Would You Unschool Your Child?

http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/2010/09/would-you-unschool-your-child/

by DuncanKinney • 16 years ago

78 107 16 years ago

This page isn't loading for me, but to answer the question: absolutely.

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.

reader5000• 16 years ago

Agreed, one of the ironies of school is that one of its sole conceivable benefits is socialization, which is heavily punished and restricted. I have no idea where it was agreed upon that sitting passively listening to middle-aged people lecture for six hours a day is in anyway helpful to a young person, but whatever.

DuncanKinney2• 16 years ago

This socialization comment is one that my coworkers always brings up. "They're breeding serial killers" he half-jokes.

I wasn't very well socialized in school. Maybe that's why I was interested in writing this story.

jerf2• 16 years ago

I think the absolute biggest hurdle that homeschooling faces is that people always compare it against the Platonic ideal of schooling. You know what? I'd send my kid to the Platonic ideal of a school, no problem.

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.

kchodorow• 16 years ago

Describing school as "sitting passively" is a huge generalization. If you have a half-decent school system (which you might not, I was lucky and had a great one) it should be very interactive.

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?

DuncanKinney2• 16 years ago

The site is up now. On my own Wordpress installs I usually run SuperCache but it interferes with some of the custom hacking I've done on this template.

Thanks for the comment.

tommynazareth3• 16 years ago

It is a good article. I agree that unschooling is probably the most demanding form of education for a parent to undertake. I wouldn't insist everyone do it this way (maybe there.ls a possibility for unschooling tutors?).

j_baker2• 16 years ago

I like the idea and feel that a significant number of students (including myself when I was in school) would benefit from it. I think the majority of students are better off with some kind of formal education. Now, whether we're providing the appropriate formal education is another question entirely.

brlewis• 16 years ago

Unschooling seems vaguely defined, but it seems to sit on the child-initiated end of the spectrum. Traditional schooling is at the teacher-initiated end. I'm a fan of the Montessori style, which is near the middle. It's a great balance of freedom and structure.

lotharbot2• 16 years ago

One of the keys to both Montessori style instruction and "un-schooling" is the recognition that children learn at their own pace. Sometimes their brains aren't ready for a particular topic, and trying to get them to learn it too early can do a lot of harm (much like "learning" a physical activity before the muscles and bones are ready for it), or at the very least won't do much good. On the other hand, when a kid is ready to learn a topic, he may pick it up much more quickly than the lesson plans expect. Teacher-initiated schooling, with its curriculum and standards boards, usually doesn't have the flexibility to accommodate different kids' different readiness to learn different topics.

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.

bmj• 16 years ago

This is true, and homeschooling with some sort of curriculum is a nice balance, I think. My wife and I follow a "classical" curriculum with our kids at home, but at the same time, we are flexible according to what works and what doesn't, and what they enjoy. And, hopefully, we're developing and nuturting their intellectual curiosity.

sumeetjain• 16 years ago

"...un-schooling is learning without the trappings of a formal schooling arrangement. It is the act of trusting your child’s natural curiosity to teach them what they need to know. This is not to say that you abandon your children at the playground and pick them up at the end of the day, mind you. Instead, the parent plays a critical role as a resource who is there to answer questions, to talk with and to provide support."

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.

joshkaufman6• 16 years ago

My wife and I are expecting in December, and we're planning on some variation of unschooling for our children, starting at an early age. Based on the research we've done, it's a straightforward way to get better educational results for your kids if done properly.

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.

andrewce• 16 years ago

I spent my summers (as a child) doing more or less what you've described.

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."

tommynazareth3• 16 years ago

I also think it is a fantastic plan.

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.

marknutter• 16 years ago

I've never met a home-schooled kid who wasn't social awkward. I really hate the current education system, but I also recognize that the social skills developed there are almost as important as the formal education kids get.. perhaps even more so.

fr0sty3• 16 years ago

The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.

