Schooling, Homeschooling, and Now, "Unschooling" 1345
ciaohound writes "The Baltimore Sun has a story about 'unschooling,' which is like homeschooling except, well, without the schooling. '...unschooling incorporates every facet of a child's life into the education process, allowing a child to follow his passions and learn at his own pace, year-round. And it assumes that an outing at the park — or even hours spent playing a video game — can be just as valuable a teaching resource as Hooked on Phonics.' If you have ever been forced to sit in a classroom where no learning was taking place, you may understand the appeal. A driving force behind the movement is parents' dissatisfaction with regular schools, and presumably with homeschooling as well. Yet few researchers are even aware of unschooling and little research exists on its effectiveness. Any Slashdotters who have experience with 'unschooling?'"
So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Unschooling: For those kids who aspire to be the dish washers of the future"
But seriously, is there any less way to be prepared for higher education (higher, meaning anything from 3rd grade on up)?
Sounds like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Old fashioned good parenting. At dinner time, I'd make a game of learning, with Q&A, and they loved it. It's taking the time to answer your kids' questions and satisfy their innate curiosity, rather than stifling it like the public school system does. A walk in the park CAN be a learning experience.
My best friends family did this (Score:1, Insightful)
It worked great for him, not so hot for his brother. my take on it is, it depends on the kid.
Good luck in university (Score:5, Insightful)
These parents are in for a nasty shock when their precious snowflakes head off to university and can't get in. What you will discover, and many homeschooling parents have already found out, is that they don't care how good a job you think you did or how proud you are. You pass their various admissions tests, or you go somewhere else. They are not at all interested in your ideas of how education should be. Your reading comprehension, writing, and math skills had better be up to spec or you are sent packing.
It's called "Evenings" (Score:5, Insightful)
No preparation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Unschooling: For those kids who aspire to be the dish washers of the future"
But seriously, is there any less way to be prepared for higher education (higher, meaning anything from 3rd grade on up)?
Given the number of children in the current system that aren't remotely prepared...?
Depends on the parents (Score:4, Insightful)
Good parents would do well with this, poor parents terribly. If only there were a way to decide who gets to do this.... but then who gets to decide? We can't, that's who.
I've taught before, I know there are both kinds of parents out there. If you're pessimistic about this you probably had the bad parents, optimistic you probably had the good ones.
Think of how the kid feels - learning what's needed and being interested in what's being learned. The only fear I have is that lots of kids are forced to take certain classes, learn that they actually like it, and have a happy and successful career. We just need a guarantee that the students will be exposed to more than just their interests, and then I won't have a problem with this.
Re:Bah... (Score:3, Insightful)
Learning should be fun whenever possible, but not all things are pleasant, and children need to learn that some things require work and discipline.
Even work and discipline can be made fun. It just takes a little imagination. The trick is to make them want to, not force them to. My ex-wife hates reading, and that's because her parents forced her to. I love reading, and that's because my parents read to me and stimulated my imagination. I wanted to learn to read, and that made the learning fun.
No child fails, the teacher fails the child.
Re:Good luck in university (Score:3, Insightful)
If the parents (Score:4, Insightful)
actively use everything as a teaching tool, then fine, otherwise it's just creating a steaming pile of ignorant burger flippers.
Of course, if they were already doing that, then the school system would be fine.
Most homeschoolers I know are people who aren't sociable and just don't want to deal with the daily social 'grind' of dealing with people. Also they ahve some fear the child will be exposed to something outside there own beliefs. Political or theological.
Re:Good luck in university (Score:4, Insightful)
Good homeschoolers can pass those tests just fine, often better the class taught kids.
Home schooling isn't about goofing off.
Re:Good luck in university (Score:5, Insightful)
What you will discover, and many homeschooling parents have already found out... Your reading comprehension, writing, and math skills had better be up to spec or you are sent packing.
Got a citation to support this? From what I see, homeschooled kids tend to be better-prepared academically than their public-schooled counterparts.
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Unschooling: For those kids who aspire to be the dish washers of the future"
I know plenty of dishwashers who graduated high school and several, in this economy, have college degrees. At what point do we say that no matter how you progress through school, there may come a time when you are at the bottom rung for one reason or another?
Do I think that "unschooling" is a good idea? Not particularly, especially after watching a documentary entitled Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa [snagfilms.com] (you can watch it there free). This particular documentary had a portion where a father was raising his family on the Mesa in a camper. Their education included all the things that were supposedly important like measuring things, shooting shit, and watching the others on the Mesa smoke lots of pot. I'm sure that "unschooling" done properly and with the right child could be successful--unfortunately I have a feeling that the majority of those that think it would be the best option, are probably better off going back to school themselves.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good luck in university (Score:3, Insightful)
These parents are in for a nasty shock when their precious snowflakes head off to university and can't get in. What you will discover, and many homeschooling parents have already found out, is that they don't care how good a job you think you did or how proud you are. You pass their various admissions tests, or you go somewhere else. They are not at all interested in your ideas of how education should be. Your reading comprehension, writing, and math skills had better be up to spec or you are sent packing.
Even if they succeed in insilling the knowledge necessary to pass the admissions tests (homeschoolers are required, at least in my state, to pass regular competency tests, just like public school students) any child educated in this way will be woefully unprepared for the regimented world of the higher-level instruction. All of a sudden, they'll be expected to shut up, sit still, and listen for hours to a boring instructor with his whiteboard and PowerPoint slides.
Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should this necessarily be worse than regular schooling? If this technique teaches that every moment is a learning opportunity, and it does not teach children that learning is a chore, children who learn in this fashion may grow up to be more knowledgeable and curious than their peers. The only important thing that I see lacking in this technique is teaching children how to jump through the arbitrary hoops that life will expect them to jump through. If the parents make this lesson a part of the learning process, by teaching the children why delayment of gratification is important, and how to do it, then I see no inherent reason why children who learn this way should be any less successful.
Of course, the technique also seems tailor made for lazy parents, and it seems easy to do wrong, but I ask, if done right, and the proper 'jumping through hoops' techniques are taught, what is inherently inferior about this technique?
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble is "guidance". I agree that a committed, competent, organized parent could probably pull this off, and end up with a very well-rounded and well-educated child. After all, the parent-teacher ratio is fantastic, and there are no discipline problems with "you're not my Mom, I don't have to do what you tell me to".
But, to succeed (at either college admissions or finding a desirable non-college job), a student has to have a balance of useful skills. If the parent lacks those skills, lacks the tools, or lacks the commitment to teach and promote those skills within their child, this could turn out really badly for the child.
There are lots of parents who are smart and organized enough to do this. There are a bunch who are ambitious enough to do it. There are some that are even committed enough to see it through. There are a few that have the time to do it. Unfortunately, there are just a small number with all four traits. We pay for Waldorf school for our daughter because I feel the method of education is worth the cost. I don't think we could take on this kind of task ourselves, though, which is why we chose what we feel is the best method then "hired experts" to do the heavy lifting.
I'm not saying home/non-schooling should be disallowed, but it's in society's best interests to educate as many kids as we can to the highest level we can reasonably achieve. So if a parent wants to do this, I'd say they should have to demonstrate the skills and commitment, then they can receive support, assistance, and above all constructive progress monitoring and feedback.
After all, if a parent succeeds, they've saved the school district a significant amount of money. It's well worth taking the parents who are willing and able to do this and supporting them as a volunteer force to take care of their own kids.
But if they fail, they cost society an even more significant sum. So the overarching priority is - is the parent accomplishing the task they have taken on? If they start faltering, intervene with assistance and constructive advice. If they start having real trouble, then the child should go to school.
But, I guess if there is a state-established guideline and monitoring, it becomes "home schooling" again, doesn't it?
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:4, Insightful)
Same here. I was usually bored to death by the school.
Until I got transfered to a special school for gifted children, where the material was presented at much quicker pace and at much more depth.
Just imagine: math textbooks with problems that you can't just solve right away!
Depends on the teacher (Score:3, Insightful)
Can parents do a good job teaching their kids? Sure. Will they? Well that depends. Plenty of parents think they are smarter than they are, or more problematically, think their kids are smarter than they are.
I work at a university and because of the problems with home schooling and charter schools, they instituted new entrance tests some time ago. Just having a reasonable SAT score and a diploma wasn't enough (it's a public school so admissions aren't harsh), you had to pass their own English and math test. These weren't hard, but made sure you had the basic skills needed.
The English test is the one that seemed to trip up alternate education kids the most often. It was a fairly classic reading comprehension/critical writing test. You read an essay, you write your own analysis on it. However many seemed to have problems with that. Why I don't know for sure but my guess would be because that was the sort of thing they weren't taught. English for them was reading books or the like, which is not what the university is interested in.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, Child A needs to learn his multiplication tables too.
So you're saying "school + extracurricular learning > school", which is a rather silly thing to argue about.
What this is about is whether "extracurricular learning > school", which could be slightly less silly. If whoever was helping with the "extracurricular" learning knew a large amount about pretty much everything, and could generate interest in all of history, politics, math, literacy, science (how to use experiments and record-keeping to assist curiosity), the various trivia that we learned from science (earth goes around the sun), basic accounting, etc.
Just remember.. (Score:5, Insightful)
what Mark Twain said - "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education".
Schools theses days are about indoctrinating and conforming to useless standards, not about learning. If you want to learn, you have to do it outside of school.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Child B. Maths is a prerequisite for being an Engineer (with a big "E"). Spend all day tinkering with old bikes and maybe you'll be a mechanic.
And that makes everything you say true? FWIW I'm the same level, but I wasn't bored.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that I only hear this from smart kids who whine about having been bored in school?
There is one very good reason why the public school system has consistently told people like you to get bent. If you track students by ability - all the smart kids together, all the average kids together, all the dumb kids together - you are flushing the dumb ones down the toilet. Even the biggest idiot knows that he has been labeled stupid, and will perform to your expectations. You'll never get them back after that. Conversely, in our current system - you may have been bored, but I'd lay even money you turned out just fine. You didn't need the help. You were just a spoiled brat who couldn't think of anyone besides yourself. (Says the former spoiled brat who had his eyes opened by a much less intelligent, but much wiser man than me. Thanks Josh.)
I call bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
This is fucking ludicrous. A large part of the failure of school is because the parents don't get involved. Studies have consistently shown that schools with high parent involvement produce better-educated children, and parents who engage their children outside of school produce better-educated children.
If parents aren't getting involved in education when the bulk of the burden is on someone else, why would they take any more time to do the whole thing themselves?
Schools are necessary. Very few parents have the necessary knowledge or experience to properly educate a child. If there is a problem with the school system here in the states, it's up to us to fix it.
I certainly don't want a society full of uneducated twits. We have enough of those now.
I knew our society was starting to distrust intelligence and education, and making ignorance a virtue, but this is fucking ridiculous.
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
In school, I learned how to read and write, how to use numbers, some basics on how the world works in a biological/scientific sense and - perhaps most importantly - how to deal with and understand other people.
