# Unschooling



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 18, 2019)

Unschooling is a new trend in which parents legally home school their children, but instead of choosing the curriculum, you allow the child to choose their own curriculum. You basically just leave them to their devices.

Most people, upon hearing of this, immediately assume that unschooling is a terrible idea because they assume that children will naturally spend all their time playing vidya and hitting things with sticks. But, unschooling parents argue that the reality is that they get just as good of results if not better. They argue that the natural tendency of children is to be curious and try to learn, but when confined to a state curriculum and a classroom full of ADHD/methbaby shitheads, their passion for learning is extinguished.

To be honest, I'm inclined to agree. Little children do seem to usually be a lot more enthusiastic about school than older kids, and in Third World countries where education is rare, travelers have often reported children in those societies being much more interested in the world around them than First World children are.

By allowing the child to study what they want in the way that they want, unschooling parents hope to encourage that attitude in their children and allow them to proceed as quickly as possible in the fields that they're good at. Statistically, unschooled children have turned out pretty well compared to the general population, and that's especially good considering that they don't have the vast resources of the state behind them...









						How do Unschoolers Turn Out? | KQED
					

Unschoolers weigh in on how their lives have evolved, including college, career, and overall happiness.




					www.kqed.org
				



(proof that I didn't pull this out of my ass)

So, how should we think about unschooling as a society? Personally, I feel like it's a good idea for the talented minority but maybe not for everybody. If you have the sort of child who's naturally curious and talented, they're probably better off being left to their devices then put through the school system meat grinder, public OR private. But, I would stipulate (as many unschooling parents do) that vidya and TV don't count as unschooling time. Like, the kid has to be made to study something. Also, some people argue about socialization. Usually unschooling parents just have their kids socialize in non-school events/associations, and again, they tend to turn out just as well if not better.


----------



## The Pink Panther (Aug 18, 2019)

lol nigga we have a whole community watch thread on this shit:






						Unschooling
					

Welcome to the world of Unschooling, an 'educational' style that basically boils down to not teaching your children jack shit. Basically, it's homeschooling but without any sort of curriculum, assignments, or schooling. Keep your children at home and allow them to learn everything just from...




					kiwifarms.net


----------



## The Cunting Death (Aug 18, 2019)

That's incredibly fucking stupid


----------



## nagant 1895 (Aug 18, 2019)

I was home schooled from 3rd through through 8th grade. My mothers motto was "I never let schooling interfere with my education" a quote from Mark Twain. Based on my observations of the other home schooled children I assert that I was home schooled for the perfect amount of time. Kids who started too early were always way too family oriented and shy. Kids who never went to real high school ended up being failure of all sorts, dug addicts, selling their children to shady adoption agencies, you name it.
Even within my sibling group it worked out different for each of us. The youngest enjoyed the freedom and grew up dumb but hard working, Its been a long road for them to get to a stable place in life. The eldest studied fine but without social pressure on their looks they grew up fat as hell and cut off anyone who talks about it. Me in the middle, I feel i got the best of it. I spent a few hours a day working on math and science with mom and dad and the rest of the time reading The Great Books. People sometimes ask me what my major was or lament "I wish my history classes had covered Thai History" because I've learned myriad fields (mastered none).
TL;DR - It depends on the child. Some will waste it, some will thrive, all need to go to real high school and learn real world social dynamics.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 18, 2019)

The Pink Panther said:


> lol nigga we have a whole community watch thread on this shit:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I'll take a look at it.

The OP on it seems rather ignorant, bit of a strawman. You're not supposed to unschool by letting little Treyvon or Cletus watch Spongebob all day. You're supposed to take the little geniuses and have them read nonfiction books.

Considering that most of the great intellectuals of history have been self-taught, well...

I mostly think about it because I really do believe I would have been better off if I had never gone to school, and so do my parents now. I learned plenty of stuff in elementary and high school, but none of it was stuff I wouldn't have or couldn't have easily learned on my own and done faster.



nagant 1895 said:


> I was home schooled from 3rd through through 8th grade. My mothers motto was "I never let schooling interfere with my education" a quote from Mark Twain. Based on my observations of the other home schooled children I assert that I was home schooled for the perfect amount of time. Kids who started two early were always way to family oriented and shy. Kids who never went to real high school ended up being failure of all sorts, dug addicts, selling their children to shady adoption agencies, you name it.
> Even within my sibling group it worked out different for each of us. The youngest enjoyed the freedom and grew up dumb but hard working, Its been a long road for them to get to a stable place in life. The eldest studied fine but without social pressure on their looks they grew up fat as hell and cut off anyone who talks about it. Me in the middle, I feel i got the best of it. I spent a few hours a day working on math and science with mom and dad and the rest of the time reading The Great Books. People sometimes ask me what my major was or lament "I wish my history classes had covered Thai History" because I've learned myriad fields (mastered none).
> TL;DR - It depends on the child. Some will waste it, some will thrive, all need to go to real high school and learn real world social dynamics.



Ah, this is interesting perspective (as opposed to "lol u need school"). 

Interesting that the ones who didn't go to high school turned out fucked up. I wonder why. I was best friends with a guy who was home schooled until high school and he was/is weird, in a sheltered-spergy-Christian way, but well-functioning. 

I feel like unschooling's effectiveness may be cut into by the lack of natural social environments for children now. The lack of socialization will pretty much always be the biggest problem with not having public/private school. But at the same time, a lot of the social environment that happens there is trash.

Unschooling is ultimately something that will most benefit brilliant/talented children, while public/private school will most benefit average-to-above-average children.


----------



## The Pink Panther (Aug 18, 2019)

Maybe back then this would work, but in today's society if you let a kid off on his own, once it discovers technology...


_it's fucked for life_

Homeschooling is better than just complete unschooling, but maybe if a child could adapt to outside surroundings....then...


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 18, 2019)

The Pink Panther said:


> Maybe back then this would work, but in today's society if you let a kid off on his own, once it discovers technology...
> 
> 
> _it's fucked for life_
> ...



I should clarify that among unschooling there seems to be a multitude of stances. I have a more moderate stance on it, which is advocacy of it for certain groups of people (not everybody) and in a more limited, controlled fashion. There are some parents who will consider their children's 18-hour Fortnite binge unschooling. I think you need to require the kid to study and keep a bit of an eye on them (hard to do if you don't have a family member who stays at the house), with gentle nudges. It's just that you're not teaching them state-structured lessons in the way that home schoolers do. That's the problem with home schooling: an amateur tries to do a professional's job and almost always fails horribly.

Technology, if anything, makes it way better. It's a lot more of a potential distraction, but these days it pretty much is in the schools too. Tech allows us to read information on pretty much everything immediately. The big downside, which I'm all too aware of, is that it encourages a short attention span... skimming articles instead of reading long passages carefully.


----------



## nagant 1895 (Aug 18, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> I should clarify that among unschooling there seems to be a multitude of stances. I have a more moderate stance on it, which is advocacy of it for certain groups of people (not everybody) and in a more limited, controlled fashion. There are some parents who will consider their children's 18-hour Fortnite binge unschooling. I think you need to require the kid to study and keep a bit of an eye on them (hard to do if you don't have a family member who stays at the house), with gentle nudges. It's just that you're not teaching them state-structured lessons in the way that home schoolers do.


In home/unschooling everything is negotiable, it's your parents, what are they going to do? Ground you? you'll just sleep all day and not learn and then when they go to sleep sneak out/on the computer. So what real school provides in contrast is an inescapable lesson on how shitty the world is. Public education teaches us that the world will force you to pass a test or it will ruin your life, the world will force you to attend something against your will or it will ruin your life, the world will expend way more energy that its worth to punish you for breaking its rules.



Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> That's the problem with home schooling: an amateur tries to do a professional's job and almost always fails horribly.


If someone doesn't know everything a kid needs to know to graduate high school or get a GED they shouldn't have had kids to begin with, much less be homeschooling them.