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.

tbrownaw2• 16 years ago

My sister turned out just fine, and my brother also seems to be doing alright. I had a bit of trouble my first couple years away from home, but then since I supposedly had issues when I went to preschool it probably isn't attributable to the home-schooling.

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.

joshkaufman6• 16 years ago

I think a child's social skills are very influenced by the type of environment at home.

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.

absconditus• 16 years ago

Can you describe what you mean by socially awkward? I am not entirely convinced that what is considered social by most people is desirable.

tokenadult4• 16 years ago

I've never met a home-schooled kid who wasn't social awkward.

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."

mcknz• 16 years ago

There are more social activities these days for home-schooled kids, shared co-ops, and chances for them to get together to socialize with peers. I'd wager for every awkward home-schooled kid there's one in school who is bullied or made fun of. Not all social skills kids learn in school are good ones.

nicholasjbs3• 16 years ago

As a point of comparison, I've met several hundred who are not in the least socially awkward.

joshuacc• 16 years ago

In addition to what some other people have said, there is a certain percentage of kids who are homeschooled because they were socially awkward in school.

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.

Kadin• 16 years ago

Smells like confirmation bias to me.

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.

pbhjpbhj9• 16 years ago

>I've never met a home-schooled kid who wasn't social awkward.

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.

euroclydon• 16 years ago

We're unschooling, but with backstops on reading. If the kids don't want to read for several days in a row, then unfortunately we're going to have to find a way to compel them to. They're young, and reading is the predicate for everything; if we can get 'em into it, hopefully this unschooling will pick up steam.

tokenadult4• 16 years ago

A good book for developing reading skill and getting kids hooked on reading (it has worked for all four of my children) is Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach.

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...

roqetman• 16 years ago

Tried it. Didn't work for my children. As the article says though, it's not for everyone. My kids are super-smart, but lazy, and unfortunately need structure. I homeschooled them for several years, but both of them asked to go to "real" school eventually, one by the age of 6 and the other by 8 (they were about 2 years ahead of the other kids when they enrolled). I think that it's worth the experiment though, but be prepared for the unexpected as you're dealing with an individual, not an ideal.

mturmon• 16 years ago

Such a smart comment. The ideals matter, but so do the individual kids. What works for some may not work for your kids, or for you as a parent. Being adaptive gives better results than following the One True Way. Especially with a thing like "childhood," which is so idealized -- it's easy to get carried away.

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.

Revisor• 16 years ago

But it's you who should motivate them and provide structure for the learning, no?

dnsauve• 16 years ago

While I love the idea of homeschooling and unschooling, I can't quite figure out how people do this while still managing to pay their bills. Wouldn't this, in essence, take up a significant portion of your day, preventing you from working?

tbrownaw2• 16 years ago

My mom stayed home with us while Dad worked (now that we're all grown she got a new job, the sort that has a commute and is counted in GDP). I think the other homechool families in the area did the same thing.

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.

knarf_navillus• 16 years ago

My wife is a stay-at-home mom. They still exist. =P

tokenadult4• 16 years ago

Good question (hence my upvote). I have been the home-educating parent, sporadically employed for money, as my children have been growing. Observing them pursue their interests has given me new career ideas, which I like better than my former career.

pbhjpbhj9• 16 years ago

It's an extension of how you look after infants isn't it. If you have kids then how did you look after them before they reached school age? There you go.

If you chose not to look after them then I guess your question still stands.

bugsy6• 16 years ago

I do it and I am able to work from home most of the time as an engineer. To do a smash up classical education job teaching your 8 yr old to speak fluent Latin will take 4 hrs a day. Then you spend 8 hrs at work while they run around wild, work on projects, or whatever. Teach them how to cook at an early age and now you have freed up even more hours.

Some freelancers will take the kids with them as they travel about the world on assignment. That's an education in itself.

