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Un-Schooling

  
  

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grant
16:07 / 16.03.07
In my glancing experiences with home- or un-schoolers (it seems the "home-" word is code for "Bible-believing," while the "un-" word is code for "belongs to organic co-op"), they all seem to have these these large group outings more than a couple days a week -- the practice actually seems to be evolving into a parallel school system outside the public schools.

For example, there are people in my area who are "home-school teachers" for various subjects, including P.E.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
19:01 / 16.03.07
I just read this thread for the first time in nearly five years, and I'm still really curious about how anyone would answer my last set of questions because right now I probably have less of an idea of what the answer could be than I did back then.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
19:58 / 16.03.07
What do you think is the best way to educate those students who are not especially bright or motivated? ... [Gatto] tends to ignore the legions of people who would just watch trash tv and play video games all day if school was taken away from them... What can be done for those who for one reason or another shun any form of education?

I don't know how true that is, really. Maybe I'm overoptimistic but I just cannot believe that these legions of leaden-eyed juvenile TV-addicts who would inevitably merge into the soft furnishings if not poked along by the demands of school really exist. It might take a lot of creative thought on the part of an educator to winkle it out, true, but I don't know anybody who's never had at least one or two things they were into that could be parlayed into a marketable skill. All the serious couch potatoes I've ever met have ended up that way because the stuff they were into was taken away from them somehow: they lost the ability to do it, or got leant on to quit by someone in their lives, or internalised some dumbass reason for not doing whatever X was (not enough money in it, too much money in it, too girly, too butch, blah blah blah).

However, I see this as an argument against homeschooling, not for. School offers children exposure to a broader range of interests and concepts than they would generally encounter if they're stuck at home.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
20:04 / 16.03.07
Re-reding this thread, I realise that in the last five years I've become even more disenchanted with homeschooling than I was back then. I guess my biggest problem with it now is less the potential for screwing up your kid's education--although that's certainly a concern--and more about the impact on their empathy for the rest of the world. The fewer people you meet, the fewer different lifestyles, histories and situations you are exposed to, the less appreciation and understanding you will have for your own relative advantages or disadvantages in this world.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
21:05 / 16.03.07
the fewer different lifestyles, histories and situations you are exposed to, the less appreciation and understanding you will have for your own relative advantages or disadvantages in this world.

Of course depending on where you live a public education might not give you any better sense of this, and it might give you a crappier education.

When it was time for a young text adventure to begin schooling my mother decided that the local public school was a bad idea. She had a masters in education, and with a few like minded parents opened a small alternative school. The school was a mix and match of a variety of teaching styles, a little montesori, a little 'odd' math (has anyone here ever heard of a mini computer?*) and some less revisionist history.

Over the years the school grew a bit larger, from the first class of 7 of us to about 30, and has grown a bit since I last saw it. When my classmates and I hit the upper limit of what the school could offer our parents (some of the same group, others had moved on to public schooling) someone opened an alternative middle/high school. The guy running the place had no idea what he was doing and the place fell apart after a semester. The few of us whose parents were still against the public education system then hired a tutor for us. For the next few years we had 1 or 2 teachers per term focusing on different subjects. I finished the high school curriculum when I was 15.

This is note exactly meant as a defense of the home/tiny schooling idea. I consider it a cautionary tale. In theory having school with the same 5-8 people for 10 years or so will cause you to never go outside your comfortable boundaries to meet new people. Of course, if the people you are stuck around don't like you much this can cause even bigger issues down the road.

The most important part, to me, was that my mother encouraged me to do things outside of school. This way if my classmates were excluding me from X, I always had Y to fall back on.

So, definitely a case of mileage varying. I think I learned a shit load of good stuff at a young age (from science stuff to things relating to the different lifestyles, histories and situations I was not exposed to) but the social aspects of my childhood left something to be desired.

That is not to say that had I gone to public school I would not have been locked in a locker or shoved in a toilet.