----------



## BoingBoingBoi (Aug 18, 2019)

i've always been skeptical of homeschooling, as a few of my cousins are homeschooled. one is a total mess. the others are too young to tell.

i can see the idea of allowing the child to pursue their own interests as being an effective way to do it. i'm far more well versed in topics i pursued on my own than i am in those i learned in school, and i'm sure this is true of most everybody. i'd say if you're going to homeschool your kid anyway, it might as well be through unchooling, otherwise then it's just the parent stifling the kid's curiosity rather than a teacher, so why bother?



nagant 1895 said:


> I was home schooled from 3rd through through 8th grade.



this seems like exactly the right time to be home schooled, and it seems like you've confirmed some of my suspicions. if you miss out on kindergarten and early elementary school, you might miss out on vital, childhood social skills. if you're homeschooled through high school, you might also miss out on vital social skills. later elementary school thru middle school though is usually a shitty nightmare of stupidity that nobody remembers anyway (except maybe for the bad parts), so being homeschooled through it might be a good way to go.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 18, 2019)

nagant 1895 said:


> In home/unschooling everything is negotiable, it's your parents, what are they going to do? Ground you? you'll just sleep all day and not learn and then when they go to sleep sneak out/on the computer. So what real school provides in contrast is an inescapable lesson on how shitty the world is. Public education teaches us that the world will force you to pass a test or it will ruin your life, the world will force you to attend something against your will or it will ruin your life, the world will expend way more energy that its worth to punish you for breaking its rules.
> 
> 
> If someone doesn't know everything a kid needs to know to graduate high school or get a GED they shouldn't have had kids to begin with, much less be homeschooling them.



...What were you, raised by hippies? If you don't obey you get whooped and if you keep disobeying you get your shit taken away and beaten.

The argument about real school providing an experience in misery (character-building, basically) reminds me a bit of CGP Grey's "Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant." It's an argument I've heard in different forms, about different things. I'm not particularly fond of it as it always feels more like a retroactive justification. For example (and pardon the hyperbole), imagine if we had a cultural practice of driving a nail in the pinkie of every child at age 10, and we justified it because they need to know pain in case one day they encounter it. Now, there is certainly value in toughening people up. It's just... I'm not convinced that you need to go seeking unpleasantness.

Actually, as I write, I've come up with the perfect counterargument: jobs. High school aged kids can work part-time jobs and elementary kids can work informally (mostly lawn care; unfortunately, the whole lemonade-stand-and-paper-routes practice has been killed off). That's more real-world than school ever is.

The need to produce results is something that families can still very much provide. Shit, it's the family that gives the school their teeth. Children from parents who don't care tend to not perform at school regardless of the consequences. Very common behavior among the low-character poor. Like, when a kid makes an F on a test, what's usually their worry? Is it "oh shit, Mrs. Teacher is going to be mad" or "oh shit, my parents are going to kill me"? But more than anything, most unschooled kids I've read about went on to go to college. They had to pass the ACT the same as everybody else. They usually pick it all up along the way, intentionally or not.



BoingBoingBoi said:


> i've always been skeptical of homeschooling, as a few of my cousins are homeschooled. one is a total mess. the others are too young to tell.
> 
> i can see the idea of allowing the child to pursue their own interests as being an effective way to do it. i'm far more well versed in topics i pursued on my own than i am in those i learned in school, and i'm sure this is true of most everybody. i'd say if you're going to homeschool your kid anyway, it might as well be through unchooling, otherwise then it's just the parent stifling the kid's curiosity rather than a teacher, so why bother?
> 
> ...



What's the story there? I mean, I don't like homeschooling myself, I think it's garbage. The difference between unschooling and homeschooling is curriculum. If Momma is teaching the child just like the teacher would have in school, it really is pointless. 

The biggest problem is that most every homeschooled kid I've met has been homeschooled for religious reasons, which means that parents are religious nutters and usually living Dunning-Krugers.

I also doubt that people of below-average or maybe even average intelligence would have much to gain from unschooling. It's more of a matter of needing different approaches for different kinds of people.


----------



## nagant 1895 (Aug 18, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> ...What were you, raised by hippies? If you don't obey you get whooped and if you keep disobeying you get your shit taken away and beaten.


It takes emotional energy to beat your own child, the one you loved so much you dropped out of your career to home school them. It rarely came to beatings but when it did I never backed down, flip flops, belts, spatulas, maglite flashlights. if I had more stubbornness than my parents did emotional energy I might not win but I could bring them to the table.


Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> Actually, as I write, I've come up with the perfect counterargument: jobs. High school aged kids can work part-time jobs and elementary kids can work informally (mostly lawn care; unfortunately, the whole lemonade-stand-and-paper-routes practice has been killed off). That's more real-world than school ever is.


Jobs would be great but even at a job everything is negotiable, even more so than between family members because either side can walk away. It doesn't teach that lesson about the inevitable or ineffable nature of dealing with, say, the state. The state will not negotiate if you were running a red light or if you paid your taxes. The state gives school teeth because, at least where I live, truancy results in your parents getting straight up arrested. Failure to pass a test results in not moving on to the next grade. It's hardy an issue what the parents think or do because when the take any action at all the aim is almost always to help the child. It's the state that will ruin a kids life.


----------



## NOT Sword Fighter Super (Aug 18, 2019)

Kids are retarded and so is this idea.
This is almost as bad as letting a kid decide to transition.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 18, 2019)

nagant 1895 said:


> It takes emotional energy to beat your own child, the one you loved so much you dropped out of your career to home school them. It rarely came to beatings but when it did I never backed down, flip flops, belts, spatulas, maglite flashlights.
> 
> Jobs would be great but even at a job everything is negotiable, even more so than between family members because either side can walk away. It doesn't teach that lesson about the inevitable or ineffable nature of dealing with, say, the state. The state will not negotiate if you were running a red light or if you paid your taxes. The state gives school teeth because, at least where I live, truancy results in your parents getting straight up arrested. Failure to pass a test results in not moving on to the next grade. It's hardy an issue what the parents think or do because when the take any action at all the aim is almost always to help the child. It's the state the will ruin a kids life.



TBH, I was only whooped maybe twice in my life that I can actually remember. I just never acted up to start with so punishing me wasn't really relevant anyways. That homeschooled friend of mine had parents who'd whoop him frequently and he was apparently too stupid to change his behavior. So that's an admission that I'm not hardly an expert on that aspect.

I'm legit curious how many kids out there have parents who don't care but the kids still put in some effort so they don't get held back or otherwise screwed with by the school.



Sword Fighter Super said:


> Kids are exceptional and so is this idea.
> This is almost as bad as letting a kid decide to transition.



> Looks at Andrew Carnegie
> One of the greatest industrialists in world history
> Created the US steel industry, made a fantastic fortune, gave most of it away out of generosity 
> Considered a model for titans of industry even to this day
> Didn't have a formal education
> Taught himself through hard work, self-motivation, reading books in a library


----------



## NOT Sword Fighter Super (Aug 18, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> TBH, I was only whooped maybe twice in my life that I can actually remember. I just never acted up to start with so punishing me wasn't really relevant anyways. That homeschooled friend of mine had parents who'd whoop him frequently and he was apparently too stupid to change his behavior. So that's an admission that I'm not hardly an expert on that aspect.
> 
> I'm legit curious how many kids out there have parents who don't care but the kids still put in some effort so they don't get held back or otherwise screwed with by the school.
> 
> ...


Yeah, the exception is not the rule. Most normal kids aren't driven enough to do that. And again, nearly all kids are retarded.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 18, 2019)

Sword Fighter Super said:


> Yeah, the exception is not the rule. Most normal kids aren't driven enough to do that. And again, nearly all kids are exceptional.



Which is why you don’t unschool “most normal kids”...


