5 ms·

'Unschooling' parents put their kids in charge of their own educations

21 points by howard941 2y ago

Spivak 2y ago
It's not surprising that this mom's approach is working, she's essentially acting as a private tutor which have a thousands of year history of being effective. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that our current way of doing education in classrooms would be better in any aspect except volume and some minimal baseline consistency.
- decremental 2y ago
  [dead]
- JackMorgan 2y ago
  There's a long history of classroom education producing significantly worse outcomes. "Bloom's 2 sigma problem refers to the educational phenomenon that the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than students educated in a classroom environment." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem We just keep doing it this way because now it's a cargo cult.
  - klyrs 2y ago
    Is it a cargo cult or a scaling issue? Because for every article I've read about a try-hard parent succeeding in this, I've met a handful of people who are emphatically not educating their children and also calling it unschooling. Scale up schooling, it's median quality droops a little. Scale up unschooling, and the median quality will continue to fall with every subsequent generation.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > We just keep doing it this way because now it's a cargo cult. Policy inertia is always a factor in adopting techniques that appear better in limited testing, but we also do it this way because 1:1 instruction with mastery learning techniques is more than 30 times as expensive as 30:1 instruction with classroom techniques, and because education sits as #2 behind healthcare (ahead of things like debt service defense, and non-healthcare entitlement spending) in overall public spending in the US, and if it was multiplied 30 fold it would be over 150% of GDP, which is...problematic. It's never been controversial that being educated by an expert personal dedicated tutor is better than classroom learning, but it just doesn't work at scale. Unfortunately, the success at the challenge laid out in the article you reference of finding group learning techniques that achieve the same benefits, in practice, has been less than successful. (And, no, unschooling/homeschooling isn't a general solution here.)
    - JackMorgan 2y ago
      I responded to another similar comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41500932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41500932 Considering how much more effective tutoring is, we do it this way not because it's the best way to provide free child care (it isn't and doesn't even cover a whole work day). It's not the most effective way to educate students. Nor is it even the most cost effective way to teach students. I'm left with the belief that it's either a cargo cult or a program designed to make a servile, uncreative population.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    You really think the only -- or even the primary -- reason we're not providing 1-to-1 dedicated tutoring to students is because a cargo cult thinks that 30-to-1 ratios are better? No, we keep doing it this way because the public refuses to actually engage the real challenges of actually educating a nation. Comments like this one being excellent cases in point.
    - JackMorgan 2y ago
      Because of how much more effective one on one tutoring is, it needs significantly less effort in total hours even maintaining a 30-to-1 ratio of students to teachers. "It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you." [1] Unless you have some strong evidence to argue why "sit down and lecture" is the most cost effective way to educate a population, I will retain my belief that it is a cargo cult at best. [1] https://cantrip.org/gatto.html https://cantrip.org/gatto.html
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        Can you describe in more detail how you achieve 50 contact-hours cost-effectively when students outnumber teachers 30 or 40 to 1? Can you also substantiate the claim that 50 contact-hours is sufficient for students to become "self-teachers" and that they actually do that?
        JackMorgan 2y ago
        For the first claim, 50 hours at 40 students would be 2000 hours. One year to complete the prerequisites for self teaching for those 40 students. Instead of 12 years full time lecturing, so that's 1/12th the cost. I have volunteered at a school that allows students to become self-teachers and it is very effective. They follow the Sudbury model, and students entirely teach themselves everything from reading to mathematics. They graduate from college at higher rates than traditional school students, make more, and have very high levels of self reported happiness. It's a really cool model, I wish it was more common. The school I helped at had no teachers, only 3 adults for 120 young people. They could all come and go throughout the day as long as they signed in and out. It's been up and running for decades, so it's not just a flash in the pan. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school
- garciasn 2y ago
  Sure; it's great when there are focused and meaningfully engaged parents directed their childrens' learnings in a way which is intended to drive measureable educational achievement. The problem is that many of those who choose to homeschool or 'unschool' are not looking to do anything near this; instead, they want to buck the system in a way which does not create a usefully educated human--usually in a very narrow siloed way (e.g., religion-focused).
- salemh 2y ago
  [dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
titusjohnson 2y ago
From the very bottom of the article.. > Still, many survivors of unschooling, and home schooling, aren’t buying it. The projection of normalcy, and even success, has long been part of the home-schooling toolkit. > “This is exactly how my mother was back in the 90s,” says Tyler. “For her, it was touring support groups and conferences and whatnot, to brag about how happy, well-adjusted and educated her children were, while neglecting to mention the suicide attempts, running away, screaming and tears that permeated daily life.” This maps to my experience being Homeschooled. To this day my Mom refuses to acknowledge that every one of her children needed remedial education the moment we left the home, from basic math & composition down to just plain old human interaction. All 5 of us have been "that weird kid" well into our 20's, until we caught up enough to mask our history.
