Unschooling - We don't need no education.

[a bootiful jung woman]

What water reservoir.

I'm using the wrong term I think.

Edit: it's called a pond, duh. Its condition is vividly described here.

Edit 2: They had to do certain upgrades including fencing the pond and sorting out a clean water supply before getting their kids back.

$25,000 - Physical materials and upgrades including labor costs to the home including a fence, finishing a new primary living structure, and permanent solutions for clean water and electricity.

~from https://www.gofundme.com/savekyfamily

Edit 3: I think they were stealing water - I'd forgotten about that.

 

[a bootiful jung woman]

On a related but also separate topic, stories from adults who were deprived of identity documentation as children.

My dad is a weird anti-authoritarian “pacifist” who really isn’t and later turned out to be a paranoid schizophrenic who wouldn’t let us go outside despite us living in the literal middle of nowhere, citing black helicopters and all kinds of weird shit so we wouldn’t be taken away or tracked. Our schooling basically discontinued sometime in the early 90’s, so when I left home at a young age, it was sink or swim.

 

[CatFace]

I remember https://homeschoolersanonymous.org as being a pretty good resource for seeing accounts the good and the bad. I haven't read for a while so I don't know if it got infested but I do recall reading allumi accounts about parents who put their all into home schooling alongside parents who used home schooling to mask abuse and the snowflake parents who who did this "unschooling" as a way for their offspring to never be criticized.


My Grandpa and Grandma learned in a one room school where teachers had to deal with five year old students up to teenagers. In this environment Grandma decided, instead of a nurse, she wanted to be a teacher. She was thirsty for knowledge. I learned from her to see teaching as presenting a feast, turkey, stuffing, bread and butter, a table filled with so many options to dip into. These people present it as a bowl of mashed potatoes and wilted greens. That is all. Sure, you can learn to like it, but there is so much more to eat.


I think homeschool can be good. In this age of internet there are even more options, distance learning for example. In my middle year of high school I did it, finished a month early, and was able to go on a trip to visit family in Mongolia.


It is so disgusting what the unschoolers do. No options presented, no guidance. Unschool? more like Unparent.

 

[The Great Citracett]

Looking at those "homestead" pictures, I couldn't help but think that maybe I'd seen that sort of place before.

That there was something missing.

Then it hit me.

Ah, perfect.

 

[TiggerNits]

I have lived and worked in Africa and the standard of living there seems worlds better than what these assholes are putting their kids through

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

Why in the hell did CPS give them their kids back?

 

[TiggerNits]

Why in the hell did CPS give them their kids back?

You know how the kid at the burger joint fucks up your order? Maybe forgets the cheese, or gives you Diet Coke instead of regular Coke. That kind of shit, kid's just shit at his job but he seems to be there everyday fucking up your order with the regularity of a coin flip. You might complain, but the manager won't let him go, he's been there for awhile and he shows up on time, even covers shifts whenever needed. Sure he's shitty at his job, but it's a pain in the ass to give them the boot.

It's that, but in a job where fucking up the order gets replaced with fucking up the lives of children

 

[Mrs Paul]

I remember reading about them awhile back, right after they lost their kids. And now they got them BACK? Fuck.
They definitely deserve their own thread.

These people are almost as bad as anti-vaxers. (Actually, I'm guessing a number of them ARE anti-vaxers)

 

[The Great Citracett]

I remember reading about them awhile back, right after they lost their kids. And now they got them BACK? Fuck.
They definitely deserve their own thread.

These people are almost as bad as anti-vaxers. (Actually, I'm guessing a number of them ARE anti-vaxers)

This family, in fact, are proud anti-vaxers.

 

[Lackadaisy]

This family, in fact, are proud anti-vaxers.

It would be weird if they weren't anti-vaxxers.

 

[Maiden-TieJuan]

Oh boy. Unschoolers have special place in my cold black plastic heart. I worked at a school for years, and we has several "Unschooled" kids come thru there, from foster homes (removed from their homes due to unschooling) and the severe lack of social skills alone can tell a person that the kids aren't being cared for.

The main problems we had with the Unschooled was a lack of socialization and illiteracy/no math skills. These kids wouldn't share at all. They had what they referred to as Mine Syndrome. "I want that toy, IT'S MINE TO DO WITH AS I PLEASE!" They usually were standoff ish, ordered adults around, and never wanted to stick to a schedule. wandered around the room, tried to leave when they wanted to, and the tantrums!!!!! oy vey ! The hardest part was testing them to find out where they were, scholasticly. Lone kid could do well in math, but horribly in reading, or vise versa. Some were functionally retarded in everything! After about 6 months in, the kids were learning quickly, and by the end of a year were close to normal levels due to accelerated learning programs at the school. unfortunately, the parents would get the kids back, and they would go right back to the Unschooled system. The only difference was their hard job of teaching their kids to read and to do math was done by the teachers at the school!

So no. unschooling is a horrible, abusive, lazy way to raise your kids. I hope that the state these kids are living in takes an interest in these children soon and force the parents to put them into the public system.

 

[Krookodile]

If only I could rate these people as A-log or horrifying IRL.

 

[Collections Agent]

In the end this is just stupid people making sure their family goes nowhere.

It's sad for the kids but Darwin predicted this.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

I was gathering content on a possible MMS cow and my travels led me to this "school" that their children briefly were sent to in Bali, Indonesia. Here's a Guardian writeup on it in 2014 which is typical middle class rose-tinted wishful thinking.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/20/whole-child-green-school-bali

"Whole child" is a meaningless buzzword.