Yes, the school system sucks. Any school system sucks simply because it will never be able to deal with all the different types of students. But NOT having a school system is probably even worse.
Practical Learning (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like... (Score:3, Insightful)
FWIW, the "Calvin's Dad" effect is a huge positive. Even in the strip, BW pointed out the benefits:
1. Calvin learns to not always trust authority figures.
2. Calvin learns that he should look things up on his own, to find the truth himself, and not depend on others to slake his curiosity.
While I agree with you on kids needing to learn how to deal with structure (to a certain extent -- many of the happiest people I know operate outside of normal structure systems, like a formal workplace), I completely disagree on the Calvin's Dad effect... I believe one of the best things you can teach a kid is to think critically and do research for themselves.
This thread [slashdot.org] is a good illustration.
Re:Bah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like 'uneducation' to me. The problem with learning at your own pace is that not all students are naturally curious, and even those who are are most likely not naturally curious about every subject that needs to be taught in the world. Learning should be fun whenever possible, but not all things are pleasant, and children need to learn that some things require work and discipline. Outside of research labs, very few individuals in life are able to do or think about just what they want to do.
From a cynical point of view, it sounds an awful lot like the people I know whose parents had them home schooled but then didn't actually spend any time teaching them anything. They didn't end up learning anything and now aren't really prepared to get a job that pays the rent.
I don't think it's impossible to make it work well, and for a certain kind of kid I think it would be fantastic. Unschooling would require a lot of involvement from parents, though, probably a lot more than public school would, and I expect that some portion of parents aren't willing to provide that involvement. I'd worry that those parents will latch onto unschooling as a way to justify letting their kids do whatever they want without any supervision.
Re:Don't experiment on your kids! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Old fashioned good parenting. At dinner time, I'd make a game of learning, with Q&A, and they loved it. It's taking the time to answer your kids' questions and satisfy their innate curiosity, rather than stifling it like the public school system does. A walk in the park CAN be a learning experience.
You know what old-fashioned good parenting is? Doing all that stuff you just said AND making sure your kid goes to school, helping him with his homework from school, and making sure getting a good education (including school) is an important value instilled on him from the very beginning.
The public schools just about everywhere are just fine at teaching the basic skills that serve as a foundation for higher education (reading, writing, arithmetic, the sciences, etc), but they simply don't have the resources or the time to give each child the individualized attention they need to make sure they truly understand what's being taught. This is why ultimately your child's success in school is up to you as a parent. You need to constantly reinforce the importance of school, and you need to be ready willing and able to help and encourage them when they're not in school.
Too many parents today are dumping their kids off on the schools, doing nothing to promote education or learning during the times the kids are not in school, and just expecting that the school system will somehow be able to turn their neglected children into Rhodes scholars. Then, when that doesn't happen, they blame the school system.
My kids attend a public school that serves kids from all economic and social backgrounds. They do very well in school because we maintain clear communication with their teachers, we make sure they do homework every single day, we help them with what they don't understand, and we attend any and all parent-teacher conferences available to us. Meanwhile, the kids whose parents just dump them off every day, never talk to the teacher, never ask about their homework, and don't seem to care if their kids are educated or not, struggle. Then, when the kid comes home with poor grades, they blame the teacher and the school, despite the fact that the teacher may have been begging them to come in and talk about their child for months and months, and they never showed up.
We already do plenty (some would say too much) to try and hold schools accountable for student performance. It's time to start holding parents accountable too.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
When I'm stuck at school or work and am bored I find better ways to entertain myself, thinking, writing or drawing. I have had teachers that didn't care if I sat in the back of the class room coding on my laptop as long as I kept up and didn't disturb anyone else.
This might just be my lack of motivation but I find it very helpful to be forced to find someway to entertain myself, often in a positive manner, when not surrounded by the distractions of home.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No preparation (Score:4, Insightful)
ritalin certainly helps.....
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Child B
Because one day Child A is going to open one of those black boxes that has the sticker: "WARNING: ELECTRICAL SHOCK DANGER IF OPENED. NO CONSUMER SERVICEABLE PARTS" and does something "inquisitive", like touching a flyback transformer or CRT capacitor that can be found in most monitors and TVs.
Then there will be no more Child A.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:4, Insightful)
Child D: The one that went to school and had the support at home to be inquisitive.
When I as in school every person that complained about being bored, being in the top percentile and said school was a waste weren't taking the top tier classes.
Those of use taking the top class in every subject were quite engaged by school and learned a lot of cool stuff becasue those teachers are often the most interesting.
Re:If the parents (Score:2, Insightful)
Most homeschoolers I know are people who aren't sociable and just don't want to deal with the daily social 'grind' of dealing with people. Also they ahve some fear the child will be exposed to something outside there own beliefs. Political or theological.
Those aren't unschoolers. Unschoolers that I know, and since I am one, I know a lot of them, are every one of them is very conscience of socializing. They just want control of their children's education, and not turn it over to the state and the kids peers. I would argue that the main problem with public school is that we group all the kids by age rather than skill in each subject. By grouping by age, we end up with lots of peer groups that divide our children in ways that don't exist in the "adult" world.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
I know many brilliant people who never lived up to their potential partly because, among other reasons, they were completely stifled in a public education system. They were never taught how to work hard to learn, how to challenge themselves.
Yes, there's some selfishness and entitlement issues with people feeling that their school system failed their brilliance.
But from a societal standpoint, that educational system failed society at large by not nurturing the potential of those people.
