April 26, 2010
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Down With School!
Voting is still up. Please help me want to stay with Xanga!
And no, I don't mean down with MY school. I love my job, remember? Yessirree Bob, I do.
Anyway, ABC News has come under fire lately for being extremely biased against a poor set of parents who have decided to pull their students out of school. Their kids are at home, and apparently ABC has made them look like bad and neglectful parents who are teaching their children to be vagrants, although they did not use that exact word.
These parents keep their children home from school, but they are not homeschooling. In fact, the term that these parents have chosen to describe themselves is "radical un-schoolers."
To put it as fairly as possible, this means that the children as not "schooled" in any typical manner whatsoever. Although I suspect that this does not eliminate any sort of education whatsoever, what it does mean is that there are no textbooks, no schedules, no rules, and no discipline. Serious. This is how the parent describes it: "There is no hierarchy in our house, so there is no punishment, no judgment, no discipline. They get what they want for breakfast and eat whatever they want. It's all a matter of what feels right to them." The books are available (or not; they don't specify), but if the kid would rather watch TV and eat donuts all day, there is no consequence other than the natural one.
I've kept silent about this for a long time because I wanted to mull this over. At first, I was upset. The parents are doing their children a disservice. Ultimately, when the kid wakes up in his/her own vomit in the basement of his/her parents' house, hung over and jobless, they will realize they had been robbed...
Apparently, this is legal in Massachusetts. (The unschooling part. Throwing up in your parents' basement is ok in many places, with some assumptions in place. Like the understanding that they know you're there and you're not robbing the place.)
I'm still a little upset about this, but apparently there are situations in which it works. I read of one un-schooler who decided to enroll back into High School after being unschooled for a while. Apparently, (according to the parent) long division and such can be learned in two weeks (versus months in grade school.) Sure, the kid flunked out, but he's in college now (somehow) and is doing great (so far... not to be pessimistic, but the future hasn't quite started yet, 'na mean?).
I've thought about this some, and the basic questions I've parsed it down to is this:
(a) (General) Who's in charge of education? Are we really intrinsic learners who can navigate to what we want to learn, or are we meant to be dependent on a system (which, interestingly, is broken) to guide us? (Me-based versus standards-based?)
(b) (Practical) Does this work for ALL children? What about future doctors? Lawyers? Other profession-that-needs-a-whole-lot-of-schooling-and-competition-ers? What about kids with ADD/ADHD? Learning Disabilities? ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder)?
(c) (This is in the theistic mindset) If we are left to do as we please, will we really desire good?
(d) Is school really a big bad institution? Should we line up like Pink Floyd's children and sing "We don't need no education"? (Don't ask me how I know about this.)I've realized that there is one thing that has kept me from becoming unhinged about this. This is the one thing I agree with these 'radical un-schoolers': the educational system is broken. It is! We introduce children to languages when they're in high school, EXACTLY at the point where the window of opportunity to learn them efficiently closes (it's at puberty.) We cram Algebra I, II, Geometry, PreCal, and etc into a bloated curriculum and adopt a sink-or-swim attitude to teaching. We teach literature without application, PE with bullying and embarrassment, and teach everyone to compartmentalize everything. (What? Why are we doing MATH in English Class?!)
But and if the world is truly a one built and run by God... we have to understand the true character of education. Life is not compartmentalized into neat groups. Life should be interesting. We should learn what we want. We can't continue to think that conformity to the routine will produce neat leggo-block perfection all the time.
Anyway, this is a pretty hurried post, but lend me your two cents and mebbe we can pool it together and get something yummy.
References:
The original ABC news Segment about unschooling
The followup ABC News segment
The example of the unschool Success cited above
Radical Unschooling Page
A less radical webpage about unschooling (FAQ page)
Comments (11)
I don't know if anarchy is the answer to a bad education. Is it purely protest or are the parents just the hippie do what feels good for you type? Sounds like both. But I can agree with you that our education system is broken. I wonder if there is a middle option where a parent could do a partial homeschooling and the kid also go to school? It seems like parents could supplement part of the missing education for their children.
this is such a great post. very interesting thoughts. i started my masters, last fall, in education and i am learning about all the hot-button debates that you hear about in the news. i used to be on one spectrum of the debate and find it interesting that age has brought me much closer to the other side. i'm not saying that i went completely to the other extreme; just that i understand the issues a little better. it is a complex issue.
learning abt the history of education in this country has been fascinating for me. the current system can be most directly traced back to the industrial revolution, when the philosophy of education changed from more of a moral emphasis, to one that stressed preparation into the workforce.
anyway, i think it is a horrible idea that parents, or anyone would consider this approach a valid method; even if you can find that odd exception like you noted above. the earliest philosophies of education, at least in this country, understood and celebrated the benefit of learning and broadening the mind. they placed value on character formation through guidance and moral teaching. though, throughout history, differing schools of thought would emerge or conflict, the underlying belief in education being valuable to the individual, has always been there.
i don't think i really touched on your specific questions, but you did invite my 200 cents.
i have some thoughts on those too (i'm sure everyone's excited abt that!).
