Unschooling: An Encouraging Option

[Freeky]

Nigel, at about what age is a good time to begin unschooling, do you think?

I don't think it's ever too early, but most kids seem to get a lot out of kindergarten and many of them also enjoy first grade. At that age, the socialization is really good for them, so even if you plan to unschool all the way it would be good to find a playgroup.

By fourth grade, though, they're usually showing pretty intense signs of stress. So, preferably before fourth grade.

The problem for most parents is that they have to work, and can't actually be home to keep an eye on their kids and act as facilitators. For safety and psychological reasons, I wouldn't recommend leaving a kid under 12 home alone for longer than an hour or two (at most). 12 is also the age at which, for many children, school becomes an intolerable ordeal, and is also about the age at which schools are increasingly criminalizing children.

http://www.temple.edu/history/thompson/documents/Thompsondissent.pdf

Good to have knowledge of for thinking on. I'll check that link out when I'm on the computer, instead of my phone. Thanks!

[Golden Applesauce]

But, god forbid you be a poor, single parent of a middle schooler, especially a brown middle schooler. In many states, Wackenhut is "providing security" for schools, and the system is set up to earmark "failures", which include anyone who thinks for themselves. It's chilling. You can see it pretty systematically, and its especially evident in girls; they are doing pretty good, then they hit middle school and they start failing, HARD. Their self-esteem plummets. From a psychologist's perspective, school does significant, irrevocable damage. Many girls experience their first bouts of depression at this point, and never recover.

What's both interesting and horrible is  that I tend to hear the same thing over and over: "My child used to like school, but things started to go downhill in middle school. Now he's depressed and suicidal, and he hates school. I just want him to make it through to graduation, and then things will get better".

WHY are we willing to do this to our kids?

This is a thing? Fuck, I thought it was just me and my sister and chalked it up to a family history of depression and miscellaneous mental weirdness.

Mind you, we're white, comfortably middle class ["No, this isn't a huge house! Land is just cheaper in America, because we have more of it... than... China. Crap."] and our mother quit her job as a software engineer for NASA when I was born so she could parent full time.

I can't say that I did particularly well in 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade, but I crashed and burned when I hit 6th grade and John Sevier Middle School. More accurately, John Sevier Middle School tried to throw me under the proverbial school bus. My mom actually did pull me out halfway through 6th grade and homeschool me, and then, a year later, we moved two states over just so my sister wouldn't have to go to John Sevier and I could go to the same elite private high school that my dad graduated from.

We had the best pre-college education money can buy, plus extremely invested parents. And we're both still dealing with the psychological fallout of middle school. (in my sister's case, also the first half of high school, which was until she found her first good math teacher and the best guidance counselor in the world.)

I can't help but laugh whenever I see someone advancing the claim that the problem with schools these days are uninvolved parents. They're half right, in that involved parents + a good home environment are the most important things. But that would be true if schools didn't exist, and in least in my case, "involved parents" means "actively fighting against the school system for your children." Even then it only worked because my mom is a genius in her own right and they had resources that simply aren't available to single parent or two-income households.

[navkat]

What's both interesting and horrible is  that I tend to hear the same thing over and over: "My child used to like  school, but things started to go downhill in middle school. Now he's depressed and suicidal, and he hates school. I just want him to make it through to graduation, and then things will get better".

WHY are we willing to do this to our kids?

You just convinced me to get serious about finding someone to homeschool him before he turns 13.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

But, god forbid you be a poor, single parent of a middle schooler, especially a brown middle schooler. In many states, Wackenhut is "providing security" for schools, and the system is set up to earmark "failures", which include anyone who thinks for themselves. It's chilling. You can see it pretty systematically, and its especially evident in girls; they are doing pretty good, then they hit middle school and they start failing, HARD. Their self-esteem plummets. From a psychologist's perspective, school does significant, irrevocable damage. Many girls experience their first bouts of depression at this point, and never recover.

What's both interesting and horrible is  that I tend to hear the same thing over and over: "My child used to like school, but things started to go downhill in middle school. Now he's depressed and suicidal, and he hates school. I just want him to make it through to graduation, and then things will get better".

WHY are we willing to do this to our kids?

This is a thing? Fuck, I thought it was just me and my sister and chalked it up to a family history of depression and miscellaneous mental weirdness.

Mind you, we're white, comfortably middle class ["No, this isn't a huge house! Land is just cheaper in America, because we have more of it... than... China. Crap."] and our mother quit her job as a software engineer for NASA when I was born so she could parent full time.