But of course, that's not the purpose of the educational system in the US. The purpose is to create a functional workforce that is conditioned to structured systems.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:0, Insightful)
You know, talking to others, playing with others. Gleaning strength through emulation of your superiors, having your ass kicked my the occaional bully, being a mentor to the weak. Learning your strengths and your weaknesses through interaction with your peers. Later in high school, partying and getting laid. All of those are lost on many of you in this discussion.
Does the bad stereotype of the Slashdotter being spoiled, arrogant, silver-spoon trustfund latchkey kids with no social skills hold true here?
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Child B. Child B without a shadow of a doubt.
I'm sorry to burst the bubbles of all the school reformists around here, but the simple fact is learning anything, and learning it well, requires a certain amount of effort, work and indeed hard slogging. While I agree that school should not be a monotonous, pointless drudge, at some point in education student are going to be required to sit down at their desks and drill something difficult into their heads.
Do you know what happens when you let children run around, be inquisitive, ask questions, appreciate concepts, and open doors of wonderment in every topic? You get Arts students. Arts and Humanities students who know how to appreciate everything and know how to do absolutely nothing. People who can master the art of appearing intelligent whilst remaining shockingly ignorant. People whose ideas and tastes and practices are simply imitations of something that was actually original.
When you sit a child down, get them to learn their times tables; learn how to spell and write; learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide; learn how to solve algebraic equations; learn the periodic table; learn the organs of the body; learn the continents and countries of the world; learn the history of their own country; learn the planets of the solar system; and nowadays learn the principles and usage of computers, you will have given that child the tools they need to build a life worth living. A life that they spend bettering themselves and their society.
I was as bored as anyone in school. Sleepy too. But, reluctant as I was, I learned my lessons and I know full well that if I had been left to sit at home with entire library of books and no one to watch me I would probably have spent the whole day playing video games. Maybe my education could have been faster, better and more comprehensive, but only if my society wanted to spend more on it. But no matter how magnificent my experience could have been, I could not know all that I do today without those mind-numbingly painful drills and lessons and test and reviews.
Learning is fun. But it's also pretty hard. And a wide curriculum means a better chance of everyone finding something they are good at. Combined, this means that most children will be bored at some stage during the school day. But it also means there's a good chance they'll learn something each day too, or learn how to do it better.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:2, Insightful)
So, how does Child A learn his multiplication tables? It's still rote learning - it's just happening one on one.
I don't have a problem with the theory of unschooling, but the practice. Theoretically, it shouldn't matter HOW kids get an education, as long as they gain a certain minimal level of knowledge to be whatever they want to be. So, how is that measured? Typically, you test for the knowledge. Oh, wait - everyone hates NCLB because of...testing to make sure there is some minimal level of knowledge.
There is a middle ground between "unschooling" and "teaching to the test". As for the "Who do you think is going to be a better engineer someday?" question, if I was forced to choose I'd really rather have an engineer that gets his math right than one who is original and creative but can't get the damned thing to work because he can't do the calculations correctly.
I'm reminded of the last episode of Project Runway (go ahead, laugh, but at least I have a wife to watch something with). One of the "designers" was full of ideas and plans that would have been beautiful. One problem - he couldn't sew. So no matter how stylish his designs WOULD have been, they wound up looking like total crap because the finishing was so poor.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
We regret to inform you that Child C has died due to electrical shock.
It wasn't curiosity that killed the cat, it was ignorance. Curiosity was framed.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Insightful)
There is one very good reason why the public school system has consistently told people like you to get bent. If you track students by ability - all the smart kids together, all the average kids together, all the dumb kids together - you are flushing the dumb ones down the toilet. Even the biggest idiot knows that he has been labeled stupid, and will perform to your expectations. You'll never get them back after that.
That's just total rubbish though. The best classes I took at secondary school (UK, so GCSEs) were the ones that were segregated on ability. We ploughed through the curriculum at a fair pace in our maths and science classes whereas mixed ability classes dragged as the teacher tried to respond to various levels of ability at the same time. Mixed ability classes might work if learning was more focused on groups of students interacting and discussing ideas in groups rather than the rote learn-to-test that secondary education here in the UK has become.
Thinking about it like that, mixed ability classes require a different, arguably better style of teaching. I think that point is missed a lot of times this discussion comes up.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you from personal experience hearing another student say "I could not have passed without you" is much more fulfilling than simply hearing the instructor say "you passed". Only the foolish refuse to train their replacements. The brilliant will have a hard time finding enough replacements to keep them moving upward.
Re:Sounds like... (Score:3, Insightful)
Please send your children to school.
I sent mine to school, and was underwhelmed at their education. To me, this "unschooling" thing isn't about keeping your kids out of school, but keeping the bad part of school out of them. The first thing the public school system teaches kids is to hate learning. You have to instill the love of learning in them yourself.
If you don't like your public school, do what everyone else does and move until you find one you like.
That's not always an option.
You, I, and 99% of all parents are ridiculously underequipped to educate their children independently of trained professionals
Alas, most of the "trained professionals" teaching most public schools are woefully incompetent. I had three good teachers in 12 years of public school, and I don't think my kids fared any better.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good luck in university (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:2, Insightful)
Given the number of children in the current system that aren't remotely prepared...?
A fair comment, but is taking them out of the system entirely going to somehow prepare them?
Well I haven't read the article yet, so I guess I am still eligible to post... Anyways, The folks I know who are "unschooling" Are essentially homeschooling, they are just not using the same methods and materials that public schools are currently using (Homeschoolers frequently just provide a "school environment" in their home.) Most importantly "unschoolers" are intentionally avoiding replicating the "school" atmosphere in their home. They feel that public school is mostly focused on making kids "obedient citizens" or "little robots". And they very much want their children to have "open minds" and not "be like the rest".
