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I know that I could figure out what they mean by "unschooling" by clicking around and searching. It's just that it feels a bit annoying to read an article about it, have it mentioned several times, but not be told what it's supposed to mean. I take it it's supposed to be a cool way of saying homeschool.
In a previous thread the author mentioned that it is homeschooling without a set curriculum.
That’s one definition. I like “study what you want but you must study something.”. I have also seen what I call “raised by wolves” labeled as unschooling. We homeschooled, but it was somewhere between “school at home” and unschooling. It was structured, there was a core, but kid could follow there interests, assuming core was being served.
its another way to say homeschooling, but with an emphasis on what the kid wants to do and not on a govt provided curriculum.
You could say it's homeschooling without the pressure to follow some arbitrary curriculum.
£1382 plus missed opportunity cost depending on the job that affords them to work for X hours per day (while the kids are being unschooled?), plus cost of risk that the kids are shouldering from risk of negative impact them due to unschooling. The price tag looks attractive but the externalities weigh heavily.
Having been roomates with friends who were unschooled, it definitely made later life much more challenging. College was a lot of remedial mathematics catch-up, and the way they engaged with employers, potential partners and such was much different than most people.
Quality public education can serve children much better than unschooling or poorly performing private or public schooling.
Some areas just have very little choice though, the Catholic Schools are shit, the public schools are severely underfunded and decrepit, and unschooling starts to look reasonable, despite how it seems to have stunted my friends :(
How do you weigh that against the risk of public school, peer pressure, bullying, drug & sex culture, and a middling career as a corporate drone?
I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as you make it out to be. There are risks on both paths. All kids are unique and what works for one may not work for another.
I’m going to try to go the unschooling route, and see how it goes.
Let's not forget the potentially large offsetting negative impacts from schooling! Violence, abusive peers and teachers, disinterested teachers and systems leading to wasted years and loss for love of learning, I could go on. And I don't think you mean "externalities" though you might.
There's a lot of athletics but where are the hard sciences, the literature, math, etc?
My son is 9 and attends a standard British primary school.
Today, he was explaining that two of his friends are arguing a lot because they can’t agree on rules to a game. He’s trying to stay friends with both of them, and has figured out that getting involved in the argument makes this harder.
These are the essential lessons home-schooled kids typically miss.
I'm glad your child is learning valuable social lessons.
If anything, I learned how to appease people to fit in and make them like me at school.
It wasn't until the last 2-3 years (I'm in my thirties now) after on a startup for the past 7 years that I started to better understand, explore and comprehend my personal psychology.
It was until these last couple years that I learned that it’s not job to fix problems between people and that often it just makes things worse.
You think homeschooled kids typically don't have friends who argue? Interested how you've come to that conclusion.
Are his friends learning the lesson as well? Because they are also in school.
Previous Discussion from yesterday (Mar 22): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35265299
Unschooling costs literally nothing. This person is talking about homeschooling-lite.
We unschooled our son from the age of 12. This is how you do it: don’t do anything other than what you normally do as a family to live your lives.
My son eventually wrote a novel, got married. And is our live-in computer builder and handyman. He, his wife, and my wife run an eBay-based jewelry store.
Anyway, unschooling is absence of any organized intervention in some else’s education. I have unschooled myself since the age of 16, and I make a good enough living.
This comment section is 99% preconceived biases and notions about homeschooling and nothing to do with the article.
Can dang or someone just preemptively run the article through a "pro" / "con" ChatGPT prompt on the overall topic and then delete comments not directly related to the article.
To avoid hypocrisy: this is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on books and crafts a month. Do they not have libraries?
Hard agree. Might as well just call this "Ask HN: What are your opinions of homeschooled kids" and be done with it.
I've read this and I still have no idea what unschooling is. Does the author mean that they literally pulled their kids out of school and instead they just do open university courses? That's mad. Like actually 100% mad. In fact I don't think that should even be legal.
The author is only listing those items that have costs so there might be other educational activities that the children are pursuing.
Also curious to know if open university courses are not considered to be educational for teens.
There's a good reason it's illegal in many countries.
Here, I would question this more if it was 1 or 2 children, instead of 5. I've come around on this.
I've seen a variety of schooling concepts and the ones with the most group autonomy had the most motivated children. And they integrated and socialized just fine after the high school equivalent.
A significant factor in my changing thoughts comes from recognizing that socializing can be done in extracurricular activities and in your community.
What grade schools aim to prepare you for isn't necessarily relevant. ie. colleges and corporations. Even the good ones are only preparing you for that, and you also don't need grade school to be eligible for those things, or other things.
I'd suggest unschooling is good if the parents are regimented, habitual, and knowledgeable or willing to put in all the work. Teachers learn how to alter teaching styles to a child, and to repeat information often. Parents have none of this training.
