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When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

158 points by hodgesrm 6y ago

Kednicma 6y ago
I wonder whether maths really can be self-taught for more than about two generations. It has been known since the beginning of maths that it must be taught by teachers who understand the ideas to students who challenge the descriptions.
- ksdale 6y ago
  This is a good point, but I think it is relevant to ask whether most people learning math in school have the experience you describe. I certainly did not. My math education consisted purely of recitation of things I didn't fully understand, and I got very good grades all the way through.
- mathnovice 6y ago
  When you say self-taught do you mean even without using a really good text? Or do you mean that it actually can't be taught without a teacher? If you are saying that math can't be taught without a good teacher I don't really see how that is "known".
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    Even if it requires a good teacher, does society benefit from forcing it on individuals at a time they don't want to learn it? Or would we be better served by making good teachers available to those who want to learn it, at the time they want to learn it? I'd -love- to go through some of my college level math classes; both the ones I took, and the ones i didn't need to take. They weren't especially relevant then. They're slightly more now, but more than that, I'm -interested- now. But self-learning takes too much of an investment of time (when I run into something I don't know I have to research -that-, and it becomes this infinite process of diving down rabbit holes, rather than having someone who has gone before who can give me a sufficient answer to unblock me on my original question).
- unnouinceput 6y ago
  Yes, Math can be self-taught. I am a living example. I went through school, up to 10th grade (junior high school) with only getting minimum passing grades. I was worse at everything except History. That was the only thing that I liked. And even at History I was getting like medium grades, not the highest marks. Then in the summer vacation between 10th grade and 11th grade I got hit with a hobby of Electronics. I read by mistake an old book, from 60's, that was in my father's book collection, of how to create a radio for short waves that was powered by a potato (the vegetable, not the sarcasm!). And I went down through that rabbit hole. I started to learn electronic components and what they do. That required Physics, which I knew nothing about it - so I started to learn Physics as well. Well, have you ever encountered Physics to be, in practice, applicable without Math? So I started to learn Math all by myself. Between ages of 16 to 18, while I was as Senior in high school I recovered all previous 10 years when I slacked worse than a worm. That allowed me to go to University where I got hit by another hobby - programming. Both these hobbies still stay with me to this day. So yeah, I would argue not only is possible to learn Math all by yourself, but I'd say that doing so you actually learn it even better then when is forced upon you, even if you're good at it.
- bawolff 6y ago
  If anything, math is probably one of the easiest to self teach. The basics (which goes all the way up early university level) hasn't really changed in 100s of years, and learning resources are readily available, and you don't need any special equipment.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Newton famously taught himsef Calculus. As did Leibnitz.
- timwaagh 6y ago
  thats mostly a romantic fantasy. reality is poring over books and practicing by doing the exercises.
mathnovice 6y ago
Learning of (keyword of) concepts and ideas is fun but the reason schools exist is because most learning is a grind. Learning to draw well, learning a language, learning an instrument, and even learning math and logic require going through the grind of learning and repetition. The grind is only harder if you don't have a good book or teacher because the practice you do could potentially be actively harmful (or useless). Exploring is fun for children and adults. Being exposed to new things is always interesting. The grind is the hard part.
- LanceH 6y ago
  > The grind is only harder if you don't have a good book or teacher because the practice you do could potentially be actively harmful. This is neither an argument for or against traditional schools (or homeschools or unschooling).
  - mathnovice 6y ago
    From the article unschooling apparently eschews textbooks.
    - waterhouse 6y ago
      It doesn't make them go through textbooks. But it doesn't stop them either, and often a decent textbook is the best way to learn about a subject. As someone who chose to learn some subjects outside of school (usually years before they would have been taught), I tended to read textbooks my older siblings had used—did this for algebra, physics, and calculus—although I didn't do that many problems from the textbooks. (I also read lots of what might be called popular science books.) The article does say "[The McQueen] parents spurn curriculums, textbooks, tests and grades", but I know some unschoolers, and I suspect if I asked them, I would find that they read several textbooks. One unschooling mom's website quotes (seemingly with approval) another unschooling mom's email on the subject. Ultimately it seems to be saying that, while textbooks shouldn't be the primary tool, they are a tool that is sometimes appropriate. https://sandradodd.com/school/textbooks https://sandradodd.com/school/textbooks
- 6y ago
t0mbstone 6y ago
I was homeschooled until the age of around 10, and then my family adopted a new approach called "lifestyle of learning", which is just another way of saying "unschooling". Basically, I was allowed to skip schoolwork, as long as I was doing something productive. I hated schoolwork, so I started spending all my spare time tinkering with stuff on the computer. I wasn't allowed to play video games (since they aren't productive), but I was allowed to BUILD video games. I was also allowed to build web sites and do programming. By the age of 13, I was doing contract web development work, and by the age of 16, I was employed full time at a local web development company. My parents wouldn't let me get a drivers license and car until I had at least passed the GED, so I spent a couple of months cramming for it by studying a 2 inch thick book about how to pass the GED. I passed it without too much trouble (I think I got a 98% in math, if I remember correctly). My career has developed across multiple companies over the last 20 years, and I'm currently making around $150K a year as a software engineer. I never did go to college. They took "unschooling" even further with my younger brother. He didn't even learn how to read until he was around 10. He ended up having to cram for his GED to get a drivers license, too. He ultimately ended up getting a job as a waiter, then as bank teller, then put himself through college and got a degree. He now owns a house worth around $400K and has a career as a software engineer at the banking company that initially hired him as a teller. TL;DR: "Unschooling" worked for my family because they combined it with at least a base of traditional education.
- hereme888 6y ago
  That's impressive, and sounds like what I was thinking for my future children. I just have no idea where to start. Got any resources for me to learn how to do these things for my children?
  - xtagon 6y ago
    My story is similar to that of the parent comment and I would say the most important thing is to be supportive of the activities and interests that your future children are driven towards. If they're into computers, let them tinker with computers. If they like to take things apart, give them your old electrical components and teach them about electrical safety and soldering. If they like making things, show them some cool DIY videos on YouTube. Whatever it is, if they're into it and you support them, then all that time spent is practice doing something they love, regardless of whether or not it ends up being a career.
yters 6y ago
I was homeschooled and taught myself a lot. Works well if the material is clearly relevant.
Proziam 6y ago
I attended brick and mortar schools until 8th grade and then basically did zero actual school work because I was too busy starting my own business among other activities I found interesting. I eventually crammed for about 2 weeks to get my high school diploma at my mother's request, then I moved to Sweden for a while (on my own, as a teenager). My school experience was abysmal and doing things my own way allowed me to actually learn stuff that would end up being useful. I'd not have made it half as far if I had gone the traditional route. Currently 28 and satisfied with how things have played out so far.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > I moved to Sweden for a while (on my own, as a teenager). How were you paying rent in Sweden?
  - Proziam 6y ago
