HANGING OUT IN THE HALL
Salon has a really good article up on unschooling. A taste:
Their days at home were loose and unstructured, filled with hours reading on the living room futon or playing homemade quiz games about Greek mythology and geography, calling off nations from a map. While occasionally Francoise nudged them in a certain direction, by suggesting a book or an activity they might enjoy, in the end she felt it was important that Celine and Julian call the shots. Since entering adolescence, both have been entirely in charge of their own schedules, attending tai chi classes twice a week and volunteering part-time as antiwar activists. Julian, a devoted member of the New York Assembly of the Society for Young Magicians, performs regularly around the city for other home-schooling groups. Still, both admit that some weeks pass in a blur, without anything to show for the hours. “There are times that I’ll spend a bunch of days hanging around the house, bored,” says Celine. “Then I start to feel guilty.”
Interestingly, the only critic quoted is another home educator:
After talking to a dozen unschooling families and studying their blogs and message boards, I’ve found countless similar tales of sucess. But outside that small circle, even among liberal home-schoolers, unschooling still provokes uneasiness. Gail Paquette, a home-schooling mother of two and the founder of the Web site Hometaught.com, is one of unschooling’s most vocal critics. “A child-led approach may develop the child’s strengths but does nothing to develop his weaknesses and broaden his horizons,” she writes. “I [mostly] disagree with the premise that children can teach themselves what they want to learn, when (and if) they want to learn it. Certainly children do learn some things on their own, but their often roundabout way of going at learning is not necessarily the best way.”
We’re not unschoolers, but I don’t diss them. I just don’t have that kind of strong faith. Seems to be a pattern.
4 Responses to “HANGING OUT IN THE HALL”
 Comment by Joanne the Happy HSer October 4th, 2005 at 9:46 am |
“I [mostly] disagree with the premise that children can teach themselves what they want to learn, when (and if) they want to learn it. Certainly children do learn some things on their own, but their often roundabout way of going at learning is not necessarily the best way.” We are not unschoolers, either. Clearly Gail doesn’t quite “get” it, though. Unschoolers don’t teach *themselves*. They do determine what the are ready to and interested in learning. Unschooling is not unparenting. |
 Comment by speedwell October 4th, 2005 at 12:12 pm |
It strikes me that “unschooling” is precisely what adults do when they have the (comparatively rare) leisure, resources, and motivation to learn something on their own. How much easier it must be for kids, whose parents give them the leisure and resources, and productively direct their motivation, to learn the same way. |
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Comment by Daryl October 4th, 2005 at 12:37 pm |
Yeah– I’m just starting to try to teach myself ASL. Why? ‘Cause I want to. I don’t know a single deaf person, but the language is fascinating and beautiful. Maybe it’ll come in handy one day. Of course, I’m going to try to encourage my kids to come along for the ride. Who knows– it might even help them get into college (Colleges accept ASL as meeting the foreign language requirement.) |
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Comment by Lillian October 4th, 2005 at 3:09 pm |
We are unschoolers — it just seems fair to give the kids the same freedom to explore the world that we have. When he was younger, unschooling for Alex (who’s 13) took the form of reading most of every day, then later he added computer and video games to the mix. This year he’s decided to start preparing for college, so he’s taking two online classes and three co-op classes. Unschooling for Ben (who’s 8) seems to include Singapore Math and structured time on Latin, handwriting, science, and a variety of other things — the crucial point being that he requested all of this. Unschooling is a word used by different people to mean different things, and some of those people can be quite dogmatic. For us it means listening to the kids and trying to provide what they need, offering suggestions (sometimes quite strongly!) along the way. |