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?'"
Just do Montessori instead (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, but it might be great for actually learning something. I don't know about the majority of people here, but I learned despite my school, not because of it - every skill I now use professionally is a skill that my school took great effort to teach glacially, incorrectly, and uselessly.
On the other hand, the year in which I basically dropped out of high school, I learned a huge amount.
I don't know if this will be better than conventional education, but, honestly? It'd be hard for it to be worse.
The pre-1800s elite called.... (Score:5, Interesting)
And they want their personal tutors back.
No seriously... Throughout history, back before established private schools and universities, the well to do would hire a educated person to basically follow their child around and given them instructions pretty much all the time.
You know... Socrates and Alexader the Great
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
I should have added the disclaimer that I was a dishwasher for years in my teens. I was also damned good at it, and I think that part of the reason was the learned discipline to focus on a boring and unpleasant task. And while that's a backhanded compliment at formal education, it's a real and tangible benefit.
"Unschooling" the hard way. (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some famous examples of this working. But only because the parents had time, money, and high standards.
One of the Rockefellers, the son of John D., wrote that when he was a kid, his father gave him an allowance. He was required to keep a proper set of double-entry books on how he spent it, and the books were audited by an accountant. He didn't get the next allowance payment until the books balanced.
Henry Ford II was promised a car for some birthday. On the appointed day, he was taken out to a garage, and there was the car - totally dissembled with all the component parts laid out. A full set of tools was supplied. Eventually, he did get the car assembled and running.
If you have the resources, it can work.
Homeschooling (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing that I missed was the day to day social interaction with peers. I saw kids my own age just a couple times a week and it was normally at my house or theirs. They were always friends. I never had to deal with a conflict with peers because I simply never had them.
The social aspects of school are just as important as sitting in a classroom- you need to learn how to deal with others. I'm 30 and I still struggle when i have disagreements with co-workers.
We need serious school reform in this country, and although there are advantages to homeschooling or unschooling, I think there is still something to be said for classroom learning.
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Higher education" is really a medieval style guild system, and it has no place in modern society. With ubiquitous internet access anyone with sufficient talent and motivation can teach themself any subject to any level. The only remaining step is to decouple the certification from the training.
It's true that some people will learn better with a teacher and fellow students, but there's no reason this has to be within academia. Students could save a lot of money by cutting out the middle-men and hiring teachers directly.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north748.html [lewrockwell.com]
Overconfidence (Score:4, Interesting)
The parents are usually the ones who barely got out of 9th grade, couldn't now pass the sixth and think they're more qualified to teach K-12, start to finish, than a dozen people who collectively have more years of tertiary education than said parents have walked the earth.
Textbook cases of...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org]
Besides, a major component of schooling is in fact /just being in school/ so you'll be, hopefully, a vaguely functional human being who can navigate all the various and sundry organizations of life and put up with all the other dysfunctional members of the species with a minimum quantity of blood spilling.
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unschooling is much more closely related to free schooling or democratic schooling as has been practiced successfully since the 1920s at places like Summerhill School [wikipedia.org]. These students are sought after by colleges [powweb.com] because they are articulate, self-motivated learners. It is actually much like college because students choose what to learn about (often through classes or workshops), rather than the high school model of everyone taking the same state-required classes. I would bet nearly all Slashdotters learned to code this way.
The biggest drawback to unschooling is that it pretty much requires one parent to stay home (or both to work part time). On the other hand, in areas where the public schools are underfunded, private schools can eat up all the income from a second job anyway.
It's about choices and taking them seriously. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parents who can and will take the time to teach their children about the world around them and how to act and interact within it will, more than likely, end up with children who are well-adjusted, relatively well-educated and prepared children. Parents who believe that it's someone else's job to do all of those things will more likely end up with entitlement babies who will be leeches on society.
Some kids will be well-educated because of our public schools, and some will end up well-educated in spite of them. The same can be true of any other learning environment, if poorly and carelessly administered. My 15 year old, who none of us think is a genius, scored as post-high school in almost every subject. My son, who is very smart, started college at 16, because we had nothing left to teach him. Both would have been bored in public school, as I was.
The point is that parents should have the ability to choose that which works best for their children, so long as that choice produces acceptable results.
