Unschooling

[boku-chan]

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]

@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]

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]

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]

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]

@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.

@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]

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]

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]

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]
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]

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]

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.



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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.