What gets my attention the most though, is that everyone I know who is doing this is very intelligent and usually well educated (Much more so than most elementary school teachers) This would not work for the average American family.... They lack the fundamental tools and education to pass on anything worthwhile to their children.
This is a trendy term for parents who look at our education system and think "I don't like what they are doing to my child, I don't like what he is learning there..." And most importantly "I think I can do a better job"
I think it's pretty sad that in most cases it's true. Our schools, staffed with trained professionals, sets the bar so low that just about anyone with some brains, and time could do a better job. Even though they lack any sort of formal training or devotion to said process. (in other words our specialists , suck so bad, that anyone can do their job, and do it better.)
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just do Montessori instead (Score:3, Insightful)
My whole family went through the Montessori program from 3-year-old kindergarten to 5-8th grade. Some did really well and others, well, not so good.
The structure part of Montessori is really important - if a student is allowed to skate through without honing skills, they can leave really academically unbalanced.
I didn't like biology, so I kept doing the same vertibrate/invertibrate flash cards. I didn't like reading, so I read the same book on greek mythology during reading time.
I really like the idea of Montessori so long as it's implemented properly (I know Montessori teachers have to go through an extensive training period before getting certified), but it also takes parent involvement to get things done. Even then, a kid or two will figure out how to skate through the system and not learn what they were supposed to. By that point, you're in an area where a conventional school can pick them up and get them back to speed in a remedial program.
Re:If the parents (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm making a fairly big assumption here, that you are a social progressive / liberal type.
You just a bigot. You probably think of yourself as this highly enlightened progressive. Yeah, my kids (home schooled) probably wouldn't want to hang out with you either.
However, my kids are very well socially adjusted and can handle most situations quite fine, even if that simply means walking away from elitist dolts.
How would you like to hang out in a church for five days a week around people you don't agree with? I'm sure that they would come to the exact same conclusion you did, that you can't adjust socially and deal with the daily grind of people.
My kids are exposed to all sorts of things outside viewpoints. They all have traveled overseas for extended periods, often traveling alone. They've seen other cultures and customs, and they adjusted just fine, without having to compromise their values in the process.
And I would suggest to you that it doesn't matter what "school" a child goes to, if the parents aren't involved in "education" their kids will be "burger flippers".
Education is more than school. And school often has little to do with education. It is often just a free babysitting service so mom and dad can work and ignore the kids.
BTW, I work in public education, and I homeschool my kids. I don't want them learning what I've seen in occur in classrooms that has NOTHING to do with "education".
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, the looked the part - but when it came time to stop talking and start doing, they fell apart. Which implies that they weren't as brilliant as you or they thought. If they lacked the drive in school to get off their butts and improve themselves - they weren't going to succeed among other (actually) brilliant people when they got out into the real world.
Falsifiable by existence proof - the number of brilliant people who did excel after attending public school. From a societal standpoint - the educational system was a screaming success because it separated the poseurs from the real McCoy.
No, there's nothing but selfishness and entitlement issues - it's not societies fault that they weren't actually the special snowflake they thought themselves to be.
Re:Bah... (Score:3, Insightful)
No child fails, the teacher fails the child.
As someone who worked in "alternative education" for a while, that's not entirely true. There are stupid kids out there. There are kids who don't want to learn anything at all (usually in my experience these are kids who grew up in a really privileged environment and never had to work for anything in their lives).
It is partially true. If you drone on about sines, cosines, and tangents for 15 minutes, kids will get bored. If you tell them you're going to show them how to design and build a set of steps that people won't trip on (which actually can use quite a bit of trig and geometry), they'll pay a lot more attention.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it does. But it only needs a few Einstein's. It also needs retail managers, mediocre accountants, office workers, checkers, mail carriers...in far larger numbers than we need a smart (but not genius) kid to realize his full potential.
I disagree with your statement. You can *never* have enough intelligent people, or even "Einsteins". Until we're all chillin' on interstellar spacecraft with unlimited fuel and your only worry is what galaxy you're going to visit next, there are plenty of complex problems that need solving.
Re:Good luck in university (Score:5, Insightful)
No. You didn't pay anything because you were smart.
The very real possibility of some of those stats is that homeschooled kids would be smart in regular school as well. Parent involvement is critical in any education, and the commitment of homeschooling parents is very high. Maybe parents with that commitment level are smarter or work harder and pass those traits on to their kids.
Just like the study reported in Freakonomics [usatoday.com] that kids parents with at least 50 books in their house score 5% better than a child with no books, and a child with 100 books scores 5% better than the child with 50 books. But there was no correlation at all with test scores and how often parents read to kids. Because educated and motivated people will buy more books, and they pass those traits on to their kids. The books are not the cause of intelligence, but an indicator of intelligence.
It may be the same for homeschooling.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I'm quite certain the gp was trying to point out that having 'engineer' in your job title and being a Professional Engineer are completely different things, and that the latter requires a lot more education.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:4, Insightful)
"you are flushing the dumb ones down the toilet."
The dumb ones will dive into the toilet of their own accord, but before they do they help make school a Hellmouth.
The bright kids shouldn't have to suffer merely to make the dumbshits feel good when it is smart folk who advance mankind. Nurture the intelligent and don't hold them back to make the worthless feel good. We have program after program to make the parents of Johnny Window-Licker feel good by pretending he won't be a mop-actuating doorstop, while gifted kids are merely pressured to conform.