Re:What would these kids grow up to be? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, generally people who seek alternative forms of education for their children are the ones who care about whether or not their children are learning, and are willing to give their children the time of day (after all, it is a huge time commitment). Parents who don't care just send their kids to school so they don't have to deal with them.
Re:It's called "Evenings" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Interesting)
I reject your hypothetical situation for the same reasons that others have. Both children need to learn their multiplication tables. You're also making the assumption that Child B isn't curious about the world around them. What if Child A isn't curious or doesn't spend their time productively? Video games and TV make awful good temptations.
In my case, we sent my daughter to a Montessori preschool and she just started first grade in public school a few days ago. She has a day off later in September, so instead of spending the day goofing off or learning multiplication tables, she and I are flying to Washington DC for the day and I'll be sure to get her full of museums and other sights in the city. She probably won't understand it all (she's only 6), but I guarantee it's not the last trip of its kind she and I will make.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm, odd. I don't remember it being like that at all. If anything, I had a lot more time to learn things than I do now at college.
As a kid, my mom read all sorts of great books to me, and when I was older she could literally just leave library books on the kitchen table. I had learned that books are interesting, so of course I read them. Besides fiction, I loved books about science and history. I even tried to read some Platonic dialogues in 4th grade. I was really into spy stuff for a while, so we also did a lot of codes and ciphers, which quickly translated into the fun parts of math. I knew I wanted to go to college, so we did some formal curriculum for a couple hours every morning in middle school. It was mostly lame, but it was helpful with math at least. I also joined the "Homeschool Film Club". I learned Adobe After Effects and did a lot of camera work for the local public access channel.
In ninth grade I decided to try a fairly rigorous Christian private school in the area. It was fine, I got straight As, but it was boring. The kids had no motivation to learn, and I could progress in most subjects on my own faster than at the school. (Math was again the exception, I had a fantastic math teacher.) So I went back to unschooling in tenth grade. I was really into popular science books at this point, and I read a lot about theoretical physics and evolutionary biology. I was also reconsidering a lot of the religious ideas I had, so I was reading a lot of hardcore theology.
I discovered UC Berkeley's online lectures around this time, and listened to a bunch of college-level psychology. Eventually I became interested in the philosophical side of psychology, and started investigating philosophy. Fortuitously, UC Berkeley has a philosophy professor who likes podcasting, so I listened to a few of his series of lectures. I went through the first half of Heidegger's "Being and Time" this way. It's a hideously difficult book, even for philosophy, but I had a lot of free time!
During this same period I was working with a professional theatre in a neighboring town, as well as a couple local community theatres. Since I didn't have set hours for school, I was able to be there whenever they needed me. I acted in several shows, and worked on lighting and general tech work.
Oh, almost forgot. I also took a couple community college classes, in physics and writing. They were both absurdly easy and I didn't learn anything, but it looked good on my transcript to have some formal classes at the college level.
I decided I wanted to go to the University of Chicago, if I could. It's ranked 8th in the country, but in my opinion it's academically better than the Ivies and other colleges ranked above it. (MIT and Caltech are the exceptions, but they are also more narrowly focused.) I applied, got in, and am currently attending. It's awesome being around other academically engaged people, but I kinda miss the chance to learn on my own. Luckily, I have the summer to do that!
I admit I'm a bit of an outlier, and I probably would have done fine in the public schools. Not everyone who is unschooled will have a natural passion for academics. However, if anything, unschooling is even better for people who don't want to become academics. My younger sister has some minor learning disabilities, and is far more into the arts than the sciences. She spent her high school years learning about theatre and music, and has become a fantastic actress. She spent the summer working with the professional theatre company I mentioned, but in a much more intensive way than I ever did. However, while it's not her focus, she still loves learning intellectual things as well. She's currently doing some pretty substantial research into psychology and counseling. She's trying to decide between theatre and counseling as possible careers. Either way, I'm convinced she's in a better position than she would be at the public schools, where she'd likely be forced into special LD classes and not allowed to explore the things that actually interest her.
It's entirely possible to do unschooling badly, but that doesn't mean it's inherently a bad idea.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Interesting)
There are no IQ's "over 170" IQ is a statistical measure conforming to a standard bell curve with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. Like all such measures, any value beyond 3 standard deviations is an outlier and can not be considered accurate.
