretofore, history books in California schools must include "the contributions of LGBTQ individuals" throughout our history. Never mind that no one knows for sure if any meaningful figure of American history before 1950 was gay. Surely the most bizarre 'unschooling' curriculum could do no worse for its student. And there is some merit to gaining practical 'unschooled' experience in business or science as a method of awakening interest.
So, thoughts on 'unschooling'?
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Dec '10
Re: On Unschooling
The most striking quote from that article, was from a 14-year-old student talking about the college courses she was taking.
“I’ll earn a degree, but the important thing to me is to learn what I need to and want to know. Everything else is a bonus.”
Learning for the sake of knowing and then doing seems to be a casualty of a system that demands an arbitrary standard and then expects every student to meet it. In that system, intelligent young minds rot from boredom, while the majority of teachers time is spent prodding those lagging behind so their school won't loose funding which would in turn puts them out of a job.
I've known a handful of home-schooled kids, most of whom were very bright, though some of the stereotypes do apply. However, from what I've seen any lack of social skills was more than compensated for by the intelligence that I would attribute to extra individual attention and custom lesson plans.
Edited on August 29, 2011 at 11:13pmRe: On Unschooling
I agree that traditionally homeschooled students(including, for much of his life, Abraham Lincoln) have been some of our nation's best and brightest. My qualms about un-schooling are 1) it's not like traditional home-schooling in that parents do not substitute themselves for teachers, which means children essentially determine what they do and do not master. 2) it gives too much leeway to activities that do not constitute real learning. But yes, I agree that it could challenge the arbitrariness of our learning standards today.
Re: On Unschooling
There is a variety of 'unschooling' even at some of our nation's most elite academic institutions. Consider the following excerpt from Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield's 2001 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Re: On Unschooling
"Never mind that no one knows for sure if any meaningful figure of American history before 1950 was gay."
Well, James Buchanan was probably a little, um....well, let's put it this way: If "Glee" had been on in the pre-Civil War years, he'd have been a big, big fan.
Re: On Unschooling
Another thought: it's interesting that the WaPo is suddenly discovering the benefits of home schooling. Educational choices like that often entail a certain amount of standardized testing. (Parents who homeschool are often put on the defensive about it, so they like to point to the higher scores that homeschooled kids usually receive...)
And what's the most profitable entity within the Washington Post Company? More profitable than any of their publishing businesses?
Stanley Kaplan, the test prep company.
Apr '11
Re: On Unschooling
I homeschool my daughter a bit (on top of her private school) because I liked the "classical" method which emphasizes a lot of rote learning in early years followed by anaysis and logic in middle school and then using all that for theses in highschool. But I should have unschooled. She serially develops crazy passions for different subjects. Instead of following those to conclusion, we stuck to the curricula. It has varied - math, psychology, science etc. But its a hard thing to structure and guide and I was lazy. And she's motivated enough to follow through on her own, somewhat.
If I had unschooled my sons, they would have PhD's in Fifa Soccer years 05 ->11 (Xbox and PlayStation, they're that good..)
Some kids long, thirst to learn. Unschooling has its place, but I would suggest it's effective for a VERY small percent of populace.
May '11
Re: On Unschooling
Couple thoughts on this. First, I can easily imagine that kids home schooled in this way gain a habit of self-motivation, and that is obviously good. I wonder, though, whether kids are always the best judges of what they need to learn. Some subjects (classics, for example), are not fun, and it may not be apparent why they should know it, but there is a huge payoff. Also, I knew a mom used this method; her daughter was very bright, but scored average on standardized tests. These tests don't show everything, obviously, but my impression is the average child home schooled in a traditional way out-performs most of his or her peers by a long shot--so the scores raised some question whether this particular child was really getting as much as she could have out of home schooling.
Nov '10
Re: On Unschooling
E.D. Hirsch traces the origins of student-centered learning in "Romancing the Child." It's a great read: http://educationnext.org/romancing-the-child/
There's a small formatting issue with the page, but the bulk of the article is there.
Aug '11
Re: On Unschooling
"Unschooling" certainly isn't new -- the approach has been around as long as the modern homeschool movement. This homeschool dad is kind of horrified by the idea of a purely unschooling approach. While we're using a rather traditional approach in our homeschooling, the best thing about educating at home is that you can draw from all sorts of educational models and find out what works best for your children. One size doesn't fit all. A classical approach with a "great books" program appeals to me, personally. Perhaps an openness to the ideas behind unschooling -- that children are natural learners -- can help an educator find out the best approach to use with specific children by seeing what they gravitate toward and let the learning flow from that expressed interest. As a primary model, though, I recoil from unschooling.