Many Slashdotters are well aware how the US education system exalts the stupid. No surprise that bright parents who value their children send them to boarding schools or home school them. The first step in helping the gifted is to rescue them from the herd.
Re:Good luck in university (Score:5, Insightful)
I think part of the problem with that statistic is that in the public schools, you get the kids from the worst socio-economic classes in the nation. Try teaching someone that math matters when his buddy in the gang got shot in front of his eyes, he doesn't know his dad, and his mom is selling drugs from home.
For parents who have the proper education and how know how to pass it on, homeschooling can produce excellent results. But realize this is a self-selected sample, and it won't work for everyone.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Insightful)
... They were never taught how to work hard to learn, how to challenge themselves....
That statement struck a chord with me, in my experience as a parent.
My own son, who is now a sophomore in college, was "gifted." By that, I mean that he is intelligent, he found schoolwork to be extremely easy for many years, and he seemed to have talents in certain areas "beyond his years." He coasted through school, found it extremely boring and filled with (what he perceived to be) dummies at both ends of the classroom.
The thing is, he eventually ran into school material that he could not immediately understand. At that point, after so many years of coasting, he had no idea how to go about solving this new problem of his. It took him years to figure out how to really work at that kind of stuff. He did, and along the way he realized that he wasn't quite as bright as he thought he was.
I've seen other kids follow the same path, but sometimes with different results. Some do what my son managed to do -- figure it out and learn from it -- while others seemed to just give up and focus on the things that they can do well without effort. Some of the kids in that latter group will succeed, but a lot of them will wind up disappointed with their lives down the road. The stuff that happens to you is rarely just what you want or like, and you have to deal with it. The former group will deal with it, but the latter group will consistently either turn to help, ignore the problem or run away.
All generalizations are bad, I know. I'm just making a point.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:2, Insightful)
DEhumanizing? Are you suggesting that all humans are of the same level of intelligence? If calling dumb people dumb is 'dehumanizing' them, then you have some kind of strange, idealized definition of human. It's you here who's assuming that all true humans are smart. Nobody else is implying that unintelligent people are somehow less human.
In high school I was able to go to a different school for 'advanced' students during the second half of my school day. It was a great opportunity to learn, and gave me a taste of what a tiered schooling system might be like. In 11th grade I was able to take both AP Trigonometry and AP Physics (college level classes) in the same period, freeing up room in my schedule for other courses. It would have been perfect, except for the fact that the teachers were still forced to 'teach for the test', meaning that on top of my normal trig and physics classwork I got to do pages upon pages of simple algebra in preparation for a standardized test that I knew I had absolutely no chance of failing.
Most of it I didn't complete; instead I spent my time learning to code (which is now my occupation). No schools around here offered anything like a programming class, so I had to do it at home on my own time. At one point I had a 34 in the trigonometry class, despite getting 90s or above on all the tests (and having a B in the college-run portion of the dual-credit class); that is how heavily they weighted the busywork.
It's like they were actively trying to prevent me from going to college simply because I wouldn't submit to training for problems that I could already do in my head years before being tested on them. But of course, they had to keep it 'fair'. The other kids would complain if I was able to get by without doing busywork, even though it was obvious that they needed the practice while I didn't.
Your response will probably be something like, "You should suck it up and do the work. Everyone else has to," but that's a lie. Not everyone does have to 'do the busywork', IRL. A captain of a cruise ship sure as hell isn't the one polishing the rails and mopping up spills.
So why raise kids with an idealized version of life? Do you really want them to be able to graduate from college before they first realize that they aren't in fact able to be anything they want to be? Where's the dehumanizing aspect of saying, "Sorry, little Johnny, but you don't grasp these concepts yet. We're going to send you to a simpler school, but if you study hard and learn all you need to know then we'll move you up to the next level." Why is that unacceptable and dehumanizing when 10 years later they're just going to hear, "Sorry, Mr. Doe, you don't have the aptitude required for this position in our company. However, we can start you out as sales clerk, and if you show the right initiative and sufficient business acumen we'll consider you for manager."
A multilevel schooling system can be accomplished without denying anyone access to the education they desire. Sending them to a different school isn't denying them anything when they don't have the curiosity, desire, or intelligence to learn the higher concepts anyway. The schools could even have the same courses, but at different paces and with different teaching styles. The point isn't to tell kids they're stupid, but to make sure that their slower learning pace isn't interfering with the quicker kids.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:2, Insightful)
The world needs ditch diggers.
Yes, but not very many of them. In most cases a single backhoe operator can dig ditches faster, better and cheaper than a team of ditch diggers. Operating a backhoe isn't exactly brain surgery but it is a learned skill and basic reading and math skills are generally a prerequsite.
C == A (Score:3, Insightful)
Child A is taught to be inquisitive about everything around him. As he encounters things in his daily life he figures out how they work, rather than accepting them as magical black boxes.
You Wrote:
Child C, the one who took apart the toaster when he was 4.
As you can see, the two are equivalent. Except the original was better written, and of course there's the fact you misunderstood it - I guess we know where you got your schooling from.
From a homeschooler (Score:4, Insightful)
Our schools are presently designed to help kids be successful in the context of economy (as we understand economy today). American schools are beginning to fall behind in this aspect, but the point is that they are designed to produce kids who work well together as managers, employees, businessmen, etc. We want our kids to get good jobs, be competitive, and become wealthy (or "successful"). This kind of system was imported from Europe, where it continues to enjoy good success toward these ends. There are a lot of amazing things that can be accomplished when people work together this way, there is no doubt about it.