My "MENSA ego stroking BS IQ for people stupid enough to pay to be told how smart they are" is 186, my real IQ is 143.
Quite frankly, I would have killed to have been in high school for 4 years. I only got to spend 6 months in high school before I was forced to quite and take my GED.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:1, Interesting)
Schools don't cater to the best or the worst. They cater to the middle. Almost every aspect of education is normalized to the average child. The only exception is sports and even that is being homogenized. I don't disagree that school could be more effective if it tailored programs for individual kids. That being said people are already screaming about their taxes. How would you convince them to pay for a full staff of gifted teachers?
I think un-schooling is an interesting idea. I like to talk with my kids about the things that interest me and also about what they learned on a given day. I am an engineer and a writer. I think that my experience and knowledge allows me to give them a perspective and information that they might not get at school. I don't think it should be a substitute for regular schooling but enrichment. Really it comes down to taking an interest in your kid and creating a home environment that encourages kids to question and learn.
As a movement I think un-schooling is probably a glorified form of goofing off. Kids, especially young ones need structure. It gives them a foundation and makes them feel safe. They need rules to fall back on and limits to build on.
My daughter is gifted. She spent the first 5 years of her schooling in a private Montessori school. The philosophy was to let the child find there own way, with guidance from a trained teacher. The key is the skill and expertise of the teacher. With out that structure you have chaos. That is bad for the kid intellectually and emotionally.
Sorry about the long post.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd submit that the vast majority of us never live up to our potential. I certainly didn't. That doesn't mean that I am not happy and successful. Your friends were given the same opportunities that the rest of us were to learn those skills. They only have themselves to blame if they did not.
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.
And what is wrong with that? I sit in my cube, every day, largely bored, but enjoying a standard of living my great-great-grandfather could never have imagined. Our system works pretty damn well.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:1, Interesting)
I said Child A should learn his multiplication tables.
Does that have to be done in a traditional school environment?
Didn't you get more difficult calculations to do when you asked for them? I know I did when I was in your place. I'm pretty sure you could have gotten such too.
Or was it in fact so that you didn't ask for them? You didn't want to study when you didn't need to, didn't want to learn more for learning's sake, at least in subjects that you didn't find interesting, even if they were important?
Because that is what kids are like. Yeah, I actually liked math, physics, etc... That's why I became an engineer. In those I asked for more difficult things to do when I got bored. Same wasn't true for geography, though. Never liked it that much and I had no interest in studying any more than I was forced to. So it was good they forced me to study some, to be able to place all the European countries on the blank map, to be able to tell where are the major rivers, lake, cities, etc. in my country... I had no interest in those at the time.
And in math... Why were you bored? Because the progress was slow? Because many students needed the slower pace? Do you think they would have been gotten to study those things outside school system by "encountering them in their daily life and then following their desire to..."?
If you are saying "In schools, teachers can't make subjects interesting though students could be interested in them", I'll admit that you hadn't very good teachers. If you are saying "They don't teach the right stuff. The stuff we need in our daily lives..." Then you are saying that the content isn't very good and I can give you that. If you are saying "The teaching methods suck", you might still be right.
But this isn't about that. This is about whether "Encountering stuff in your daily life and then learning how it works" is a valid approach. It requires someone to actually be there to explain it all to you (which just doesn't sound possible) and it requires you to have interest in everything that you should know.
As I said, I had no interest in geography - I still don't have and don't think that approaching it through history, for example, would have helped - but it is just something that I really did need to know. And someone did need to teach me about it. I don't see any way to get around that.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:2, Interesting)
Nay, twas Child D, who's father got him interested in mechanics, then started using mathemtics to explain the mechanics and when the child exclaimed "how can you add so fast?" the father explained to the son, and thus, the son did his times tables, learned arithmetic rules, and became a human calculator so when he drew on a piece of paper he could estimate the plans precisely and navigate around bad ideas rather than loosely do so just like dad. Ad then said to his son, "you want a fast car? We can get you one with one caveat, you have to build it!".
And that child never sped over the speed limit, never drove drunk, and never drove dangerous, because the car was something hand crafted and to damage it would be a high cost.
