Messages By: laderrick

It's really not surprising that most people today don't understand how anyone can learn what they need to know without schooling. It's also not surprising (to me) that most people don't realize how dangerous and insidious a notion it is that all of us need to be institutionalized in order to be successful, to get along, or whatever. That's one of the lessons schooling teaches best - and more successfully than almost anything else! Fortunately, it's simply not true. People can and do learn what they need to know without schooling. There are many successful, sociable, joyful people who are unschooled. I am the mom of two unschooled teens . We have never done any formal schooling. I didn't sit them down and teach them to read, or to write, or to do basic math, yet they learned, because those things were part of our lives. I didn't prescribe history or science lessons, yet they delved into both with a passion, because they found them interesting. We have played games for hours on end, watched oodles of television and videos, spent much of our time with friends, gone places, done all kinds of things, and just generally created an interesting, fulfilling life for ourselves. Both of them have found ways to make money, and have found mentors in areas where they especially wanted to focus. Best of all, they have enjoyed being free human beings all of their lives. So, for all of you who believe that children should not be allowed to follow their own path, or that the adults in their lives are irresponsible or abusive for choosing to unschool, what would you say to my two happy, healthy, successful unschooled teens? Do you hold it against them that they have been able to do whatever they wanted, and yet turn out just fine?

I said my kids were unschooled, not uneducated, as you seem to think they must also be. Education doesn't require schooling, and schooling doesn't guarantee education.

I've been talking about this a bit with my kids, and decided to add to my previous response. I apologize in advance for the formatting - these message boards and my browser seem to be conspiring to remove the separation between my paragraphs. First, there is nothing irresponsible about being free, or protecting our children's freedom. In fact, that is one of our primary responsibilities as parents and citizens. Second, I disagree that someone must have "flown the coop" or be of a certain age in order to be considered successful. Third, as I have said before, my children are most certainly not uneducated, just unschooled. Fourth, both of my children have already found gainful employment that they enjoy, that is neither minimum wage, nor a dead end career-wise. My son says it's okay for me to tell you a little more about him, since his experience disproves these many dire predictions. He's fifteen years old, and in many ways a typical teen. He loves music, and hanging out with his friends, and as with most kids his age, eating and sleeping are high on his list of favorite pastimes. But he's also very busy and active. He is a drummer, has played with several rock bands and works and plays hard at improving his skills. He's been in more than a dozen plays, primarily Shakespearean, but also others, and he was recently accepted into an acting troupe at a local theater. He does a lot of volunteer work, and serves on the Board of Directors of our region's Camp Fire USA council. Through Camp Fire, he also goes hiking and backpacking, and does many other activities, including community outreach, which involves public speaking. He's working on completing his WOHELO award, Camp Fire's equivalent of the Eagle Scout and Girl Scout Gold awards. Part of his work toward this has to do with advocating for drama education for kids, and he's volunteered several hundred hours as a drama camp counselor toward that end. Another interest area he's working on has to do with nonviolent communication and teen issues like dating violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and police-teen relations. He has been working lately for pay doing audio and video editing, at which he is pretty skilled. He enjoys doing it but doesn't think that's what he wants to make a career of. His first love is programming, which he has been doing since he was not quite 8 years old. He thinks something in the video gaming industry to do with programming would be right up his alley. In working toward that goal, he decided he wanted to go to college. He spent a minimal amount of time (a month or so) preparing himself, then took admissions and assessment tests, applied, and entered the college of his choice. He tested into college level courses, and is taking just two classes a semester for now, since he's still very young and wants time for all his other interests and to "just be a kid" too. And then there's his interest in singing, and filmmaking with his friends, and sleepovers, and video games, and composing music, and almost any other kind of game, and swimming, and cooking, politics, the state of the world, environmentalism - the list goes on and on. I couldn't stop him from learning if I wanted to. These are the things he's chosen of his own free will to do. He's worked hard at them. He's developed a great deal of discipline (no - we didn't discipline him either!) and a lot of skill. He's well-liked, has proven several times over that he's a great employee, and has jumped the college admissions hurdle. I suspect that, even though I'm a bit biased as his parent, I'm not the only one who would say he's successful already.