Before becoming a parent, I worked in the "homeschool industry," and I got to see a wide range of educational approaches and resources available to homeschoolers, such that homeschooling was a natural and enthusiastic decision for us. But I met very few unschoolers, probably because they were a bit too lassez-faire to ever go to homeschool conventions.
May '10
Re: On Unschooling
You always must measure basic achievement objectively to determine if the kid learns anything.
But as long as that step is not compromised, the parent has the right to do an imperfect job of educating the kids. The government should not reach in, even if the mom is a wacky, lefty, Birkenstocker who believes in self-actualization of 3 year olds, as long as the little monster is meeting basic means of knowledge in the R-R-R (plus science) fields.
Education reform- that is, true universal choice- is inevitable now that the left is discovering it as well. Good. As Howard Fuller (no conservative by any measure; he currently opposes expanding voucher in Wisconsin because they would then go to middle class students as well) says, educate them by any and every means- public, charter, voucher, on-line, etc.
Re: On Unschooling
The older I get the more I look back at K-12 education as a waste.
What does one truly need to know by 18? Can't they learn it quicker?
Dec '10
Re: On Unschooling
I suspect these kids will have rude awakenings when they discover that bosses don't give a crap what you want to do.
Re: On Unschooling
True. To me, much of unschooling seems to be postponing the onset of maturity in the student, which would allow him to realize that 90 % of people, even CEOs and others who have achieved very high positions, do not do exactly what they want to do during their waking hours.
Edited on August 30, 2011 at 7:48pmAug '11
Re: On Unschooling
"Noodles is a dictatorship!"
(Sorry . . . I take advantage of every opportunity to link to that video.)
Dec '10
Re: On Unschooling
DrewInWisconsin
"Noodles is a dictatorship!"
(Sorry . . . I take advantage of every opportunity to link to that video.) · Aug 30 at 10:54am
My whole day is better.
Nov '10
Re: On Unschooling
The technique has been discussed since at least the 1700's - see for example, Rousseau's Emile (which was in turn dependent on previous philosophers, like Locke) Even if he wasn't exactly a model parent, there's still some good lessons in it. Like the first one - which the left, although they tend to adore Rousseau, always ignore. It concerns the first thing you should teach your child, the value and meaning of private property.
Personally, I was pretty much brought up to see schools as a necessary evil, and that the bulk of education should take place at home (whether the kid is home schooled or not), and that most children learn more, and faster, through observation and practice than by rote or lecture. This I find is especially true in K-6,
Jun '11
Re: On Unschooling
We homeschooled our son. We did not unschool him. However we knew other parents that successfully unschooled their children. Some kids are self-motivated, others are procrastinators. One of the things that makes homeschooling effective is that the people who know the child the best (the parents) are in a position to find and use the most effective teaching method for each child. The child is not forced into a one-size-fits-all mode of instruction.
Mar '11
Re: On Unschooling
We homsechool ours (we have a bunch). Ours learn a very rigorous curriculum, but I freely admit that since the curriculum comes in a box, I spend no more than a few minutes a day actually teaching - they can do the rest from the books.
I know many unschoolers, and I think it is an unwise approach. Unschoolers end up with MANY holes in their education - things like learning punctuation or the parts of a sentence. I don't know any who made it from unschooling to college without remedial community college in between.
Edited on August 31, 2011 at 12:43amAug '10
Re: On Unschooling
This is a fascinating topic, and one I'm interested in (I'm an instructional designer by trade). I did a long paper once on Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, which proposed a rough equivalent to 'unschooling'.
Illich is impossible to pin down. On the one hand, he proposes a kind of wide-open free-market approach to educating children, i.e. children and parents should be free to obtain knowledge or training or whatever from whoever is willing to provide, for fees or for free. Organized government schools are verboten.
This all sounds good, but then Illich (writing in 1971) also praises Maoist China and the Cultural Revolution, which he saw as a kind of cleansing of a society in a way that would make possible true 'deschooling'. Not good.
Another interesting read in this vein is John Gatto's Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.
My own views are similar to several contributors' above. That is, for a fraction of children 'unschooling' is feasible and -- with some gentle guidance, which for us Christians is Biblically-mandated -- potentially ideal; but most children need more 'formation' than this approach can provide.
Mar '11
Re: On Unschooling
Unschooling is fine as long as it isn't just a way for parents to completely abdicate on their responsibilities for their children's education. Regardless, it still beats sticking a kid in front of a chalkboard in a government box 7-8 hours a day. The more I read about the origins of public schooling in America, the more horrified I became. As John Gatto put it, American public schools were created to do two things: provide a suitable labor force for American industry, and to enforce a social order. It does the former poorly, and it has twisted the latter into a sick corruption.