*This is not a small computer, despite the name. This is a magnetic board divided into 4 quadrants of different colors representing, iirc, powers of 10. I can't find a reference to the fucking thing anywhere online.
 
 
illmatic
08:59 / 18.03.07
tends to ignore the legions of people who would just watch trash tv and play video games all day if school was taken away from them

As a teacher, I must say this isn’t my experience of kids, and it’s a very pessimistic view of young people. Pupils tend to be switched off with some subjects, sure, but these are normally the one’s with which they have experienced failure - most commonly Maths, and (sadly IMO) English. I have experience of trying to teach Maths because of teaching what’s called “Key Skills” – these are basic numeracy and communications qualifications (underfunded and treated in the UK education system as a cursory add-ons, but that’s a different story). To put it bluntly, my students hate it. This is a huge contrast to my main subjects, Media and Film Studies – most students come fresh to this, and they haven’t yet learnt that they are failures and lack ability in this area, and so are hugely switched on. Also, the practical nature of these courses is a big attraction to students who’ve become alienated from more academic subjects. You can give the most alienated learner a chance to feel good about him or herself and they’ll come to life. The idea that young people need the pressures and carrots and sticks of conventional schooling just isn’t true in my experience. This approach creates as many problems as it solves, as it turns learners off some fundamentally important areas. I want to cry for the ones who never read books.

All the students I’ve encountered – mostly 16-19 year olds – have a degree of natural curiosity that will open up in the right circumstances.
 
 
illmatic
09:11 / 18.03.07
Oh, BTW, I’m not saying home-schooling is an obvious panacea to the problems caused by conventional schooling. I can see the advantages of some sort of institutional structure and the diffculties caused by running this out of one's home.

These guys have a interesting approach.

The fundamental premises of the school are simple: that all people are curious by nature; that the most efficient, long-lasting, and profound learning takes place when started and pursued by the learner; that all people are creative if they are allowed to develop their unique talents; that age-mixing among students promotes growth in all members of the group; and that freedom is essential to the development of personal responsibility.

In practice this means that students initiate all their own activities and create their own environments. The physical plant, the staff, and the equipment are there for the students to use as the need arises.

The first clause there (italicised) is one I very much agree with.
 
 
Quantum
10:46 / 20.03.07
I'd just like to point out a big big difference in modern homeschooling that wasn't available when we were wee bairns, the Internet. I hated school with a fiery passion up until I was 16, and we often talked about home schooling as a possibility. Unfortunately as a single parent family and v.poor it wasn't possible, but another big stumbling block was my Mom's ignorance of swathes of the curriculum and our inability to access educational resources- poor library, no money for textbooks etc.

If we'd had access to the internet (even through the library) it would have been a different story. The wealth of educational websites and support is improving every day, and as the internet matures people's use of it gets more effective.
I agree with apophenia, that people are naturally curious, and further say that given access to an almost-infinite databank and a bit of guidance we could learn as effectively (if not more) than at school, social skills notwithstanding. My ideal solution is two or three days a week at school and the same amount of self learning time.

Anecdote time- my best mate didn't go to school for a year when we were 18, due to depression. He sat at home instead and read the textbooks, revised on his own and got the best A-level results in the year (Politics, Philosophy and Economics as I recall). He puts it down to a lack of distraction and not having to deal with annoying peers who are switched off and disruptive, he reckons (and I agree) the environment we were taught in was extremely detrimental to learning, and extremely prone to bullying and disruption. Like most schools since Thatcher IMHO.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
16:14 / 21.03.07
That is a good point Quantum.

In fact, part of my latter years schooling (13-15) was only 4 days of classwork and Friday was a study day. Usually I would get dropped at the local University library and spend hours researching whatever topic I was writing a paper on at the time.

Between Microfiche, Periodicals and Reference it was almost the internet right there. When you throw in the regular Stacks you have a pretty complete, if slow and inefficient, version of the internet.

I wonder how many of the people who are 'bad' at home schooling ignore the traditional academic resources available to them.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
20:22 / 22.03.07
Good point. I think people can and do overlook the value of the resources that are available to them. There is also, as Quants points out, the issue of "what if your notional homeschooling family doesn't live near/can't get to said resources."