    When I moved I arranged to live with some folks I knew through my online esports adventures in Umeå. At the time, I was seriously consider living there permanently and moving my business there. I really enjoyed the place but between family and personal goals it just wasn't destined to be a permanent move the way I had hoped. Interestingly (to me at least), I had gigabit internet in Umeå and I believe it only cost around 40 USD/m at the time (2011-ish). I didn't get gigabit again until I moved to Las Vegas and I'm currently paying around 3x that amount. EDIT - Actually I have one big complaint. Trying to learn the language was impossible because every time I would attempt it people would notice I'm not a native speaker and instantly switch to English as if they had been waiting for that moment their entire lives. Lesson: Swedish people are an order of magnitude more considerate than the french folks I've met.
    - peterwoerner 6y ago
      My dad said when he went to France for work (outside of Paris), they were no longer embarrassed by their poor English, once he shared his abysmal French.
tasuki 6y ago
Is "fear of school shootings" the worst reason for unschooling?
chrisBob 6y ago
I am sure unschooling works out well for some people. I appreciate giving students some flexibility, but I think there really is a standard core that most people should learn. I went to a good engineering school for college, but they also require everyone to take 3 years of history, 3 years of english, 2 semesters of a foreign language, a psychology course, ... If it was left up to me I would not have taken most of those classes, and I suffered through many of them, but I think they were an important part of my education, and I am glad I came out of school knowing more than the engineering that I would have picked for myself.
- lostcolony 6y ago
  A lot of unschooling is predicated on the idea that if you're not forced to learn things, you will be more open to wanting to learn them. Certainly, in my own life that has held true. I learned to read when I was a kid because I saw my parents doing it, and engaging in it taught me to love it. A lot of math I learned early on just as I was growing up (I figured out multiplication on my own, for instance). But by the time school started 'teaching' me things, I chafed at it. I hated being told what to learn, hated having to follow the classroom's pace, etc. The same has held true in my adult life too; given a problem to solve or an interesting thing to explore I'll learn. Even things I -hated- in high school and college (such as foreign languages), I am engaging in learning on my own as an adult because I -want- to. Given a better environment, most kids will want to learn. The problem is school forces it on kids, without investing in showing the kid why they would want to learn it in the first place (i.e., the reason "when will we ever use this?!" is so stereotypical)
  - mdorazio 6y ago
    This is a pretty horrible assumption to make and it's a bad idea to use yourself (or any HN commenter) as a good example of the general public with regard to learning curiosity. If you spend much time outside the tech bubble, I think you'll quickly find that the number of people who go out of their way to learn things in-depth instead of spending all their time on entertainment and social activities is a rather small percentage of the total population.
fxtentacle 6y ago
My impression has always been that "unschooling" is mostly an indicator of wealth, and so it'll correlate well with future success. If both parents have to work a regular day job, there's nobody at home to teach the kids so unschooling is not possible. And if only one parent stays at home, they will also yearn for some free time and push for getting the kids signed up for school. The only situation where I can imagine the parents being enthusiastic about unschooling is if they are independently wealthy and can afford to spend lots of time with their kids, when other people would have to work. And obviously, plenty of personalized attention from the parents will make the kids learn a lot faster than your typical 1 teacher 30 students class. Plus, once you assume that all unschooling parents are much wealthier than regular people, it kind of makes sense that they will have very different opinions about life in general, due to their very different experience of it. Regular folks will go to a public playground and complain about the dog shit there. Rich folks will just buy a playground for their backyard and hire a gardener to keep it tidy. To outsiders, that wealth discrepancy would then look like a religion, because all of the unschoolers have a shared untypical worldview.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  The NYT article claims that 'the psychologists Peter Gray and Gina Riley published a 2013 survey of about 230 unschooling families, they found “a wide range in terms of socioeconomic strata.”'. I followed the link and the source is... flimsy at best. The lack of numbers here is conspicuous, especially when combined with the fact that most of the respondents were stay-at-home moms, not something super common among the American working-class. I do not think the rise of this phenomenon is unrelated to the increasing number of affluent, young white parents raising their children in urban cores while remaining afraid of the school system.
- watwut 6y ago
  I think it is not so much money, but more whether mom is content being stay at home mom being completely fully dedicated to family, being content being dependent on husband and without being independent source of income. That is situation that can get you quite trapped it the things go wrong. It is also quite isolating situation, some women don't like basically working alone all the time or have own aspirations and dreams.
saberdancer 6y ago
A lot of first hand experiences here have to be understood as survivorship bias. It's unlikely that "unsuccessful" unschoolers would wind up here. I don't have a strong opinion either way but I was raised with a strong basic well rounded education and personally I feel it helped me. One thing that should be emphasized is that the material should be challenging enough as having it too easy leads to bad work habits.
cosmiccatnap 6y ago
In an age where people can't agree on if we should be doing a census or not, the idea of letting parents tell their children what is right and wrong just seems immoral. School is an opportunity for alot of these kids to learn about the world outside their parents worldview and as much as you might hate it it's useful to know the pythagorean theorem and the civil war in some detail
eloff 6y ago
My brother and I were homeschooled, but it was quite structured and we wrote the same provincial exams as every other grade 12 kid. My brother did the SAT as well. We had excellent scores. We both dropped out of college with near perfect GPAs. Today I'm a successful self-taught software engineer now starting a SaaS business. My brother is a famous sci fi author. He makes even more than I do. I think homeschooling let us learn whatever we wanted to learn without fear, and find our own path in life. Where I think it hurt was we didn't do any group social activities and lived in remote places. So socially we had a lot to learn. I don't think that was a permanent disadvantage, but it was not a necessary drawback of homeschooling. I would recommend sports and other after school activities to add the social dimension into homeschooling.
- saas_sam 6y ago
  Fascinating. Do you think things would've turned out differently for you and your brother had you attended public school? Private? I went to a truly terrible rural public school and I see many areas where that has held me back. Success was something to be ashamed of there. Loserthink was king.
  - eloff 6y ago
    It's impossible to say of course. But I think at the least we would have led more conventional lives. For myself, maybe a darker outcome. I was struggling with peer pressure and getting into trouble. The family that owned our house before lost their daughter to overdose. She went to my school. I wonder sometimes how my life could have been had things been slightly different and we hadn't changed to homeschooling (after grade 6 for me, 3 for my brother.)
    - waterhouse 6y ago
      I suspect it would depend a lot on whether you were allowed to accelerate academically, and the answer would likely have been "no" or "not much". You might take a look at the following study, and see if it rings true to the school you did experience, or to what you've heard from others you've met: "The considerable majority of [the subjects: young people with 160+ IQs in Australia] who have [skipped 2 or more grades in K-12] report high degrees of life satisfaction, have taken research degrees at leading universities, have professional careers, and report facilitative social and love relationships. Young people of equal abilities who accelerated by only 1 year or who have not been permitted acceleration have tended to enter less academically rigorous college courses, report lower levels of life satisfaction, and in many cases, experience significant difficulties with socialization. Several did not graduate from college or high school." https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf I don't know if you're at the 160+ level, but SAT scores are something of a proxy for IQ, and the severity of the social and academic frustration due to mismatch with age-peers can be judged directly.
