3 ms·

One complaint that I hear about the method you are describing is the the kid/teenager will naturally gravitate towards easier "mindless" activities such as vide

by belval 5y ago

One complaint that I hear about the method you are describing is the the kid/teenager will naturally gravitate towards easier "mindless" activities such as video games/TV/YouTube. Did you enforce discipline or did they have enough intellectual curiosity to learn stuff like calculus on their own?

geocrasher 5y ago
Oh sure they had core stuff they had to do. But we also let them learn on their own. The programming experience? Inside Minecraft with a mod called ComputerCraft that put an 8 bit computer that ran Lua inside of Minecraft.
- belval 5y ago
  Yeah that makes sense. Additionally, like some other commenter pointed out, did they ever suffer from limited interactions with people of their own age? My high school friends stayed my friends well into adulthood and I would've been much lonelier had I been homeschooled.
  - geocrasher 5y ago
    Nope. That's a misconception that's commonly used against homeschooling. There are homeschooling co-ops that organize field trips. We also associated regularly with our congregation with people of all ages that they were friends with. My 15 year old daughter's best friend was an 83 year old woman. They hung out all the time. It was amazing. There are those examples of families who treat it like they're on a deserted island. They're doing it wrong. Thankfully, they are a very, very small minority.
mapgrep 5y ago
I get these kinds of questions too and while I can’t speak for the person you’re replying to (my kids are younger) it’s the second answer. Kids naturally have a ton of intellectual curiosity which the school system. I do think there needs to be an adult with them, probably, it’s not like you could just leave them on their own for king stretches at a young age especially. Although maybe you could. This talk has influenced my thinking since I saw it in Long Beach. https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the...
- atatatat 5y ago
  Your kids do! Likely lots to do with you! Cherish this.
jhedwards 5y ago
I dropped out of school and I almost immediately got tired of low-effort activities. Games and TV are great as a respite from doing other things, but if you're a young person with an active mind you will quickly get bored doing that stuff all day. My biggest problem was the sudden lack of a social sphere. High school was terrible, but I dramatically underestimated how important the social environment was. The thing I wish most was that there were people to teach me challenging subjects. Left to my own devices I naturally gravitated to things I was already good at.
mumblemumble 5y ago
Speaking for myself (not a kid), I only start to gravitate toward those sorts of activities when I'm low grade burnt out. Especially if I'm burnt out from having to do something that feels difficult and pointless, but is also on a deadline and subject to performance assessment. Nothing wears your ability to concentrate down faster than having to to actually force yourself to concentrate for hours at a time. I see the same thing in both my kids. They're both mentally engaged, skilled, perseverant problem solvers. . . except in the evenings after school. Then, they simply can't emotionally handle much beyond games/tv/youtube. What worries me right now is that this situation may be setting up a bad psychological pattern that may stick with them for life: anything that takes work is, in some Pavlovian sense, associated with frustration and exhaustion, while pleasure is associated with brain candy. I don't think that that's their natural experience of life; it's something they're being taught by a regime that's dominated by report cards and standardized tests. I'm personally not too keen on homeschooling. I did it for some time as a child, and I honestly think that the reduced social contact with my peers had consequences that also need to be considered. But I'd love to see schools become less bureaucratic. Teachers, in my experience, usually want to keep things fluid and engaging, and they know how to do it. What seems to get in their way are policies that the suits in office buildings develop, most of which are primarily designed to placate the anxieties of parents who are worried about their kids "falling behind" or whatever and want to see hard numbers proving that the school is doing a good job of producing kids that are all STEM and no roots, leaves or flowers.
- fzzzy 5y ago
  The association of frustration and exhaustion with "productivity" is absolutely one of the most destructive forces for freedom and creativity.
TaupeRanger 5y ago
Homeschool proponents always cherry pick the good parts. Some kids are naturally motivated to acquire skills, but most will play with toys or play outside when they're young, and then start doing more social media/gaming when they're older. There's no solution for this other than to prevent them from doing these things and actively force them to do "learning stuff". Homeschool is no different, no matter what anyone implies by selective storytelling.
- camjohnson26 5y ago
  Play time is extremely important for building curiosity and learning. Playing outside has massive health benefits too which will help with burnout down the road. Of course they need discipline too but I think schools leave barely any time for kids to be kids between classes, homework, and extra curricular. Feynman is an example of somebody who practiced this. Done right play isn’t wasteful, it makes people want to dig deeper into something which is how discoveries are made.