On the other hand, people like me don't buy into the economic argument for schooling. I'm interested more in the educational, or intellectual aspect that Thomas Jefferson advocated. Schools should seek to build character and create men and women who are suitable for democracy, because they know how to think as individuals and follow their own, unique paths through life. Perhaps there is more emphasis on argument than on cooperation -- I don't know. We do not seek to bend to other people as employees, citizens, etc. Schools should engender the love of learning and help students discover their passion and life's work. The hope is that students will be able to find whatever it is that calls them to action, and then master it. We believe that talent is naturally profuse and must be developed outside of a strict format. This isn't facilitated by the "factory" style public schooling that is operated from the top down. It is more of a ground-up approach, but it could still work as a public system (in my opinion). True, it may not produce massive economic wealth or compete favorably in a capitalistic society, but I am convinced that it can contribute greatly to personal satisfaction and fulfillment.
What I find is that all my kids are autodidacts. I don't remember actively "teaching" the subject of reading, yet we read together all the time and my son quickly became the best reader of his peer group. On the other hand, some areas that he is not interested in still lag behind his friends because we don't force him to improve in those areas. We expect that he will eventually see a need to develop them. Under such circumstances, it appears to take far less time to learn the subjects that traditionally waste years of our time in formal schools. There, everyone must progress at more or less the same pace; not so with homeschool.
I realize that people who step outside of the accepted social norm, like I have done with homeschooling, can be feared by others. What if we are too dumb to raise our own kids? For instance, I am lucky to have a high-school diploma, yet I teach my own children. To some, that sounds like madness. What if we ruin the social commons by producing dysfunctional adults? Shouldn't our government protect us from that?
It's true that sometimes the plans that other people make for us are superior to our own plans for ourselves and our children. Maybe it can be argued that others really do know better, based on some official standard. What I worry about is the ability of these true believers, some who have posted to this story right here on Slashdot, to eliminate the sovereignty of parents over their families. In America, at least, I believe we still subscribe to the idea that regular human beings are fit to guide their own destinies. For me, that is the appeal of homeschool.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Insightful)
"Multiplication tables" in this context means learning the function x*y over the set [x,y<=9], which amounts to the atomic operation for performing base-10 multi-digit multiplications. You can't realistically break that down in any useful way - Although I suppose you can "solve" those by adding x to itself y times, you can't meaningfully move on to more complex problems before mastering that basic one.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:4, Insightful)
If you knew much about the history of compelled schooling, you would realize that a high school education was never meant to prevent you from menial, mind-numbing and stressful jobs. Quite the opposite. It was meant to prepare you for it.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Insightful)
Einstein evaluated patents, which is one of the most glaringly dull jobs there is most of the time, with occasional moments of delight. He was also married and had children. If you think he didn't have to do some dishes, change some diapers, and try to fix a toilet now and then, you have a very distorted idea of married life with children. And as a Jew living in Berlin, before the war, you'd better believe he learned some harsh lessons in when to shut up and do what he was told.
Re:Oo! Oo! Oo! (Score:2, Insightful)
I, on the other hand, learned far more than you'd ever learn in a public school. Being homeschooled via complete workbooks, I learned a lot that my parents never knew, or, in one case, ever understood. Public school never taught my mom how to correctly solve algebraic equations; my school books taught me, and I was able to show her. I'm now a self-taught computer programmer, and upon taking my last placement test at HS graduation (at age 16), I scored within the top 2% of the nation for first-year college students.
I believe wholeheartedly that homeschooling is awesome.... unschooling, however... lets just say it takes an awesome lot of luck & planning on the part of the parents. And a lot of devotion!
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Insightful)
About a month ago someone here on
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:2, Insightful)
Multiplication tables.... he meant top percentile in Maths and Sciences obviously.... English is for wankers.
You are yet another example of the fact that merely being expert in a subject like Mathematics or Physics has nothing to do with intelligence.
In fact I've noticed that people who are particularly dumb are drawn to Mathematics because it is much easier to understand discrete units of logic like 1+1 and it's more elaborate forms than it is to understand reasoning and critical thinking.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:4, Insightful)
If you've ever seen someone mis-punch a number into a calculator and blithely accept the result you know why you still need to be able to multiply. Have some idea of what's a reasonable answer without just blindly accepting what comes out of a machine is a critical part of being educated.
My wife told me about how, many years ago, her son's 2nd grade teacher got upset because her son was actually doing multiplication to figure out problems. Apparently they were supposed to guess, so he was "doing it wrong". I'm hoping that educational philosophy has changed.
A lot of school can be pretty mind-numbingly boring, but the alternative of hoping that kids somehow fumble their way to knowing something useful seems like it's throwing about about 100,000 years of human progress.
I was "unschooled", and look where I am now... (Score:3, Insightful)
I went through the (California) public school system through fifth grade.
In 3rd grade I tested (not sure now what test) in the top 1% of students, and got bumped up into 4th grade early.
Through all that time I found school pretty boring and tedious, and putting up with the other students even more so.
Early in 6th grade my parents pulled me out of the normal school system and had me home tutored through a program that the public school district provided for kids at the fringes of the academic bell curve. Basically each day a teacher would come by my house, return my graded assignments from yesterday, answer any questions I had, give me my new assignments and then leave me to work on them. This was some of the best (from my subjective experience) education I ever got; I was actually interested in what I was being taught and liked my teachers.