enkid 6y ago
I think success of unschooling is highly dubious. https://www.parentingscience.com/homeschooling-outcomes.html https://www.parentingscience.com/homeschooling-outcomes.html
iambateman 6y ago
I was homeschooled 1-5, private 6-8, public 9, homeschooled again 10-12. A couple observations: - homeschooling is efficient. I only needed a few hours per day of school. - homeschooling is a religion for some people (who end up in articles) but there are lots of cool people. - “homeschooling” is often way less “sitting at home with mother learning math” than people think. We took tons of trips, did cooperative school, took college classes. It’s funny to joke about never leaving the house, but most homeschool kids manage to be quite social. - because it’s unusual, it succeeds with the right kid-parent relationship. My sister and mom made each other miserable and it didn’t work. There are lots of kids for whom homeschooling would be problematic.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
GhostVII 6y ago
Sounds like a bad idea to me, at least for most people. The reality is that if you want to be able to get a good job in an area you are interested in, you will need to be able to work with others, and get up on time, and work at a task you might not be as excited about. And you need to have a basic understanding of math, language, writing reports, etc. Most kids aren't going to learn any of that if they are free to sleep in and browse the web and learn whatever they want. Sure some kids might be motivated enough to learn that on their own, but based on what I have seen from my parents grade 5 class, most of them will just spend all day on Fortnight. And maybe for some people it's OK to never learn those things, and be stuck working at lower skill jobs. That's legitimately an option, there are probably many people who are happy with a simpler life. But for me, I'm glad I went to a proper school and learned everything that I did there, and didn't have the opportunity to have a great career taken from me because I didn't go to a traditional school. I find the reason for the family in the article to be pretty poor Fear of school shootings and concern over “the racial bias in schools, the school-to-prison pipeline,” as well as many schools’ stunted curriculum in Black history, drove the McQueens to begin their experiment with at-home learning in 2015 Fear of school shootings is obviously a bad reason to avoid school given how many people die in car crashes each year, statistically the risk is negligible. And if you want more black history curriculum it's not hard to supliment it at home. I think you are much more likely to go to prison if you are uneducated. Racial bias concerns is a legitimate reason to avoid traditional schools though.
jjcm 6y ago
I was homeschooled with my brother up until high school, and it was a mixed experience for me. Academically both myself and my brother were far, far above our peers in public school. The main difference was that especially with math, we had understanding of the material rather than just knowledge. Our parents flipped houses a lot so we'd often have to use our math skills regularly when helping out. How much area is a deck that's 15'x40' with a curved section at the end that has a 7.5' radius? Applied geometry was reinforced heavily. In addition we were able to do more community activities, which boosted our ability to talk with people older than us. The disadvantage however was in our ability to socialize with our peers. The trope of homeschooled kids being weird is 100% true, and is a factor of a lack of a peer group to test social norms with. When you have an insular network your set of social norms only evolves around what's acceptable within your family. I personally struggled a lot with socializing and I wasn't really able to properly integrate until I was ~25 or so. I disagree with Amanda's statement that you have to have faith in a child's wonder to facilitate their development. I would say the onus is on the parents to provide things to wonder about. This is a hard task, one that my mother worked endlessly on. It was a 50 hour a week job for her to educate us. Even with that though there are still the social downsides. For parents that are considering it, I would still recommend it, but know that you're taking on a significant responsibility and that you'll need to find after school programs for your kids to have a chance to socialize with other kids their age. This can be hard to find, especially in earlier years.
- TaupeRanger 6y ago
  Exactly. Many parents just buy a homeschool "curriculum" and do an accelerated version of the public school lessons. Making various subjects interesting is a skill in itself for the parent-teacher. Young kids just want to play with their toys and friends for the most part.
mgh2 6y ago
This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. 2. Not everyone is self-motivated to learn. Children, at critical developmental ages, are more prone to be led astray than "follow their passions" (at this age, really?). They will more likely be manipulated by vices if not constantly monitored. 3. Not all parents are good teachers. Usually, responsible families understand the value proposition- they wish their children have a better future- and education is the ticket that provides these opportunities. 4. School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. Public schools, with all its flaws, are the best instruments to free the masses. Knowledge is democratized power to avoid the corruption that absolute power entails.
h0l0cube 6y ago
People interested in unschooling, may also be interested in the discourses of Ivan Illich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society L. M. Sacasas on his mailing list and podcast, 'The Convivial Society' recently interviewed one of Ivan's close friends, Gov. Jerry Brown. I've found the mailing list really worthwhile to read, and has surely affected the way I think about technology. https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/remembering-illich-a-conversation https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/remembering-illic...
mberning 6y ago
Some of the most intelligent and exciting people I have worked with have been homeschooled. I would counter the idea that homeschooling/unschooling is like a religion by turning it around. The orthodoxy of public education in the US is a borderline cult. The institution is unassailable. Where I live levies are passed that raise taxes and the community has nothing to show for it. The union Is like the mob and once you are a “made man” it is nearly impossible to be fired. Administrators are paid more than senior engineers. People that work in this system absolutely abhor the idea of citizens having a choice over their own education. Returning tax money to the tax payer to fund their own education, even if it is a fraction of what the public school receives, is a source of vehement objection by the teachers union.
alexmingoia 6y ago
If unschooling is almost like religion, what is forced schooling almost like? A prison labor camp?
xkgt 6y ago
Most of the anecdotes here are quite illuminating. But I am interested to understand this from parenting perspective. How much of time and effort a homeschooling parent need to dedicate. And I wonder whether there is a selection bias in the outcome. Are we looking at a sample of households that are already well off enough to spend dedicated time and resources on homeschooling? Does the family background improve the chances of success significantly? It is hard to separate these tightly coupled factors.
02020202 6y ago
"When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion" - that's literally an oxymoron. Especially in 'murica.
Noos 6y ago
I don't like discussing this, because smart people completely turn their brains off when it comes to discussing it. Somehow homeschooling creates Lake Wobegone, a place where every child manages to be above average. The reality is more homeschooling is completely unregulated in the majority of states, so people can do almost anything. Most states require no formal education from the parents at all to teach. Many don't require any form of assessment or to keep a portfolio or records of education. Some have required subjects but no real enforcement of them being taught. Any form of standardized testing or auditing may not even be required. If you wanted to keep your kid at home and not educate them at all, you could easily do it in most states. Would you really bet a system like we have now would provide better outcomes overall?
- MH15 6y ago
  Exactly. I homeschooled through a trad-religious program for one year in 4th or 5th grade and it was unregulated at best. I recall we had to report only our final letter graded to the state, which of course were recorded and granted by the parents, not by the "accredited" school system.