I can't say that I did particularly well in 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade, but I crashed and burned when I hit 6th grade and John Sevier Middle School. More accurately, John Sevier Middle School tried to throw me under the proverbial school bus. My mom actually did pull me out halfway through 6th grade and homeschool me, and then, a year later, we moved two states over just so my sister wouldn't have to go to John Sevier and I could go to the same elite private high school that my dad graduated from.

We had the best pre-college education money can buy, plus extremely invested parents. And we're both still dealing with the psychological fallout of middle school. (in my sister's case, also the first half of high school, which was until she found her first good math teacher and the best guidance counselor in the world.)

I can't help but laugh whenever I see someone advancing the claim that the problem with schools these days are uninvolved parents. They're half right, in that involved parents + a good home environment are the most important things. But that would be true if schools didn't exist, and in least in my case, "involved parents" means "actively fighting against the school system for your children." Even then it only worked because my mom is a genius in her own right and they had resources that simply aren't available to single parent or two-income households.

It's totally a thing. It's a huge problem. Your experience is very typical, and your observation about the myth that it's all about having involved parents is very astute. Having involved parents helps ameliorate the damage somewhat, but it doesn't prevent it. Kids who have involved parents are simply less fucked overall than kids who don't.

Some schools are better than others, but the bottom line is that the problem is systemic.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What's both interesting and horrible is  that I tend to hear the same thing over and over: "My child used to like  school, but things started to go downhill in middle school. Now he's depressed and suicidal, and he hates school. I just want him to make it through to graduation, and then things will get better".

WHY are we willing to do this to our kids?

You just convinced me to get serious about finding someone to homeschool him before he turns 13.

Right on!

Seriously, though, look into unschooling.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Nigel, I'm curious to know what your opinion is of some of the new approaches in public education that are being tried out. The company where I work designs, produces, and markets digital course material and tools that are used to transform traditional classrooms into "blended learning" environments. The most successful approach to this, and the one we sell the hardest, is one that completely eliminates the traditional classroom model and replaces it with an environment where students guide their own learning, at their own pace, and allows them to spend as much or as little time as they need on any subject, in whatever order they want to. Teachers are freed to work one-on-one with students, and the time they have to spend grading assignments is cut by as much as 80%.

Of course this isn't unschooling, and because we're dealing with public school districts we still have to have an over-arching platform that ensures students meet standardized benchmarks and tests. But we do see all kinds of improvement when we take students out of the normal routine of classroom lectures and quizzes, and let them work at their own paces.

Do you think that there's hope for public education, if it's reimagined the way we're trying to do, or should the whole system be abandoned?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nigel, I'm curious to know what your opinion is of some of the new approaches in public education that are being tried out. The company where I work designs, produces, and markets digital course material and tools that are used to transform traditional classrooms into "blended learning" environments. The most successful approach to this, and the one we sell the hardest, is one that completely eliminates the traditional classroom model and replaces it with an environment where students guide their own learning, at their own pace, and allows them to spend as much or as little time as they need on any subject, in whatever order they want to. Teachers are freed to work one-on-one with students, and the time they have to spend grading assignments is cut by as much as 80%.

Of course this isn't unschooling, and because we're dealing with public school districts we still have to have an over-arching platform that ensures students meet standardized benchmarks and tests. But we do see all kinds of improvement when we take students out of the normal routine of classroom lectures and quizzes, and let them work at their own paces.

Do you think that there's hope for public education, if it's reimagined the way we're trying to do, or should the whole system be abandoned?

That model sounds really good, but what I would want to look at are the results. EFO is in a similar program and she likes it a lot better than the traditional model, but really what I would want to look at is satisfaction and completion rates down the road. I would also want to look at how a model like this handles "bad" students.

[Cainad (dec.)]

But, god forbid you be a poor, single parent of a middle schooler, especially a brown middle schooler. In many states, Wackenhut is "providing security" for schools, and the system is set up to earmark "failures", which include anyone who thinks for themselves. It's chilling. You can see it pretty systematically, and its especially evident in girls; they are doing pretty good, then they hit middle school and they start failing, HARD. Their self-esteem plummets. From a psychologist's perspective, school does significant, irrevocable damage. Many girls experience their first bouts of depression at this point, and never recover.

What's both interesting and horrible is  that I tend to hear the same thing over and over: "My child used to like school, but things started to go downhill in middle school. Now he's depressed and suicidal, and he hates school. I just want him to make it through to graduation, and then things will get better".

WHY are we willing to do this to our kids?

This is a thing? Fuck, I thought it was just me and my sister and chalked it up to a family history of depression and miscellaneous mental weirdness.