Kids are curious; curiosity finds the most novel, interesting thing available and explores it; wither that's airplanes, striptease, or barbie is all up to the child.
School says "you are going to read this book, memorize these objectives, then pass this test".
The children ask "what reward do I receive'
The teacher responds "An education, the tools to live the rest of your life."
The child responds "and how does that work?"
And at this point, the teacher babbles on about oil refineries, engines, space travel, time travel, making lots of money, and everything the angels blessed upon the earth; precisely the least interesting thing to the child. When the child says "well none of that seems fun!" the school then beats the child emotionally, mentally and/or physically, to get rid of their curiosity, because it is a distraction from the work to be done.
The child then ends up, 40 years later, working as an accountant and realizes their entire life has been focused on making money for others, that they hate their life, their wife and kids, their house and their job and they fling themselves off the 40th floor of some sky scraper or worse; take all their money, go to south America and bang hookers for fun.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:4, Interesting)
I was Child "D",
That's the one that took every thing apart to see how it worked, and figured out how to stop getting in trouble for it when I learned how to put it all back together so that it worked properly.
Then when I figured out how to make it work better, started saying "I Fixed it".
It's a lifelong avocation now.
I was also bored out of my mind in school, even in the advanced classes they had me in.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Interesting)
Then they got into a selective middle school, where the teacher tried to have them solve problems, but what happened - the answers were off (kids were calculating with approximations) or they took so long they never got to the result in the time alloted (because 5 x 5 = ? well make a grid with 5 squares on each side...)
She had them memorize the times table. Problem solved.
Sometimes you need to have basic facts memorized, even if you have the internet at your fingertips and "you understand where the answer comes from".
Memorization is as an important skill as well as knowing the concept behind what you are doing.
A good engineer should be creative. but he/she also has to know, for example, that off-the-shelf items come in specific sizes and if you have a job where you have to keep costs down, you design so that you use standard parts.
And hey, did the guy at the hot dog cart give you correct change?
Re:Good luck in university (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely correct. Studies consistently show that homeschoolers are ridiculously better prepared than students who have been through the public school system. A study in 1997 (admittedly 12 years ago) showed that students who have been homeschooled for two years or more usually score between the 86th and 92nd percentile in every subject.
linky [hslda.org]
Homeschooling has its problems, usually social ones, but academically, homeschooling nearly always produces vastly better educated children.
Well, clearly those state universities must have sucked because you apparently never learned that correlation does not equal causation. I went to an accelerated program for high school [wikipedia.org] that compresses 5 years into 2. About 25% of the people in my class were previously homeschooled - and it was easy to see why.
Being gifted academically is often correlated with being socially maladjusted. I don't think any parent chooses for their kids to be bored or bullied in school but this is often what happens to these kids. Bottom line is - public education does a very poor job of satisfying the emotional needs of smart kids. Home-schooling is a solution, but let's be clear here - that does not make home-schooling an ideal educational path.
If you left high IQ kids alone (after about age 12) to play videogames for 5 years, their IQs would still be high. This does not mean videogames create smart kids.
Compound that with the fact that a parent who homeschools kids is a parent who isn't working. Which means that either the other parent is making enough money for two, or they are already financially well-off for other reasons. So the average socioeconomic status of a homeschooled family is going to be much higher than the average socioeconomic status of a public education family... and surprise-surprise, income levels also correlates with educational attainment, IQ, health, and pretty much every other "good" thing!
Re:Good luck in university (Score:2, Interesting)
My wife and I homeschool elementary aged children. We spend about 3-4 hrs a day on homeschooling (as opposed to 8 by the time the kids get off hte hour long bus ride each way plus 2 in homework). Our child who had real problems in public school was a grade level behind in 1st grade and is probably a grade level ahead now in most subjects and farther than that in some in 3rd grade.
Overall, the Bull pucky that one doesn't have to deal with with bullies on the bus, BAD teachers, poor administrators and psycho classmates tends to more than make up for the "sacrifice" of actually paying attention to your kids and teaching them on a 1-on-1 basis.
We did it not because of "religious reasons" (I'm VERY agnostic and so is my wife) like most claim but because we had a low performer who was an extremely smart kid.. and the school who would belittle him because he was a poor performer would also tell us he could not have any extra state funded help because he wasn't "bad enough". F them.