ryanmarsh 6y ago
I’m surprised this was printed. Usually NYT is negative, or at best tepid, towards homeschooling. There’s a diverse set of homeschool/unschool lived experiences. There’s a diverse set of challenges and opportunities that change on a family by family, child by child basis. Homeschool proponents aren’t trying to take anything from you, they just want the option to do things their way, in the privacy of their own home at their own expense with their own labor. That’s all. I’m glad you had a great (normal?) school experience. I’m grateful for your concern about the children of homeschoolers. Please do not confuse your concern with the correctness of the school system for our child. It’s well established the US is a follower in school performance. That should be all the justification we need.
- 3131s 6y ago
  I attended public schools for 12 years and you could not be more right! If the school had put me alone in a room with some textbooks all day with the option to go outside and exercise occasionally, I would have vastly preferred that to the painful boredom of being forced to sit in a chair 8 hours a day without movement or socialization.
colechristensen 6y ago
People need to stop turning their preferred X into replacements for the lack of religion. Apparently some people are just built to need this sort of thing and in absence of a compelling religion they turn whatever interests them into one, with all the obnoxious traits that made people go atheist in the first place.
mantap 6y ago
I was "unschooled" for some years. I was near the top of my class at school (not because I was smart, just because I paid attention and worked hard), and hence my teachers gave up on me. Expending time on a kid who is likely to get A's without intervention does nothing to improve the school's metrics/ranking. I would have been fine in a good private school but my parents weren't rich and couldn't afford the fees. Somehow I convinced my parents to let me educate myself, and at least for me it was successful. I finally had time to teach myself programming, which at the time was not taught in school. Would I recommend it to others? Kids should try school first and see if they benefit from it. Some kids love school and do very well out of the system. However, if school is failing your kid, they might be better off without it.
TheButlerian 6y ago
I wonder how many of the schoolcels here are jealous that someone managed to do it without following their way.
grandinj 6y ago
Something as important as education is always going to attract very strong emotion. When you get into "state schooling", it is also almost a religion - thought shalt not question the teacher, thou shalt not question the dictats of the education establishment, etc.
Shivetya 6y ago
Well we certainly have an opportunity to fix education but I doubt we will make the right changes because the public education system in the United States suffers the same problems the police system does. Public Employee Unions. Whose first task is not to serve the people whom their members are supposed to work for. Just look at the demands some of these unions put up as required before going back to the classrooms! Some wanted changes to minimum wage, taxation, and more! Nothing related to education because they themselves have nothing to do with education other that there are teachers as their members. It is well documented how teachers in good standing with the union can get out of schools they don't want to be in meaning if they don't like the neighborhood its too damn bad for the kids there. They can also avoid disciplinary actions and have their records protected from public view and in many districts have their records expunged within only a few years. There are many great teachers out there but they are stuck in a system government by a political class masquerading as their union. A union which serves local politicians first and parents and students are so far down the list as to not be considered. Hence when it comes to bettering education their first response isn't how to do so but instead how to benefit their financial position
deepstack 6y ago
I personal experience I find home schooled friends are smarter and more educated than public schooled ones. Yeah you would say there may be correlation instead of causation. However, US public school system really leave me extremely unsatisfied. Would never send my kids to US public school.
mikedelfino 6y ago
I'm surprised no comment so far mentioned four important aspects of traditional schooling that I believe should be repeated here: 1. More than just teaching the curriculum, schools are great for socializing with other children your age, learning how to share, how to deal with drama and to grow some empathy. Not to mention the benefits of getting used to rules, authorities and schedules. 2. Getting in contact with how other people live and with what others think, specially outside your family, can be enlightening sometimes. The handful of successful anecdotes shared here, besides falling as survival bias, don't represent cases of disfunctional families or families crazy towards subjects like religion, science, violence, racism or politics. For every happy family there is at least another one potentially raising sociopaths. 3. Many cases of child abuse are committed by family members, frequently by parents at their own home. Allowing children to miss school takes off from them the chance of a teacher noticing such abuses or at least teaching them the limits on their bodies and well being. 4. In some cases, and I'm not sure this applies to the US, schools are the best source of food for poor children (assuming it's free). I understand that people in favor of home schooling are not saying that home schooling should be mandatory for everyone. So in this sense, only families able to provide a positive experience to children would try it. I'm afraid that when this rationale is even an option, families could wrongfully choose home schooling, sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not so much. And in the long run I'm afraid it could leat to less public funding for schools when people are pressured or at least influenced to try home schooling their kids.
bryanwb 6y ago
background: I worked in edtech for about 5 years Start w/ smart kids w/ relatively affluent parents and any educational strategy succeeds. The kids will do well no matter what. Start w/ less innately intelligent kids w/ uneducated, poor parents and that is where you see what really works. Virtually all studies/articles about unschooling/less schooling approaches and they don't control for this variable. Show me homeschooling/unschooling/Waldorf/Montessori/Reggio works for poor kids w/ uneducated parents. Until then, I don't give a shit. I have worked w/ a lot of autodidacts, including a couple better known ones in the software world. They all had professor parents and comfortable upbringings.
helen___keller 6y ago
My main concern with the thought of homeschooling / unschooling as a future parent: I feel fairly confident that I could get my kids far ahead of the standard school curriculum, with stronger fundamentals. But I think the school system serves more purpose than just education, and I'm not convinced my home would be a better school for everything else: Making friends, learning multiple perspectives, learning conflict resolution, learning about diversity, making mistakes and dealing with failure, learning to deal with authority[0]. These are all lessons that I personally would attribute to going through a public education. [0] Just to be clear, dealing with authority isn't the same as blind respect for authority. While school tries to teach you blind respect for authority, every student builds their own relationship with authority, probably in combination with the values they learn at home.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
Here are two anecdotes from my life which oughta make you think about public schools. 1) I was born in USSR, in what is now Ukraine. I finished 5th grade there, in 1992. I skipped 4th grade, because of system conversion to 11-year system. I went to average public school and was a B (4) student. I moved to the U.S. and went to 6th grade in an average middle school. I coasted through 6th, 7th, and 8th grades on what I learned in my first four years of schooling. Only in high school did I see anything new math-wise. 2) In high school, I developed nearsightedness, I got a computer when I moved to U.S. In 10th grade, I started needing glasses, and I got behind in Physics class because I couldn't see the board. Eventually, my parents found out I needed glasses, and I got glasses. But I was about 3 months behind in Physics. So my dad sat down with me, after a day of work, and tutored me in Physics for probably an hour a night. Within 1-2 weeks, I was fully caught up on 3 months of "Magnet" high school physics. Whenever you try to scale something up to millions, quality almost inevitably drops significantly. Imagine the difference between a child getting the full 6 hours a day of public school versus just 2 hours a day of focused tutoring? The difference would be night and day.

