Call me crazy, but letting kids school themselves sounds like a bad idea.
This is an offshoot of the hoomeschooling movement which is gaining support. There are differing views on it, but it's essentially a detox of the public school experience before going on to homeschooling, rather than making the transition immediately and abruptly.
It seems to be most beneficial to children who have been subjected to extensive bullying and/or unfair teachers.
My poor son. He didn't get any time off. I figured since he had been on vacation for 5 years that it was time to hit the books.
Deschooling, or unschooling, as it used to be called, has always seemed impractical to me. (I homeschooled for 8 years.)
If you happen to live in a state where you know your child will need to be tested each year to show they are at "grade level," I don't know how you could just sit back and let the child "choose" their own course.
In certain subjects, history, reading, and science, I did follow my son's lead on what we taught each year. But on math, grammar, and writing, it's just like many things in life, a discipline that must be learned, whether you want to or not.
What a bunch of crapola this is. No wonder why kids are so screwed up today.
We are all still working on jumping up and on eating pillows.
http://www.homeschoolutah.org/pages/pastandpresent.htm
Many U.S. Presidents were home schooled,
among them:
George Washington, 1st President, 16th
taught by his mother, father, and brother
John Quincy Adams, 2nd President
accompanied his father to France at 11
Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, mother of John Quincy
was taught by her clergyman father and in visits to her cultured grandparents
who had an extensive library
James Madison, 4th
taught by his grandmother until age 12
Zachary Taylor, 12th
taught at home by a tutor
Millard Fillmore, 13th
attended school for short periods; studied the Bible and a hymn
book at home (those were the basic texts of that time)
James Buchanan, 15th
learned arithmetic and bookkeeping in his father’s store
Abraham Lincoln, 16th
taught by his stepmother
Andrew Johnson, 17th
apprenticed to a tailor, learned to read at 18
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th
taught by private tutor, at 19 was sent on the Grand Tour where
he learned a few languages
Woodrow Wilson, 28th
taught at home by his father in a home full of books, in the company of cultivated minds,
until he entered college; didn’t learn to read until age 11
"What need was there to read when I could spend hours
listening to others read aloud?"
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd
taught at home by a governess
Other Founding Fathers
Benjamin Franklin
six months of schooling at age 8; worked in father’s candle shop
at 10, father taught him to love good books, at 16 his first
essay was published
Alexander Hamilton, statesman, politician
taught by his mother and a clergyman, worked in a general store
from 12 – 16, then entered college
Patrick Henry, Revolutionary leader
informally taught reading, arithmetic, Latin, Greek ancient history
by his father
"Give me Liberty or give me Death."
George Mason, Revolutionary statesman
taught by his mother, occasionally tutored, studied law from an uncle who had
a library of 15000 volumes
Other Famous Non-Schoolers
Ansel Adams, photographer
". . . had difficulty adjusting to traditional schools. His father decided to teach him at home, and the next
years were extremely fruitful. Learning experiences were always tapped into the young boy's intrinsic
interests and ranged from playing the piano to visiting an exposition.
Years later, after he had become internationally known for his creative photography, Adams paid tribute to
the courage of a father who was willing to take risks, to listen to that "different drummer" unique to each
child. In his autobiography, Adams wrote:
'I am certain he established the positive direction of my life that otherwise, given my native hyperactivity,
could have been confused and catastrophic. I trace who I am and the direction of my development to
those years of growing up in our house on the dunes, propelled especially by an internal spark tenderly
kept alive and glowing by my father.'"
- Reader's Digest
Louisa May Alcott, author Little Women
educated by her father
Susan B. Anthony, women’s rights leader
home schooled by her father
Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of telephone
no interest in formal studies; taught by his talented mother
William Jennings Bryan, orator, statesman
until age 10, taught my his mother who stood him on a small
table to recite his lessons
Pearl Buck, author, Nobel & Pulitzer prizes
taught by her mother until she started formal school at 17
William F. Buckley, political columnists
taught at home by parents and tutors, father taught him politics
at the dinner table
Andrew Carnegie, steel manufacturer
Refused to go to school at age five so his parents kept him home. An uncle read
to him out loud. After three years he went to school, but quit a 13, later to
become one of the world’s richest men.
Charles Dickens, author, A Christmas Carol
couldn’t afford school; "passions for reading were awakened by his mother" who
also taught him English and later, Latin
Thomas Edison, inventor of light bulb, phonograph
When the teacher called him "addled," Edison’s mother told him that her son had "more sense in his little
finger than you have in your entire body." She took him out of school and taught him herself, making learning
fun for him. She bought him books of experiments; then he went off on his own. Later, he hired a staff of
educated scientists to work on the electric bulb, finally firing them all and figuring it out himself.
Robert Frost, poet, Pulitzer prize winner
disliked school so much he became physically ill; what schoolwork
he did was done at home until he passed the entrance exams
and entered high school.
General Douglas MacArthur, WWII and Korean War
taught by his mother until 13, then tutored; entered West Point with highest entrance
exams ever reported
Margaret Mead, Anthropologist
"Some years we went to school. Other years we stayed at home and Grandma taught us."