iamleppert 2y ago
My parents divorced when I was just becoming a teenager, and I had to move schools from a suburban school to a poorly funded urban school. Both parents were very hands off (as in didn't want to know about my schooling, didn't care). I tried the urban school for a year, but it was shocking how different it was. They basically had no funds for anything, and you could see it everywhere. The classes were mostly teachers giving assignments, not much teaching and frequently disrupted by out of control students. I decided to enroll in a public charter school my next year of high school. It was billed as a "Science Academy". I gave it about 6 months before I quit that school year altogether. It was even worse than the urban school, and was filled with students who had been expelled from the local public school district, and couldn't be turned away from the charter school by what they laws were at the time. And the teachers were all foreign with incredibly thick accents. It went about as well as you'd think: constant disruptions in class and terrible quality teachers. So I decided to switch back to the urban, public school for the next year. I think I ended up going another 8 months before just deciding to drop out completely of high school and get my GED after I was beaten and robbed in the parking lot, and start going to college. The education system, in most places in the US, is a complete joke and my story is way more common than you'd think. If your parents don't care about your education and aren't willing to move to a good school district, you're basically screwed.
- 4fterd4rk 2y ago
  It sounds like you had a very bad experience but to say that "in most places in the US" the education system is a complete joke is projection.
  - more_corn 2y ago
    I think it’s a fair criticism. The fact that we fund schools based on property taxes disadvantages those students who need the most help. Schools in cities tend towards bad. Schools in rich suburbs tend to be excellent. I went to college with a guy who attended a prestigious private school. He was an indifferent student there and still knew more than me on most subjects. I was left with the impression that public school in the US overall, as a system is a joke even though I went through a pretty privileged one.
big-green-man 2y ago
All this stuff about unschooling and homeschooling and all the different outcomes come down to one thing: parents have to make it a top priority to educate their children. This is true whether they're homeschooling, "unschooling", going to public school, basically any situation besides parents rich enough to send kids to expensive schools or hire tutors. I know a few homeschooled people. One is entirely self taught because their parents put 0 effort in. They're very smart, well read, but there are gaps and what they did learn wasn't with the chosen curriculum, but their own reading online, "unschooled" you might say. The others are educated better than public school students. I've met lots and lots of students of public schools that can barely read. I've met lots of them that are well educated. The key differentiating factor is whether their parents took an interest in their education. Too often, "unschooling" is an excuse not to care. Public school is used this way more often, with marginally better results. If you're willing to be a private tutor for your kids, to go learn the material you aren't familiar with so you can teach them, probably homeschooling is better. If not, if you don't have the time or patience, public school will work, but you still have to take an interest. Homeschooling is better, if the parent actually educates their kids, but almost no school is going to make your kid well educated if you don't make it a priority in your life. Take an interest in and prioritize the education of your children.
- sharadov 2y ago
  Yup - unless parents are completely vested in the child's education, it won't happen.
viraptor 2y ago
Onami somehow became popular recently. But I've seen a bit of backstory from previous videos and it's weird. When she was dealing with a school previously, she made an angry video about the school making her sign off on kid's work - essentially the school seemed to want to ensure she's aware of what the kid is doing. She was angry because she had no time for that and she's busy running a business... so that led her to doing full time unschooling somehow... There may be good cases, but I've got low expectations here.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tbatchelli 2y ago
I have two data points for unschooling, my two children. After a foray in public school in SF, we decided to take one kid out at first, and the other one a year later, the older in 3rd grade, and the younger in 2nd grade. We unschooled them, which we were able to do because we had the equivalent of one full time parent available every day. It was hard work for us, mostly for my wife. It was expensive too. We hired tutors for certain things, we sent them to workshops, classes, etc… but it was always after they expressed interest (one way or another). After 3 years and one year of COVID, our kids expressed interest in going back to school to be around more kids their ages. It was weird for them (and for us!) at first, but they adapted to the schedule pretty quickly and they’re straight As kids. It worked because in a way, they already had it in them. They both were (and still are) very curious and self-starters. They liked unschooling for a while, and to this day they still have an do-it-yourself attitude when it comes to learning things that they’re interested in —- I think most kids do, and in their case it got cemented during this period. But they got sick of it too, they got sick of not having a clear schedule, clear goals to meet, too much uncertainty. Now they like more academic-oriented schooling, a bit of the opposite of unschooling, and they’re thriving. We were lucky that the director of the elementary school they ended up in. She was very welcoming of our kids, and expressed that she herself had an unstructured upbringing. More interestingly, she seemed to think kids should have some unschooling period in their lives, as having free range helps them develop as people. Anyway, as I said, 2 data points
shantom 2y ago
[flagged]
shantom 2y ago
[dead]