SandB0x• 16 years ago

Wait wait wait. I don't understand this. Unschooling simply seems to mean "being a good parent". Can someone explain the distinction? The Unschooling website doesn't help me either:

"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?

joshkaufman6• 16 years ago

I think many parents think of schools as a form of outsourcing - sending their kids to school means educating their child is no longer their responsibility. (It's also "free" daycare, as PG mentioned in one of his essays)

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.

j_baker2• 16 years ago

I think you're thinking about the parents when you should be thinking about the kids. Let me explain.

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.

Retric2• 16 years ago

Yep, I was "homeschooled" from 4th through 8th grade. I don’t think the term “unschooled” really applied to me, but I was under minimal direction.

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.

tptacek2• 16 years ago

Doesn't "unschooling" mean "unstructured homeschooling"? People who believe in unschooling generally aren't sending their kids to school at all.

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.

joshkaufman6• 16 years ago

I think most people use "homeschooling" in the sense of re-creating a school environment at home - assignments, textbooks, tests, etc. At least one of the parents is expected to take on the role of the teacher, with all that implies.

"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.

bugsy6• 16 years ago

SandB0x, what you describe with your father, his encouraging you to follow your interests and providing materials and support as requested, is indeed what the most common sort of unschooling is like.

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.

SomeCallMeTim• 16 years ago

You have great parents. Not all parents are so supportive, but many are.

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.

Alex39173• 16 years ago

"The current K-12 educational system exists, generally speaking, for two primary reasons. First, its scalability makes it easy for the state to educate its citizens, and second, it gives children and teens a shared public space where they learn to interact with others and hopefully pick up some societal norms."

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?

fr0sty3• 16 years ago

If the core assumption is: 'each area of life is dominated by only a few major schools of thought, and these schools of thought tend to favor the elites' why should disregarding the research produced by the such elites be an issue?

Alex39173• 16 years ago

I think you're comparing what I'm saying with the thesis of Illich's book.

crpatino• 16 years ago

I would down vote you if I could.

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".

Alex39173• 16 years ago

1) I was sort of ignoring the scalability part and responding as if it just said education and socialization. The author never mentions scalability again in the article, so it's not even clear why it's there.

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.

adbachman• 16 years ago

Deschooling Society is available online if you're interested in looking it up again. I highly recommend it. (http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/chap1.h...)

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.

kenjackson2• 16 years ago

If I was unschooled as a child, I think my every minute would have been playing basketball and Atari.

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.

nickpinkston• 16 years ago

They say "not to say you abandon your child at the playground". Every kids plays the "why" game with their parents. They're naturally curious assuming they're stimulated. You can feed this curiosity and see where it takes them. If they love sports, see if they're interested in reading about the greats, or looking at stats, etc.

kenjackson2• 16 years ago

I get the playground line. But I really do mean something stronger. As a child, I may have asked why on occassion, but the most common question was probably, "why can't I play basketball?" or "why can't I play space invaders?".

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%.

pbhjpbhj9• 16 years ago

>Every kids plays the "why" game with their parents.

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.

davidcuddeback• 16 years ago

When I have kids, I might consider this. One of my big fears is that I may not be the most qualified person to teach my children. The idea of un-schooling actually reminds me of a program that I went through in elementary school.

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

That would draw a square with a diagonal line through it. Of course, they had more interesting pictures than this example, such as a horse. Naturally, I wanted to draw these pictures, so I learned how to plot coordinates. Later, I discovered a more challenging set of pictures--the coordinates involved negative numbers, and the grid included all four quadrants of a Cartesian coordinate plane. My teacher gently nudged that it's more advanced, but when I wanted to try anyway, she taught me about negative numbers and I was successful at plotting the negative coordinates. This was all while my peers who were not attending the GATE program were still learning basic arithmetic.

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.

ScottBurson• 16 years ago

"One of my big fears is that I may not be the most qualified person to teach my children."