I realize that you've put a great deal of time and effort into learning about how to teach, and I commend your for that, but you're making some assumptions about homeschooling parents that are crippling your ability to think clearly about how children learn, and who is best able to help them along the way. (My browser will not let me do paragraphs, so I am going to try using spaces to indicate a new paragraph.) We are an unschooling family. By the time that my first child was old enough to attend kindergarten (though he never went to kindergarten - we didn't see any point in that), I, as his "untrained" parent had OVER 25,000 HOURS of experience helping him learn. In that time, he had learned how to babble, roll over, crawl, talk, walk, run, relate to other people, recognize all the things in his environment, empathize, solve problems, read, write, count, add, subtract, multiply, keep track of his own things, cook bread and some other basic foods, help with household chores, make friends, swim, use a computer, speak a small amount of several different languages, read a simple map, use the library's computer catalog, and a zillion other things I couldn't possibly list here. He is 15 years old now, enrolled in college, and excelling there, despite never having been schooled before. So, you do the math. At this point, I have over 15 YEARS of direct, hands-on experience helping my children learn. I am not am amateur, neither am I uneducated or unskilled in the field of education. I started researching homeschooling 20 years ago. I have read hundreds of books about education, psychology, communication, neuroscience, learning styles, disabilities, behavioral and pedagogical approaches, etc. I have attended dozens of conferences, and hundreds of workshops. I am also not the least bit unusual among home educators. How do I know? I also TEACH workshops. I see many thousands of homeschooling parents each year, continuing their educations, evaluating curricular materials, adapting to the learning styles of their children, and being very successful at helping them learn and grow. I have seen parents with bad spelling, poor grammar, and virtually no math skills, drop-outs and rise-outs, products of dismal public school systems - many hundreds of them - help their children become well-prepared for college level work. I admit, there was a time when I would not have believed it could happen, but it does, and I can tell you after all these years that it is the norm, not the exception. People can and do learn outside of school, fortunately. And perhaps you are not aware of the latest research? http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=168927 "There seems to be little difference in teacher effectiveness among certified teachers, the uncertified and those who enter the profession under the new “alternative” (often midcareer) certification schemes, according to a major study of nearly 52,000 teachers in New York City. These results are a heavy blow to decades of conventional wisdom promulgated by the education establishment. "

Actually, a majority of the families in my local homeschooling group (there are over a thousand families in the group, btw) are either lower middle class or below. Quite a few qualify for various forms of assistance, and quite a few, both economically disadvantaged and not, are single parents.

They are all a source of inspiration to me, and a wonderful reminder that one of the most important skills we can help our children learn is that of resourcefulness. There are plenty of activities available to all of us that are free, and many others that are either very low cost, or will waive fees for those who cannot afford to pay.

All of our museums, for example, have an open door policy. And of course, the libraries are free, provided you return things on time. Parents have been able to borrow materials, buy things used and sell them again when they're done with them, trade expertise or services for specialized classes or tutoring, participate in cooperatives, and come up with many other inventive ways to provide opportunities for their children.

As children get older, they are able to help pay their way, as well. For example, my children are volunteer counselors at a drama camp in the summer. In exchange, they get a discount (based on the amount of time worked) on any drama classes they enroll in during the year. If they put in enough time, they end up being able to choose a class for free.

I am one of the posters here with a 15 year old, by the way. He's a lifelong unschooler who started college this year. Quite a few homeschooled teens start college early, and that's one reason you don't see as many parents of 15 or 16 and ups here.

There are several unschooling stories I'd like to tell that may shed some light on why we choose to do what we do. Unfortunately, I have a limited amount of time, and I don't know how much I can get written down before I have to stop for the night. I am really wishing we were sitting in a room together, because then it would be SO much easier!

Before our children were even born, we struggled over whether to even have children. My husband is in a business that requires him to travel for months at a time, and we watched as family after family fell apart after their children reached school age. Usually, it was the dad that left to go to work, and then the family spent most of their time apart because the kids were in school. Family after family went through separation, and then divorce. It was tragic, and heartbreaking, and we didn't even want to have children if that was how things would end up.

Along the way, about 20 years ago, I met a young family with three children (later they had another) who were in the same business. I walked into their temporary home away from home (they had traveled with the dad, who was working on location) to find them gathered around the breakfast table in their PJs, eating cereal, chattering away, and making simple electrical circuits - homemade flashlights. That was the day's science lesson, and they were homeschoolers.

