A.G. dropped this fantastic unschooling article into comments. I’m bringing it forward because this is fabulous, fun, and encouraging. Well-written, too.
The fact that it’s running in Outside magazine is even better. Non-political ‘zine; lots of open-minded readers who might get wild new ideas.
The article is excerpted from the upcoming Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World by Ben Hewitt, father of two untrammeled boys. The book looks like an absolute must-read for freedomista parents — and heck, even freedomista non-parents.
Outstanding!!! Those kids are developing something conventional public schools do not teach….these kids are developing independant thinking…not some crap about fitting some kind of mold.
Great article.
The comments are interesting, showing how worldviews shape the wildly different reactions to this article. For some people, the only way to “make it” in this world is to stick to a narrow, carefully controlled and institutionalized path.
I remember one camping/get-together I attended (a Free State Wyoming Jamboree) where I had brought my son (who is unschooled). We were discussing that subject and one woman, who was quite angry with me, asked how my boy could ever become a lawyer or a doctor (she was a doctor). I asked her, “Why in the world would I want my son to be a lawyer or a doctor?” That did not go over very well. 🙂
I spent my working life as a computer technician, then a diagnostic software engineer, then a customer service engineer (including a year in Paris), then a hardware designer (including running my own business doing custom work), then a systems engineer. Virtually all of it was learned on the job – I took no more than a single class in college on the subject, a class in Fortran! Learning a trade, even a very complex one, is accomplished by actually doing it, not by studying in some ivory tower (although some trades are stifled by professional licensing boards and other “helpful” state institutions). Those who can’t do, teach.
I agree with Paul-you learn, for the most part, by doing. At my last job, I did a lot of that (hospital maintenance guy ). Sometimes, you just have to “look at the flow”-whether the flow is water, steam, or electrons-and figure it out as you go along. I’m not saying I didn’t make mistakes, but I at least didn’t make the same one twice( or at least not too often). A great many of the things I worked on had no manual (those had been lost years before). Nothing wrong with doing a little research, though.
Two jobs ago, I worked for a small college. Most of the professors were really decent folks, but there were a few that existed in their own little private Idaho….including one who couldn’t screw in a lightbulb-that’s not a joke….he though he was above such things.
Definitely encouraging to see this in Outside. May the very idea infest itself into hordes of the unaware, and fill the hearts of the pernicious piddlewit set with fear.
One of the many reasons we like life in Alaska so much is the state’s conspicuous friendliness* to several “backwards” ideas like midwifery and homeschooling. In reality, I suspect this may be as much an accident of history as anything; there are still very real logistical challenges up here, and it seems very likely that much of this official friendliness is based on the reality that if the state wants to “educate” anyone at all, they must be flexible about it. (It’s either that, or they look impotent at “reaching” the people to whose lives they have laid claim, right? I’ve no doubts that once the logistical challenges are “solved”, the noose of control will tighten here as it has elsewhere.) Well, accident of history or not, we do enjoy our alternate options without the quantity of authoritarian social stigma I remember from the other parts of the country I’ve lived in before.
And this is very much real for me at this time; we are starting our 5yo daughter in “kindergarten” on a homeschool/unschool path, and are very excited about it. Actually we’ve been working with her for quite some time already–she was clearly ready for something–and now we have our plan for how we’re going to coexist with the state over the whole matter. The way we’re going, we should be able to rather seamlessly slip in and out of “the system” as it benefits us, giving her visibility to both sides of the coin, which I can’t help but think will at least be useful. (It’s supposed to be education, after all.)
I like the article’s observation about “taking the long view” of the everyday-life version of “on-the-job-education”; that is just exactly what is really resonating with us about the unschooling idea. (Our 5yo, at least at this time, has a distinct need both for structure and unstructure, and the idea of unschooling as much as possible, with the option to provide structure where necessary, is very appealing.) And the more we both look into it, the more little things that my wife and I find that we simply never considered to be “school moments” in everyday life. One of the most insidious things that the Prussian model does to your mind is to separate the idea of learning from everyday life. In looking back at it now–and this is completely aside from the political purpose of the Prussian model–I would say that the single biggest defect of the education I got was just exactly that it was not integrated, but separated, from the world around me.
I strongly suspect that all parents who take an active interest in their kids’ education, find at least something to fixate upon that they wish to be an improvement over their own. I am finding that it is probably this “integration” idea which is mine. (Now, for the tricky part: not to let this become an obstacle, from my own desire. 🙂
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* Not to make any apologies for the state. To paraphrase a great idea I first heard articulated by Kent McManigal, my cooperation with the state is no evidence of assent or support, but rather of a simple desire not to be murdered by idiots with control issues.