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School not being a "bad thing" does not make unschooling a "bad thing," though.
They each have the POTENTIAL to be a "bad thing." We've all heard of school-related horror stories. And there is some unschooling family out there whom everyone seems to know, whose children never learned to read, don't ever leave the house, and are unable to make eye contact with strangers.
They also each have the potential to be a "good thing." There are great schools out there, and awesome teachers. I see unschoolers thriving around me (not just my own).
There is also no "window" for learning algebra. I actually liked algebra, and my son thinks a lot like I do, so my guess is that he will like it as well. My daughter, perhaps not. If she decides to go to college, she'll need to learn it. If she learns it at 16 or 18 or 39 instead of 14, that's fine. If she decides to open her own art studio and does not need to learn algebra, that's fine too. In my profession as a freelance writer, I actually don't use algebra on a daily basis. If I'd never learned the quadratic formula (which I still remember, because my algebra teacher put it to rap!), I'd be okay. If I needed it one day and did not have an uber-cool algebra teacher who sang formulas to us, I could easily look it up.
Just yesterday, my ten-year-old was asking about whether he shot his BB gun at a steep upward angle, would the BB go further than if he had shot it parallel to the ground. We talked a little about gravity, acceleration, Newton's law of motion. We were in the car at the time, and I actually advised him to call my brother, who is an engineer, and who is great at explaining these sorts of tings. We were busy yesterday, though, and he forgot. This is a great reminder for me to remind him today to call him for the info! Voila, physics at the age of 10.
That is absurd. Do you know anyone who is only interested in wooden spoons? My kids never stop asking a million and one questions about hundreds of topics. I'm assuming your kids did the same, even before they went to school? It's the same thing, only on a much larger scale.
As I said, I used to think it was weird and uncomfortable, too. I know a lot of unschoolers, and their kids are delightful and smart and know a lot about a lot of things. When you're not forced to memorize things for the sake of a grade, you are free to pursue your interests. I don't know anyone who is only interested in one inanimate object, child or adult.
This is all well and good - but when you're 35, and in casual conversation with a group of people who -did- attend school, and one of them snickers and comes out with the silly poem "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and you ask "Columbus who?"
It's just embarrassing.
I -never- would have had even the remotest, slightest interest in world history growing up. In fact, I never -did- have the remotest, slightest interest in it. So it's a good thing that they shoved it down my throat. Because at least now, if someone mentions Columbus and 1492, I have some general idea what they're talking about. I can even toss in "Queen Isabella of Spain!" with confidence, and be lauded for the clever girl I am.
All because - world history was shovelled down my throat, against my better judgement, while I was in the midst of preferring to eat rock candy and play with mud.
School not being a "bad thing" does not make unschooling a "bad thing," though.
They each have the POTENTIAL to be a "bad thing." We've all heard of school-related horror stories. And there is some unschooling family out there whom everyone seems to know, whose children never learned to read, don't ever leave the house, and are unable to make eye contact with strangers.
They also each have the potential to be a "good thing." There are great schools out there, and awesome teachers. I see unschoolers thriving around me (not just my own).
There is also no "window" for learning algebra. I actually liked algebra, and my son thinks a lot like I do, so my guess is that he will like it as well. My daughter, perhaps not. If she decides to go to college, she'll need to learn it. If she learns it at 16 or 18 or 39 instead of 14, that's fine. If she decides to open her own art studio and does not need to learn algebra, that's fine too. In my profession as a freelance writer, I actually don't use algebra on a daily basis. If I'd never learned the quadratic formula (which I still remember, because my algebra teacher put it to rap!), I'd be okay. If I needed it one day and did not have an uber-cool algebra teacher who sang formulas to us, I could easily look it up.
Just yesterday, my ten-year-old was asking about whether he shot his BB gun at a steep upward angle, would the BB go further than if he had shot it parallel to the ground. We talked a little about gravity, acceleration, Newton's law of motion. We were in the car at the time, and I actually advised him to call my brother, who is an engineer, and who is great at explaining these sorts of tings. We were busy yesterday, though, and he forgot. This is a great reminder for me to remind him today to call him for the info! Voila, physics at the age of 10. :D
Yep, it's just one step from there to rocket science, no doubt. Professional athletes, some of whom don't seem bright enough to write their own names, can gauge a fly ball's trajectory well enough to catch it. That's not physics.
I really try to subscribe to the "live and let live" lifestyle, figuring it is none of my business how others conduct their lives. However, I do not get the "unschooling" lifestyle, how is allowing your child to learn at their own pace, only what they want to learn going to prepare them for their lives as adults? I am not attempting to degrade anyone's choices, just simply do not understand the concept.
For the parents who do "unschooling" why did you decide to do it? Were you unschooled?
