Unschooling

What are y'all views on unschooling? Unschooling is a branch of alliterative education much like homeschooling but where you do less book work but you learn from normal life experiences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling

I personally am all for it. It would be really weird if I wasn't since I do it. But wonndering what the NZ comunity thinks on homeschooling/unschooling and other alternate forms of education?

Pinkie: First of all - and I need to stress this part - I think it's super important for everyone to know some basic things - for example, literacy, or maths. I disagree with any educational system that doesn't allow some children to learn these skills. I have other issues with unschooling but that's the big one for me. Able children stuck in it might miss out on extremely basic skills.

Homeschooling is fine by me. Parents and ordinary teachers may have different approaches but both can be positive for a child in different ways. Importantly, however, it should be required of parents who choose to homeschool to at least teach the very basics so the students don't make amusing language mistakes like "alliterative education".

I think the prevalence of these things in America is sympotmic of the fact that nobody really has much confidence in your education system. In New Zealand homeschooling is very rare, and unschooling unheard of. We do have some alternative schools (Montessori and the like - one of my good friends went to such a school) but they are required by law to at least teach some of the basics and frankly aren't that popular. There are also religious schools but these tend to augment the curriculum rather than substitute the important parts. So long as there's a law saying stuff like that each child must be taught math etc, and each child has the opportunity to explore their own interests, I'm satisfied with everything.

admin: That makes lots of sense. I mean, unschooling is certainly not for everyone, you have to want to learn. Do I sound literate? At least most of the time?

I used to be homeschooled but I fall more in the unschooling category, I like to be exploring every thought myself, I don't read into philosophies until I've thought it out first.

That's because public school is awful, teachers have no time for the kids, the classes are too big, when they teach religion they get their facts wrong which opens up the question of if they get their facts wrong in religion what else do they get wrong? My debate friends and I were actually sitting around the dinner table today and I said, "You want to be president right, well what do you offer this country and what will you reform?" And she listed things that have idiotically been put off and things that have been stupidly implemented and said, "If you can be in charge of public education what would you do?" And we discussed how the federal government has no right to have authority over the school districts that is unconstitutional and that is something the states need to have. But the states need a standard for what is taught and not also we talked about how we would definitely un-sign the Law of the Sea Treaty because that was an idiotic move, like seriously? Who thought that companies would... (Let's not start that rant again). I think if we have children like us who sit there and talk about how we can change our government there might still be hope for America.

Pinkie: I certainly have heard from many of my American friends that American public schools are jokes.

I can relate to public school nightmares. I'll spare you the details but there were major bullying incidents involving me as the victim. Most NZ folks I tell my story are usually shocked and apologize in a hushed voice as if it's their fault. Homeschooling was never an option for me as I was raised by a single mom who worked very long hours to provide for me and my brother.

I'm not sure if the federal government is to blame really. That's an issue of how much bureaucracy you want, but even some incredibly bureaucratic organisations can be very effective (see the army for an example). But teachers deserve good conditions. Teachers who really respect their students are rare (well, given how teachers were usually bullying me more than the students were I am a little biased against teachers, though on the other hand my mother was a teacher) but those that do are in my view among the greatest people in the world. Our formative years define most of our character, so really teachers do more for this world than almost any other profession.

I'm actually curious though. How would you change your government to restore hope to America and reform your educational system? What would Rebecca's plan for the USA look like?

admin: They are, that's why I don't go.

I'm sorry, no one should have to live with that. When I was little this older girl made me eat a centipede that's the extent of being bullied.

There are things to blame and I know it's not me. Someone has to take blame and I put that on the government because it is being unconstitutional.

I respect your mother, people do everything to give their children good lives and they are looked down on in society.

Well, first I wouldn't be president because I would just cut a lot of unneeded programs, put a flat tax in place, clean up our debts somewhat, and get things done the wrong way, but I know a girl who'd make a great president and this guy who would make a good vice, they'd turn the department of education over to this other girl I know and she would work on streamlining what can and cannot be taught. Also the different departments would be filled with people who are super trusted and would get things done. What would you do?

It's Rebekah or Rebeque, but never ever ever ever ever Rebecca.

Pinkie: My apologies Rebekah.

I'm not being critical when I ask this, just ignorant. Why is the government federalizing education unconstitutional?

So the answer for you is to teach students less? Usually "streamlining what can and cannot be taught" would mean teaching students the bare minimum, which is interesting. In New Zealand, we changed our education system a little over a decade ago, ditching Cambridge exams for our own national standards, which we call NCEA. In NCEA it's significantly easier to pass but slightly harder to get top marks. It's controversial as many independent and private schools still do the Cambridge exams from England or the IB exams from France. But I really like it, because it actually values exactly how much people have learned and allows teachers to set a pace appropriate to their classes, while also giving the smart students something difficult to strive for (thus increasing the value of a good NCEA grade to universities and such compared to other high school qualifications).