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.

hnal943• 16 years ago

This sounds a lot like the Montessori philosophy

nicholasjbs3• 16 years ago

As a life-long unschooler, I'd answer with an emphatic yes (though I don't actually plan to have kids of my own). Letting me direct my own education was without a doubt the single greatest thing my parents did for me in life.

"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.

tallanvor• 16 years ago

I would not consider "unschooling" or home-schooling for a child, nor do I think it is a good option for the majority of children.

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.

pbhjpbhj9• 16 years ago

>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 system tends to reinforce the behaviour by not ejecting those who are disruptive to the severe detriment, IMO, of those others who are not.

mquander2• 16 years ago

My contribution: If you're doing this, and you have a smart kid, for God's sake, buy a lot of books, buy every book you can think of and put it in your house. I can point at three quarters of my interests and trace them straight back to books I picked off the shelf when I was 10. My parents had a lot of books, but even so, I ended up having to re-read the ones that were interesting to me instead of pushing further and learning more as a kid.

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.

edanm2• 16 years ago

This is the thing I'm most excited about for the future of the internet. Forget Amazon - anyone with an internet connection has access to audio and video lectures, notes and classwork from Harvard, MIT and others. Almost anything you want to learn can be picked up online, and (illegal though it is) any book you want to read can be found online.

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 :)

vyrotek• 16 years ago

While I agree, I still think there's an important part missing. Testing and Application. While studying topics that you have chosen out of interest is fun, I don't think most people have the discipline to really learn something. That is, until there is an expectation that their knowledge will be tested in some way.

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.

whyenot2• 16 years ago

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.

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.

Qz• 16 years ago

$500 would have lasted me about 6-8 months when I was a kid...

whyenot2• 16 years ago

Better yet, get them a library card. It will open up a whole new world, especially with inter-library loans, and is a whole lot less expensive. Really, it's like pouring gasoline on a fire :)

pbhjpbhj9• 16 years ago

> I can point at three quarters of my interests and trace them straight back to books I picked off the shelf when I was 10.

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.

mquander2• 16 years ago

I agree, I bet that many children would benefit a great deal from that. Eight hours less at school is eight hours more time to expose a kid to as many cool things as possible.

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.

bugsy6• 16 years ago

In unschooling circles, acquiring interesting books and materials and leaving them laying about for kids to find or ignore is called "strewing".

bugsy6• 16 years ago

A lot of the controversy comes from the reality that there's no single definition for unschooling so it can range from montessori style progressive education in which facilitators help the independent learner explore a curriculum of their own choosing, right through keeping the children chained in a basement and fed raw potatoes and water. Everyone would agree the latter is abuse and not really homeschooling or unschooling, but the minute fraction of parents with children chained up in basements are of course going to claim that the children are homeschooled in order to explain why they aren't in school.

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.

petercooper3• 16 years ago

Because the article mentioned not memorizing the alphabet, I thought I could ask a question I've been pondering on a while.

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?

sp3323• 16 years ago

A binary search on a sorted list can only work if you know whether the item you're looking for is earlier or later in the sequence. Not knowing the order of the alphabet is like not knowing the order of the numbers 0-9. You have to fall back to a linear search, which is prohibitively slow for many day-to-day operations.

petercooper3• 16 years ago

Appreciate the point in the first sentence; that's just what I was looking for :-) But..

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).

geuis• 16 years ago

I think teaching your kids the alphabet isn't asking for too much. And whatever you do, don't mix up the letter order.

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.

petercooper3• 16 years ago

I think teaching your kids the alphabet isn't asking for too much.

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 ;-)

kls• 16 years ago

We Homeschool, My wife is a full time mom, she was a practitioner so has a lot of Bio background. I Freelance, and generally work from home. I have a friend here in my home town that came back from the valley after a successful exit who introduced us to the concept of unschooling.

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.

jsharpe• 16 years ago

As always, correlation is not causation. I was unschooled, and a lot of people get into it precisely because school is simply too slow for their kids. It isn't surprising that these kids would go on to be very bright.

Would You Unschool Your Child?

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