Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion To the homeschoolers about unschooling

Social studies is probably the worst example to bolster your argument as it is one of the most neglected and poorly taught subjects in most public schools. Many kids get none in elementary school at all. I naturally loved social science (graduate trained in the field) so I took everything offered at my school and had at most one semester worth of information about world history prior to the U.S. revolution and nothing at all about ancient history. The school offered one paltry civics course which was taught at a remedial level.

I've seen quite a few homeschool kids who are into social sciences and history. Sometimes it starts with a fascination about a particular period in history - knights, world war two, life in the Old West, and continues from there. Sometimes it starts with a deep concern for a particular social issue like concern for the environment. For many that pretty naturally extends into some degree of political involvement. If I've got any beef about homeschoolers and political involvement it would be that I'm not a fan of right wing politics and there are some homeschoolers very actively focused on producing politically active conservatives.

Keep in mind that any non-negligible number of kids who aren't well-rounded by nature means the scheme won't work well at all.
That's not at all what I'm assuming. I start from the belief that ALL humans are born with natural curiosity and the desire to learn about the world around them. This can be damaged- through stifling inappropriate education, parental neglect, massive amounts of media, etc. However, the innate desire to learn is there.

I don't assume most people are well rounded. I believe being well rounded is totally overrated. It is vitally important that during childhood kids get the foundational skills - critical thinking, strong reading skills, high school level math skills, the ability to ask questions and research answers. The rest I see as pretty negotiable. There will be kids who think of nothing but biology and kids who end up knowing little. With the skills I outlined in place the rest is always possible.

My only hesitation with unschooling is for the kids who don't get the strong foundational skills because they are starting adult life with a big deficit. I agree with other posters though this is more an issue of neglect than something specifically about the educational method.

My basic assumptions in this conversation are:

1) More options for education are better than fewer.

2a) What works/doesn't work for one kid is only indicative of what works/doesn't work for that kid.

2b) In the same vein, my kid isn't "most kids."

Anecdotal evidence about one kid and grand sweeping generalizations about how "everyone" is impress me to exactly the same degree: that is, not at all. If you want to dismiss anecdotes and *my* experiences, then you have to provide some justification for what sounds like foundationless bias.

But if you make grand sweeping generalizations about how "everyone" is, than one kid (or 3) does provide evidence that your generalization does not hold true across the board.

3) Opinion is not evidence.

4) Making grand pronouncements about how bad a given educational option is because there are a few bad apples in it is illogical and not persuasive. By that reasoning, traditional schools should be dumped because abusive teachers exist. It's as meaningless to apply to unschooling as it is to apply to traditional schools.

5) The vast majority of homeschooling parents--even unschooling parents!--do not neglect their kids. That's discriminatory nastiness. Different is not automatically wrong, and 99%+ of parents want their kids to be educated. Really educated. Those parents work to be sure that their kids are educated, regardless of how they do that work. It make look different from the norm, but it can still be effective.

5) Not all kids will respond well to unschooling, just as not all respond well to Montessori or to sitting in a desk all day. These kids should try some other method. Responsible parents will make a change if something doesn't work.

6) Neglect should be corrected in all cases, regardless of the educational method being used.

I am not trying to persuade anyone to unschool. I don't do it! But I am deeply troubled by some of the attacks I see here. They seem unfounded and unfair.

passthepotatoes ... right on board with you. Great response. Thanks!

I feel like I have a different perspective on this 2 years into homeschooling. My youngest LOVES history, social studies, cultural studies. We went to a Pow Wow last weekend for HER. She was entralled. She wants to be a medieval girl for Halloween this year. She was Cleopatra last year. She retains history stories like crazy. She is obsessed with her American girl. She loves field trips involving people dressed up in period costumes.

My son love project based things that he can dive into and learn everything about. Most are science or technology based.

They are both highly motivated in these areas and I don't have to encourage them. I finding myself tying other subject areas to their passion areas. I am not an unschooler, but at this point, I could certainly see how that could work for us (and does quite a bit of the time). Once kids have reading, writing, and research skills, kids that have been allowed to love learning through discovery really can fly. It's fun to watch.