21 points by howard941 2y ago

It's not surprising that this mom's approach is working, she's essentially acting as a private tutor which have a thousands of year history of being effective. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that our current way of doing education in classrooms would be better in any aspect except volume and some minimal baseline consistency.

decremental 2y ago
[dead]
JackMorgan 2y ago
There's a long history of classroom education producing significantly worse outcomes. "Bloom's 2 sigma problem refers to the educational phenomenon that the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than students educated in a classroom environment." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem We just keep doing it this way because now it's a cargo cult.
- klyrs 2y ago
  Is it a cargo cult or a scaling issue? Because for every article I've read about a try-hard parent succeeding in this, I've met a handful of people who are emphatically not educating their children and also calling it unschooling. Scale up schooling, it's median quality droops a little. Scale up unschooling, and the median quality will continue to fall with every subsequent generation.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > We just keep doing it this way because now it's a cargo cult. Policy inertia is always a factor in adopting techniques that appear better in limited testing, but we also do it this way because 1:1 instruction with mastery learning techniques is more than 30 times as expensive as 30:1 instruction with classroom techniques, and because education sits as #2 behind healthcare (ahead of things like debt service defense, and non-healthcare entitlement spending) in overall public spending in the US, and if it was multiplied 30 fold it would be over 150% of GDP, which is...problematic. It's never been controversial that being educated by an expert personal dedicated tutor is better than classroom learning, but it just doesn't work at scale. Unfortunately, the success at the challenge laid out in the article you reference of finding group learning techniques that achieve the same benefits, in practice, has been less than successful. (And, no, unschooling/homeschooling isn't a general solution here.)
  - JackMorgan 2y ago
    I responded to another similar comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41500932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41500932 Considering how much more effective tutoring is, we do it this way not because it's the best way to provide free child care (it isn't and doesn't even cover a whole work day). It's not the most effective way to educate students. Nor is it even the most cost effective way to teach students. I'm left with the belief that it's either a cargo cult or a program designed to make a servile, uncreative population.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  You really think the only -- or even the primary -- reason we're not providing 1-to-1 dedicated tutoring to students is because a cargo cult thinks that 30-to-1 ratios are better? No, we keep doing it this way because the public refuses to actually engage the real challenges of actually educating a nation. Comments like this one being excellent cases in point.
  - JackMorgan 2y ago
    Because of how much more effective one on one tutoring is, it needs significantly less effort in total hours even maintaining a 30-to-1 ratio of students to teachers. "It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you." [1] Unless you have some strong evidence to argue why "sit down and lecture" is the most cost effective way to educate a population, I will retain my belief that it is a cargo cult at best. [1] https://cantrip.org/gatto.html https://cantrip.org/gatto.html
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Can you describe in more detail how you achieve 50 contact-hours cost-effectively when students outnumber teachers 30 or 40 to 1? Can you also substantiate the claim that 50 contact-hours is sufficient for students to become "self-teachers" and that they actually do that?
      - JackMorgan 2y ago
        For the first claim, 50 hours at 40 students would be 2000 hours. One year to complete the prerequisites for self teaching for those 40 students. Instead of 12 years full time lecturing, so that's 1/12th the cost. I have volunteered at a school that allows students to become self-teachers and it is very effective. They follow the Sudbury model, and students entirely teach themselves everything from reading to mathematics. They graduate from college at higher rates than traditional school students, make more, and have very high levels of self reported happiness. It's a really cool model, I wish it was more common. The school I helped at had no teachers, only 3 adults for 120 young people. They could all come and go throughout the day as long as they signed in and out. It's been up and running for decades, so it's not just a flash in the pan. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school
garciasn 2y ago
Sure; it's great when there are focused and meaningfully engaged parents directed their childrens' learnings in a way which is intended to drive measureable educational achievement. The problem is that many of those who choose to homeschool or 'unschool' are not looking to do anything near this; instead, they want to buck the system in a way which does not create a usefully educated human--usually in a very narrow siloed way (e.g., religion-focused).
salemh 2y ago
[dead]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

titusjohnson 2y ago

From the very bottom of the article.. > Still, many survivors of unschooling, and home schooling, aren’t buying it. The projection of normalcy, and even success, has long been part of the home-schooling toolkit. > “This is exactly how my mother was back in the 90s,” says Tyler. “For her, it was touring support groups and conferences and whatnot, to brag about how happy, well-adjusted and educated her children were, while neglecting to mention the suicide attempts, running away, screaming and tears that permeated daily life.” This maps to my experience being Homeschooled. To this day my Mom refuses to acknowledge that every one of her children needed remedial education the moment we left the home, from basic math & composition down to just plain old human interaction. All 5 of us have been "that weird kid" well into our 20's, until we caught up enough to mask our history.