158 points by hodgesrm 6y ago

I wonder whether maths really can be self-taught for more than about two generations. It has been known since the beginning of maths that it must be taught by teachers who understand the ideas to students who challenge the descriptions.

ksdale 6y ago
This is a good point, but I think it is relevant to ask whether most people learning math in school have the experience you describe. I certainly did not. My math education consisted purely of recitation of things I didn't fully understand, and I got very good grades all the way through.
mathnovice 6y ago
When you say self-taught do you mean even without using a really good text? Or do you mean that it actually can't be taught without a teacher? If you are saying that math can't be taught without a good teacher I don't really see how that is "known".
- lostcolony 6y ago
  Even if it requires a good teacher, does society benefit from forcing it on individuals at a time they don't want to learn it? Or would we be better served by making good teachers available to those who want to learn it, at the time they want to learn it? I'd -love- to go through some of my college level math classes; both the ones I took, and the ones i didn't need to take. They weren't especially relevant then. They're slightly more now, but more than that, I'm -interested- now. But self-learning takes too much of an investment of time (when I run into something I don't know I have to research -that-, and it becomes this infinite process of diving down rabbit holes, rather than having someone who has gone before who can give me a sufficient answer to unblock me on my original question).
unnouinceput 6y ago
Yes, Math can be self-taught. I am a living example. I went through school, up to 10th grade (junior high school) with only getting minimum passing grades. I was worse at everything except History. That was the only thing that I liked. And even at History I was getting like medium grades, not the highest marks. Then in the summer vacation between 10th grade and 11th grade I got hit with a hobby of Electronics. I read by mistake an old book, from 60's, that was in my father's book collection, of how to create a radio for short waves that was powered by a potato (the vegetable, not the sarcasm!). And I went down through that rabbit hole. I started to learn electronic components and what they do. That required Physics, which I knew nothing about it - so I started to learn Physics as well. Well, have you ever encountered Physics to be, in practice, applicable without Math? So I started to learn Math all by myself. Between ages of 16 to 18, while I was as Senior in high school I recovered all previous 10 years when I slacked worse than a worm. That allowed me to go to University where I got hit by another hobby - programming. Both these hobbies still stay with me to this day. So yeah, I would argue not only is possible to learn Math all by yourself, but I'd say that doing so you actually learn it even better then when is forced upon you, even if you're good at it.
bawolff 6y ago
If anything, math is probably one of the easiest to self teach. The basics (which goes all the way up early university level) hasn't really changed in 100s of years, and learning resources are readily available, and you don't need any special equipment.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Newton famously taught himsef Calculus. As did Leibnitz.
timwaagh 6y ago
thats mostly a romantic fantasy. reality is poring over books and practicing by doing the exercises.

mathnovice 6y ago

Learning of (keyword of) concepts and ideas is fun but the reason schools exist is because most learning is a grind. Learning to draw well, learning a language, learning an instrument, and even learning math and logic require going through the grind of learning and repetition. The grind is only harder if you don't have a good book or teacher because the practice you do could potentially be actively harmful (or useless). Exploring is fun for children and adults. Being exposed to new things is always interesting. The grind is the hard part.

LanceH 6y ago
> The grind is only harder if you don't have a good book or teacher because the practice you do could potentially be actively harmful. This is neither an argument for or against traditional schools (or homeschools or unschooling).
- mathnovice 6y ago
  From the article unschooling apparently eschews textbooks.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    It doesn't make them go through textbooks. But it doesn't stop them either, and often a decent textbook is the best way to learn about a subject. As someone who chose to learn some subjects outside of school (usually years before they would have been taught), I tended to read textbooks my older siblings had used—did this for algebra, physics, and calculus—although I didn't do that many problems from the textbooks. (I also read lots of what might be called popular science books.) The article does say "[The McQueen] parents spurn curriculums, textbooks, tests and grades", but I know some unschoolers, and I suspect if I asked them, I would find that they read several textbooks. One unschooling mom's website quotes (seemingly with approval) another unschooling mom's email on the subject. Ultimately it seems to be saying that, while textbooks shouldn't be the primary tool, they are a tool that is sometimes appropriate. https://sandradodd.com/school/textbooks https://sandradodd.com/school/textbooks
6y ago

t0mbstone 6y ago

I was homeschooled until the age of around 10, and then my family adopted a new approach called "lifestyle of learning", which is just another way of saying "unschooling". Basically, I was allowed to skip schoolwork, as long as I was doing something productive. I hated schoolwork, so I started spending all my spare time tinkering with stuff on the computer. I wasn't allowed to play video games (since they aren't productive), but I was allowed to BUILD video games. I was also allowed to build web sites and do programming. By the age of 13, I was doing contract web development work, and by the age of 16, I was employed full time at a local web development company. My parents wouldn't let me get a drivers license and car until I had at least passed the GED, so I spent a couple of months cramming for it by studying a 2 inch thick book about how to pass the GED. I passed it without too much trouble (I think I got a 98% in math, if I remember correctly). My career has developed across multiple companies over the last 20 years, and I'm currently making around $150K a year as a software engineer. I never did go to college. They took "unschooling" even further with my younger brother. He didn't even learn how to read until he was around 10. He ended up having to cram for his GED to get a drivers license, too. He ultimately ended up getting a job as a waiter, then as bank teller, then put himself through college and got a degree. He now owns a house worth around $400K and has a career as a software engineer at the banking company that initially hired him as a teller. TL;DR: "Unschooling" worked for my family because they combined it with at least a base of traditional education.

hereme888 6y ago
That's impressive, and sounds like what I was thinking for my future children. I just have no idea where to start. Got any resources for me to learn how to do these things for my children?
- xtagon 6y ago
  My story is similar to that of the parent comment and I would say the most important thing is to be supportive of the activities and interests that your future children are driven towards. If they're into computers, let them tinker with computers. If they like to take things apart, give them your old electrical components and teach them about electrical safety and soldering. If they like making things, show them some cool DIY videos on YouTube. Whatever it is, if they're into it and you support them, then all that time spent is practice doing something they love, regardless of whether or not it ends up being a career.

yters 6y ago

I was homeschooled and taught myself a lot. Works well if the material is clearly relevant.

