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I think it might be wishful thinking to imagine that kids left to their own devices will identify and persue useful skills without adult guidance. Even if every

by jiggy2011 12y ago

I think it might be wishful thinking to imagine that kids left to their own devices will identify and persue useful skills without adult guidance. Even if every kid who watches cartoons develops an interest in stop motion animation, how many stop motion animators do we need? How would you even understand how to start with quake modding without knowing basic math and reading comprehension? When I was at school there were kids who would frequently "unschool" themselves by skipping class, the interests they developed were mostly related to vandalism and other petty crime.

glenra 12y ago
One develops reading comprehension by reading, including texts, blogs, and videogame chat - and time spent sitting at a desk being talked at takes away from the time you could be using to do that. Realizing you want to do something that requires basic math gives you a reason to learn basic math, which makes learning that basic math easy. (Me, I learned trigonometry because it was helpful to draw cool patterns on a computer) I think you're suffering from status-quo bias. Read the link I gave you above. One of the biggest secret weapons of homeschoolers and unschoolers is age-mixing. Standard schools artificially segregate kids by age and force them to learn in a specific order. This guarantees that no kid in the room knows much more than the other kids. In the real world, on just about any subject at all you can find people who know a little more than you and learn from them or find people who know a bit less and teach them. Kids teach EACH OTHER how to do cool stuff like use a computer or mod a video game. The hardest and most important thing to figure out in life is "what do I want to learn and how can I learn it?" When schools decide on a specific curriculum and spoon-feed it to kids, they destroy the intrinsic motivation to solve that question for yourself; you can just passively accept what is being force-fed to you by your teachers. But then when school is finished, what do you do THEN? Over a dozen years or more you haven't PRACTICED setting your own goals or figuring out how to fulfill them! Mightn't it be better to do that starting much earlier in life?
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  In order to read you need to be exposed to books and also somebody to read with you until you can do it on your own. Since there is no instinctual human drive to seek out books you need to be guided in that direction and encouraged to push through the pain barrier because it's quite boring to start with. This is basically what the job of a teacher is. It may well be true that kids with educated parents can do well in a loosely structured environment with freedom to explore, but these kids tend to outperform whatever the education structure. Kids who grow up in deprived areas without educated role models risk being "educated" by criminal gangs.
  - glenra 12y ago
    > In order to read you need to be exposed to books and also somebody to read with you until you can do it on your own. That's what parents do. You don't need teachers for that. You found reading "boring to start with"? That seems sad. Me, I wanted to read almost every minute of every day - I was always in the middle of multiple books, read while walking, read books held secretly under the desk during boring class lectures, even occasionally read while riding my bike. I imagine today kids learn texting and tweeting (or whatever the next thing is) with similar vigor, even if long-form work is starting to lose out a bit to it. Do you really imagine that kids won't be able to read if not for elementary school? We live in a world that is saturated with the written word. It is an inescapable fact of our environment that we are surrounded by text and use text to communicate; it seems crazy to imagine that kids of average or better intelligence would fail to find some incentive to learn to read something. I mean, sure, a priori it seems conceivable that could happen, but it doesn't seem particularly likely and as far as I know that hasn't been the experience of anybody who has pursued unschooling.
    - jiggy2011 12y ago
      I think you're making my point for me. Kids of above average intelligence with the right parents can do well with unschooling, but then they also do well with regular schooling. A kids educational outcome would become linked to that of their parents and other adults in their environment, even more so than is currently the case. In fact it's worse than that , because as soon as one generation messes up because for example a parent develops a mental health issue there is no mechanism for fixing the next generation.
ThomPete 12y ago
You can't compare the schools you went to with the Sudbury system. The skipping class happens exactly because you are trapped, because there is something you rather will. But why skip class if you can do what you want?
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Sure, if they were allowed to swear and fight in class they might not have skipped so much but what would that achieve besides disrupting the kids who actually wanted to learn?
  - ThomPete 12y ago
    It's easy to make a point when you make up your own premises. I never swore or fought in high in class but i did skip class.

glenra 12y ago

One develops reading comprehension by reading, including texts, blogs, and videogame chat - and time spent sitting at a desk being talked at takes away from the time you could be using to do that. Realizing you want to do something that requires basic math gives you a reason to learn basic math, which makes learning that basic math easy. (Me, I learned trigonometry because it was helpful to draw cool patterns on a computer) I think you're suffering from status-quo bias. Read the link I gave you above. One of the biggest secret weapons of homeschoolers and unschoolers is age-mixing. Standard schools artificially segregate kids by age and force them to learn in a specific order. This guarantees that no kid in the room knows much more than the other kids. In the real world, on just about any subject at all you can find people who know a little more than you and learn from them or find people who know a bit less and teach them. Kids teach EACH OTHER how to do cool stuff like use a computer or mod a video game. The hardest and most important thing to figure out in life is "what do I want to learn and how can I learn it?" When schools decide on a specific curriculum and spoon-feed it to kids, they destroy the intrinsic motivation to solve that question for yourself; you can just passively accept what is being force-fed to you by your teachers. But then when school is finished, what do you do THEN? Over a dozen years or more you haven't PRACTICED setting your own goals or figuring out how to fulfill them! Mightn't it be better to do that starting much earlier in life?

jiggy2011 12y ago
In order to read you need to be exposed to books and also somebody to read with you until you can do it on your own. Since there is no instinctual human drive to seek out books you need to be guided in that direction and encouraged to push through the pain barrier because it's quite boring to start with. This is basically what the job of a teacher is. It may well be true that kids with educated parents can do well in a loosely structured environment with freedom to explore, but these kids tend to outperform whatever the education structure. Kids who grow up in deprived areas without educated role models risk being "educated" by criminal gangs.
- glenra 12y ago
  > In order to read you need to be exposed to books and also somebody to read with you until you can do it on your own. That's what parents do. You don't need teachers for that. You found reading "boring to start with"? That seems sad. Me, I wanted to read almost every minute of every day - I was always in the middle of multiple books, read while walking, read books held secretly under the desk during boring class lectures, even occasionally read while riding my bike. I imagine today kids learn texting and tweeting (or whatever the next thing is) with similar vigor, even if long-form work is starting to lose out a bit to it. Do you really imagine that kids won't be able to read if not for elementary school? We live in a world that is saturated with the written word. It is an inescapable fact of our environment that we are surrounded by text and use text to communicate; it seems crazy to imagine that kids of average or better intelligence would fail to find some incentive to learn to read something. I mean, sure, a priori it seems conceivable that could happen, but it doesn't seem particularly likely and as far as I know that hasn't been the experience of anybody who has pursued unschooling.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    I think you're making my point for me. Kids of above average intelligence with the right parents can do well with unschooling, but then they also do well with regular schooling. A kids educational outcome would become linked to that of their parents and other adults in their environment, even more so than is currently the case. In fact it's worse than that , because as soon as one generation messes up because for example a parent develops a mental health issue there is no mechanism for fixing the next generation.

ThomPete 12y ago

You can't compare the schools you went to with the Sudbury system. The skipping class happens exactly because you are trapped, because there is something you rather will. But why skip class if you can do what you want?

jiggy2011 12y ago
Sure, if they were allowed to swear and fight in class they might not have skipped so much but what would that achieve besides disrupting the kids who actually wanted to learn?
- ThomPete 12y ago
  It's easy to make a point when you make up your own premises. I never swore or fought in high in class but i did skip class.