I see enough "hippy, uneducated types" unschool and it becomes dramatically less effective for the child. The child becomes unable to deal with routines, may be less social [depending on outside activities], very weak in the areas their parents are weak in, and often behind a grade level or two. While yes, they may be a more "creative, free spirit" at times - that only gets you so far.
Someone from my work fell down the rabbit hole of homeschooling - her spelling and grammar was poor and she was (is) into 'alternative' therapies etc.
Each to their own but I do feel that children need to be around their peers and learning a set curriculum. By taking her 12 year old out of school, she has removed many career roles from him and limited his future (she'd argue that she's freed him, no doubt).
By all means home school but there should be a basic set of facts taught - not that antibacterial oils kill viruses (for example - a real home work she set)
I had a teacher one year in elementary school whose use of my native language was kinda bad, my mom was kinda furious that people were taken for these positions (I guess math would've been fine, but not the native language). So not sure your point holds, except for homeschooled kids if the parents can't spell they're stuck with those teachers for longer than a year. FWIW, I don't have a bone to pick with the public school system in general, although I didn't enjoy it very much in the last few years. The thing is that I doubt homeschooling (if it was allowed here) would have improved a lot.
> Each to their own but I do feel that children need to be around their peers and learning a set curriculum
which one ?
There's always an obsession with how much something costs.
You could do this cheaper. It would be much more beneficial to learn about "how" you unschool, not just a receipt of extra curriculars or supplemental materials.
How much is it costing you to teach english, history, math, etc? What curriculum are you using if any? How far is your kid's natural curiosity going compared to a public standard? At least that would make this more interesting to read.
As someone who was homeschooled for a year by a private company, it works when it's one on one everyday and the teacher isn't someone who thinks unschooling (Taking kids away from some sort of educational framework) is a good idea.
I wouldn't recommend this unless the previous public school experience was hellish for the kid. Honestly, home-schooling is such a weird, american idea. Like all things american, it's spreading though.
I don't have strong feelings on the subject, but I find it bizarre that you'd find what most people traditionally did for almost all of human history up to a little more than the last century a "weird, American idea." And you get most of the rest by counting "just a few kids from the local area" rather than a mass state-sponsored institution.
Agreed, the most valuable skill learned in school is how to socialize.
Honestly, all this sounds such an american, middle class thing: the public X is shit, and everything is up to the individual. I am not saying public education is great where I grew up, and I can definitely imagine doing what I wanted being better in many ways (anyway this is how it turned out to be in last classes in practice more or less), what I cannot imagine is my working class parents handling that situation, esp with like 5 kids, as they worked jobs that involved being in their workplace for 8 hours per day, and they could not get away with working for 1-3 hours on a laptop here and there and wherever the kids' activities were supposed to be.
But that is also not taking into account other things, like providing intellectual stimulation/mentors in areas where the parents are not experts/educated, which sometimes is not trivial. And while schools are indeed a hit and miss in this stuff, ime private tutoring is usually not a better choice (and adds up in the bill essentially). This could be solved in different ways granted a wide and strong social circle/community, but that is probably not what all this is about in the land of individualism.
Yes, better to leave your child's education to the state, the state would never think to damage family cohesion or try to undermine any ideas that pose a threat to its power.
Elementary school is generally a great time for kids to make friends and generally goof off. I have a 2nd grader and 6th graders. Both really happy and it’s public school. 6th grader will head to jr high (we do k-6 elementary) so have to see how that goes. I don’t have complaints against public schools. Both my kids look forward to going.
Unschooling is not home-schooling.
Homeschooling typically means one of the parents or somebody in a pool of families follows some kind of curriculum still, unschooling expects kids to learn from... something.
Isn't the industrial state school model outdated by at least 50 years? What can't you learn with books, Khan Academy, Youtube, ChatGPT?
Socialization you can get anywhere. From her list:
Forest School, Badminton, Swimming, Football, Gymnastics, Annual membership to Paradise Park, Annual membership to Drusillas Park
What's weird about it?
Home schooling isn't weird; it was the default for most of human history.
Would love to see homeschooling becoming a trend.
Why?
I’m Danish, and homeschooling is imcredibly rare in Denmark, and I frankly can’t see the appeal.
What is it that makes it so compelling?
Why would you have that happen? Serious question. Isn’t that putting kids in an echo chamber and restricting their access to friends?
Too experimental. It is a subject whose outcome will probably be very uncertain.
I could say the same thing about "Let's put EduTech in front of students, as pushed by for-profit companies, with one tablet per child sort of programs."
Except, unfortunately, it's not very experimental at this point. It's well demonstrated that it doesn't do a damned thing for educational outcomes - but it is, at least, very profitable for the EdTech companies who, when pinned down on it not working, assure you that if you buy the next version, they'll fix it.
We know that the current public school approaches aren't working very well for vast numbers of students. So, yes, I'll take "experimental by parents who care."
How will the kids be able to navigate modern life without anti-racist math [0] ?
[0] https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...
Did you actually read that?