Talk about a light bulb going off! I had spent the past few weeks exploring our new location, history and geography coming to life for me, totally engrossed in learning, and enjoying and appreciating it in a way I never had while in school. And I could suddenly SO see myself homeschooling. After all, we had such incredible opportunities to go places and meet people and do things - opportunities it would be devastating to have to pass up because of a school schedule. AND it would solve the problem of having to be separated - we could travel together if we homeschooled!

So, I set about learning everything I could. I'm a reader, and I read everything I could get my hands on about homeschooling, learning, teaching, education, schooling, child development - you name it. I was really, really excited and hoped that homeschooling would suit our children, when they arrived on the scene.

A few years later, our son was born, and he turned out to be a little sponge. I know we all like to think our children are brilliant and like most parents, I marveled over how quickly he learned. He was a very early reader. We have videotape from his third birthday of him reading his birthday cards out loud to everyone. Mind you, I didn't teach him to read, he just figured it out from being read to, and from playing games, and asking a million questions.

Well, I can tell you that if you happen to have a little one who reads very early, and carries on intelligent conversations with adults, and seems to have been born with understanding beyond his or her years, you are very likely to get a lot of pressure to put them into a gifted program. You will probably be advised to keep them challenged with academics, or they'll get bored, and you will almost certainly be told that you need an expert's help. For me, the pressure was immense, and my gut reaction was that I needed to protect my little guy from that kind of pressure, and to let him have as normal a childhood as I could.

Not too long after he turned three, I had my one big moment of panic. We were at a public park, in the restroom, with several other moms and their kids. My son needed to go, and wanted to "do it himself" so I stood right outside the stall door. He proceeded to ask me very loudly, "Mommy, what does F*** you mean? It says F*** you, Megan!" The other moms looked at me like I had sprouted horns. I told him it was just something not very nice, and that I would explain after he came out. It was then that I realized A) my child was not waiting for me to figure out how to educate him, and B) there was absolutely nothing in the world of prepared curriculum appropriate for a barely-3-year-old like him.

I took a lot of deep breaths after that, and thought about it for days. And then it hit me. What we were doing - living a full, joyful life, exploring the world, sharing our knowledge and experience, playing, taking care of ourselves and our home, finding our way around, making friends - was perfect. He was learning at lightning speed, faster than any curriculum would have planned for him. He was hungry for new experiences, and we were good at finding them. He was happy and healthy, helpful, and friendly, and just generally a lot of fun to be around.

So, we continued to do as we had done, setting about making a full, interesting life for ourselves. It was a huge relief to realize that there was no need to change what was working so well for us. It also gave me great joy to realize that he wasn't going to STOP learning the way he did as he got older. It was so totally unconventional, but it was also very apparent that he was doing just fine.

We never did do formal academics. No math lessons. No reading or writing lessons. No science lessons. No history lessons. No spelling lessons, NO formal academics. He chose what he wanted to learn, and how he wanted to learn it.

I realize when I say that, that some of you are going to think we didn't have structure, or didn't expose him to certain things, or that he had big gaps, or that he will never be responsible, or never amount to anything, or that he will hate us for shortchanging him, or whatever.

We had a very organic structure. When he and his sister (she's 2 1/2 years younger and unschooled too) were very young, the structure mostly revolved around when we needed to eat and sleep, and when friends were available, or various outside activities were happening. As they got older, there were more and more things we wanted to do that happened at a certain time, so we planned around those if they were important to us, and the rest of our daily life remained fairly organic, based on our needs for food, sleep, excitement, relaxation, etc.

Certainly, there were things we didn't expose our children to. We avoided stressful situations, as much as possible, as we found we were all happier without them. We avoided things that we felt were age-inappropriate, and things they were afraid of (scary movies, and that sort of thing). We avoided coercion, shaming, blaming, rewards, punishment, psychological manipulation, and other behaviorist tactics we wouldn't want practiced on us. As he and his sister matured, they were able to handle more difficult situations, though we didn't ask or expect them to do so without us until they were ready and willing. We talked about anything and everything along the way, and of course we encountered people and situations that were challenging.

Were there gaps? Of course. Everyone has them. We introduced our kids to everything under the sun, but never forced them to pursue anything. And they most certainly didn't do things in a conventional way! For example, although math comes very easily to him, my son chose not to do any formal study of it until just over a month before he was ready to take college entrance and placement tests. In about 5 weeks, he paged through texts on basic math, algebra I and II, geometry and a little trig. He spent a total of about 20 hours on it, and he had near perfect scores on the tests.