----------



## nagant 1895 (Aug 18, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> I'm legit curious how many kids out there have parents who don't care but the kids still put in some effort so they don't get held back or otherwise screwed with by the school.


It depends on how well the kids peer group is doing and if they have decent teachers. I've seen plenty of kids of convicted felons doing just fine in school because their friends value good grades and they take their cues there. On the other hand parents can work their hearts out trying to help a child but if they child is being socially shunned for studying and performing they'll regress to the mean. That's one of the good arguments for homeschooling is being able to control/provide your child with a intellectually rewarding peer group.


----------



## byuu (Aug 18, 2019)

The whole point of school is to teach the kids the shit they *don't *want to learn.
Kids already learn the stuff they're really into without it.


----------



## sadbird (Aug 18, 2019)

nagant 1895 said:


> In home/unschooling everything is negotiable, it's your parents, what are they going to do? Ground you? you'll just sleep all day and not learn and then when they go to sleep sneak out/on the computer. So what real school provides in contrast is an inescapable lesson on how shitty the world is. Public education teaches us that the world will force you to pass a test or it will ruin your life, the world will force you to attend something against your will or it will ruin your life, the world will expend way more energy that its worth to punish you for breaking its rules.
> 
> 
> If someone doesn't know everything a kid needs to know to graduate high school or get a GED they shouldn't have had kids to begin with, much less be homeschooling them.


A lot of parents already do a fantastic job of teaching their children how bad the world is. But sure public education does it too, by rewarding students for not doing any work, getting credit despite lack of participation, and letting everyone graduate so long as they showed up at least half of the year. Getting a HS diploma is the bare minimum for getting a mcjob, nothing more.
In anycase, I would agree that home/unschooling probably works best in tandem with parents who give a damn and make efforts to expose you to things and develop useful skills.


----------



## Lemmingwise (Aug 18, 2019)

I think unschooling, like homeschooling can be great or poor.

Curiosity is a great engine for natural learning, but there can also be great value in prepared lessons. Like guided tours, the material and journey may be fixed, but there is great value in learning some of the fixed things.

There is value in developing grit to study what you don't like.

Above all I think (like most modern schooling) it neglects giving guidance to kids. Kids may have boundless enthusiasm, but they don't have an idea what the world is like. It is a bit of a paradox though, because teachers and parents don't know what the world will be like either at the time the kid grows up into adulthood.

But they do have some idea of the incoming challenges and what the world is like. And they shouldn't renege their duty to instill wisdom.


----------



## Varg Did Nothing Wrong (Aug 18, 2019)

There is an enormous difference between "you homeschool your kids and adapt their curriculum to their interests" and "you let your kids run around all day every day for years playing games and climbing trees and call it an education".

I think that with a good family situation and parents who are able to pay attention and actually do the job, homeschooling can be perfectly fine, provided proper socialization is also taught in some other ways. Unschooling puts the responsibility of planning for a future and learning things on the back of a 10 year old who has no concept of "need" vs. "want", what are the odds a child will actually sit down and learn things that might seem boring to him but are necessary? The Unschooling thread we have is full of fucking teenagers who are unable to read and do simple math because that shit was boring and their parents didn't think sitting the kid down with some fucking flash cards was a valid sacrifice of the child's free will to make for the sake of their future.


----------



## Maggots on a Train v2 (Aug 18, 2019)

For ever one parent who could successfully implement it, there are 100 Cecily Ks.  And once they start utterly fucking up their children, they will be too stupid to notice, or too proud to admit it.


----------



## Fagbag (Aug 18, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> Andrew Carnegie


It's funny because when you made the assertion that most of the world's geniuses have been self taught, Carnegie was literally the only example I could think of off the top of my head.
Carnegie is the exception to the exceptional. 
SOME kids might have a natural inclination to learn, but definitely not most of them, and even those that do need structure and direction.
Kids don't teach themselves practical skills, they teach themselves about whatever catches their interest. Like fucking dinosaurs, trains, and the animal kingdom.

You're retarded. Your kid is going to be at least half as retarded as you are.
If you want them to make what little they have of your awful genes, make sure that their education is entrusted to someone else.


----------



## keyboredsm4shthe2nd (Aug 18, 2019)

I agree to a certain degree. Have you been forced to endure common core and test obsession in modern schools? Even to a third grader it makes daddy's shotgun look mighty tasty.


----------



## WhoBusTank69 (Aug 18, 2019)

Just like regular schooling there's too many variables to account for in asserting that unschooling is either superior or worse in comparison to anything else. The major problem in this is that public schooling is becoming increasingly terrible for a myriad of reasons including funding, the incentive for increased funding, unions keeping poor teachers employed, shitty/absent parents raising shitty kids, etc. which skews the theoretical favor towards anything involving homeschooling.
I can agree with one of the earlier posts in that the 3rd grade to 8th grade gap is immensely important to personal development suited well for homeschooling, and that the schoolyard environment is absolutely exhausting whether it can be blamed on socializing and bullying or an increased focus on useless standardized tests. Middle school/Junior High is such a fucking nightmare for almost everyone with puberty kicking in that I wouldn't blame parents for homeschooling during just that three-year period.


----------



## ES 195 (Aug 18, 2019)

Unschooling sounds really stupid. Even if the child is gifted or whatever and learns almost everything they're supposed to by choice they're still going to avoid some subjects they don't like or are bad at and you would gambling on if that's something stupid like interpreting poetry or something important like math or science.


----------



## Gravityqueen4life (Aug 18, 2019)

home schooling feels so alien too me every time i hear it since i was raised in a socialist country were that sort of thing was un-heard off. if you even tried doing it here, the state would take your kids away and you be charged with child abuse.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 18, 2019)

nagant 1895 said:


> So what real school provides in contrast is an inescapable lesson on how shitty the world is. Public education teaches us that the world will force you to pass a test or it will ruin your life, the world will force you to attend something against your will or it will ruin your life, the world will expend way more energy that its worth to punish you for breaking its rules.



As someone who did go through K-12 I can confirm that this is really the only thing I actually learned in school, that the system is just there to defeat you and keep you occupied for six hours a day. Just about everything else I learned on my own through books and documentaries and later on the internet. It follows that I was bored out of my skull most of the time in school. The rest of the time I was stressing out about how shit everything was. I think this way of controlling people is starting to break down though, because we're seeing an uptick in stuff like suicide and drug abuse where most people go "Well, if this is what life in the real world is about, to hell with it." With the rise of the internet, its becoming easier for the average person to see how empty and monotonous life is, especially if you do everything you're supposed to.

I don't really see how something like unschooling/homeschooling is going to work any better. You're going to get a society of completely depressed addicts one way or the other when they get out into the real world and find that human contact is miserable and you need to spend at least 8 hours a day doing something you hate. I guess the best thing any of us can do is sit on our hands and wait for robots to save our ass, but I doubt we'll get that far before society implodes.


----------



## Duke Nukem (Aug 18, 2019)

keyboredsm4shthe2nd said:


> I agree to a certain degree. Have you been forced to endure common core and test obsession in modern schools? Even to a third grader it makes daddy's shotgun look mighty tasty.



I've been saying it for years, the real reason for the current public school system is to keep kids off the streets. That's literally all it's good for these days.

These moronic common core and "study for the test you need to pass to take the other test" things are doing very little to teach our youths about, well, anything, really. We still use the Prussian model in public education (K-12) and it was designed to produce factory drones for the Industrial Revolution, not well adjusted young adults who know how to innovate and produce new exciting technologies for the world to invest in. A lot of people who are passionate about certain subjects lose all interest because of the one size fits all mentality and the watered down, bland nature of public education. They also enforce this idea that if you fuck up now, you're fucked forever. And we're not even getting into the problems of forcing a thousand people who don't necessarily like each other into a relatively small space.

