hmm. A couple of thoughtful questions to a thoughtful (I think) post.
(At first I wanted to ask, Gruss, is that you? But Gruss did not
suffer from random capital disease. If you are for real you don't
understand the comment, and thas' ok. I am not making fun of you. I am
also pretty sure Gruss did not know about unschooling.)
First of all, where did this take place? I am noticing the .ca, and
yeah, if we are talking about something like oh Thunder Bay or
Gatineau or Athabasca then yeah, there is a certain intellectual
poverty there, not specifically Canadian, but so much of Canada is
empty... I saw some of the same kind of stuff in New Mexico. I am
Canadian, by the way. But it can happen just as easily in big cities.
I remember a little kid in montreal -- I think he was about six -- who
had never heard of a giraffe, and another in San Antonio whose mother
did not allow him to go to the library with us.
That's really an aside. You do have some valid points.
Unschooling, yes, sometimes has the weakness of building up a child's
strengths but not always the weaknesses. Depends on how dogmatically
the theory is applied. You could well hit college needing remedial
work in something. The answer to that though is -- most students do
anyway. I know that there was a huge gap between the math they were
teaching in ottawa and the math they were teaching in Paris, and I did
not manage to backfill until about the third year of college. This
does *not* mean that I learned nothing in Paris.
And the child will not have had it pounded into them that they hate
math/spelling/whatever. If the kid is determined not to learn, or
simply is not ready to, in the way that some boys are not ready for
fine motor skills until their teens for example, he probably won't. If
the kid later discovers that the skill or knowledge in question is
needed for something they want to do, they can and will put in the
effort to learn it. And really, they usually do.
I have seen unschoolers claim that math is unnecessary ("my
husband/brother/father makes good money and *he* never learned
algebra..") or that spelling or handwriting is unnecessary ("*my* kid
will have a secretary for that stuff"...) and just like most other
dogma, I think this is koolaid.
On the other hand, Las Cruces public schools were all set to flunk
James over his handwriting back in the fourth grade, and that is
koolaid too. Fine motor skills do not equal brains, or knowledge, or
willingness to work.
Point of reference: Unschooling normally has nothing to do with
inability to find curriculum. To an unschooler, everything is
curriculum.
I do agree with the following aspects of your comments:
-- if homeschooling is used as a means of enforcing parental control,
this is a red flag
-- in rural places, the schoolteacher may be the only person around
who can model intellectual pursuits, well and the librarian if there
is one.
However, I think that my own experience rather eloquently shows the
other side: Paris. I got around to DiffEq when I needed to ;)
On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 8:12 AM, Luke Kilpatrick <l...@lukek.ca> wrote:
>
> This discussion has been interesting,
>
> I am very much on the Fence about home schooling, I can see the good points
> and the bad. I am not talking completely out of my ass here as My Wife was
> Homeschooled from K-12, she never stepped foot in a classroom until she was
> 23. I am not going to quote studies nor am I going to say Homeschooling
> sucks. I do however want to share my experience of some issues that had to be
> worked through so the people on the list can be aware and deal with some of
> the issues we have had.
>
> My Wife was homeschooled not for religious reasons, but for control reasons
> due to her Father not wanting to loose control of any aspect of his family.
> This fact has soured the relationship with both of his kids as well as his
> kids partners when they broke is control. This is not a slight against home
> schooling, just please to make everyone's life better, when your kids start
> to date, try to be accepting of different ideas and backgrounds.
>
> My Wifes Mother was a teacher, but left her work to help her husband in his
> business and to school the children full time, so the needed to be schooled
> by a certified teacher argument on this case is moot. However, I do believe
> that having someone that can see no wrong in their offspring does not always
> make the best educational choices. The cost of this has been very poor
> spelling and grammar skills as those subjects were found very difficult. Also
> not learning to read until 9 years old I think was a serious mistake which
> has resulted in 2 years extra college to bring skills up to the level. Please
> Please start your kids reading as early as possible, spelling and grammar
> count so much in this world and this is something not focused on enough in my
> Wife's experience. This is not unique to home schooling but, in this case
> with out any testing or solid curriculum it has cost my wife several years
> and several thousand dollars of upgrading.
>
> Make sure your kids know how to make friends, also make sure they know how to
> deal with people that do not like them. There is a difference of
> "socialization" and having to work with people you may not like to accomplish
> a goal. Having the kids involved in scouts, 4-H and more is unfortunately not
> enough in my experience, I am not sure how to solve it. Not trusting people
> is a serious issue that was instilled and has worked against both my Wife and
> her Brother.
>
> Encourage your children to go to college asap. My Wife's Parents did not
> encourage her to go, going as far as telling me that College was not right
> for her. She has managed to complete an Electrical Engineering Degree on the
> honor roll, unfortunately she was 27 when she completed this rather than 22
> or 23. Her not attending college was breaking her fathers control and opened
> her mind up to new ideas that were not presented to her.
>
> Live somewhere where your kids can get into town or see other people on their
> own power, this will let them meet people you may not approve of but can
> provide experiences that living on an isolated farm 10 miles out of a small
> village can not.
>
> A good thing of Home Schooling is that my wife and her brother are very close
> and are great friends, they didn't have anyone else for a good chunk of their
> lives. I came into the picture when her brother was 15, he now lives on the
> west coast in the large city closest to us. He is currently a Photography
> student at a great school and will Grad when he is 23. His Father does not
> approve and blames me for moving both of his children 3000 miles away, he is
> a very angry man. Please don't be him.
>
> Like both good schools and bad schools, there are good homeschooling parents
> and bad homeschooling parents. I think my wife had Ok homeschooling parents
> who were involved with many homeschooling organizations in their state.
> Unfortunately in any of the homeschooling events and conferences I attended
> with my wife (I attended 3, including her brother's graduation ceremony) the
> majority in the community were doing it for religious reasons. Her parents
> ended up leaving the local homeschooling group after it began requiring a
> statement of faith. I do think this was the right choice but it caused a big
> split with the parents of most of my wifes friends, therefore she lost the
> few friends she had due to parental stupidity.
>
> Due to the difficulty in finding good high school curriculum My wife spent
> most of her High School years UnSchooling. I don't think this served her well
> as it didn't provide testing, transcripts or the sense of completion when she
> was finished. Please don't make the first test that your kids take be the
> drivers exam when they are sixteen.
>
> I am still deeply divided on if we will home school or send our kids to
> school, but I just wanted to give a bit of my experience in dealing with it.
> When you home school your kids please keep in mind you will be responsible
> for both the good and the bad, and if the bad outweighs the good, you may
> loose your kids as adults.
>
> This is not home schooling's fault but the fault of a very angry controlling
> man who did not trust anyone else to help school his kids.
>
>
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