But that program only extended through the 8th grade, so in 9th grade my folks put me in a small, private, on-campus alternative school (~15 kids to a classroom, desks arranged in circles, first name basis with the teachers, environmental biology class that included mountain hikes, etc). By 10th grade that school had an online distance learning program and I went into that. Around that point I started spending most of my free time (after burning through my assignments) debating with college professors on UseNet, and learned more from them than I did from my official school. For 12th grade, in a different school district, I was in a similar program to my 6th-8th grade home tutoring, except I went to the teacher instead of them coming to me, and only once every two weeks instead of every day. I graduated high school half a year early, and went into the work force as a computer tech at a local shop.
When they went out of business a year or two later, I had to figure my own way into college/university (my parents are bright but neither are college-educated or really academic at all), got in easily with full scholarships, and went on to get two degrees (an AA in Multimedia Arts and Technologies and a BA in Philosophy) with straight As, and a 4.0/3.9 GPA (4.0 for the AA, 3.9 for the BA).
I'm now barely working part-time as an administrative assistant and occasionally tech/web/database guy at the same dead-end job I've been at since before I even had the AA, and have been searching in apparent futility for better work for the past two years since I finished the BA.
Where did I go wrong, and is my unusual education at all responsible for this?
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if the current system works well doesn't mean it can't be made to work better.
The only reason the system is better than it used to be is because some people strive for something more than being content with "good enough". I see no reason for this trend not to continue.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Insightful)
"What would have happened to you if you didn't memorize where the major cities in your country are?"
That he wouldn't understand why in hell somebody pays so much attention about this or that frontier being this or that side of this or that river. Not being able to comprehend that opens the door for others making your mind for you. The next you know is that you are dressed on a uniform going for Poland out of other peoples' demagogy.
"Good to know doesn't mean need-to-know."
The whole history of civilizations is about people going beyond the "need-to-know" (which basically limits itself to being able to hunt today's dinner).
"is that most education is quite useless and a waste of time for most people."
I partially concede you that. But it is not a waste of time "for most people"; it's only a waste of time for the few people that certainly prefer you to know the bare minimal to be a good wheel on the machine that gives them their 'statu quo' without revolting. After all why do you nead even the ability to read when the landlord can tell you whatever you need to know to be a good servant?
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:1, Insightful)
An existence proof? In a social sciences issue? Yes, there are some amazingly successful people who came from public schools (which, note, I bet you that a lot of them came from relatively rich areas), but that doesn't mean that public schools *aren't* stifling *some* brilliant people, nor that those brilliant people wouldn't have been billions of times more brilliant.
If there's really *nothing* but entitlement issues, you must mean that the school system is 100% perfect at sorting people -- that *no* gems sift through the cracks. I'm sorry, but that's absurd. Some people have no functioning home environment to speak of, no one cares about them, and they are taught they are stupid. These people *do not* think themselves special snowflakes: they think they are stupid. You put them in a slightly different learning environment, and they do much better, and you say: hey you did well on this. And they don't know what to do with that. They get so confused, because they've been taught they were stupid.
I know someone who aced every AP exam and did horribly on homework...and they did not think they were a special snowflake.
You're level of absolute trust in a horribly broken school system disgusts me. Maybe you'r school district is one of the lucky ones, but every school district is different, and your assertion amounts to a declaration that a poorly functioning school system is impossible. Some real public schools are nothing more than unschooling.
Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools (Score:3, Insightful)
From an essay I wrote almost three years ago: ... With all that technological success in other areas, why are schools still considered a problem area, see: ...
"Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools"
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html [sourceforge.net]
"""
"To fix US schools, [bipartisan] panel says, start over"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.html [csmonitor.com]
Or in other words, why has technology failed in compulsory schools? Clearly something is wrong here -- technology is helping make these other places more productive and more flexible -- but in schools, there is not much change, despite a huge expenditure in technology and training.
Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change.
But, history has shown schools extremely resistant to change. Consider for
example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Caldwell_Holt [wikipedia.org]
From there: "After many years of working within the school system, Holt became disillusioned with it. He became convinced that reform of the school system was not possible because it was fundamentally flawed. Thus, he became an advocate of homeschooling. It was not helpful, however, to simply remove children from the school environment if parents simply re-created it at home. Holt believed that children did not need to be coerced into learning; they would do so naturally if given the freedom to follow their own interests and a rich assortment of resources. This line of thought became known as unschooling."
And it also turns out, based on psychological studies, that for creative work (as opposed to ditch digging), reward is often not a motivator, and creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if a task is done for gain:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html [gnu.org]
This finding calls into question the entire notion of a scarcity-based ideology oriented around exchanging ration-units for creative goods, as opposed to a "gift economy", such as drives GNU/Linux.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy [wikipedia.org]
So, if most of what people do is not related to growing food or making things, then a system based around material rewards doesn't make much sense. And it turns out, a lot of difficult work is quite interesting, if you are not forced to do it -- where the work (and success at a challenging task) is its own reward.
But then is compulsory schooling really needed when people live in such a way? In a gift economy, driven by the power of imagination, backed by automation like matter replicators and flexible robotics to do the drudgery, isn't there plenty of time and opportunity to learn everything you need to know? Do people still need to be forced to learn how to sit in one place for hours at a time? When people actually want to learn something like reading or basic arithmetic, it only takes around 50 contact hours or less to give them the basics, and then they can bootstrap themselves as far as they want to go. Why are the other 10000 hours or so of a child's time needed in "school"? Especially when even poorest kids in Ind
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:1, Insightful)
You never really saw math past high school, did you?
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Insightful)
And understanding how to multiply isn't the same as actually being able to multiply. Without knowing the tables you will find it difficult or impossible to do even a simple multiplication a) quickly and b) in your head.
You're the one who said calculators made learning tables obsolete.
Support for any of those three assertions?
Pot, meet kettle.