I can see where unschooling advocates are coming from, but I have to concur that most parents are too dumb to make it work. It's great for some kids but many others, yeah, good luck doing anything other than flipping burgers your whole life.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 18, 2019)

Duke Nukem said:


> I've been saying it for years, the real reason for the current public school system is to keep kids off the streets. That's literally all it's good for these days.



I was, as a child, given a mountain of shit for comparing school to prison. A few years after I graduated they installed hermetic doors and a buzzer system. I guess I got the last laugh in the end, no bars on the windows yet though.



Duke Nukem said:


> These moronic common core and "study for the test you need to pass to take the other test" things are doing very little to teach our youths about, well, anything, really. We still use the Prussian model in public education (K-12) and it was designed to produce factory drones for the Industrial Revolution, not well adjusted young adults who know how to innovate and produce new exciting technologies for the world to invest in. A lot of people who are passionate about certain subjects lose all interest because of the one size fits all mentality and the watered down, bland nature of public education. They also enforce this idea that if you fuck up now, you're fucked forever. And we're not even getting into the problems of forcing a thousand people who don't necessarily like each other into a relatively small space.



I also think its not very healthy to just continuously pound "THE REAL WORLD" into kid's heads over and over again since even in grade school the thought of having to work a boring office job made me want to just give up on everything. I think Middle School/Junior High is a time where a lot of kids just absolutely shut down partially because of puberty but also because the realization sets in that, no, the rest of your life is not going to be fun.

I still think the modern work environment and shift schedules are unsustainable because they were designed in an era where you could buy meth, cocaine and heroin over the counter. I'm reasonably certain that if you coked me up I probably could work a 12-hr shift without even thinking about it. Then we realized that was destroying people, so we banned the drugs, but any reasonably well-paying job still expects you to just have no life and rent out 90% of your head to it. Its just not possible anymore.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 18, 2019)

Fagbag said:


> It's funny because when you made the assertion that most of the world's geniuses have been self taught, Carnegie was literally the only example I could think of off the top of my head.
> Carnegie is the exception to the exceptional.
> SOME kids might have a natural inclination to learn, but definitely not most of them, and even those that do need structure and direction.
> Kids don't teach themselves practical skills, they teach themselves about whatever catches their interest. Like fucking dinosaurs, trains, and the animal kingdom.
> ...








						List of autodidacts - Wikipedia
					






					en.m.wikipedia.org
				




Ive tried to limit my list to people who didn’t have any more than a few years of formal childhood education, but I haven’t checked each individual person:

Benjamin Franklin
Michael Faraday
Frankly Lloyd Wright
Gustave Eiffel
Leonardo da Vinci
John Smeaton
Thomas Alva Edison
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Henry Ford
Melanie Klein
Francis Edgeworth
Oliver Heaviside
Charles Darwin
Blaise Pascal
Michael Faraday
George Boole
Andre-Marie Ampere
Antonie can Leeuwenhoek
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eric Hoffer

“That’s the only one I can think of” says more about you than about homeschooling. Not to mention the scores who probably went to school but didn’t learn anything while there.

Lastly, you, like half the people responding, apparently have some shitty reading comprehension. I’m not going to bother rebutting your points because I’ve already done so multiple times to other people. Go back and read the thread again. You get an F.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 18, 2019)

Duke Nukem said:


> I've been saying it for years, the real reason for the current public school system is to keep kids off the streets. That's literally all it's good for these days.
> 
> These moronic common core and "study for the test you need to pass to take the other test" things are doing very little to teach our youths about, well, anything, really. We still use the Prussian model in public education (K-12) and it was designed to produce factory drones for the Industrial Revolution, not well adjusted young adults who know how to innovate and produce new exciting technologies for the world to invest in. A lot of people who are passionate about certain subjects lose all interest because of the one size fits all mentality and the watered down, bland nature of public education. They also enforce this idea that if you fuck up now, you're fucked forever. And we're not even getting into the problems of forcing a thousand people who don't necessarily like each other into a relatively small space.
> 
> I can see where unschooling advocates are coming from, but I have to concur that most parents are too dumb to make it work. It's great for some kids but many others, yeah, good luck doing anything other than flipping burgers your whole life.



The worst problem I’ve ever heard of with the new system is their Nu Math. They teach the children exactly one way to do it and count it as wrong if they do it another way. The thing is, the new methods violate the Properties of Algebra. When x + y = a, the teacher will claim y + x = b.

I have a hunch that the system is deliberately designed to depress the scores of the lighter races, bring parity by reducing everybody else rather than bringing Black scores up.

They’re also banned; now; from punishing certain students. They straight up can’t do anything. That alone has completely torpedoed the value of public school, rendered it lawless. Private school is still fine, but public school is a lost cause even for those without much academic potential.

The biggest problem I have with the idea of unschooling growing is that parents are fucking awful at judging their own children’s abilities. Damn near everybody I’ve met has thought that their kids were lazy geniuses, some of them when the child was an idiot.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 18, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> “That’s the only one I can think of” says more about you than about homeschooling. Not to mention the scores who probably went to school but didn’t learn anything while there.



It doesn't really disprove anything in your arguement, but I think its worth noting that a lot of people on that list were born in an era where being an autodidact was one of the only ways you could actually get an education unless your family was absolutely loaded.



Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> I have a hunch that the system is deliberately designed to depress the scores of the lighter races, bring parity by reducing everybody else rather than bringing Black scores up.
> 
> They’re also banned; now; from punishing certain students. They straight up can’t do anything. That alone has completely torpedoed the value of public school, rendered it lawless. Private school is still fine, but public school is a lost cause even for those without much academic potential.



This is total paranoia, the racial issues public schooling faces are related to the trouble educators actually have in engaging with students of different ethnic backgrounds. For instance, in my area anyone who lacked a decent command of the English language was basically just dumped in with the speds when most of them were of average intelligence at worst. Having a functioning brain but being treated like a tard would make anyone give up and tune out, if they could even follow along due to having ESL. Even to born Americans like inner city blacks, they have different standards and dialects than stuffy suburbanite whites, hence why we see inner city schools performing much better when the teachers are black.

I don't believe segregated classrooms are the answer here though, I've always been an advocate of trying to create a more flexible educational program that gives students a bit more freedom to decide what they want to do. Currently there are a lot of kids trapped in the system who are dumb as stumps because they got hit by the sped train and dragged all the way to the gutter. 

Further, identity poltics are a total demon in this situation. The same way you worry that whites are being deliberately targeted in some kind of conspiracy to make them dumber, you can go on Twitter right now and see people on the other side of the color bar complaining that public education is a conspiracy by whitey to make the black race into tards. The real conspiracy is that schools are factories designed to churn out grades and government funding. Any kind of discrimination or fuckery with identity politics or rewarding poor students with fake grades is based on that. Unless you find a real ideologue in the system, the rest of these assholes are just trying to make a paycheck.

 I'm sure one thing kids of white and ethnic households share is that they both really fucking hate school.



Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> The biggest problem I have with the idea of unschooling growing is that parents are fucking awful at judging their own children’s abilities. Damn near everybody I’ve met has thought that their kids were lazy geniuses, some of them when the child was an idiot.



Its a difficult call to make because intelligent people tend to not be terribly social. Refer back to your list of autodidacts; most or all of them were known for having weird personalities or being gigantic assholes. Someone's seemingly idiot kid could be a math wizard . Personally I think a possible solution to this would be a comprehensive set of exams and tests given to kids before they get too far into their education. If they score very high on certain subjects, it may be a good idea to start pruning off some of the shit no-one cares about. 

This is just an aside became I'm full of them, but also the parents of children who really are geniuses tend to not talk about it, because often having such a powerful mind at such a young age drives them mad. It becomes a thing to be hidden and rarely discussed, and generally parents of really intelligent children report suffering from intense stress. Another reason we need formalized testing to detect this stuff sooner rather than later.


