Poll: Unschooling: Parenting at it's worst

[Soushi]

I don't know really. This seems to make a lot of sense.
Tehre are many benefits to sending children to school, but they increasingly becoming oppresive and nasty atmospheres. At a schol, you are told to sit down, shut up and fly straight nad if you don't, the teachers and the principles will punish you. I have never been given the chance to stretch my creativity, and as a matter a fact have been held back and punished when i try to do someting different. Schools have become factories for twelve pages essays about bland topic written with almost no passion at all. And what about being forced to go back day after day to a place where, not only do your peers not respect you, those who are respected are the ones who make your life a living hell.
Whereas, in this system you get to stretch your wings, explore, get excersise, hang around with people you like and experience the world through your own eyes, not through others.

HOwever, this is not a porblem that can be solved simply through picking one or the other. My advice to schools, turn out the lights and open up the windows from time to time and whatever you do, if someone writes or draws something that is creative and new, encourage them, don't flunk them. And for teh love of god, if the child obviously has no apptitude for math or science, then don't make them learn trig or biology for three fucking years, so that they can get to where they actually want to be, and then act surprised when they do poorly or fail.
Yes the really world is harsh and schools need to train kids to deal with that, but we don't need to simply accept that as fact, we have the power to change it into a fairer, more just place. So do it, and stop using schools as a medium by which to encourage a status quo atmosphere that makes people believe there is nothing they can do and that this world will stay shit forever! Schools should be less about the straight and narrow and more about the play ground. I have seen so many goood ideas, and so much creativity go to waste in a classroom that it makes me want to cry tears of blood. We have the fucking ability and the fucking will to change, so for teh love of god DO IT! Before the teaching proffesion becomes so unapppealing that you will literally need to train teachers at gunpoint before they will set foot in a classroom to teach the same samey bullshit and watch as children slowly become linear automatons who dream of nothing more than a few more sunny years at highschool and university, both of which usually disapoint, before they get to enter the dead existence of adulthood! *pant pant* okay... i'm done... i'm gonna go sit under a tree now...

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

If everyone was "unschooled" we'd lose any form of advanced science that involved anything more than a linear function.

My goodness I went to the website

But, what about math?

It's easy to see how children can learn many things without using traditional, formal methods of teaching, but many people see math as a huge stumbling block, mainly, because most of us have learned to hate math because of the way it was taught in school. There are a great many ways to encounter math in the real world. Geometry can be found in quilt making, algebra in painting a room. Shifting perspectives, from textbooks to the real world is sometimes difficult, but math that is actually used is math truly learned.

Where will the calculus come from! Nooo!

When I paint a room I mainly just hope I don't go out of the corners - algebra is never needed. I might hate maths but it is important, and I definitely needed a basic grounding in it.

 

[GenuineCounterfeit]

Wow, a lot of negative comments from those who i thought would be a little more open minded!

I'll start with my story. I'd say i was home educated (still am) but it seems that people define that as learning with books and teachers at home, so therefore i must be unschooled, because there is no teachers, structure, school books or punishment.

I went to school when i was 5, and after a year of hating it, my parents took me out. I am eternally thankful of them for doing this, as it then meant that we had a huge amount of freedom to do as we pleased as a family. (I'm an only child).

It gave us the freedom to travel an awful lot, which was so beneficial.

Now to really understand how unschooling works, you have to really think outside the box. Most of you, I'd guess, have been brought up and fed into the school system. I'm making a wild guess that quite a few of you don't like it, or hate it. If you don't, maybe you resent it a little, but feel it is necessary.

When my school friends get out of school for the day, they plonk down in front of the tv or computer, and that's how their free time is spent. This is how unschooling is essentially different. IF you are brought up with endless amounts of free time, and no one telling you what to do, you essentially start doing what interests you, or what you love

Now this is probably starting to sound a bit hippy-ish, and yes, its pretty out there. I'm not claiming that if you leave your son or daughter to their own devices they will start learning complex maths and without any help, what i'm saying is that they will go toward what truly interests them. Whether this is music, science, art, gymnastics, maths, photography, whatever, you'll find that children will latch on to something, and seek out the things that they need to progress with their interest.

I know lots of families who unschool. But here is the problem; unschooling often leads to parents who just don't give a damn what the kids do, which leads to kids who are rude, violent, self obsessed or socially awkward.

So where do people go wrong?

In my opinion, unschooling was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It meant i had time to pursue my true interests, and find like-minded people. And this is all down to my parents, who took care of me, but let me choose what i was interested in.