"On some days she gave me a set of plants to analyze; on others, she gave me a description and sent
me out to the woods and meadows to collect examples, say, of the 'mint family.' , , , She taught me
to read for the sense of what I read and to enjoy learning."
"Grandma . . . . seldom took more than an hour a day and left me . . . much time on my hands while
other children were in school.
One of Margaret's oldest friends told her in later years, "In my house I was a child. In your house
I was a person."
- Larry M. Arnoldsen, "On Human Learning," UHEA Newsletter, April 1991
Laura Ingalls Wilder, author, Little House on the Prairie
Brigham Young, Mormon colonizer, founder of 200 towns and villages
11 days of formal education
In my years of teaching and time with my own 2 kids, I've encountered about 20 or so homeschooled children (either in school, church or sport teams) About 1/2 seemed to be receiving excellent educations. The remainder ranged from grade level to big Springer fans.
The reports I've heard from FR are those of parents who are very involved with their kids and providing top-notch educations either at home, at a private or public school. Wish there were more of them out there. All kids would be better off with involved parents.
Cue the chorus of they are still better off than the public school kids........
I'm a big suporter of home schooling... but this deschooling drivel is a riducous excuse to goof off if you ask me, and sounds like some liberal way of home schooling.
Kids today aren't pressured, what a joke, try being a kid in Africa and then tell me about pressure.
We homeschooled 5th through 12th grade and our son is now away at college. We were not unschoolers but we weren't school-a-homer people either. I chose my own curriculum and most of my time was spent directing my son's choice of books and discussing their content with him.
I can understand the need to de-tox from school, I think we did that the foirst year, all we formally studied was English, Nath, History and Science. History was mostly biographies and science was lots of hand's on activities. We did lots of field trips!
Kalee
PS. Our son applied to 4 colleges/universities and was accepted by all of them. He received scholarship offers from 2.
ping
I wasn't home-schooled, but I was largely self-schooled.
I was an autodidact even before I ever started formal schooling, a learning preference that stayed with me and served me well through and beyond graduate school. I read encyclopedias, fine literature, science and history books, anything I could get my hands on. I was usually way ahead of the other students in my public school. I hated to diagram sentences, which seemed to be the preferred method of English instruction at that time. But my reading comprehension was first-rate, and I tended to write well because I generally read well.
Math was about the only area of study in which I had to rely on teachers and I wasn't particularly well taught. It seemed to me that my friends and acquaintances who did well in math all had at least one parent who was willing and able to tutor them in math. Because of my weakness in math I have not been much involved in that aspect of my children's educations.
Now, my youngest son is the best math student in his middle school. Why? Because we live near one of my nephews, a college student minoring in math, who is willing to tutor my son outside the formal structure of the public school. The middle school math teacher does her best, but babysitting the disruptive problem children takes up valuable time she might otherwise be using to teach math to the children who want to learn.
This seems to be an issue that would need to be decided on its merits by each parent or set of parents; just as the decision to homeschool or not would need to be decided by parents.
Great article.
I was subjected to government schools for a good portion of my life, and never learned a thing.
I self-taught, since I learned to read, at age 3. The only thing I really learned in school is that if you are smarter than both the students and the teacher, you will be ostracized.
I built my first transistor radio at six. Read the entire World Book Encyclopedia by twelve.
Government schools did absolutely nothing for me.
They require deprogramming for bright kids.
"It is my understanding that unschooling is when the child is allowed to direct himself. There is no curriculum, no set subjects, nothing really structured. The child learns on his own, as he wants to, about what he wants to learn. Deschooling seems to be the term used to describe what it takes to get your child back after he has been institutionalized."
Right. Yeah. PS2 rocks.
Ping
I have not read all the replies, so please forgive me if I am duplicating what others have said.
De-schooling and un-schooling are two different things.
When parents bring their children home from public school to teach them, they may need a period of time to de-school. During this time both parent and child need to adjust. That is not usually child directed learning. It is both parent and child taking a breather from intense education in preparation for more strenuous study at a later time. The parent still directs the child, but the subjects covered can be as casual as reading, book discussion, household chores, and rule setting.
What you do to de-school is as individual as the child you are de-schooling. If the child has had difficulty following the parent's rules, some time should be taken to instill the discipline necessary to homeschool. It is just as important for the parent to know how to develop discipline in the child as it is for the child to know how to obey.
Un-schooling is the usually thought of as child-directed learning. The extent of the child's control is determined by the parent. Some children are very capable of doing this. It is not good for everyone. I found that given his own choice, my son would play videogames and watch TV all day. The idea of furthering his academic knowledge could not be further from his mind, so we have never un-schooled.
However, I would have loved un-schooling as a child. Even though I went to public school, I spent hours in the library learning about things I wanted to study. My self-education was only limited by the hours I spent bored at school. A child like me would do very well with un-schooling -- given some parental guidance.
Each situation is different. The biggest advantage of homeschooling is the ability to adjust and adapt to the needs of the child. If as the title says, "Some in Homeschooling Movement Support 'De-Schooling,'" there may be some who have been able to de-school or even un-school successfully. But no one should think this is what all homeschooling families do.