As an educator, I think the part that is missing is the hands on application to real life. In the past, you learned math so that you could be sure you were getting fair compensation for what you made/grew/did. You learned your "letters" so that you could present yourself well to get the attention of someone who could help you with capital to succeed. You learned biology in order to further your herds. And on and on.....unfortunately, today we teach in a "hands off" vacuum. There is a disconnect between the "knowledge" and the "application".
As for the unschooling movement, I think it could work if you started with good raw materials-an intelligent, inquisitive, driven child. As an educator, I don't see too many of those anymore. We've become the "feed me" state, as in, just give me enough information to survive (ie pass the SAT, do well on state exams, get that A in the class). Don't "burden" me with anything else.
The internet makes education possible about subjects you might never have considered, but the student still needs led to those sites. Your analogy of the person in the basement might be a truer situation than you realize....
@brokenbindings2 - @thegirlxfiles - @vangelicmonk - thanks for your comments, guys. I agree with your sentiments. First, as an educator and an ex-student, let me apologize for my egregious oversight in not including references. As I got ready for bed, I remembered that I had forgotten to append them as I had intended. They're up now, so feel free to get to those original articles themselves.
vm:
they're mostly not hippies, or not outrightly so. You can watch the video on the ABC page posted.
girlx:
wow! you're an educator too. more in common for us. elementary or secondary? (I have my MA in secondary and in special ed.) The Industrial Revolution, Sputnik, all this competition and drivenness of America has gotten us in trouble, and hundreds of years later, we are paying for it. And we're not even number one in education! Sad.
bb2:
I wish we can do more hands-on, direct applications to real life. I experienced something so shocking yesterday that I will need to mull on before I post. I'll probably do that later today. I agree with the raw-materials part. If you don't have that, (LD/ADD/ODD/Autism child) it's hard to do. If you're a bad parent, it's hard to do. If you're poor, it's hard to do.
(This xanga comment box is driving me crazy! Sorry for the bold; I can't get it to stop! HTML knowledge helps just a little. :) )
@jensa07 - thanks for the links. they really provide additional context for the discussion. it reminds me of some other movements that had the same premise of working with a child's natural curiosity and interests to drive learning, which is why i also agree with @brokenbindings2 , that there could be some merit to this movement if done right.
i remember reading in class abt a current movement that incorporated these principles into their school. the curriculum and structure are nontraditional, for sure, but the positive results they were getting surprised me. in thinking about it, though, i have become more convinced that if an approach is working to develop a mindset that is more curious by nature and one that wants to learn, that maybe we should go back, and look at how we can do that with our current educational system.
re: your question on being an "educator", i hate to disappoint. i actually have a psychology background and am going into the field to be a professional school counselor. i am leaning towards either middle or high school.
Regarding your plug/Xanga idea, I have seen pages that don't have the top toolbar. I'm not sure how to do it, but I think you can change it with the Xanga Themes design, or customized layouts.
Just for the record, I love your teaching method. So huzzah to that. And if I ever have kids, wish there were more jensas around... but since that is a negative.. I may home school for my child's early learning and character imprinting years...
@AlterEgo909 - I know; they're using the old version of xanga, which allowed for that (which technically is not allowed by xanga--it's a code you can put in and they've officially thumbs-downed the idea. For people who adopted the new look, that kind of stuff is not possible anymore. :( thanks for the thought, though.
@thegirlxfiles - hey, that's just as cool. I have a (bio)psych background, was going to go into research, and somehow ended up in education instead. Never regretted it. Do you conduct testing (school psych) or more into the counselor side? (sounds like the latter.)
the movement you're talking about sounds more like student-centered or project-based learning. I've heard of that too, and it sound interesting. But versus the 'unschooling' method, this is school that is based on the students' needs. For example, they choose a project they want to work on, or have modules in the class they can choose from. Each project or module is an integration of subjects so the student naturally learns (and incorporates) as they go. These studies have had some success, but I would definitely not call it a raging breakthrough (it's not a breakthrough, nor is it a great success.) It's definitely not close to doing away with curricula altogether and letting them choose to do nothing if they wanted.
@sunnystarfish - thanks, erlenmyer. that is something I would definitely support. And I think you'd do great!
@jensa07 - yeah, it's on the counseling side. i would be interested in knowing more about the unschooled movement's effects on children raised in it. it's such an unusual concept that i have a hard time picturing what they go on to do once they're old enough to leave the nest.
Comments are closed.