If you leave your children run free, there will be consequences. But letting them decide their future is one of the greatest gifts you can give them

Many of my close friends are unschooled, and are now going on to college. They are some of the most intelligent people i've ever met. People unfortunately only get exposed to the awful side of unschooling, so I'd just like to let you know that there is another side to this. We just don't tell people about it because we get a very negative response

 

[AndyFromMonday]

Wait a minute, are you saying that as a parent, I should let my 5th grader CHOOSE if they want to go to school or not?

No. I'm saying you should let your 5th grader CHOOSE what he wants to learn. If he does not want to learn about anything then he obviously has no interest in school and as such there's no use forcing him to go to school. If he doesn't care or does not like school then he will not learn anything.

And that they have learned all that they need in life by 4th grade.

No. I'm stating that the basic knowledge to be a successful human being is learned in the 1st to 4th grade. You learn basic maths which you will use the most and you learn to read, write and formulate sentences.

If my mom didn't force me to do things when I was a kid, I wouldn't be who I am today. As an example, I just wanted to play video games, she made me pick a sport.

So because she forced you to do something you did not enjoy that made her a good mother. Fine and dandy, but let's remember the fact that children aren't fucking animals.

Found out I was pretty good at running. When I broke my ankle, she made me pick something else so I chose theater and still have friends to this day from it (17 years).

Insignificant. Friends can be made in any social environment.

art of being a parent is making our kids get out there and experience things that they would normally not do.

And you can give them an nudge about those things, you can even show those things to the child, but if he does not enjoy said things why should he do them?

Good parents want their kids to have a better life and, statistically, getting an education is part of that goal.

That's partially correct. If the child doesn't want to become a lawyer even tho that's the better choice then you have no right to force him to do so. But do explain how learning biology, history, algebra, spatial geometry, chemistry, physics etc helps the child succeed in life? The fact of the matter still remains. Children learn the majority if skills needed to succeed in life during the first to 4th grade. Reading, writing, basic mathematics with everything else being just for "general knowledge".

And some of us actually use things like calculus and advanced English skills for our everyday jobs, and this wasn't taught to us by 4th grade.

If the child chooses to pursue a career which includes Calculus then the institution responsible with preparing said person for their chosen job has the responsability to teach the person calculus.

Didn't mean for this to get this long. So, to each their own. All I know is that I've met a few too many people that dropped out of high school and now have 2 kids on a salary from a fast food place. Maybe if someone kicked their ass and made them stay in school, they would be a better place now.

And why has this happened? Because todays educational system is fucked up. The moment you enter school you have a set goal to achieve a good grade with the other option being considered a failure. There's a lot of useless information being teached to children in schools that will eventually end up not being used. NOT ONLY THAT, but the current educational system uses said useless information to grade children. What the current system does is separate children into groups depending on how much useless crap they decided to study. School is not longer a place where you genuinely learn, it's a place where your worth is decided based on how good you can memorize subjects that have a slim chance of ever being used again.


Ivan Illich - "Schooling confuses teaching with learning, grades with education, diplomas with competence, attendance with attainment, and, especially, process with substance."

 

[derelict]

The school system is a ridiculous joke, but this dwarfs it. The end result is going to be kids with no credentials struggling to hold a job in a world that still wants degrees and etc.

Schooling is a problem, but this isn't the answer.

 

[SwimmingRock]

School -cripples- the spirit of learning. School teaches things, valuable things to be sure, but it is not invested in the kind of high-minded growth and learning people seem to be ascribing to it. In function, it focuses primarily on creating viable workers for base positions, people who can read and write and perform basic arithmetic and who are unlikely to be socially maladjusted. By and large it succeeds in this regard, however, this kind of environment is not for everyone, and indeed can do more damage to a person's education and development than other methods.

Of course, as has already been mentioned, the system can not cater to, nor should be expected to cater to everyone. That's why there need to be other options available to those that require them.

I'm not saying that school is for everybody, I'm saying that some level of rudimentary schooling is necessary to function in daily life. I wholeheartedly agree that school is too focused on preparing kids for jobs and not interested enough in helping them develop. I have always been a fan of the Einstein quote:"I never let school interfere with my education."

However, I think schools need to be changed so as to allow for development in the arts as well as sciences and perhaps also the idea of what a school is needs to change. This is not the point of Unschooling, if I understand the term correctly. Giving up on the concept of school and allowing kids to run rampant is not a step in the right direction. It's the other extreme end of the spectrum.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Education, for lazy people.

 

[JaredXE]

Stupid hippie parents and their Cult of the Child. Listen, kids have the nasty habit of growing up no matter how hard we try to delay that notion. Oh, you want your kids to run around and play and read and sing? So who's teaching them to read?

Kids need structure; not absolute, totalitarian structure, but a framework to plan out their day. Aside from the obvious benefit that it helps guide them to know how and what and when to do something, it helps them grow to be adults.

