4 ms·

Having thought about (un|home|normal) schooling for my own kids, it seems like unschooling in particular depends very much on who the parents are. Is it underes

by svdad 15y ago

Having thought about (un|home|normal) schooling for my own kids, it seems like unschooling in particular depends very much on who the parents are. Is it underestimating people to say that most kids wouldn't engage in anything like what this girl did? Nor obviously would they have the opportunities to do primary research in biology with a family friend, but even aside from that, doesn't unschooling put a huge emphasis on the parents providing opportunities for the kid to express whatever natural curiosity he has? And this depends on the parents having the education and financial resources to do it. Not being hostile at all, I'm genuinely interested -- trying to figure out myself what's the right thing to do for two little boys of my own.

aorshan 15y ago
I absolutely agree. I feel that without the proper parental support a student (do you still call a person who is unschooled a student?) would end up not getting very far. As a personal example I know that neither of my parents would have been able to discuss mathematics and biology with me in the same way this girl's parents did with her.
eurleif 15y ago
I was unschooled. My parents are great, college-educated, knowledgeable people, but they're not preeminent scholars or trained teachers. They pretty much let me do what I wanted, and there were definitely times growing when I slacked off and did nothing remotely of value. However, I was always interested in computer programming, and I devoted a lot of time to learning it. My parents helped me get books and other resources, and I learned a lot from online material as well. I launched a startup almost three years ago, when I was 18. It's doing very well. I'm lucky that I happened to get into programming. It's cheap, (relatively) easy to learn on one's own, and it also helped me to learn bits of other fields. I honestly don't know how I would have turned out if I had gotten into something else, so this might be a testament to programming rather than to unschooling.
- eropple 15y ago
  How well-rounded are you outside of computer programming? Hard sciences, humanities, etc. I ask the question because to me it seems like hyperfocus is a significant danger to the unschooling concept. In particular, I can see a real possibility that an unschooled child with a heavy computer focus and a lack of parental guidance could very easily lock in on computers and neglect potentially "boring" but incredibly helpful topics. I'm thinking largely of the humanities here; you can get away without understanding, say, chemistry [1], but it seems difficult (in my circles, at least) to be taken seriously without a decent command of English--a skill that I think is refined largely from reading, because I've never met someone who could speak and write well who didn't enjoy reading--and it seems like it'd be difficult to really understand the world around you without a decent grasp of history. In neither case does Wikipedia really cover it; I think that a level of internalization of such things is necessary (it becomes harder to evaluate political statements without at least a high-level understanding of where they come from, which has driven my own recent forays into economics and sociology). For similar over-focusing reasons, I'm generally but not completely skeptical of the "don't go to college" argument sometimes espoused here on HN; the focus on matters of immediacy--the get-a-job skills--strikes me as a good way of turning out someone with a few strong skills in a few areas and a generally fuzzy understanding of topics unrelated to their focus area. I am, however, even less fond of the idea of "max out your subject matter, take the bare minimum outside your degree area"--I have a hunch that a self-directed person is more likely to stumble into well-roundedness than somebody whose academic drive is constrained to do-your-job topics. [1] - Not to say chemistry's a useless subject by any means, I actually draw on it sometimes in my day-to-day life. But knowledge of the hard sciences, physics possibly excepted, are a little less impactful overall.
  - diwank 15y ago
    I have had 'normal' schooling for the most part of my life. Two years back, I got into web dev. Made an app or two. Now working on others. I learnt everything about it on my own. For the first time in my life, I REALLY understood the meaning of an effective pitch and the value of expression. I taught myself to write well, to be able to communicate with the developer community, do a lot of math and well, coding. I spent time learning how to sketch too. I had so much fun studying the boring subjects - arts, writing etc. In fact, the 'boring' subjects were made boring only for lack of application! Had I gone the 'normal' way: I don't know whether I'd have been better off but what I do know is that I could never have learnt so much. It's really circumstantial. What works for someone may not work at all for someone else. So, there cannot be a fair comparison, so to speak.
csomar 15y ago
I'm thinking the same. (I'm not married, nor I have children right now). However, it's essential that they get some guidance; like joining private courses for English, Chemistry and other stuff. Outside of school, certainly. So they learn in their own pace, and no stress (or aim) to get high grades (or any grades at all).