So now we are on the way to having very smart kids who will wipe out public school kids like the poster I'm replying to-- and have an ability not to be a "average drone" like you are expected to be in public school. They will be thinkers and achievers and capable of independent thought. This is IMPORTANT at the college level and it is exactly why so many wash out in their freshman year.
Most slashdotters are above average IQ folks? Right? Tell me are you this way because of public school or despite it? I know I fought them all the way until I was in college.. that was for sure. Took a lot of bad grades for having opposing political views right up through college.. but still overall I excelled.
Unschooling I don't totally agree with-- but all homeschoolers should take advantage of ideas from this. It is amazing how motivated a kid gets with math when his engineer father explains why it's necessary to be good at math to design a space rocket. A school teacher would say "shut up and memorize those tables". And there are hundreds of other examples of this I can give you. Persuing a child interest can be academic and works VERY well.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Interesting)
No, my point whizzed right over your head... They did live up to their potential - their actual potential, not what they thought their potential was.
As I demonstrated in my original post, that's an assumption - and one shown to have significant flaws. As above, I didn't mistake your point, I demolished it and that fact whizzed right past your blinders and bias.
Society is best served by allowing the cream to force itself to the top - not by creating more special snowflakes who believe they deserve special treatment because they hold the belief that they have [subjectively measured] 'gifts'.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:2, Interesting)
the act of multiplying requires memorizing the tables for 1-9 first, unless you multiply by repeated addition, or your final goal is to multiply like a Russian Peasant [mathforum.org]
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Interesting)
No, we're not. That is not the premise. One premise here is that some (most?) kids can learn in a way that better suits their interests and desires and better preserves their intrinsic motivation if they have the opportunity to exercise their intrinsic motivation. Think of motivation as a muscle that can waste away. If all kids get to practice is learning what somebody else has told them to learn in the exact manner and according to the exact schedule set by others, their ability to set goals for themselves and maintain interest in a subject for its own sake is likely to suffer.
Some kids can learn more or deeper or more efficiently or in a way better tuned to their particular needs and interests. It does not matter why they can do this. Maybe they had good genes, maybe they had good parenting, maybe they were just lucky enough not to have the curiosity beaten out of them at a young age. Unschoolers tend think that most kids could do well in this environment but especially the ones that "don't fit in" so either the top or the bottom performers are likely to be good candidates.
It's worth noting in this context that if you've ever seen the movie "Stand and Deliver", one way Jaime Escalante got those great results was by giving his students access to self-paced homeschooling math workbooks rather than using the standard school-provided curriculum.
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact is, and that I keep on bringing up in these discussions, is that most education is quite useless and a waste of time for most people. For example, most medical doctors are required to take "science" courses like biochemistry even though they don't plan on becoming biochemists. It's quite useless, but to those people who have passed the course they often rationalize its importance (sometimes with lame reasons like it helps push their competition outside of the bell curve).
FWIW, as someone in the middle of a medical education, I can tell you that while the vast majority of the stuff in basic science courses isn't particularly applicable, some of the basics are indeed very important. My chemistry and biology courses (to include biochem) allow me to understand why medications that are quaternary amines such as Pyridostigmine don't usually cross the blood-brain barrier, why certain medications exhibit different efficacy in various parts of the body due to pH differences, and why G protein-coupled receptors are both slower and diverse in their actions than ionotropic receptors. Our curriculum is based on the assumption that we already have a fundamental understanding of physics, biology, and chemistry, and thus can understand the principles underlying physiological and pharmacological actions. To put it another way, undergrad put a lot of stuff in my mental toolbox that I'll likely never need, but thus far I've always had the tool for the job given to me in my training. cheers.
Unschooling or Information Transfer? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So it's a fnacy nmae (Score:3, Interesting)
History of compulsory schooling (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uexMYBkfCic [youtube.com]
See also a longer written history that goes back farther (to Plato): ... Resistance"
"The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651 [archive.org]
However, redistributing wealth towards families with kids is still a good idea IMHO, or in more general, a basic income:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html [pdfernhout.net]
So, I part company with Propertarian-libertarians on that (many of whom would just eliminate schools as well as the wealth redistribution aspects, leaving families with children with no formal social support in an industrialized society now in the midst of "The Two Income Trap").