I am reminded of Patton Oswald's explaination of how all the fun things in America are being banned by the asshole children of hippies because their parents were too permissive.

 

[Soxafloppin]

Its silly of them.

There not just stoping there child from gain qualifacations, there stopping them from ever getting a social life.

 

[Iron Mal]

Now I've had numerous problems in the past with teachers being less focused on teaching me valuable and interesting lessons and more on how to regurgitate facts for an exam (so that they don't have to explain a bunch of low marks to their higher ups at the end of the year) so I am fully aware of the flaws of official schooling (there's too much emphasis on marks, grades, exams and leaderboards, students are forced to work harder so the school doesn't look bad and it just ends up making things nightmarish for everyone), but this 'unschooling' thing seems to take these problems to the other extreme (that being, there's absolutely no structure at all and it is entirely possible that nothing valuable or useful will get done).

I hated school but in hind sight it was possibly a nessercary evil, let's face facts, not many children are going to willingly sit down of their own volition and learn half of the crap they force on you in school (yes, you'll get a few budding geniuses and 'gifted' people but they're the exceptions that prove the rule), given the choice kids would not sit in and learn maths or english, they would go play outside or fire up the Xbox/PC/PS3/Wii (and teenagers and above are not much different).

Also, the end result of 'unschooling' gives us...what exactly? Qualifications? Experience? Knowledge and understanding?

School might have felt like a waste of time but at least I got something for my trouble.

 

[JaredXE]

No. I'm stating that the basic knowledge to be a successful human being is learned in the 1st to 4th grade. You learn basic maths which you will use the most and you learn to read, write and formulate sentences.

And what about history or basic knowledge of how our country works? Your idea would create people who would know basic arithmatic and MAYBE how to spell the word 'sentence'. Have you SEEN a 4th grader write or read? Have you seen the majority of 12th graders, or at least those that frequent the internet? They write like 4th graders, which is apparently fine with you.

I'm more worried about how ignorant the average person is going to be, even beyond the ignorance of today, on the basic things we need to know historically so we don't repeat them. Your system of thought leads to an acceleration of what we have today: A small group of elites controlling everything because their parents kicked their ass and payed for them to go to college, and a large base of ignorant citizens that believe Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are giving actual news reports. YOU DO NOT GIVE YOUR CHILDREN CHOICES. Yeah, they can choose what shirt they want to wear, or what they want in their Happy Meal, or what toy they want to play with, but they do not get to choose at that young age how they want to spend the rest of their life: educated or ignorant.

 

[Del-Toro]

The problem with this is the same problem that is inherent in homeschooling ( I homeschooled for a year, I know what I am talking about). The thing about educational institutions wether they are private or public is that aside from the academic superiority they have one great benefit over the "alternative" education styles: Social Interaction. In school you learn to get along and work with people. You also learn to deal with people you don't like. Both of those are essential for making your way in the real world, both of those are forced upon you in public and private schools, neither are inherent in alternative schooling. Check and mate, unschoolers.

 

[JEBWrench]

*raises hand* I question the questioning of education methods by someone who can't use "it's" properly.

What it sounds like is similar to Montessori schools, where teachers direct, and the kids interests dictate what will be done in class. From my understanding, it's very effective in places where traditional schooling hasn't worked well for whatever reasons.

 

[Julianking93]

Well, this is pretty much exactly what I do.

I didn't know there was a word for it.

But my parents let me study whatever the fuck I want when I want it and I seem to be turning out just fine.

 

[GenuineCounterfeit]

As usual, people bang on about the social aspect of things. The common stereotype of home schoolers/unschoolers is, of course, the social outcast. I'm blaming the parents here! I was unschooled, and i went to piles of afterschool activities, classes, workshops, groups filled with people who had the same interests as me, who were all ages. I went to school for a year, and got dumped in a class of 30 people all exactly my age, who had no diversity, and who didn't like the same things as i did. How is that a good social environment?

 

[Byrn Stuff]

I love the idea of unschooling/homeschooling, especially if there's a blend of structure skills-learning and open-ended interest-based learning. Having freedom study what interests you to the extent that it interests you is a fascinating concept.

 

[Julianking93]

Well, this is pretty much exactly what I do.

I didn't know there was a word for it.

But my parents let me study whatever the fuck I want when I want it and I seem to be turning out just fine.

But is it structured? Is it learning on a website/virtual school (for an example, Florida has FLVS, which, IMO, is great) or out of books, or is it learning what you want when you want how you want?

The two latter.

I study out of books when I want to. Not text books mind you, but regular books and I read what I want to when I want to.

I wouldn't say it's structured because I'm hardly ever told what to do past "you should read this book today" but it's not utter chaos like those biased idiots make it out to be on that news program. I apply myself into whatever it is I'm studying at the time and stick with it.