Absolutely, there are parents out there failing their kids. Numbers wise though there are many, many more kids being failed in the public school system at this point in time. So I'm personally unconcerned about the tiny number of very lazy unschoolers out there.


If it makes you feel any better, the HS circles we run in are moderate to left wing.

Edited to add - agree with Kriston too.

Me too, but the conservatives are so much better organized. They are producing a future generation of movement leaders.

And, good point about Halloween costumes. Lots of geeky history costumes around here too!

I really wish I believed this to be true, but having homeschooled K-12 unfortunately I have seen that this is not always the case. I've known far too many middle and high school age kids who are not just a little bit underprepared but radically underprepared.

These are not the children of mean child abusers. They are nice people who have wonderful qualities and they are people that for the most part I would trust to babysit. They just have a very different idea of the importance of academics for adult life. I don't believe there is a real fix for this problem as there is no evidence that any type of government regulation does anything to improve homeschooling.

I think it is okay for homeschoolers and unschoolers to acknowledge that there are cases where kids maybe are not well served and there are families who really shouldn't have their kids at home. This is very much on topic for a gifted discussion list because one of the greatest challenges for some homeschooling families is finding intellectual peers for their kids. In my community gifted academically minded homeschoolers will really struggle to find kids to engage with academically. For some kids this matters not at all, but for some it is real frustration.

Do you think that it is possible that as a member of the HG+ community you may have unreasonable expectations for kids who are not gifted? Personally, I try pretty hard to remain neutral about ND kids and their education, because I have found that I really have very little idea of what is normal for them. I don't mean to sound elitist, but there it is.

Well, I didn't say that 99% effectively educate their kids. I said that they want their kids to be educated. Two different things.

Though I would also say that while 99% of the parents of kids in traditional schools want their kids to be educated, that's not happening either. The majority of the public school kids in our area are not what I would call well-prepared. In our area, IMHO, homeschoolers are in the lead on this one. That's probably partly because so many gifted families choose to homeschool because there's nothing--not even enrichment pull-outs--until 4th grade.

So maybe I'm just in a really great homeschooling community, but this is the position from which I am operating.

I did say they were assumptions. I cannot prove it. I'm not going to try to. <shrug>

I freely admit that not every homeschooler is doing a fabulous job. (Thus #5 and #6 are on my list.) Under the circumstances, that wasn't where my focus was.

Oh yeah, I forgot. �I've also read that if you're going to be over-staffed and underfunded then yeah, you're going to need a lock-step cookie cutter curriculum to be able to teach thirty different kids in your class every year. When it becomes just you taking over the responsibility for teaching your own two or three children everything they need to know every year you have license to be much more flexible. � That's why I keep asking 'what makes it unschooling'? �Following a child's lead just makes it be called self paced, if they're learning the same thing as everybody else and the end goal is the same. �What makes it suddenly this new thing called "unschooling" unless it's completely letting go of all expectations, dropping out of the rat race, living off of society's mental grid? �That's what's so confusing, if the end goal is the same as everybody else's, if there is an end goal, then �that would just be homeschooling, plain old-fashioned regular self-paced homeschooling. I agree society's got bigger problems than dictating how a few people should raise their own children. �

Totally agree here.


My thought is that let's say these kids that are inadequately prepared went to school (public or not) and were not homeschooled. I would argue that their parents do not value intellectual pursuits, would not support their children academically, and they are likely to come out of the system unprepared anyway. Plenty of kids come out of the school system with no ability to write or apply critical thinking skills. It's not the kids with involved parents that spend the weekends at the libraries and museums.

Good point, Kim.

I guess was I was trying to say with #5 was that I am going to assume that all parents--including unschooling parents!--are generally making a good faith effort to educate their kids. A few parents aren't. That's bad. See #6. And some succeed better at the actual education part than others. That's life. Some traditional schools are better than others, too.

But in the end, some kids somewhere thrive under EVERY method of education, no matter what the method. Bashing any method does a disservice to the kids who thrive under that particular educational option. That's what I don't like. I would be making the same argument if someone were arguing that public school is inherently bad and should be forbidden. It didn't work for my children, but it does work for other kids. Parents need to be able to make that choice.

More options are better than fewer.