Goodness, I could never remember exactly what they were reading, it was a long time ago, but it was not just sounding out and learning in first grade. That was pre-school and kindergarten.
You know depending on when you are talking about, I doubt that they learned to sound out words in preschool or K very much. It is only in the last 10 or so years that the curriculum has been pushed down from 1st grade to K.
Now, I learned to read on my own before I went to school and some children do that, but it was NOT taught in K in the 50s when I went to school nor in the early to mid 70s when my kids were in kindergarten.
Kindergarten was only 1/2 days when I went to school and it was 1/2 days but with an option for full days when my kids went.
Forget cookies and milk, nap time and finger painting. Kindergarten has gotten serious in the past 20 years — and even more so in the past 10. Due to forces ranging from rising parental expectations to the No Child Left Behind Act, many children now attend full-day programs complete with homework and standardized testing.
"Basically, kindergartens have become first grades," said Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor of education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.
The growing expectations are controversial, with some experts saying the new kindergarten squeezes out forms of spontaneous play (building with blocks, for instance, or playing make-believe) that are vital to a child's long-term academic success.
Edward Miller, a senior researcher at the nonprofit Alliance for Childhood, points to a pivotal — and seemingly counterintuitive — German study that found that kids who had attended play-based kindergartens actually did better in reading and math at age 10 than kids who had attended academic kindergartens.
Yep, it's just one step from there to rocket science, no doubt. Professional athletes, some of whom don't seem bright enough to write their own names, can gauge a fly ball's trajectory well enough to catch it. That's not physics.
Yeppers, it actually is. Maybe not catching a ball, but what we talked about was most definitely physics. On a 4th-grade level. Which, if he were in school, is right where he'd be.
Someone else mentioned world history... I also was not interested in world history when I was a kid. Ugh, I thought history was sooo boring! Of course, it was! History, to me as a child, consisted of nuggets of information in a textbook, followed by questions that I had to write down the answers to. And I couldn't just write the answer... I had to copy the question down on lined paper, using proper penmanship, then answer the question in a complete sentence. So, in third grade, I would need to write, "Q: When did Christopher Columbus sail to the New World? A: Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492." Not the way I would choose to learn things as a child, and definitely not the way I learn now, nor expect my children to learn. On Columbus Day a few years ago, I said that little ditty about the ocean blue, and lo and behold, the kids imitated me. I briefly explained the holiday to them. Now I can rest assured that if, at the age of 25, they are involved in a philosophical debate about Columbus's voyage, they can not only parrot the rhyme, but can also delve into the issue of taking land from the Native Americans, etc. (We're currently discussing this topic in more detail, because we're reading through the Little House on the Prairie series... I love their questions about whether it was right for the white men to keep pushing the Indians out of their land.)
Answering questions, helping them find their own answers... that, along with strewing things in their path that they would enjoy, is unschooling. I have not had a problem with the kids NOT wanting to learn something that I considered important. They're lively and curious and just haven't had that issue. Granted, I don't think it's necessary to cover "topics" in any particular order, either, so when my then-5-year-old was fascinated with medieval castles, that's waht we studied and talked about and read about (down to visiting some in Germany a couple of years later), even though it would not be in the kindergarten curriculum. We did not, however, do an in depth study on "People in Our Neighborhood" that year, like the local kindergarteners were doing. He still knows what firemen and nurses do, though.
For what it's worth, modern history lessons often aren't taught the "old" way (i.e. drilling and fact cramming). My only point there is that it's not very useful to frame what unschooling in contrast to "regular" schools. Not that you're doing that in this case, as you're comparing it to your own personal educational experience -- I just wanted to throw that out there.
For what it's worth, modern history lessons often aren't taught the "old" way (i.e. drilling and fact cramming). My only point there is that it's not very useful to frame what unschooling in contrast to "regular" schools. Not that you're doing that in this case, as you're comparing it to your own personal educational experience -- I just wanted to throw that out there.
I have definately seen schools evolve in how they teach from when I was in school years ago, to even with my 2 oldest were in school, compared to how my younger boys are learning now.
For what it's worth, modern history lessons often aren't taught the "old" way (i.e. drilling and fact cramming). My only point there is that it's not very useful to frame what unschooling in contrast to "regular" schools. Not that you're doing that in this case, as you're comparing it to your own personal educational experience -- I just wanted to throw that out there.
That's good to know. And yes, I was comparing to the way things were taught 25ish years ago, not necessarily to how they are taught now.
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If I needed it one day and did not have an uber-cool algebra teacher who sang formulas to us, I could easily look it up. 
My kids never stop asking a million and one questions about hundreds of topics. I'm assuming your kids did the same, even before they went to school? It's the same thing, only on a much larger scale.