I was fortunate enough recently to visit Bali. I expected all the usual – sun, sand, sightseeing. What I didn't expect was an epiphany about how my daughters were being educated – or miseducated. An excursion to the Green School in Ubud amazed and inspired me – particularly as I watch my 12 year-old's anxiety over her assessment tests and my seven year old struggling with homework.

You walk into the school to the sound of freeform rock music being practised. At the entrance, parents mingle with children and visitors – there are no gates here or security fences. As you make your way to the school, the first thing you see is a shop selling recycled goods made by the children, while on the other there are open cafeterias selling vegan ice cream, juices and raw, living food. No Turkey Twizzlers. A poster advertises the visit of Jane Goodall, the world's foremost chimpanzee expert, who is spending the weekend there.

Raw, living food, eh? You mean it's full of bacteria, because uncooked food usually is. Congratulations, you are too dim to understand why fire was such an important discovery in human history.

(Turkey Twizzlers were a meme in the mid-2000s amongst the London chattering classes for crap school food after they appeared on a Jamie Oliver programme about how awful school dinners were.)

Can this really be a school? I am struggling with the idea. The lessons take place in open-sided bamboo pods. There is a rushing river that runs through it – at the side of it, a swimming pool for the kids has been dug. A bamboo bridge runs over the river, where lessons sometimes take place. Just behind are residences, where some of the parents live with their children.

A swimming pool is not dug, it is built. If you dig a 50 * 10 * 2 metre hole in the ground and fill it with water, you have a muddy lake crawling with bacteria and shit.

Some children are away on a surfing day. Others have left for a silent retreat. There are more than 30 nationalities here. Our guide, who is standing in a mud pit where the children do martial arts, takes us on a tour – past a young woman he describes as "one of our spiritual leaders". He shows us the arrangement of pods, each created to look like a species of animal – the one I am looking at now mimics a turtle.

There is no bullying in this school. There are no uniforms. There is no concern with passing exams. All they want is for children to pass out "whole – and OK with themselves". Drama, art and music are at the centre of the curriculum, on an equal par with science and maths.

There is no bullying. Right.

My guide is a parent, Chris Thompson, formerly the CEO of a technology company. His love for this school comes out of every pore. He shows us the oven – no electricity, only wood-fired and using sawdust for fuel. He shows us the solar panels and the giant river turbine that will power the school from next year.

I think again of the uniformed regiments of my children's school, on the way to getting results, results, results. This place with its eight-to-one pupil to teacher ratio – three adults in every classroom – has all the resources to produce amazing test scores. But it isn't interested in that – or not primarily interested. It is interested in what British liberal education was once concerned with – creating a whole human being.

So the parents who send their sprogs here are upper middle class. Note also the chattering classes obsession with class sizes, as if ExamResults = k * 1/ClassSizes. Creating a whole human being is another meaningless buzzword.

At the heart of the school is a huge, remarkable double helix bamboo structure (the whole school is built of bamboo) where the pupils gather and learn and eat. Everyone is smiling. Chris spots his daughter, picks her up, and she talks about how she created a song for the school website. He looks so proud. She looks so happy.

What has happened to us in our country that we have forgotten that education can be such a joy? How did it all become such a deadly grind? I am inspired by the Green School in a way that I have rarely been inspired by any institution – so much so that I am already making concrete inquiries about getting my kids into the place.

If you, like me, have become cynical about education and its purposes, check out its website, greenschool.org. You will realise, as I have, that there is a different way for our children. My ambitions may be just a romantic dream. But the school is real, and that dream is real – and there for anyone to see.

• This article was amended on 26 June 2014 to remove a reference to the school offering "the international baccalaureate". It does not.

And there we have it. It's a waste of time and effort, really, isn't it. It's basically the school enriching themselves at the expense of middle class parents who can be baffled by meaningless bullshit and not providing any actual education into the bargain.

 

[dunbrine47]

No gates or security fences+ Bali= Crime bait I assume?

 

[Krieger]

Looking at those "homestead" pictures, I couldn't help but think that maybe I'd seen that sort of place before.

That there was something missing.

Then it hit me.

View attachment 158662

Ah, perfect.

Something tells me if they ever looked at the unschooling kids mentioned so far, they'd fear they really lowballed how much money it takes to keep a kid normal.

 

[Mozzarella Dicks]

A swimming pool is not dug, it is built. If you dig a 50 * 10 * 2 metre hole in the ground and fill it with water, you have a muddy lake crawling with bacteria and shit.

Not even swimming pools where the water is actually below ground level?

 

[CalmMyTits]

So I clicked on the Green School website and looked at their admission fee. It's pretty hefty and definitely something for upper middle class. I notice most of the children portrayed on the site are Caucasian, despite this being in Indonesia. Makes me wonder if this Green School is a scam for locals to milk Whitey out of their money.

 

[Trilby]

So I clicked on the Green School website and looked at their admission fee. It's pretty hefty and definitely something for upper middle class. I notice most of the children portrayed on the site are Caucasian, despite this being in Indonesia. Makes me wonder if this Green School is a scam for locals to milk Whitey out of their money.

Certainly a recipe for disaster.

 

[Trilby]

It's obvious that mattress wasn't big enough for them all though.

But they're raising their kids to be little more than hillbillies, but even hillbillies have some basic life skills. If they hate the government so much, why not at least raise them with enough skills so they can take advantage of the system and game it, shit. I wonder how much tax debt the parents have.

I was thinking some sort of Neo-Hillbillies myself, but I suppose this is further than that.

I mentioned earlier how they just dump shit on their property.
Well apparently the kids got Norovirus a while ago according to http://www.blessedlittleblog.com/bucket-brigade/

Can't they even build an outhouse? What losers!

I have lived and worked in Africa and the standard of living there seems worlds better than what these assholes are putting their kids through

I'm glad for the people you worked with who understand it well!