----------



## Queen Elizabeth II (Aug 18, 2019)

I was homeschooled, and considering I later gained several post graduate qualifications I'd say my level of education was fairly decent. 

Homeschooling has the potential to be far superior to state schooling, considering you literally can have one to one attention, but also far worse. In my case my parents chose it for practicality, we never stayed in one place for very long and being relatively conservative they were afraid if I went to an international school I would "lose" our culture; I needed to be learning in our language, learning our history and traditions etc. At the time I thought it was strange, and despite learning them I don't follow most of them myself, but now I feel as if I was given something very precious, an option very few get, something if I ever had children I would feel duty bound to ensure they got as well.

I was not "Unschooled". The relative who was my teacher was a very highly qualified and intelligent woman who took the curriculum of our home country, added a few things she thought would be essential or culturally significant in where we moved to, and gave me a very strict timetable and course of study. I did the same things that others in private and state ran schools did, but far more as well and in less time since my "school day" was from 7am to midday. That might sound early, but that was to replicate the discipline and routine element that schools try to instill and for me that worked. 

We also joined a type of informal union for other homeschoolers; and this is where I got to see where homeschooling is very poor. Most homeschoolers there did so for religious reasons; they couldn't find a single sex school for their girls, they believed the Earth was flat etc. These kids were just taught utter shit and beyond being able to recite sections of the Koran/Torah from memory had basically no other skills of note. There were also the hippie parents who did this "Johnny is just so gifted, he chooses what to learn" stuff, and while their little darling (often aspie darling) was the most informed person you could ever meet on a single niche topic was ignorant of everything else.  I'm saying Johnny because I did know one guy in this group who I kept contact with for a while who knew everything that was worth knowing about World War II history, but who at the age of twenty literally could not count past seven and had devised this strange system of reciting specific dates of deaths and battle from the Second World War to give the impression he could, despite not actually understanding what was meant by "give me nine of x" . I'm not even joking. 

The only thing I think was lacking in my curriculum was the social element; despite living somewhere for several years I retained a clearly foreign accent and never really integrated or made friends with the local children (I hung around with other kids in the church who came from the same place as my family). This would have been fairly easily solved by joining say a soccer club at the weekend or even a church youth group. It was never a "problem", but just an area for improvement really. 

Just my $0.02. Teaching your kid personally if you've got more than a couple of brain cells to rub together is obviously going to be better than sending them off to some random fuckwit fresh from university with a degree in hair dressing trying to corral thirty-to-forty other little darlings unless the aforementioned fuckwit is actually smarter than you.


----------



## Crunchy Leaf (Aug 18, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> List of autodidacts - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Really, putting Eliezer Yudkowsky on a list with Leonardo da Vinci? And da Vinci did have a formal education--he became a studio boy and then an apprentice. Likewise, after Ben Franklin left public school, he too became an apprentice. This is different from homeschooling unless the parents happened to be skilled in a particular trade, and the majority of Western parents in 2019 are not. 

A lot of unschooling parents think it's great if their kids do nothing but play vidya all day and that it's extremely educational. They think their kids are totally gonna learn Japanese because of how much they love Japanese games.


----------



## Slap47 (Aug 18, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> > Looks at Andrew Carnegie
> > One of the greatest industrialists in world history
> > Created the US steel industry, made a fantastic fortune, gave most of it away out of generosity
> > Considered a model for titans of industry even to this day
> ...



He lived during an age where most people didn't have any kind of formal schooling.

Genius level people would probably benefit from a structured education. Carnegie was basically the apprentice of an already successful rail tycoon afterall.

Is is really an example of unschooling? He was basically the product of child labor and he was lucky as his boss wasn't an insane person who made him mine coal naked.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 19, 2019)

Locomotive Derangement said:


> It doesn't really disprove anything in your arguement, but I think its worth noting that a lot of people on that list were born in an era where being an autodidact was one of the only ways you could actually get an education unless your family was absolutely loaded.



I bring them up mainly as an argument that great men can and do tend to rely mainly on themselves and their willingness to seek out knowledge from others.



> This is total paranoia, the racial issues public schooling faces are related to the trouble educators actually have in engaging with students of different ethnic backgrounds. For instance, in my area anyone who lacked a decent command of the English language was basically just dumped in with the speds when most of them were of average intelligence at worst. Having a functioning brain but being treated like a tard would make anyone give up and tune out, if they could even follow along due to having ESL. Even to born Americans like inner city blacks, they have different standards and dialects than stuffy suburbanite whites, hence why we see inner city schools performing much better when the teachers are black.



I don't disagree with any of that. It's just that we know Blacks (for whatever reasons) tend to score poorly and Whites tend to score well (relatively speaking). There's always this push to try to close the gap.

Well, you can close the gap by improving things for the Blacks... or you can depress everybody down to the same level of shitiness. It's kind of like when Blacks continually violate certain misdemeanors in cities (like not paying fares on buses), so they just get rid of the misdemeanor. 

Or the schools do what they do out of stupidity. Most of these problems seem to stem from the Department of Education having been created. The idea of having a standardized curriculum for a nation where people move from state to state frequently makes sense. But, it invited the bureaucrats and the professors (there are a LOT of education professors who have never actually taught children) to start imposing their shitty ideas on the actual teachers. Trying to make education more professionalized and "scientific" seems to have only made it worse.

Speaking of Blacks feeling more comfortable among their own, I'm totally on board with teaching AAVE in Black-majority schools. The school systems ought to encourage fostering the native cultures of the area (Cajun, Black, Gullah, Chicano, Appalachian, whatever it is) over subjugating the students to a national monoculture.



> Further, identity poltics are a total demon in this situation. The same way you worry that whites are being deliberately targeted in some kind of conspiracy to make them dumber, you can go on Twitter right now and see people on the other side of the color bar complaining that public education is a conspiracy by whitey to make the black race into tards. The real conspiracy is that schools are factories designed to churn out grades and government funding. Any kind of discrimination or fuckery with identity politics or rewarding poor students with fake grades is based on that. Unless you find a real ideologue in the system, the rest of these assholes are just trying to make a paycheck.
> 
> I'm sure one thing kids of white and ethnic households share is that they both really fucking hate school.



To Blacks everything is a conspiracy by the White to destroy them, which would have been true sixty years ago, but if anything they've become more paranoid and hostile since then rather than less.

Deals with the Feds (the same is true, to a lesser extent, of the states) always turn out bad in the long run. They use money as a weapon. They give it as a gift to state and county governments, and then once they get the state/county dependent on it, they threaten to take it away if they don't comply.



> Its a difficult call to make because intelligent people tend to not be terribly social. Refer back to your list of autodidacts; most or all of them were known for having weird personalities or being gigantic assholes. Someone's seemingly idiot kid could be a math wizard . Personally I think a possible solution to this would be a comprehensive set of exams and tests given to kids before they get too far into their education. If they score very high on certain subjects, it may be a good idea to start pruning off some of the shit no-one cares about.
> 
> This is just an aside became I'm full of them, but also the parents of children who really are geniuses tend to not talk about it, because often having such a powerful mind at such a young age drives them mad. It becomes a thing to be hidden and rarely discussed, and generally parents of really intelligent children report suffering from intense stress. Another reason we need formalized testing to detect this stuff sooner rather than later.



This seems like a fine idea. Essentially exempting students from some aspects of the state's system, subject to permission from a board of educators.



Apoth42 said:


> He lived during an age where most people didn't have any kind of formal schooling.
> 
> Genius level people would probably benefit from a structured education. Carnegie was basically the apprentice of an already successful rail tycoon afterall.
> 
> Is is really an example of unschooling? He was basically the product of child labor and he was lucky as his boss wasn't an insane person who made him mine coal naked.