Speaking anecdotally, there's also an unfortunate tendency for people who (eg) don't want Noah and Bethany to learn any of that heretical Darwinist nonsense to relocate their entire family into small villages in remote areas of the US and UK, which is likely to mean a certain dearth of traditional academic resources. But short of banning homeschooling wholesale or introducing extremely stringent and intrusive monitoring, I don't know what you'd do about people who want to de-societise their kids altogether rather than simply deschooling them.
 
 
Make me Uncomfortable
01:02 / 25.03.07
My own story:

I went to US public (ie, state and country run) school all the way through high school, and now attend a private university (Carnegie Mellon). Until about 13 or 14 I was sort of a problem kid, way smarter than most of the rest of the class, but also way more vocal- I just love to talk, and still do. Some teachers would react better than others.

With the better ones, I would usually play the role of devil's advocate or helpful assistant to the teacher- understanding an idea or two ahead of the rest of the class, and then asking preemtive questions to sort of help the teacher guide the lesson along. Usually this worked out to me understanding topics really well, because I was, well, half-teaching them, and usually helped the other students because the explaination would be framed more as a debate than a monologue. I hope. Maybe I fucked over some other kids. But... oops.

With the worse teachers, I would basically be moved to some corner and expected to either shut up, or keep to a very small quota of questions, or deliberatly ignored.

Around High School (14-15) I began to understand how I was being played, and why my behavoir was out-of-line or in-line. So I would spend the first week or two sussing out which teachers were which kind, and then do my normal conversation-that-people-learn-from with them, which some of them actually really appreciated, and with the less great teachers, I would bring a book and shut the fuck up and do all my work perfectly just to fuck with them.

This was probably helped along by the fact that I went to the best public school in the district, the one that attracted the good teachers and good students, and consequentially fucked over the other six schools in the district...

Socially, I had a small group of really geeky friends, but other than that I didn't really hang out with anyone. I never went to parties, never did drugs, never drank or smoked. I spent most of my free time (and I had copious free time) drawing or writing or reading scifi and fantasy books until very late into the night. This escapism is probably what got me through school. That, and a select few teachers who were really, really great, and who even now I still talk to, email, etc.

College has been a bit different- almost everyone in my classes is really, really smart, and so I rarely feel the need to "lead the class by the nose" as I had been doing. And since art classes are typically small, it's basically a conversation among equals, with defference going to the more knowledgable/wise teacher. Which is cool. Also, I am far enough along in my studies that I'm not taking any classes that I don't want to take, which is really great. I tend to excell in subjects that interest me, and flounder/give up in ones that I don't like.

Although I will say this: I learned more about the english language and about how people interact through books than through any other medium. I probably read 1400 pages a week.

Gatto's writing:
I spent about a month reading his Underground History of American Education online. I agree with most of his points, although it's certainly written in a very slanted way. I do think its true that most of the "public school success stories" "learn despite thier education" as he put it.

As for homeschooling, my few friends who are homeschooled seem to have a sort of permenent social deficiency. Besides thier areas of expertise (and they always have three or four, and "being good at talking to people and current on popular knowledge" is almost never one of them), they are always a year or two behind, or have weird gaps in thier knowledge. They seem healthier and happier, but with specific areas of trouble. A higher average, but a higher standard deviation, to put it in math terms.

Some of my younger homeschooled friends seem better-adjusted. Apparently, they managed to hit the movement right when social interaction became an important issue. These "second wave" homeschooled kids, as much as they have told me anyway, were sort of half-homeschooled, half-exposed to society. That is, they didn't stay in thier room all day and learn- they went out and did stuff too.
 
 
Pops Sir Real
15:56 / 25.03.07
I came from a v. small rural public school district in Washington state (roughly 100 students/grade level). Born and raised I did pre-school, kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high school there. I knew a number of kids who started monetsori then were mainstreamed and a number of others who were in and out of public to do homeschooling. A good number of those were for religious/behavioral reasons, but others were for more liberal/non-traditional things. Private schooling is normally for the very well-off and/or very religious in my neck of the the woods.