Proziam 6y ago

I attended brick and mortar schools until 8th grade and then basically did zero actual school work because I was too busy starting my own business among other activities I found interesting. I eventually crammed for about 2 weeks to get my high school diploma at my mother's request, then I moved to Sweden for a while (on my own, as a teenager). My school experience was abysmal and doing things my own way allowed me to actually learn stuff that would end up being useful. I'd not have made it half as far if I had gone the traditional route. Currently 28 and satisfied with how things have played out so far.

whimsicalism 6y ago
> I moved to Sweden for a while (on my own, as a teenager). How were you paying rent in Sweden?
- Proziam 6y ago
  When I moved I arranged to live with some folks I knew through my online esports adventures in Umeå. At the time, I was seriously consider living there permanently and moving my business there. I really enjoyed the place but between family and personal goals it just wasn't destined to be a permanent move the way I had hoped. Interestingly (to me at least), I had gigabit internet in Umeå and I believe it only cost around 40 USD/m at the time (2011-ish). I didn't get gigabit again until I moved to Las Vegas and I'm currently paying around 3x that amount. EDIT - Actually I have one big complaint. Trying to learn the language was impossible because every time I would attempt it people would notice I'm not a native speaker and instantly switch to English as if they had been waiting for that moment their entire lives. Lesson: Swedish people are an order of magnitude more considerate than the french folks I've met.
  - peterwoerner 6y ago
    My dad said when he went to France for work (outside of Paris), they were no longer embarrassed by their poor English, once he shared his abysmal French.

tasuki 6y ago

Is "fear of school shootings" the worst reason for unschooling?

chrisBob 6y ago

I am sure unschooling works out well for some people. I appreciate giving students some flexibility, but I think there really is a standard core that most people should learn. I went to a good engineering school for college, but they also require everyone to take 3 years of history, 3 years of english, 2 semesters of a foreign language, a psychology course, ... If it was left up to me I would not have taken most of those classes, and I suffered through many of them, but I think they were an important part of my education, and I am glad I came out of school knowing more than the engineering that I would have picked for myself.

lostcolony 6y ago
A lot of unschooling is predicated on the idea that if you're not forced to learn things, you will be more open to wanting to learn them. Certainly, in my own life that has held true. I learned to read when I was a kid because I saw my parents doing it, and engaging in it taught me to love it. A lot of math I learned early on just as I was growing up (I figured out multiplication on my own, for instance). But by the time school started 'teaching' me things, I chafed at it. I hated being told what to learn, hated having to follow the classroom's pace, etc. The same has held true in my adult life too; given a problem to solve or an interesting thing to explore I'll learn. Even things I -hated- in high school and college (such as foreign languages), I am engaging in learning on my own as an adult because I -want- to. Given a better environment, most kids will want to learn. The problem is school forces it on kids, without investing in showing the kid why they would want to learn it in the first place (i.e., the reason "when will we ever use this?!" is so stereotypical)
- mdorazio 6y ago
  This is a pretty horrible assumption to make and it's a bad idea to use yourself (or any HN commenter) as a good example of the general public with regard to learning curiosity. If you spend much time outside the tech bubble, I think you'll quickly find that the number of people who go out of their way to learn things in-depth instead of spending all their time on entertainment and social activities is a rather small percentage of the total population.

fxtentacle 6y ago

My impression has always been that "unschooling" is mostly an indicator of wealth, and so it'll correlate well with future success. If both parents have to work a regular day job, there's nobody at home to teach the kids so unschooling is not possible. And if only one parent stays at home, they will also yearn for some free time and push for getting the kids signed up for school. The only situation where I can imagine the parents being enthusiastic about unschooling is if they are independently wealthy and can afford to spend lots of time with their kids, when other people would have to work. And obviously, plenty of personalized attention from the parents will make the kids learn a lot faster than your typical 1 teacher 30 students class. Plus, once you assume that all unschooling parents are much wealthier than regular people, it kind of makes sense that they will have very different opinions about life in general, due to their very different experience of it. Regular folks will go to a public playground and complain about the dog shit there. Rich folks will just buy a playground for their backyard and hire a gardener to keep it tidy. To outsiders, that wealth discrepancy would then look like a religion, because all of the unschoolers have a shared untypical worldview.

whimsicalism 6y ago
The NYT article claims that 'the psychologists Peter Gray and Gina Riley published a 2013 survey of about 230 unschooling families, they found “a wide range in terms of socioeconomic strata.”'. I followed the link and the source is... flimsy at best. The lack of numbers here is conspicuous, especially when combined with the fact that most of the respondents were stay-at-home moms, not something super common among the American working-class. I do not think the rise of this phenomenon is unrelated to the increasing number of affluent, young white parents raising their children in urban cores while remaining afraid of the school system.
watwut 6y ago
I think it is not so much money, but more whether mom is content being stay at home mom being completely fully dedicated to family, being content being dependent on husband and without being independent source of income. That is situation that can get you quite trapped it the things go wrong. It is also quite isolating situation, some women don't like basically working alone all the time or have own aspirations and dreams.

saberdancer 6y ago

A lot of first hand experiences here have to be understood as survivorship bias. It's unlikely that "unsuccessful" unschoolers would wind up here. I don't have a strong opinion either way but I was raised with a strong basic well rounded education and personally I feel it helped me. One thing that should be emphasized is that the material should be challenging enough as having it too easy leads to bad work habits.

cosmiccatnap 6y ago

In an age where people can't agree on if we should be doing a census or not, the idea of letting parents tell their children what is right and wrong just seems immoral. School is an opportunity for alot of these kids to learn about the world outside their parents worldview and as much as you might hate it it's useful to know the pythagorean theorem and the civil war in some detail

eloff 6y ago

My brother and I were homeschooled, but it was quite structured and we wrote the same provincial exams as every other grade 12 kid. My brother did the SAT as well. We had excellent scores. We both dropped out of college with near perfect GPAs. Today I'm a successful self-taught software engineer now starting a SaaS business. My brother is a famous sci fi author. He makes even more than I do. I think homeschooling let us learn whatever we wanted to learn without fear, and find our own path in life. Where I think it hurt was we didn't do any group social activities and lived in remote places. So socially we had a lot to learn. I don't think that was a permanent disadvantage, but it was not a necessary drawback of homeschooling. I would recommend sports and other after school activities to add the social dimension into homeschooling.

saas_sam 6y ago
Fascinating. Do you think things would've turned out differently for you and your brother had you attended public school? Private? I went to a truly terrible rural public school and I see many areas where that has held me back. Success was something to be ashamed of there. Loserthink was king.
- eloff 6y ago
  It's impossible to say of course. But I think at the least we would have led more conventional lives. For myself, maybe a darker outcome. I was struggling with peer pressure and getting into trouble. The family that owned our house before lost their daughter to overdose. She went to my school. I wonder sometimes how my life could have been had things been slightly different and we hadn't changed to homeschooling (after grade 6 for me, 3 for my brother.)
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    I suspect it would depend a lot on whether you were allowed to accelerate academically, and the answer would likely have been "no" or "not much". You might take a look at the following study, and see if it rings true to the school you did experience, or to what you've heard from others you've met: "The considerable majority of [the subjects: young people with 160+ IQs in Australia] who have [skipped 2 or more grades in K-12] report high degrees of life satisfaction, have taken research degrees at leading universities, have professional careers, and report facilitative social and love relationships. Young people of equal abilities who accelerated by only 1 year or who have not been permitted acceleration have tended to enter less academically rigorous college courses, report lower levels of life satisfaction, and in many cases, experience significant difficulties with socialization. Several did not graduate from college or high school." https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ746290.pdf I don't know if you're at the 160+ level, but SAT scores are something of a proxy for IQ, and the severity of the social and academic frustration due to mismatch with age-peers can be judged directly.