I think a lot of genius types would benefit from structure in some form that's less like public schooling and more like tutoring. Of course, that runs into a cost issue. Rich men can afford to pay for tutors for anything. Middle class men have to make do with private school. Poor men probably can't afford anything but public school. I don't see unschooling as being incompatible with having a teacher, but there's a different structure there that makes the experience fundamentally different. I had a saxophone tutor (once a week) when I was young and going to see him felt totally different than going to Music class once a week in grade school.

Carnegie wasn't what I'd call unschooled; like you said, he was a child laborer. But he's an example of a willingness to learn on your own. Not everybody has that (thus the need for compulsory school for most people), but some people get more mileage out of reading on their own than sitting in classroom lectures.



Crunchy Leaf said:


> Really, putting Eliezer Yudkowsky on a list with Leonardo da Vinci? And da Vinci did have a formal education--he became a studio boy and then an apprentice. Likewise, after Ben Franklin left public school, he too became an apprentice. This is different from homeschooling unless the parents happened to be skilled in a particular trade, and the majority of Western parents in 2019 are not.
> 
> A lot of unschooling parents think it's great if their kids do nothing but play vidya all day and that it's extremely educational. They think their kids are totally gonna learn Japanese because of how much they love Japanese games.



I think (not sure) Leonardo achieved a fair bit as an architect/scientist/inventor that he didn't have formal training in.

I'm in favor of apprenticeship as an idea, anyways. The modern equivalent of it basically being the trade school.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 19, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> This seems like a fine idea. Essentially exempting students from some aspects of the state's system, subject to permission from a board of educators.



It scares the shit out of people whenever I suggest it, but we really should just have a program where we isolate out all the little narcissists and psychopaths and figure out how to teach them to use their massive egos for something constructive. This idea has also been suggested by more left-leaning figures as a way to solve bullying, which I actually agree with. Telling a kid that they're smart and perceptive and then locking them in a cage with a bunch of tards is just going to make them despise our species even more.


----------



## Crunchy Leaf (Aug 19, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> I bring them up mainly as an argument that great men can and do tend to rely mainly on themselves and their willingness to seek out knowledge from others.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


White people score better because white people on average have higher incomes. The children of rich Nigerian immigrants will do better than the child of someone from the hollers of Kentucky.

Middle class men have to make do with private school? I don't know where you come from, but where I come from, middle class people don't send their kids to private school unless they get a lot of scholarship money or it's a Catholic school. Private school is not the norm. 

Most kids aren't geniuses and therefore their unique educational needs aren't relevant to an overall discussion on unschooling. This is a problem I see a lot on parenting forums discussing education. A child growing up in a household where their parents are married, native English speakers, college educated, and nerdy will do better in school than a child who does not have those advantages. That doesn't make your child a genius. This is why you hear about 'gifted' kids getting to college and becoming a total failure--they weren't truly gifted to begin with. True giftedness is rare.


----------



## XYZpdq (Aug 19, 2019)

I dunno.
I encounter a few people who brag about doing it and they seem kinda dumb.
Then I hear about random things from public schooling and they seem a lot dumb and fairly often sex offenders and filled with a bunch of goddamn normies for the rest of the kids so I can't really blame the parents who are only kinda dumb.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 19, 2019)

Crunchy Leaf said:


> White people score better because white people on average have higher incomes. The children of rich Nigerian immigrants will do better than the child of someone from the hollers of Kentucky.
> 
> Middle class men have to make do with private school? I don't know where you come from, but where I come from, middle class people don't send their kids to private school unless they get a lot of scholarship money or it's a Catholic school. Private school is not the norm.
> 
> Most kids aren't geniuses and therefore their unique educational needs aren't relevant to an overall discussion on unschooling. This is a problem I see a lot on parenting forums discussing education. A child growing up in a household where their parents are married, native English speakers, college educated, and nerdy will do better in school than a child who does not have those advantages. That doesn't make your child a genius. This is why you hear about 'gifted' kids getting to college and becoming a total failure--they weren't truly gifted to begin with. True giftedness is rare.



Private school's not the norm for middle class families where I'm at either, but it's a thing that's obtainable for middle class families (with a lot of sacrifice). We also have cheap, shitty Protestant private schools. I don't know what the quality of their education is, but I'm skeptical of any school who's purpose is primarily religious indoctrination as opposed to high quality education.

I don't see why "this is a thing some people might consider under some circumstances" isn't relevant. I've never, from my first post, been arguing for general implementation of unschooling. And, as I've been reading more, I've come to realize that what I have in my mind is less like unschooling and more of a looser form of home schooling.

Gifted students can fail for many reasons. I'm sure you're familiar with how really high-IQ people tend to not amount to much. There's important traits that people need beyond just intelligence or even beyond intelligence and creativity.

This is a bit of a digression on my part, but one thing I've noticed is that just because somebody is more advanced at a certain stage in their life, that doesn't mean they'll stay that way... and that goes beyond just life becoming more competitive. It's kind of like some kids get a big boost in their mental maturity at an early age, which makes them look like a genius, but... it just never keeps growing. It's sort of like if two people had similar levels of potential that they converge towards, but one starts on it way faster. They still end up with similar outcomes[/QUOTE]


----------



## boku-chan (Aug 19, 2019)

Unschooling combined with actual schooling seems like the best idea.
Be it home school or private school, children need not be left to their own devices to learn for the entirety of their education.
Socialization is also important, as is not over sheltering them. 
Sorry to say but sometimes kids need a healthy amount of bullying to learn to stand up for themselves, without their parents helicoptering over them and solving their peer problems for them.

How is a kid supposed to eventually obtain a degree if they can't even do basic math? Unschooling seems incredibly lazy.

A few hours a day of unschooling on a subject that a child is truly passionate about could go a long way.
Personally, I'd be inclined to enroll my child at a good private school and then when they return home unschool them on their subjects of choice. Books and hands on learning, though. No screens.
Not that my children would have their own screens to start with.



Spoiler: Slight powerleveling



I hated every waking minute of public school, k-12, and college was only tolerable. Moving every other year didn't help.
One might say that I "unschooled" myself after hours by reading books and writing my own stories, but this was entirely of my volition and with zero guidance. It paid off, though. When children teach themselves without even being aware that they're learning, you get much better results.
This can only really apply to something that they already love, however.


----------



## Crunchy Leaf (Aug 19, 2019)

@Ughubughughughughughghlug, since you replying to my quote inside the quote means it doesn't show up in my post: 

Religious schools vary widely in quality. I don't think anyone is sneering at Groton or St Mark's.
To me wanting a religious education is the most understandable reason to send your kid to private school--otherwise save up that tuition money to buy a house in a better school district. I'm not denying there's tons of advantages that come from going to Andover, but most private schools are not Andover, y'know?


----------



## Syaoran Li (Aug 20, 2019)

I'd say a mix of public schooling and homeschooling/unschooling would be a good deal depending on when you do the homeschooling part and where you live. 

I'm inclined to agree that it's generally a good idea to keep them in public school during the early grade school years and also in high school, but this is mainly so they can develop socially. Late grade school and middle school? I honestly would not be opposed to homeschooling your kid during those years, provided you do it competently.

I actually have some experience with this very topic as a kid. 


Spoiler: The Syaoran Li Unschooled Experience



I was always one of those bookworm kids who loved to learn about all sorts of things, especially history. Not just one topic of history, but different topics. 

I also had advanced reading skills for my age and according to my tests, I was reading at a Twelfth Grade level by the time I was in Fourth Grade. However, I was not very good with math. I always found math to be boring and also difficult and generally hated the subject. But I was competent enough to get C's and occasionally B's in math.

Here's the thing, I grew up in a rural backwoods area in Central Appalachia and my school was small and underfunded. We didn't even have a dedicated middle school in my county. Sixth and Seventh Grade was at the elementary schools and Eighth Grade was at the high school.

It got to a point that by Sixth Grade during certain classes, the teachers would just let me sit quietly and read whatever I wanted since I already knew most of the material. The only classes where I was actually having to pay attention and do work were math and science.