There's nothing wrong with a well supported and supervised home/unschooling. However, it's CRITICAL that a young human experience some of that group socialization outside the structure of your family/cultural group. It can be several years in elementary level, or the first immersion can be in those hellish 11-15 years (I personally think it makes the most sense to get out of the public school at precisely this juncture). It could also just be for a few hours a day, rather than the 'whole' school experience. Unless the student requires an unusual amount of flexibility due special needs or temperament, or the school in question is very seriously flawed, I believe that most would benefit from going to the institution for the majority of their final years, due to the benefits of things like science labs and band/choir/drama coupled with the experience and specialization of teachers in certain subjects.

I can still pick out many people who were homeschooled, sometimes by a fairly unique/independent mindset, others by the 'jeebus, are you fucked up!' reaction. (I say this as someone socially inept but who fakes it well.) In any case, for those who don't have any significant contact with the greater outside world until high school, I think their elders have done them a great disservice by not letting them beyond the garden gate in terms of learning whats out there happening vs. what's taught and told.

As for the actual learning and passing important tests, it's certainly possible to completely skip centralized schooling in this age provided that the student is somewhat inquisitive and that the instruction is well thought out (in terms of depth and variety). Public libraries and institutions of higher learning plus the internet should be able to provide almost every resource you'd need.
 
 
Dutch
09:20 / 26.03.07
I checked it, and it's pretty much illegal for anyone to homeschool their kids here (the netherlands), unless they can give religious reasons for not wanting their kids in the public school system. People like the seventh day adventists have trouble finding schools which appeal to their religious senses, due to the largely secular nature of our education system.

People who keep their children at home are always forced to debate the reasons for that with counsellors who check up on kids who don't go to school. When I was in public schooling, you could still get away with a very poor attendance record, due to the fact that the whole education system was experiencing an overhaul and you more or less got to slip through the mazes of the net. As of late, the government is becoming more and more strict on the issue of children not attending public school. This probably has to do with the rise in youth hanging out on the street causing trouble.

The fact that only people who can pose religious reasons for not wanting their child in public school, seems somewhat discriminatory. I can imagine there would be people ascribing to no particular religion who still feel that their child would receive less than a decent education in many schools. The only option for them would either be; move them to a different school, which due to the standardization of schooling-fees and government support for families with children is a somewhat viable option, or the home-schooling as supplemental to public education.
 
 
c0nstant
15:46 / 29.03.07
Apophenia, you're based in the UK, right? Would I be right in assuming, based on the ages of the kids that you're teaching that you are a college tutor? I ask because in my experience, college, due to the fact that it's optional, seperates out those who are willing to learn from those who are not. At least, for the most part. This being the case, many of the criticisms of mainstream schooling (bullying, maaaad teachers etc.) don't really apply (I can unpack my thinking on this if'n ya want me to).

I have experience of trying to teach Maths because of teaching what’s called “Key Skills”[...] This is a huge contrast to my main subjects, Media and Film Studies – most students come fresh to this[...]and so are hugely switched on.

Again, I think the difference here is that when you attend college, you do so voluntarily and therefore are more likely to be 'switched on'. I started college in the year that AS levels and Key skills first came in and can attest that I did indeed hate them, but I think that's because I felt (and still feel) that the only reason they exist is as a sort of tacit admission of the failure of the secondary education system in this country. I spent FIVE goddamn years in an instituation that accepts the brutalization of it's charges as 'normal', and to not come out with a basic level of literacy or numeracy and have to carry on learning subjects that I may not have any interest in when I have CHOSEN to carry my education on seems a little...unfair.

So, homeschooling...in a nutshell, it is entirely dependant on the abilities and willingness of the parent to do a good job. With a little common sense and a hefty investment of both time and money homeschooling is, in my eyes, perfectly viable. It just seems that for the most part it isn't well regulated enough and the parents who do embark on it aren't given enough support. However, Many (all?) of the pitfalls of homeschooling CAN, I believe, be avoided with some careful planning and good parenting skills.
 
  

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