enkid 6y ago

I think success of unschooling is highly dubious. https://www.parentingscience.com/homeschooling-outcomes.html https://www.parentingscience.com/homeschooling-outcomes.html

iambateman 6y ago

I was homeschooled 1-5, private 6-8, public 9, homeschooled again 10-12. A couple observations: - homeschooling is efficient. I only needed a few hours per day of school. - homeschooling is a religion for some people (who end up in articles) but there are lots of cool people. - “homeschooling” is often way less “sitting at home with mother learning math” than people think. We took tons of trips, did cooperative school, took college classes. It’s funny to joke about never leaving the house, but most homeschool kids manage to be quite social. - because it’s unusual, it succeeds with the right kid-parent relationship. My sister and mom made each other miserable and it didn’t work. There are lots of kids for whom homeschooling would be problematic.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

GhostVII 6y ago

Sounds like a bad idea to me, at least for most people. The reality is that if you want to be able to get a good job in an area you are interested in, you will need to be able to work with others, and get up on time, and work at a task you might not be as excited about. And you need to have a basic understanding of math, language, writing reports, etc. Most kids aren't going to learn any of that if they are free to sleep in and browse the web and learn whatever they want. Sure some kids might be motivated enough to learn that on their own, but based on what I have seen from my parents grade 5 class, most of them will just spend all day on Fortnight. And maybe for some people it's OK to never learn those things, and be stuck working at lower skill jobs. That's legitimately an option, there are probably many people who are happy with a simpler life. But for me, I'm glad I went to a proper school and learned everything that I did there, and didn't have the opportunity to have a great career taken from me because I didn't go to a traditional school. I find the reason for the family in the article to be pretty poor Fear of school shootings and concern over “the racial bias in schools, the school-to-prison pipeline,” as well as many schools’ stunted curriculum in Black history, drove the McQueens to begin their experiment with at-home learning in 2015 Fear of school shootings is obviously a bad reason to avoid school given how many people die in car crashes each year, statistically the risk is negligible. And if you want more black history curriculum it's not hard to supliment it at home. I think you are much more likely to go to prison if you are uneducated. Racial bias concerns is a legitimate reason to avoid traditional schools though.

jjcm 6y ago

I was homeschooled with my brother up until high school, and it was a mixed experience for me. Academically both myself and my brother were far, far above our peers in public school. The main difference was that especially with math, we had understanding of the material rather than just knowledge. Our parents flipped houses a lot so we'd often have to use our math skills regularly when helping out. How much area is a deck that's 15'x40' with a curved section at the end that has a 7.5' radius? Applied geometry was reinforced heavily. In addition we were able to do more community activities, which boosted our ability to talk with people older than us. The disadvantage however was in our ability to socialize with our peers. The trope of homeschooled kids being weird is 100% true, and is a factor of a lack of a peer group to test social norms with. When you have an insular network your set of social norms only evolves around what's acceptable within your family. I personally struggled a lot with socializing and I wasn't really able to properly integrate until I was ~25 or so. I disagree with Amanda's statement that you have to have faith in a child's wonder to facilitate their development. I would say the onus is on the parents to provide things to wonder about. This is a hard task, one that my mother worked endlessly on. It was a 50 hour a week job for her to educate us. Even with that though there are still the social downsides. For parents that are considering it, I would still recommend it, but know that you're taking on a significant responsibility and that you'll need to find after school programs for your kids to have a chance to socialize with other kids their age. This can be hard to find, especially in earlier years.

TaupeRanger 6y ago
Exactly. Many parents just buy a homeschool "curriculum" and do an accelerated version of the public school lessons. Making various subjects interesting is a skill in itself for the parent-teacher. Young kids just want to play with their toys and friends for the most part.

mgh2 6y ago

This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. 2. Not everyone is self-motivated to learn. Children, at critical developmental ages, are more prone to be led astray than "follow their passions" (at this age, really?). They will more likely be manipulated by vices if not constantly monitored. 3. Not all parents are good teachers. Usually, responsible families understand the value proposition- they wish their children have a better future- and education is the ticket that provides these opportunities. 4. School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen. Public schools, with all its flaws, are the best instruments to free the masses. Knowledge is democratized power to avoid the corruption that absolute power entails.

h0l0cube 6y ago

People interested in unschooling, may also be interested in the discourses of Ivan Illich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society L. M. Sacasas on his mailing list and podcast, 'The Convivial Society' recently interviewed one of Ivan's close friends, Gov. Jerry Brown. I've found the mailing list really worthwhile to read, and has surely affected the way I think about technology. https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/remembering-illich-a-conversation https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/remembering-illic...

mberning 6y ago

Some of the most intelligent and exciting people I have worked with have been homeschooled. I would counter the idea that homeschooling/unschooling is like a religion by turning it around. The orthodoxy of public education in the US is a borderline cult. The institution is unassailable. Where I live levies are passed that raise taxes and the community has nothing to show for it. The union Is like the mob and once you are a “made man” it is nearly impossible to be fired. Administrators are paid more than senior engineers. People that work in this system absolutely abhor the idea of citizens having a choice over their own education. Returning tax money to the tax payer to fund their own education, even if it is a fraction of what the public school receives, is a source of vehement objection by the teachers union.

alexmingoia 6y ago

If unschooling is almost like religion, what is forced schooling almost like? A prison labor camp?

xkgt 6y ago

Most of the anecdotes here are quite illuminating. But I am interested to understand this from parenting perspective. How much of time and effort a homeschooling parent need to dedicate. And I wonder whether there is a selection bias in the outcome. Are we looking at a sample of households that are already well off enough to spend dedicated time and resources on homeschooling? Does the family background improve the chances of success significantly? It is hard to separate these tightly coupled factors.

02020202 6y ago

"When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion" - that's literally an oxymoron. Especially in 'murica.

Noos 6y ago

I don't like discussing this, because smart people completely turn their brains off when it comes to discussing it. Somehow homeschooling creates Lake Wobegone, a place where every child manages to be above average. The reality is more homeschooling is completely unregulated in the majority of states, so people can do almost anything. Most states require no formal education from the parents at all to teach. Many don't require any form of assessment or to keep a portfolio or records of education. Some have required subjects but no real enforcement of them being taught. Any form of standardized testing or auditing may not even be required. If you wanted to keep your kid at home and not educate them at all, you could easily do it in most states. Would you really bet a system like we have now would provide better outcomes overall?

