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

I think that elevating one's baking over the history of the human race shows a lack of proper priorities. But then again, we need bakers just like we need historians, and garbage people.

http://www.pollsb.com/polls/p13492-cook#results

Anyhow, to get back to the point, your assertion is simply untrue. There is no embarrassment factor that encourages people to teach themselves civics when they don't enjoy it, or anything else for that matter. People will learn to dress themselves to avoid embarrassment, perhaps. But it was a nice try!


Which means, by extension, that everyone will, to avoid embarrassment if necessary. That's how it works, right? In fact, if any shortcoming of any person becomes apparent, they correct it to overcome their embarrassment-- and if they don't, they're simply one of the unhealthy ones. It's simply impossible that someone would either fail to teach themselves something they weren't interested in in the first place, or fail to be able to teach themselves whatever they wanted without any help-- as long as they're healthy, anyway.

I see it all very clearly now.


But we must all bake. And I respectfully submit that if you can't dress a deer, you are a failed, sick person.


I certainly don't want my kid to feel happy and fulfilled being a garbage man. If one aspires to something greater and winds up with a steady paycheck doing less, that's one thing; but no one would feel happy and fulfilled with such a menial job, though they might find satisfaction in other aspects of life. Most parents don't want such lives for their children. Although I suspect I am about to hear how that is somehow unhealthy.

Once again, I never said that the primary reason people learn things is to avoid embarrassment. That's ridiculous, obviously. Most people learn because they are interested in the world around them and enjoy interacting with it. Your supposition was that some people are not interested in some things, and I responded by asserting that most people choose to learn at least a bit about even the topics that they are not interested in. Total ignorance is an uncomfortable state for most people. Not for you, obviously, but for most people. I, for instance, am not interested in football, but if I go to a football game I'm not going to sit there moaning to myself. I'm going to figure out the rules, follow along, and try my best to enjoy it.

What people want for their children is irrelevant. What children want for themselves is what matters to me. If my child would be happiest as a garbage collector, then I hope she chooses that career. It isn't unhealthy to want your child to do something that you think will make them happy, but it is unrealistic to assume that you have or should have control over what that will be.

You have a bad habit of sniping when you lose points in an argument. You didn't say the primary reason was embarrassment, perhaps, but you invented a reason, without basis of course, why people will tend to learn things that don't interest them. And, of course, you failed to explain how the bare minimum of knowledge-to-avoid-social-embarrassment translates to adequate proficiency.

All I ever see are defensive anecdotes when people point out serious flaws in approaches like radical unschooling, even in the face of direct first-hand experience of homeschooled or unschooled kids who have been failed.

Yeah, I mean, if you want to define success as being happy, being an illiterate person who's happy not to go to college and work at the most menial jobs is something to aspire to. There are plenty of happy slackers out there; I've known some of them, perfectly happy to live paycheck to paycheck, smoke pot, play video games, etc.


... which perfectly demonstrates the mechanism by which all unschooled children will prepare themselves for a rigorous academic life. They will study, or play at, whatever they like until college age, and then the embarrassment factor will kick in, bringing them all up to snuff in their weak or nonexistent areas, every last one. Including, of course, every last illiterate one, and every last one which knows no math, etc. Except, of course, for the ones that decide to become happy garbage people instead of going to college-- and there's nothing wrong with that. It would be their valid life choice, based on desire, not on anything else such as futility or lack of ability.


Logical much?


And that's the attitude that is quite obviously behind radical unschooling-- achievement doesn't matter much; it's freedom, as a pure ideal that can only be expressed by children making all the choices all the time, that matters, even if it comes at the expense of other things.

http://www.eurekawebs.com/humlit/fast_facts.htm

Hey, as long as they're happy living in poverty... At least they're not embarrassed, or they'd lift themselves up out of illiteracy by their bootstraps. Or, rather, we know that they're either 1) not embarrassed to be poor, borderline- or wholly-illterate people, or 2) they're simply the unhealthy ones that prefer to be ignorant.

Pro's:�
Developed EF skill of managing one's own time in self directed learning.
Con's:�
Choosing to lower one's standards to avoid a challenge which one is untrained for.

both huge assumptions and broad generalizations, but they do sound familiar. �Go on. �

lucounu, I think we have reached another one of those impasses and should once again agree to stop conversing, as it seems impossible for us to effectively communicate in a calm and rational way. I am not intentionally antagonizing you, but if you're not willing to read thoughtfully, you will only see what you want to see. I'm not interested in converting you to my point of view, and I'm certainly not interested in reading over & over again how you dislike and distrust the idea of unschooling.

I'm quite calm and rational. But heck, if you want to get exasperated, call me totally ignorant for not elevating the baking arts over academics, fail to support your arguments, and cede the field, who am I to stop you?

FWIW, I never called you ignorant. I said people don't like to be ignorant, and you claimed that you were happy to be ignorant about cooking. I'd never call someone ignorant for having a belief or a lack thereof; that would be a misuse of the word. I'd use something like "misguided" or "faulty" to refer to an opinion.

As for the rest, I think it's a bit of a pot/kettle situation.

Not quite. What you really claimed was that people would achieve adequate proficiency in all topics in which they were uninterested, once it became apparent to others that they lacked proficiency, due to the mighty power of embarrassment. You invented this as a theoretical patch for the problem of lack of interest in certain subjects, to explain why the unschooled will always become well-rounded in the end... unless they turn out to be unhealthy.


No, I did not claim to be "happy to be ignorant", with the pejorative connotations of that word. Instead, I said that I don't cook and I'm happy that way (lo and behold, I don't share your reverence for cooking). Somehow in your mind this equates to revelling in total ignorance. Enjoy your muffins-- you're obviously not interested in honest argumentation.

Lucounu, I have completely lost track of what your objecting to. I suspect you have too.

Are you saying people won't learn anything unless they have a strong internal drive, or a good external reason to do so? No argument there, I just think a child's natural drive to learn is stronger than you obviously do. I also believe that external forces don't have to be a big stick. If a child really wants to do some career that requires maths, they have a good reason to learn it. So? I don't see the problem.

Are you saying that it is impossible to learn things in adulthood that you missed out on in childhood? I don't think that's what you're saying? That doesn't make sense either, there are plenty of examples where that isn't the case.

Are you saying only unschooler neglect their children's education? I doubt it. Go to any school and you will see plenty of nelectful people who send their children to school (sadly true).

Are you saying it is an excuse to neglect the child? That may happen in some cases. People use all sorts of things as excuses. The warped reasons of a few sad cases doesn't an argument make.

Are you saying unschooling won't work for every child? Again, I have no argument with that. Parents need to be able to pick what they think will work for their children. That's what parenting is. Isn't it?

Is it something about the actual method? Do you believe the curriculum as taught in schools is somehow immutable? Or that there is some sort of guarantee that a child going through it will recall it all? If that was the case, why would it different from state to state, from country to country? There are also many things not taught at school that are useful to know.

Is it the lack of testing? Because only when tested do we know something is learned? Because kids tested on Monday will never forget by Friday?

Is it concern about that children will miss out on an area of experience that they may have enjoyed? It's possible. But going to school, or following a curriculum is not a cure for that, in and of itself. Many people discover things they love that were not taught in school.

Is it something else? Please enlighten me.