by svdad 15y ago

aorshan 15y ago

I absolutely agree. I feel that without the proper parental support a student (do you still call a person who is unschooled a student?) would end up not getting very far. As a personal example I know that neither of my parents would have been able to discuss mathematics and biology with me in the same way this girl's parents did with her.

eurleif 15y ago

I was unschooled. My parents are great, college-educated, knowledgeable people, but they're not preeminent scholars or trained teachers. They pretty much let me do what I wanted, and there were definitely times growing when I slacked off and did nothing remotely of value. However, I was always interested in computer programming, and I devoted a lot of time to learning it. My parents helped me get books and other resources, and I learned a lot from online material as well. I launched a startup almost three years ago, when I was 18. It's doing very well. I'm lucky that I happened to get into programming. It's cheap, (relatively) easy to learn on one's own, and it also helped me to learn bits of other fields. I honestly don't know how I would have turned out if I had gotten into something else, so this might be a testament to programming rather than to unschooling.

eropple 15y ago
How well-rounded are you outside of computer programming? Hard sciences, humanities, etc. I ask the question because to me it seems like hyperfocus is a significant danger to the unschooling concept. In particular, I can see a real possibility that an unschooled child with a heavy computer focus and a lack of parental guidance could very easily lock in on computers and neglect potentially "boring" but incredibly helpful topics. I'm thinking largely of the humanities here; you can get away without understanding, say, chemistry [1], but it seems difficult (in my circles, at least) to be taken seriously without a decent command of English--a skill that I think is refined largely from reading, because I've never met someone who could speak and write well who didn't enjoy reading--and it seems like it'd be difficult to really understand the world around you without a decent grasp of history. In neither case does Wikipedia really cover it; I think that a level of internalization of such things is necessary (it becomes harder to evaluate political statements without at least a high-level understanding of where they come from, which has driven my own recent forays into economics and sociology). For similar over-focusing reasons, I'm generally but not completely skeptical of the "don't go to college" argument sometimes espoused here on HN; the focus on matters of immediacy--the get-a-job skills--strikes me as a good way of turning out someone with a few strong skills in a few areas and a generally fuzzy understanding of topics unrelated to their focus area. I am, however, even less fond of the idea of "max out your subject matter, take the bare minimum outside your degree area"--I have a hunch that a self-directed person is more likely to stumble into well-roundedness than somebody whose academic drive is constrained to do-your-job topics. [1] - Not to say chemistry's a useless subject by any means, I actually draw on it sometimes in my day-to-day life. But knowledge of the hard sciences, physics possibly excepted, are a little less impactful overall.
- diwank 15y ago
  I have had 'normal' schooling for the most part of my life. Two years back, I got into web dev. Made an app or two. Now working on others. I learnt everything about it on my own. For the first time in my life, I REALLY understood the meaning of an effective pitch and the value of expression. I taught myself to write well, to be able to communicate with the developer community, do a lot of math and well, coding. I spent time learning how to sketch too. I had so much fun studying the boring subjects - arts, writing etc. In fact, the 'boring' subjects were made boring only for lack of application! Had I gone the 'normal' way: I don't know whether I'd have been better off but what I do know is that I could never have learnt so much. It's really circumstantial. What works for someone may not work at all for someone else. So, there cannot be a fair comparison, so to speak.

csomar 15y ago

I'm thinking the same. (I'm not married, nor I have children right now). However, it's essential that they get some guidance; like joining private courses for English, Chemistry and other stuff. Outside of school, certainly. So they learn in their own pace, and no stress (or aim) to get high grades (or any grades at all).