Now, we could have made him do math every day for years on end, which, with his personality, would probably have reaped a lot of "am I done yet"s and "do I HAVE to?"s. And yes, he may actually have gotten to calculus if we had, but he might also have hated doing it. As it is, he's covered 11 or 12 school years worth of math in about 20 hours, and he's proven to himself (and everyone else) that he can learn whatever math he needs to know in short order.

So, yes, he's a little unusual in that he is very intelligent in the ways that schools measure, and not every child will necessarily grasp math (or whatever) as quickly. But I have seen many, many children, average, gifted, and handicapped, do similarly amazing things when they were ready and motivated.

As for him never amounting to anything, or being shortchanged, or socially retarded, well, I guess you'll just have to take my word for it that he's fine. He agrees, and so do his employers, his professors, his friends, his fellow cast members and directors, his fellow volunteers, his study group, and all the other people who know and love him.

I don't remember who is was who asked if we had taken our children to visit public schools. Fredi, maybe?

I guess the answer is that we haven't, really, in the sense that I think you meant it. My daughter thought for a while that she might want to shadow one of her friends at school (one in private school, and one in public school had offered), but then the one in private school quit to homeschool, and the one in public school became so negative about her middle school experiences she discouraged my daughter from going. My son was never interested. We have gone to events at schools, like their cousins' fundraisers and carnivals, some plays, dance recitals, youth group events, a few competitions that were held in school buildings, and that sort of thing. So, they've been into the actual buildings, but not to classes there. They have, however, been to other kinds of classes, just not the academic, compulsory variety. They have also participated in several service projects at public schools. One involved going to record books on tape for blind and visually impaired children. For that one, they didn't work with students, they just went in and read books to make audio recordings.

Another one we did together for a year or so was to read to younger children in kindergarten, first, and second grades. The kids and I just went in and read aloud whatever the students picked out, at a school where most of the kids didn't have books or anyone to read to them at home.

Perhaps the most interesting one was when we were invited to come help out at an alternative school for children with multiple disabilities. Homeschooled kids were invited to come and help disabled students with some outdoor science experiments and a few other enrichment activities. The school's students were kids that couldn't manage those kinds of things on their own, but enjoyed them and learned from getting some "hands-on" kinds of activities that they normally didn't have access to because of their disabilities. Still, it wasn't a regular classroom experience, by any stretch.

So, I guess I would have to say that public school classrooms haven't been part of their experience, but they have had lots of contact and heard more than they ever wanted to know about our local public schools from friends who attend them.

It was an eye opener even to me to discover just how many homeschooling/unschooling parents are either single and working full time, or married with both parents working full time.

The National Center for Education Statistics, our government's education data collection and analysis organization, started trying to collect demographic data on homeschoolers about ten years ago. Since then, they have included questions about homeschooling in their national household surveys, which are of a randomized sample of households, not a self-selected group. You can look up their reports on homeschooling by googling nces and homeschooling.

If you look at their most recent report (2003) and crunch the numbers from their tables, you'll see that just over 40% of homeschooled children come from families where there is either a single parent working 35 or more hours a week outside the home, or two parents with both working 35 or more hours a week outside the home.

Only about 54% of homeschooled children come from families with two parents, where only one parent works full time outside the home. Though the NCES doesn't give information about situations in between, I also know from associating with homeschoolers for many years, that there are also many families that own home businesses, or where the "stay at home parent" also works part time, or works from home.

So, not only is it doable to work and homeschool, or to be a single parent and homeschool, parents in thoses categories make up a very large chunk of the homeschooling population!

Some unschoolers can read and write at age 10 and some can't. The vast majority of unschoolers I've known are reading and writing by then, but I've known a few that didn't read until 11 or 12. One of my kids could read before age 3, and the other was 8 before starting. I know one 13 year old who is just now a beginning reader. I also have a dear friend whose daughter didn't read until she was 14. That was some years ago - she's mostly grown up now.

Typically though, the kids that wait until they are older learn very quickly, and a few months after they become readers, you'd never be able to tell they didn't read at 5 or 6.

I usually don't post many links, but I just loved this short video about the future of education, and I really think some of you might appreciate seeing it, too:

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=ken_robinson