Suffice to say, my parents were disappointed and they knew school wasn't doing me any good at that point. 

So I was pretty much unschooled during Seventh and Eighth Grade, and it wasn't that bad. I admit that I mostly just had fun watching anime and playing vidya, but I also still read books and researched history. It was actually kind of fun and I have a lot of cherished memories from that era.

However, my parents were smart enough to know you couldn't unschool a kid during his high school years and expect anything good to come of it. Fortunately, by that point we had moved to a more suburban area and I went to high school like a normal teenager. High school sucked for me, but that's true for most people anywhere.



The American public schooling system is a broken mess, especially if you live in highly polarized areas such as the Bible Belt or leftist shitholes like Portland or the San Francisco Bay. 

And if you're living in a rust belt hellhole like Chicago or Detroit? In those areas, the high schools are little more than a coed version of prison.

At that point, I can understand homeschooling them for middle school and then moving the fuck out to a different and safer schooling district for high school.


----------



## PT 940 (Aug 23, 2019)

I haven't known anyone who unschooled their kids but I don't think home schooling is vetted carefully at all.  Anyone _can_ do it but I've known people who barely had any education think they were doing their kids a favor by keeping them out of school and taught them no history, geography, nothing about other cultures/religions and they did their kids a great disservice.  An educated person would have a much better shot at home schooling but I don't think most people are smart enough to do it.  I'll speak for myself that, for me, I wouldn't have had much social interaction if I hadn't attended school and you can't just expect to join the work force as an adult and function normally if you don't understand how social interaction works.

Of the two families I know who currently home school their kids, one takes their kids to meetups with other kids and they have friends and plan activities and their kids seem normally socialized for their ages.  The other family keeps their kids home all the time and won't allow them to spend time with almost anyone else and they look/dress/talk/act very awkwardly and as for two of the kids they raised that way who are adults now they still look/dress/talk/act like children and other adults don't want to be around them.

I think it's easy to think you are doing the right thing for your kids at one point and realize later on that you screwed up.  Kids are all different and have different needs.  The best thing is to make the most informed decision to suit the needs of your kid, not what's the easiest and/or most "progressive."  A parent's job is to prepare their kids to live as adults and that's something not enough people take seriously.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Aug 25, 2019)

Yolandi said:


> Of the two families I know who currently home school their kids, one takes their kids to meetups with other kids and they have friends and plan activities and their kids seem normally socialized for their ages.  The other family keeps their kids home all the time and won't allow them to spend time with almost anyone else and they look/dress/talk/act very awkwardly and as for two of the kids they raised that way who are adults now they still look/dress/talk/act like children and other adults don't want to be around them.



You can also fuck up your kid even if he's in  public school by not letting him have friends. Some of the home-schooling types put their kids in public school for high school, but they're so overly cautious about who they let around the house that the kid is just a loner. It's something to beware of.


----------



## Slap47 (Aug 25, 2019)

Crunchy Leaf said:


> @Ughubughughughughughghlug, since you replying to my quote inside the quote means it doesn't show up in my post:
> 
> Religious schools vary widely in quality. I don't think anyone is sneering at Groton or St Mark's.
> To me wanting a religious education is the most understandable reason to send your kid to private school--otherwise save up that tuition money to buy a house in a better school district. I'm not denying there's tons of advantages that come from going to Andover, but most private schools are not Andover, y'know?



Most private schools are actually worse than the schools in the public system. 

A minority of them are run by local community leaders  who are passionate or are just fancy but most are run by corporations who artificially raise their scores by kicking disabled and troubled students. They've been caught cheating to raise their scores and even then they perform at about the same or even worse in places that went all-in on privatizing their systems (Michigan). 

They intentionally overbook so that they receive the public subsidy and then say "we're full" and force the kids into the public system. Some schools have been caught making the kids get a GED because they cheaped out on getting a renewed license. 



Crunchy Leaf said:


> @Ughubughughughughughghlug, since you replying to my quote inside the quote means it doesn't show up in my post:
> 
> Religious schools vary widely in quality. I don't think anyone is sneering at Groton or St Mark's.
> To me wanting a religious education is the most understandable reason to send your kid to private school--otherwise save up that tuition money to buy a house in a better school district. I'm not denying there's tons of advantages that come from going to Andover, but most private schools are not Andover, y'know?



It's hard to know if religious schools are better. The perception is that the schools are better so parents that care enough to do stuff like hire tutors will opt for that system. 

They tap into the same pool of teachers, usually have the same number of students and in the case of Canada are both funded and regulated by provincial governments.


----------



## Niggernerd (Aug 25, 2019)

Like I've always said. Kids are naturally reetarded the only thing they'll teach themselves is fortnite dances or whatever they do these days. Of course on reddit you'd see "I support because my kid said they wanted to learn the history of fascisms uprising so he can combat it when he/she is older then everyone but dernalf gunt cheered"


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 25, 2019)

Niggernerd said:


> Like I've always said. Kids are naturally reetarded the only thing they'll teach themselves is fortnite dances or whatever they do these days. Of course on reddit you'd see "I support because my kid said they wanted to learn the history of fascisms uprising so he can combat it when he/she is older then everyone but dernalf gunt cheered"



This post looks partially like a joke, but it makes a decent point. I have no idea how much garbage I would have filled my own head with back then if the internet was the giant shit vortex it currently is. When I was a very little kid on the internet, I clicked around to Lego.com, flash game sites and that was about what there was to do on the internet for someone at that age. I think I added Star Trek sites as I learned more how to read. I know there was more stuff around at that time, but I wasn't savvy enough to use any of it on account of being like, 6. Once I was done with that, it was back to my nature books or my movies. By the time the internet became more diverse, I was old enough to be fully in control of what I wanted to watch or read.

Now even a pre-toddler can fall into a pit of endless content and get yanked all over the place by autoplay and download prompts, bombarded with eye-gouging, brain-raping advertisements for crap they're too young to even understand (like car commercials or whatever), watching garish colourpuke animation nursery rhythmes full of broken language churned out by channels for cheap ad revenue or worse, Spiderman Elsa-level shit. I wonder if you can even reasonably expect a kid to self-educate at all in that kind of climate, public schooling or not. This is on top of the huge stack of studies published in the 1990s that shows that pacifying your kids with toddler shows like Teletubbies or whatever was probably worse for them than kids shows/movies that had actual structure and pacing. The modern internet is even less coherent than that most of the time. I'd be surprised if that madness doesn't cause some kind of developmental disorder.

It might make this whole discussion obsolete.


----------



## BoingoTango (Aug 25, 2019)

Ughubughughughughughghlug said:


> Private school's not the norm for middle class families where I'm at either, but it's a thing that's obtainable for middle class families (with a lot of sacrifice). We also have cheap, shitty Protestant private schools. I don't know what the quality of their education is, but I'm skeptical of any school who's purpose is primarily religious indoctrination as opposed to high quality education.
> 
> I don't see why "this is a thing some people might consider under some circumstances" isn't relevant. I've never, from my first post, been arguing for general implementation of unschooling. And, as I've been reading more, I've come to realize that what I have in my mind is less like unschooling and more of a looser form of home schooling.
> 
> ...


[/QUOTE]
I went to a Protestant Private school for a couple years 4th and 5th (i think I forgets, me am not remember things good). Pretty much the extent of it was that we had to memorize a bible verse each week and I think they might have had a morning service once a week, and this was in the south. Now I'm sure there are some that push the religious indoctrination really hard, but that was not my experience. In fact the curriculum they used was more advanced than the public school counterpart, so that was a plus. I remember liking the math books they used inparticular better. 

Again, it is kinda annoying how all of you faggots would rather just misconstrue this as letting the kids do whatever they want with no structure at all, as opposed to what OP was actually talking about, but that's pretty much what I've come to expect of you guys.