iamleppert 2y ago

My parents divorced when I was just becoming a teenager, and I had to move schools from a suburban school to a poorly funded urban school. Both parents were very hands off (as in didn't want to know about my schooling, didn't care). I tried the urban school for a year, but it was shocking how different it was. They basically had no funds for anything, and you could see it everywhere. The classes were mostly teachers giving assignments, not much teaching and frequently disrupted by out of control students. I decided to enroll in a public charter school my next year of high school. It was billed as a "Science Academy". I gave it about 6 months before I quit that school year altogether. It was even worse than the urban school, and was filled with students who had been expelled from the local public school district, and couldn't be turned away from the charter school by what they laws were at the time. And the teachers were all foreign with incredibly thick accents. It went about as well as you'd think: constant disruptions in class and terrible quality teachers. So I decided to switch back to the urban, public school for the next year. I think I ended up going another 8 months before just deciding to drop out completely of high school and get my GED after I was beaten and robbed in the parking lot, and start going to college. The education system, in most places in the US, is a complete joke and my story is way more common than you'd think. If your parents don't care about your education and aren't willing to move to a good school district, you're basically screwed.

4fterd4rk 2y ago
It sounds like you had a very bad experience but to say that "in most places in the US" the education system is a complete joke is projection.
- more_corn 2y ago
  I think it’s a fair criticism. The fact that we fund schools based on property taxes disadvantages those students who need the most help. Schools in cities tend towards bad. Schools in rich suburbs tend to be excellent. I went to college with a guy who attended a prestigious private school. He was an indifferent student there and still knew more than me on most subjects. I was left with the impression that public school in the US overall, as a system is a joke even though I went through a pretty privileged one.

big-green-man 2y ago

All this stuff about unschooling and homeschooling and all the different outcomes come down to one thing: parents have to make it a top priority to educate their children. This is true whether they're homeschooling, "unschooling", going to public school, basically any situation besides parents rich enough to send kids to expensive schools or hire tutors. I know a few homeschooled people. One is entirely self taught because their parents put 0 effort in. They're very smart, well read, but there are gaps and what they did learn wasn't with the chosen curriculum, but their own reading online, "unschooled" you might say. The others are educated better than public school students. I've met lots and lots of students of public schools that can barely read. I've met lots of them that are well educated. The key differentiating factor is whether their parents took an interest in their education. Too often, "unschooling" is an excuse not to care. Public school is used this way more often, with marginally better results. If you're willing to be a private tutor for your kids, to go learn the material you aren't familiar with so you can teach them, probably homeschooling is better. If not, if you don't have the time or patience, public school will work, but you still have to take an interest. Homeschooling is better, if the parent actually educates their kids, but almost no school is going to make your kid well educated if you don't make it a priority in your life. Take an interest in and prioritize the education of your children.

sharadov 2y ago
Yup - unless parents are completely vested in the child's education, it won't happen.

viraptor 2y ago

Onami somehow became popular recently. But I've seen a bit of backstory from previous videos and it's weird. When she was dealing with a school previously, she made an angry video about the school making her sign off on kid's work - essentially the school seemed to want to ensure she's aware of what the kid is doing. She was angry because she had no time for that and she's busy running a business... so that led her to doing full time unschooling somehow... There may be good cases, but I've got low expectations here.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

tbatchelli 2y ago

I have two data points for unschooling, my two children. After a foray in public school in SF, we decided to take one kid out at first, and the other one a year later, the older in 3rd grade, and the younger in 2nd grade. We unschooled them, which we were able to do because we had the equivalent of one full time parent available every day. It was hard work for us, mostly for my wife. It was expensive too. We hired tutors for certain things, we sent them to workshops, classes, etc… but it was always after they expressed interest (one way or another). After 3 years and one year of COVID, our kids expressed interest in going back to school to be around more kids their ages. It was weird for them (and for us!) at first, but they adapted to the schedule pretty quickly and they’re straight As kids. It worked because in a way, they already had it in them. They both were (and still are) very curious and self-starters. They liked unschooling for a while, and to this day they still have an do-it-yourself attitude when it comes to learning things that they’re interested in —- I think most kids do, and in their case it got cemented during this period. But they got sick of it too, they got sick of not having a clear schedule, clear goals to meet, too much uncertainty. Now they like more academic-oriented schooling, a bit of the opposite of unschooling, and they’re thriving. We were lucky that the director of the elementary school they ended up in. She was very welcoming of our kids, and expressed that she herself had an unstructured upbringing. More interestingly, she seemed to think kids should have some unschooling period in their lives, as having free range helps them develop as people. Anyway, as I said, 2 data points

shantom 2y ago

[flagged]

shantom 2y ago

[dead]