MH15 6y ago
Exactly. I homeschooled through a trad-religious program for one year in 4th or 5th grade and it was unregulated at best. I recall we had to report only our final letter graded to the state, which of course were recorded and granted by the parents, not by the "accredited" school system.

ryanmarsh 6y ago

I’m surprised this was printed. Usually NYT is negative, or at best tepid, towards homeschooling. There’s a diverse set of homeschool/unschool lived experiences. There’s a diverse set of challenges and opportunities that change on a family by family, child by child basis. Homeschool proponents aren’t trying to take anything from you, they just want the option to do things their way, in the privacy of their own home at their own expense with their own labor. That’s all. I’m glad you had a great (normal?) school experience. I’m grateful for your concern about the children of homeschoolers. Please do not confuse your concern with the correctness of the school system for our child. It’s well established the US is a follower in school performance. That should be all the justification we need.

3131s 6y ago
I attended public schools for 12 years and you could not be more right! If the school had put me alone in a room with some textbooks all day with the option to go outside and exercise occasionally, I would have vastly preferred that to the painful boredom of being forced to sit in a chair 8 hours a day without movement or socialization.

colechristensen 6y ago

People need to stop turning their preferred X into replacements for the lack of religion. Apparently some people are just built to need this sort of thing and in absence of a compelling religion they turn whatever interests them into one, with all the obnoxious traits that made people go atheist in the first place.

mantap 6y ago

I was "unschooled" for some years. I was near the top of my class at school (not because I was smart, just because I paid attention and worked hard), and hence my teachers gave up on me. Expending time on a kid who is likely to get A's without intervention does nothing to improve the school's metrics/ranking. I would have been fine in a good private school but my parents weren't rich and couldn't afford the fees. Somehow I convinced my parents to let me educate myself, and at least for me it was successful. I finally had time to teach myself programming, which at the time was not taught in school. Would I recommend it to others? Kids should try school first and see if they benefit from it. Some kids love school and do very well out of the system. However, if school is failing your kid, they might be better off without it.

TheButlerian 6y ago

I wonder how many of the schoolcels here are jealous that someone managed to do it without following their way.

grandinj 6y ago

Something as important as education is always going to attract very strong emotion. When you get into "state schooling", it is also almost a religion - thought shalt not question the teacher, thou shalt not question the dictats of the education establishment, etc.

Shivetya 6y ago

Well we certainly have an opportunity to fix education but I doubt we will make the right changes because the public education system in the United States suffers the same problems the police system does. Public Employee Unions. Whose first task is not to serve the people whom their members are supposed to work for. Just look at the demands some of these unions put up as required before going back to the classrooms! Some wanted changes to minimum wage, taxation, and more! Nothing related to education because they themselves have nothing to do with education other that there are teachers as their members. It is well documented how teachers in good standing with the union can get out of schools they don't want to be in meaning if they don't like the neighborhood its too damn bad for the kids there. They can also avoid disciplinary actions and have their records protected from public view and in many districts have their records expunged within only a few years. There are many great teachers out there but they are stuck in a system government by a political class masquerading as their union. A union which serves local politicians first and parents and students are so far down the list as to not be considered. Hence when it comes to bettering education their first response isn't how to do so but instead how to benefit their financial position

deepstack 6y ago

I personal experience I find home schooled friends are smarter and more educated than public schooled ones. Yeah you would say there may be correlation instead of causation. However, US public school system really leave me extremely unsatisfied. Would never send my kids to US public school.

mikedelfino 6y ago

I'm surprised no comment so far mentioned four important aspects of traditional schooling that I believe should be repeated here: 1. More than just teaching the curriculum, schools are great for socializing with other children your age, learning how to share, how to deal with drama and to grow some empathy. Not to mention the benefits of getting used to rules, authorities and schedules. 2. Getting in contact with how other people live and with what others think, specially outside your family, can be enlightening sometimes. The handful of successful anecdotes shared here, besides falling as survival bias, don't represent cases of disfunctional families or families crazy towards subjects like religion, science, violence, racism or politics. For every happy family there is at least another one potentially raising sociopaths. 3. Many cases of child abuse are committed by family members, frequently by parents at their own home. Allowing children to miss school takes off from them the chance of a teacher noticing such abuses or at least teaching them the limits on their bodies and well being. 4. In some cases, and I'm not sure this applies to the US, schools are the best source of food for poor children (assuming it's free). I understand that people in favor of home schooling are not saying that home schooling should be mandatory for everyone. So in this sense, only families able to provide a positive experience to children would try it. I'm afraid that when this rationale is even an option, families could wrongfully choose home schooling, sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not so much. And in the long run I'm afraid it could leat to less public funding for schools when people are pressured or at least influenced to try home schooling their kids.

bryanwb 6y ago

background: I worked in edtech for about 5 years Start w/ smart kids w/ relatively affluent parents and any educational strategy succeeds. The kids will do well no matter what. Start w/ less innately intelligent kids w/ uneducated, poor parents and that is where you see what really works. Virtually all studies/articles about unschooling/less schooling approaches and they don't control for this variable. Show me homeschooling/unschooling/Waldorf/Montessori/Reggio works for poor kids w/ uneducated parents. Until then, I don't give a shit. I have worked w/ a lot of autodidacts, including a couple better known ones in the software world. They all had professor parents and comfortable upbringings.

helen___keller 6y ago

My main concern with the thought of homeschooling / unschooling as a future parent: I feel fairly confident that I could get my kids far ahead of the standard school curriculum, with stronger fundamentals. But I think the school system serves more purpose than just education, and I'm not convinced my home would be a better school for everything else: Making friends, learning multiple perspectives, learning conflict resolution, learning about diversity, making mistakes and dealing with failure, learning to deal with authority[0]. These are all lessons that I personally would attribute to going through a public education. [0] Just to be clear, dealing with authority isn't the same as blind respect for authority. While school tries to teach you blind respect for authority, every student builds their own relationship with authority, probably in combination with the values they learn at home.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

Here are two anecdotes from my life which oughta make you think about public schools. 1) I was born in USSR, in what is now Ukraine. I finished 5th grade there, in 1992. I skipped 4th grade, because of system conversion to 11-year system. I went to average public school and was a B (4) student. I moved to the U.S. and went to 6th grade in an average middle school. I coasted through 6th, 7th, and 8th grades on what I learned in my first four years of schooling. Only in high school did I see anything new math-wise. 2) In high school, I developed nearsightedness, I got a computer when I moved to U.S. In 10th grade, I started needing glasses, and I got behind in Physics class because I couldn't see the board. Eventually, my parents found out I needed glasses, and I got glasses. But I was about 3 months behind in Physics. So my dad sat down with me, after a day of work, and tutored me in Physics for probably an hour a night. Within 1-2 weeks, I was fully caught up on 3 months of "Magnet" high school physics. Whenever you try to scale something up to millions, quality almost inevitably drops significantly. Imagine the difference between a child getting the full 6 hours a day of public school versus just 2 hours a day of focused tutoring? The difference would be night and day.