----------



## UQ 770 (Aug 25, 2019)

BoingoTango said:


> I went to a Protestant Private school for a couple years 4th and 5th (i think I forgets, me am not remember things good). Pretty much the extent of it was that we had to memorize a bible verse each week and I think they might have had a morning service once a week, and this was in the south. Now I'm sure there are some that push the religious indoctrination really hard, but that was not my experience. In fact the curriculum they used was more advanced than the public school counterpart, so that was a plus. I remember liking the math books they used inparticular better.
> 
> Again, it is kinda annoying how all of you faggots would rather just misconstrue this as letting the kids do whatever they want with no structure at all, as opposed to what OP was actually talking about, but that's pretty much what I've come to expect of you guys.



There seems to be some confusion in this thread between unschooling, homeschooling and private schooling. Hell, half of us are talking about self-schooling while we were still enrolled in some form of public or private education.  

Come to think of it, on the religious end there also seems to be a marked difference between people who self-studied the Bible and those who were schooled in it or pressured into it by their parents. Beyond the usual Protestant/Catholic divide, of course. 

Perhaps this whole issue can be resolved by figuring out some way to tell if a child is a self-starter of some kind?


----------



## Crunchy Leaf (Aug 27, 2019)

Apoth42 said:


> Most private schools are actually worse than the schools in the public system.
> 
> A minority of them are run by local community leaders  who are passionate or are just fancy but most are run by corporations who artificially raise their scores by kicking disabled and troubled students. They've been caught cheating to raise their scores and even then they perform at about the same or even worse in places that went all-in on privatizing their systems (Michigan).
> 
> ...


I was thinking of ivy-covered New England prep schools, but clearly you are not. 

The religious schools that are bad tend to be of the Fundamentalist Protestant variety. But people don't send their kids there because they care about academics. 

In the US, religious schools are not funded by the government, and they also pay significantly less than public schools, since they're not unionized.


----------



## Bum Driller (Sep 2, 2019)

Personally, I don't believe in the usefulness of any kind of unschooling/homeschooling, except if you want to teach your kid something that would not be otherwise taught in the school, like astronomy or Latin. The point of going to officially recognized school is, apart from learning certain skills necessary for living in western society like math and reading, is to get official validation that you are proficient in these skills, and thus eligible for higher education. Likewise, in higher education, apart from those who really want to become scientists, the point is to get official validation that you are qualified to do something and can be entrusted with certain responsibilities if hired for a job that is in line with your education. While there are some advanced jobs where formal education is not yet totally necessary, provided that you really have the skills, most of the job opportunities are only open for those with correct degrees in relevant fields. 

TLDR;
It matters not one inch nowadays if you're some self-taught genius in biochemistry, higher mathematics or theoretical physics if you have no university degree to show for it, and while it's stupid, it's the lay of the land. If you want what is best for your kids you don't destroy their future prospects because of your own autistic reeeing over the eeebils of school system.


----------



## Dante Alighieri (Sep 2, 2019)

Public schools are generally indoctrination centers. If you're in California, kids are learning what the State of California in all its Glory are wanting them to learn. 

But you can have a bad school and as long as parents are involved and intelligent then their kids are going to turn out fine.

This applies to homeschooling and private schooling and unschooling- if parents aren't involved and don't put in effort then the kids are failing.

I was homeschooled for the early part of my life that was in California Bay Area, due to absolutely shit schools and gang problems. Immigrant mother with English as her second language, she researched and found curriculum; she loved Saxon math. I read a fuck ton of books, and I still do.

But again, it's up to the parents. Smart parents make smart children.


----------



## RH 003 (Sep 7, 2019)

Bum Driller said:


> Personally, I don't believe in the usefulness of any kind of unschooling/homeschooling, except if you want to teach your kid something that would not be otherwise taught in the school, like astronomy or Latin. The point of going to officially recognized school is, apart from learning certain skills necessary for living in western society like math and reading, is to get official validation that you are proficient in these skills, and thus eligible for higher education. Likewise, in higher education, apart from those who really want to become scientists, the point is to get official validation that you are qualified to do something and can be entrusted with certain responsibilities if hired for a job that is in line with your education. While there are some advanced jobs where formal education is not yet totally necessary, provided that you really have the skills, most of the job opportunities are only open for those with correct degrees in relevant fields.
> 
> TLDR;
> It matters not one inch nowadays if you're some self-taught genius in biochemistry, higher mathematics or theoretical physics if you have no university degree to show for it, and while it's stupid, it's the lay of the land. If you want what is best for your kids you don't destroy their future prospects because of your own autistic reeeing over the eeebils of school system.



You can get a diploma if you're homeschooled.  You could get a GED. You can take SAT, ACT, SAT subject, AP and CLEP tests.  You can have your kid enroll in community college.  There are online schools.  There are umbrella organizations that offer diplomas.  My state tests proficiency as well.

A homeschooled student can definitely go to university. Like, if your state says you have met standards, you have high ACT and SAT, you have AP and CLEP, you pass entrance exams and interviews, you write an essay, then there's no reason a homeschooled student couldn't get into college. You have obviously learned shit and have evidence of it.









						What's different about applying to college as a homeschooler? (article) | Khan Academy
					

Read and learn for free about the following article: What's different about applying to college as a homeschooler?




					www.khanacademy.org
				




But unschooling is different. If your only education in math comes from YouTube videos and you have no test records or transcripts, you could be Einstein and it wouldn't matter, I agree.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Sep 13, 2019)

Bum Driller said:


> Personally, I don't believe in the usefulness of any kind of unschooling/homeschooling, except if you want to teach your kid something that would not be otherwise taught in the school, like astronomy or Latin. The point of going to officially recognized school is, apart from learning certain skills necessary for living in western society like math and reading, is to get official validation that you are proficient in these skills, and thus eligible for higher education. Likewise, in higher education, apart from those who really want to become scientists, the point is to get official validation that you are qualified to do something and can be entrusted with certain responsibilities if hired for a job that is in line with your education. While there are some advanced jobs where formal education is not yet totally necessary, provided that you really have the skills, most of the job opportunities are only open for those with correct degrees in relevant fields.
> 
> TLDR;
> It matters not one inch nowadays if you're some self-taught genius in biochemistry, higher mathematics or theoretical physics if you have no university degree to show for it, and while it's stupid, it's the lay of the land. If you want what is best for your kids you don't destroy their future prospects because of your own autistic reeeing over the eeebils of school system.



This may come across as shocking to you, but a large percentage "unschooled" people get college degrees just fine. Presumably quite a few of the others do things (trades) that don't need a degree in the first place.









						A Survey of Grown Unschoolers I: Overview of Findings
					

Seventy-five unschooled adults report on their childhood and adult experiences.




					www.psychologytoday.com
				









ITT: What is a GRE?


----------



## saralovesjuicyfruit (Dec 19, 2019)

UQ 770 said:


> I also think its not very healthy to just continuously pound "THE REAL WORLD" into kid's heads over and over again since even in grade school the thought of having to work a boring office job made me want to just give up on everything. I think Middle School/Junior High is a time where a lot of kids just absolutely shut down partially because of puberty but also because the realization sets in that, no, the rest of your life is not going to be fun.




Another thing to remember: many of your teachers have never actually worked in "the real world" themselves. They went to a government school, then worked at a government school, where pointless busywork and needless over-complication is the name of the game, the complete opposite of what jobs in the private sector value, which is where over 80% of students will work as adults.


----------



## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Dec 21, 2019)

saralovesjuicyfruit said:


> Another thing to remember: many of your teachers have never actually worked in "the real world" themselves. They went to a government school, then worked at a government school, where pointless busywork and needless over-complication is the name of the game, the complete opposite of what jobs in the private sector value, which is where over 80% of students will work as adults.



LOL, this is my life goal. To go straight from university to graduate school and then to professorship. No real world anywhere along the way.


----------