by belval 5y ago

geocrasher 5y ago

Oh sure they had core stuff they had to do. But we also let them learn on their own. The programming experience? Inside Minecraft with a mod called ComputerCraft that put an 8 bit computer that ran Lua inside of Minecraft.

belval 5y ago
Yeah that makes sense. Additionally, like some other commenter pointed out, did they ever suffer from limited interactions with people of their own age? My high school friends stayed my friends well into adulthood and I would've been much lonelier had I been homeschooled.
- geocrasher 5y ago
  Nope. That's a misconception that's commonly used against homeschooling. There are homeschooling co-ops that organize field trips. We also associated regularly with our congregation with people of all ages that they were friends with. My 15 year old daughter's best friend was an 83 year old woman. They hung out all the time. It was amazing. There are those examples of families who treat it like they're on a deserted island. They're doing it wrong. Thankfully, they are a very, very small minority.

mapgrep 5y ago

I get these kinds of questions too and while I can’t speak for the person you’re replying to (my kids are younger) it’s the second answer. Kids naturally have a ton of intellectual curiosity which the school system. I do think there needs to be an adult with them, probably, it’s not like you could just leave them on their own for king stretches at a young age especially. Although maybe you could. This talk has influenced my thinking since I saw it in Long Beach. https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the...

atatatat 5y ago
Your kids do! Likely lots to do with you! Cherish this.

jhedwards 5y ago

I dropped out of school and I almost immediately got tired of low-effort activities. Games and TV are great as a respite from doing other things, but if you're a young person with an active mind you will quickly get bored doing that stuff all day. My biggest problem was the sudden lack of a social sphere. High school was terrible, but I dramatically underestimated how important the social environment was. The thing I wish most was that there were people to teach me challenging subjects. Left to my own devices I naturally gravitated to things I was already good at.

mumblemumble 5y ago

Speaking for myself (not a kid), I only start to gravitate toward those sorts of activities when I'm low grade burnt out. Especially if I'm burnt out from having to do something that feels difficult and pointless, but is also on a deadline and subject to performance assessment. Nothing wears your ability to concentrate down faster than having to to actually force yourself to concentrate for hours at a time. I see the same thing in both my kids. They're both mentally engaged, skilled, perseverant problem solvers. . . except in the evenings after school. Then, they simply can't emotionally handle much beyond games/tv/youtube. What worries me right now is that this situation may be setting up a bad psychological pattern that may stick with them for life: anything that takes work is, in some Pavlovian sense, associated with frustration and exhaustion, while pleasure is associated with brain candy. I don't think that that's their natural experience of life; it's something they're being taught by a regime that's dominated by report cards and standardized tests. I'm personally not too keen on homeschooling. I did it for some time as a child, and I honestly think that the reduced social contact with my peers had consequences that also need to be considered. But I'd love to see schools become less bureaucratic. Teachers, in my experience, usually want to keep things fluid and engaging, and they know how to do it. What seems to get in their way are policies that the suits in office buildings develop, most of which are primarily designed to placate the anxieties of parents who are worried about their kids "falling behind" or whatever and want to see hard numbers proving that the school is doing a good job of producing kids that are all STEM and no roots, leaves or flowers.

fzzzy 5y ago
The association of frustration and exhaustion with "productivity" is absolutely one of the most destructive forces for freedom and creativity.

TaupeRanger 5y ago

Homeschool proponents always cherry pick the good parts. Some kids are naturally motivated to acquire skills, but most will play with toys or play outside when they're young, and then start doing more social media/gaming when they're older. There's no solution for this other than to prevent them from doing these things and actively force them to do "learning stuff". Homeschool is no different, no matter what anyone implies by selective storytelling.

camjohnson26 5y ago
Play time is extremely important for building curiosity and learning. Playing outside has massive health benefits too which will help with burnout down the road. Of course they need discipline too but I think schools leave barely any time for kids to be kids between classes, homework, and extra curricular. Feynman is an example of somebody who practiced this. Done right play isn’t wasteful, it makes people want to dig deeper into something which is how discoveries are made.