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap [motherjones.com]
The makers of that video:
http://www.freedomofeducation.net/ [freedomofeducation.net]
The more general issue:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html [whywork.org]
Assignable curiousity (Score:3, Interesting)
"When the child says "well none of that seems fun!" the school then beats the child emotionally, mentally and/or physically, to get rid of their curiosity, because it is a distraction from the work to be done."
Well, some of the kids are cultivated to have "assignable curiosity":
http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/radical-teacher.htm [tripod.com]
"""
A key to creating docile professionals is professional training. Through their training, budding professionals learn to orient their intellectual effort to tasks assigned to them. Schmidt has a wonderful expression for this: "assignable curiosity." Children are naturally curious about all sorts of things. Along the road to becoming a professional, they learn how to orient this curiosity to tasks assigned by others.
Consider, for example, a typical essay in a university class. The teacher sets the topic and the students write on it. To do really well, students need to figure out what will please the teacher. If the teacher had assigned a completely different topic, the conscientious student would have directed effort to that topic. Well-trained students do not even think about writing about topics that are not assigned. They wait to be told where to direct their curiosity.
Schmidt has a teaching credential and has taught junior high school math in Pasadena, California and in El Salvador. However, it is his experiences pursuing a PhD in physics that come through most strongly in Disciplined Minds. "Assignable curiosity" has a special significance for researchers. Military funding of science, for example, works well to direct research into military-relevant directions because scientists are willing to take up whatever project is offering. When scientists put in research proposals to military funders, they anticipate what will be most useful and attractive for military purposes, while maintaining the illusion that they are directing the research.
"""
The Underground History of American Education (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm [johntaylorgatto.com]
"The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real. "
"Our official assumptions about the nature of modern childhood are dead wrong. Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive. At the age of twelve, Admiral Farragut got his first command. I was in fifth grade when I learned of this. Had Farragut gone to my school he would have been in seventh."
"The secret of American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way children learn and it isn't supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason's words, "the control of human behavior.""
"Something strange has been going on in government schools, especially where the matter of reading is concerned. Abundant data exist to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent, wherever such a thing mattered. Yet compulsory schooling existed nowhere. Between the two world wars, schoolmen seem to have been assigned the task of terminating our universal reading proficiency."
And so on...
A fool's input. (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyways, if we, as a society, can't agree upon on what is actually important, Practical Knowledge or Erudition, street smarts and books smarts, populism or elitism, perhaps it would be worthwhile to forgo both and invest in improving artistic, logical and semantical(or as defined by psychology, such as logical, linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, intrapersonal and interpersonal) skills in the young, when they first went the education system. Replace kindergarten and first to fourth grade teachers with only the well spoken, unprejudiced, and emotionally mature. Perhaps a rotational system were teachers are forced out of their comfort level, and all teachers are at least high school level.
La Morte e il Nulla. E vecchia fola il Ciel.
Re:The Underground History of American Education (Score:3, Interesting)
I go one step further here: :-) :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out. This may seem like an unlikely idea to be adopted at first, but at least it is a starting point for building a positive vision of the future for all children in all our communities. Like straightforward ideas such as Medicare-for-all, this is an easy solution to state, likely with broad popular support, but it may be a hard thing to get done politically for all sorts of reasons. It might take an enormous struggle to make such a change, and most homeschoolers rightfully may say they are better off focusing on teaching their own and ignoring the school system as much as possible, and letting schooled families make their own choices. Still,homeschoolers might find it interesting to think about this idea and how the straightforward nature of it calls into question many assumptions related to how compulsory public schooling is justified. Also, ultimately, the more people who homeschool, the easier it becomes, because there are more families close by with which to meet during the daytime (especially in rural areas). And sometime just knowing an alternative is possible can give one extra hope. Who would have predicted ten years back that NYS would have a governor who was legally blind and whose parents had been forced to change school districts just to get him the education he needed? So, there is always "the optimism of uncertainty", as historian Howard Zinn says. We don't know for sure what is possible and what is not.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html [pdfernhout.net]
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New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators
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