NCEA wasn't really streamlining. Some teachers complained it was dumbing down, others didn't like the fairness moderation and reporting requirements. There have been embarrassing errors in some exams where the expected answer was itself incorrect. All these are problems with the current system to some degree (you can even get credit in NCEA for stuff like knowing how to mow a lawn if you can be bothered proving it). But I don't think it's true that students are being taught the bare minimum as a result. It's more that teachers have that to fall back on. My Classical Studies teacher was able to churn out 3-6 scholarships (the highest possible award, which has a monetary prize attached) from his class every year. His class was one of the largest in the school and he still had an extremely low fail rate, even among those students who just took the class because they thought it would be easy. So for good teachers the system can work.

I also think most education is generally to focused on facts rather than thinking. Facts change as society learns new stuff. Thinking needs to change much more rarely if it is taught right at the start. Too much of my calculus study was focused on how to do the math (calculus is actually super easy if you just remember all the shortcuts), and not enough on why the math works.

More broadly, education particularly in the US places too much emphasis on extracurricular activities in general (especially sport, and among sports, especially American football). It also places too little emphasis on giving students emotional and psychological support if they need it. I'm yet to hear of a single person anywhere in the world happy with their experiences with their "school counselor" if they had one.

I think I'd rather blame the education system as a whole than which party is organizing it.

Tax and such is a discussion for another thread another day.

admin: It's fine, lol, I'm just kidding around.

Because nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government a role in education, and the 10th Amendment says powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the people and the states.

Well, they shouldn't teach be teaching education, why? Because they are super biased to Islam and skip whole religions together. Also because they don't have their facts straight and if the curriculum isn't correct then it needs to be removed, and new curriculum is needed.

One of the things about homeschooling is it's half and half thought and fact I did it through 8th grade so when I was testing well I started unschooling myself, I still do a tiny bit of book work but not to a 'normal' extent. Anyways, after that my testing was higher which is one of the reasons I like unschooling, that I personally can learn from it, and that I can learn from myself.

I don't do sports really, my extra curricular activities are band, choir, speech, and debate.

I guess that's a good thought, the education system itself needs change. A good change.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it doesn't go in this education section.

Pinkie: It's interesting that you mention religious bias. Religious instruction here is rare in school. I went to a religious school and even there there wasn't much of it. I generally think it's good to learn about the major religions of the world. Islam is the world's second-largest religion and probably the most important one in the world today, because it and its teachings are having a huge influence on shaping our world. I'm not sure what bias to Islam means but I do wish people understood it more.

That being said getting facts wrong is a real problem. Another thing Americans often tell me is that teachers have issues dealing with students individually. That should never happen.

I've never understood the American government fully. I think it's that I have a normal tendency to think about stuff in terms of interests, while the constitution deals with rights. So I expect things in the national interest to be dealt with federally, but the constitution does not give the right to do it federally (assuming you know this better than me). It's weird.

admin: It may be good to learn about religion, but not when they teach it wrong. I think learning about religions are equally important. Christianity is important too. When asked why they aren't learning about it they say, "Oh, everyone knows about it." I think that is unacceptable, to shrug off different religions as more or less important.

It is, if you can't trust your teacher who can you trust to give you your education? That's why I find it funny when people say, "Parents can't teach you things, they are not capable." Well apparently teachers here aren't ether. Teachers are there to teach your kids, not preach to them.

I don't really ether, I mean, thus year I'm doing a lot of research on our constitution and other aspects of our government but our government is so complex that I cannot fully comprehend certain parts of it. It is weird.

I was Homeschooled for approximately half my time. (I went to High school but was home schooled before that)
Admin is right when he says it's not common in NZ - less than 1% of the school age population is schooled at home. That being said, the Home Schooling community is pretty tight and in my time I've associated with a fairly wide range of them - including doing some flag classes for them!

Looking at my school time with the benefit of hindsight, I can see now what I missed then. Childhood education is designed to do two things:
1) Teach kids literacy and numeracy.
2) Teach kids the skills they need to function in the world.

I don't think there's any argument that Home schooling does the first one very well, but I think it fails 90% of the time on the second one. Unschooling would fail even more and here's why...

My single biggest problem with home schooling, (and unschooling just exaggerates this) is that it never taught me how to work on a project that I wasn't personally invested in. When we did a study on a different country, my Mum would let us choose the country. If I wanted to go to the show on Friday, I was allowed to do two days of school in one day. We got to choose basically every project and field trip we ever did. We even ended up doing the physical sport we liked most of the time.
When I got to High school, I smashed every exam or test I had to do, but when it came to homework or in-school projects - I basically only did them if I was interested in the subject matter or could see an obvious use for it. As a result, as an adult in the work force I really struggle to do boring work that I see no point in. And unfortunately that's a reality of life. That work has to be done.

And I also want to say that despite what I've said, my Mum was one of the better homeschooling parents I've seen. Most parents were far less disciplined than she was.
We always had to work the same hours as the kids in regular school, yet our homeschooling mates were basically given tasks and could go play once those were finished.

I reckon that unschooling is going to result in kids who will be very bright and creative. They should show good initiative and be able to hold an intelligent conversation - but I suspect they will find that they need to work very hard to learn some of the more basic skills of time management and submission to authority that get bred into kids in regular school.

nzlockie: I guess homeschool is different for everyone, I guess just like public school experiences are too. One of my homeschool friends loved his public school experience so that says something. Since I unschool myself my parents pick some of my extra activities, and I do my best in them knowing I might not particularly like them but I have to do my best.