<snip>

It's totally a thing. It's a huge problem. Your experience is very typical, and your observation about the myth that it's all about having involved parents is very astute. Having involved parents helps ameliorate the damage somewhat, but it doesn't prevent it. Kids who have involved parents are simply less fucked overall than kids who don't.

Some schools are better than others, but the bottom line is that the problem is systemic.

Fucking hell. I had my first brush with clinical depression in the 4th grade, thanks to a teacher who had expectations of me that not only did I not live up to, but my 4th grader brain could not comprehend what it was she wanted from me (and I was a total teacher's pet). This same teacher criticized my mom (who was working full-time as a small town doctor, mind you) for taking the time to teach poor kids how to read, because apparently only school teachers should be allowed to do that.

I was homeschooled in both the 5th and 8th grades, when my parents decided the school at the time was just not going to cut it. I learned plenty during those years, but simply taking a break from the school environment probably helped me immensely.

There's definitely something fundamentally wrong with middle school, possibly more so than any other part of traditional schooling.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The problem is that it's a difficult job that very few people actually want to do because it doesn't pay for shit, it requires working in a bloated, bureaucratic, oppressive system, and it requires a Masters degree and ongoing annual education paid for out of pocket.

This does not create conditions that self-select for quality. Very few people think to themselves, "I want to teach middle-schoolers!" and an unfortunately large percentage of those who do have power and dominance issues, which is a recipe for disaster when you put them with a bunch of vulnerable adolescents.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is not an indictment of teachers. My dad has a Masters in early childhood education, and both of my ex-inlaws were high school teachers. Most of them are overworked, and while they get summers off (except for the mandatory continuing education they need to keep their teaching certificates) they work way more than enough hours the rest of the year to earn it. I also know a few absolutely superb middle and high-school teachers of my generation... interestingly, all of them teach electives, which means they don't have the same pressure and bureaucratic requirements as the ones who teach core classes.

The way the system itself is designed, it seems built to push really superb and talented people away from going into education, so who you end up with teaching the requirements are often the people who didn't have good enough grades or GRE scores to get into their first-choice Masters programs.

I am seeing this process in action right now in the cohort a year ahead of me. The ones who didn't have strong enough applications to get into any of the graduate programs in psychology or social work that they applied to are now talking about what else they can do. Some of them are taking post-bac classes, trying to bump up their GPA or get a better score on the GRE, but sure enough, some of them are saying phrases like "I could always be a teacher". They know they can get into those programs, because those are the programs that don't have enough applicants and can't afford to be very picky about who they accept.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Nigel, at about what age is a good time to begin unschooling, do you think?

I don't think it's ever too early, but most kids seem to get a lot out of kindergarten and many of them also enjoy first grade. At that age, the socialization is really good for them, so even if you plan to unschool all the way it would be good to find a playgroup.

By fourth grade, though, they're usually showing pretty intense signs of stress. So, preferably before fourth grade.

The problem for most parents is that they have to work, and can't actually be home to keep an eye on their kids and act as facilitators. For safety and psychological reasons, I wouldn't recommend leaving a kid under 12 home alone for longer than an hour or two (at most). 12 is also the age at which, for many children, school becomes an intolerable ordeal, and is also about the age at which schools are increasingly criminalizing children.

http://www.temple.edu/history/thompson/documents/Thompsondissent.pdf

Fact. And they tend to take it out on EACH OTHER. It gets compounded beyond belief.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Fact. And they tend to take it out on EACH OTHER. It gets compounded beyond belief.

Which is not even the worst possible outcome, given the possibilities:

1) They take it out on themselves. <-- the outcome that the the system likes the most, because it's hardest to see and can be willfully mistaken for "no problems at all." With any luck, kids will get out of it with minimal neuroses.

2) They take it out on others. <-- Less desirable, but can be ameliorated with platitudes like "Kids will be kids" and "Going through this crap is just part of growing up." Teaches children that their stress is best managed by shitting on others.

3) They take it out on parents/teachers/authority figures. <-- WELCOME TO THE BLACKLIST, BUCKO.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Welcome to getting pipelined to jail.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Welcome to getting pipelined to jail.

Pardon me, but 'round these parts that's spelled AMERICA.

Prisons are a business, and we need them to create jobs. Jesus and George Washington didn't bring down the Berlin Wall just so that we could let the prison industry wither away.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Welcome to getting pipelined to jail.

Pardon me, but 'round these parts that's spelled AMERICA.

Prisons are a business, and we need them to create jobs. Jesus and George Washington didn't bring down the Berlin Wall just so that we could let the prison industry wither away.