What exactly is "unstopping" and is it legal?
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Anonymous
| Confused about the term "unschooling". Met a family that I thought was homeschooling her three kids (ages 14, 11, and 9) and she corrected me and said "no, we are unsschooling". I thought it was illegal to not send your kids to school?!? |
Anonymous
| Ugh- autocorrect got me in the title... |
Anonymous
| Its basically where kids learn what they want, when they want or what the parents want without a curriculum or measurable goals. Most parents barely educate their kids. |
Anonymous
Anonymous
Citation? It's legal as long as the local jurisdiction says it is. It's legal for schools to graduate kids who can barely read... |
Anonymous
I *think* you can ask Jeff to edit it in Website Feedback |
Anonymous
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My friend unschools. They live in FLA ... So technically she home schools because she needs to present "work" to somebody to prove she is teaching.
My son is dyslexic and MOCo schools could not teach him so I looked into homeschooling, but I had to work, so I sent him to school, then taught him everything at night. When I was researching homeschooling she explained her unschooling methods to me, which are not pure unschooling. Math: they go to the store and weigh fruit and figure out how much grapes cost, then compare the cost to peaches . She has a general idea if he can add, subtract, multiply, etc Science: they own chickens and raise snakes, they go to the science center. They go bird watching. They fish, I English: they read stuff and write about it, or do oral reports. I am sure I am not doing it justice but basically, they don't have text books or a curriculum. They find learning in their real world and they discuss it. They are part of an Unschooling group of about 10 families... 15 ish kids and they do activities together. They spend a lot of time in the library, AT&T he science center, museums, etc. Many people in her family have a combination of up schooling/homeschooling/private/public school and most have masters degrees. She is an accountant! her sister is a doctor! her other sister runs a small business that teaches people to rock climb/kayak/paddle board and her brother is an engineer. |
Anonymous
Not OP but thanks for your reply. That actually doesn't seem as intense or crunchy as the name makes it sound, especially for younger kids. However, how does it work when the kids get to MS/HS? If they want to go to college, it seems like they would really have to sit down and consciously study more complex subjects, like algebra - while the mom can tell now that her child can add or subtract, it's harder to have an idea of his proficiency at math or physics! Unless they're supplementing unschooling with homeschooling or other arrangements, in which case it kinds of goes against the philosophy? |
Anonymous
| Unschooling is a radical practice that recognizes that the school system serves mainly to institutionalize (that is, to accustom its attendees to the hierarchies, politics, etc. of institutions) rather than educate its students. Read Jerry Farber's 'The Student as Nigger.' |
Anonymous
| basically it's the same as home schooling. Un-schooling may the hippie granola method while home schooling may be the ultra right wing religious method (and no, I don't have a citation). |
Anonymous
It's a type of homeschooling. There are plenty of atheist or nondevout families who strictly follow a secular curriculum. They would be referred to as homeschoolers. |
Anonymous
I know people who unschool for some ages and make other choices for other ages. In theory, though, a student who unschools seeks out the knowledge that is important to them. That can easily include taking classes (in person through a coop, or online through one or many resources, or at a local community college), or setting up a tutorial with a local expert, or self studying by reading text books or watching videos (you can buy videos of the lectures of many college professors). I am a homeschooling parent, but not an unschooling parent, in part because we started late. I think if I started from the beginning I might well have chosen unschooling. Anyway, my kid has a specific interest in Ancient Egypt. Since his interest is strong, he chooses to use the money earns from his job to buy Audiobooks of college lectures on the subject, and asks for books related to Ancient Egypt for Christmas. He's discussed looking into classes on heiroglyphics at Howard. He also has an interest in theater, and has read and analyzed many plays, including both Shakespeare and more modern playwrights, as part of various theater programs. Because we aren't true unschoolers, this is supplemented with work that I choose for him in other subjects such as math and science. If I were a true unschooler, he'd have more free time, and perhaps would discover interests in science and math that would develop his skills, in the way he's developing his historical and literary analysis skills with no direction or pressure from me. |
Anonymous
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Her kids are basically grown now so she stopped keeping up this blog, but this entire blog really is about their life as an unschooling family. These are a few of the pieces that she specifically tagged as Unschooling. You can get an idea of how they did it in their family. http://robinsblueskies.blogspot.com/search/label/unschooling
If done well, unschooling isn't passive at all. It's a ton of work to give the kids the opportunity to learn and grow and get out into the world. |
Anonymous
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I'm 21:34, the homeschooling but not unschooling parent, and I thought I'd say a little bit about how homeschoolers are evaluated in MD, and how it might work for an unschooling family.
In MD, parents are supposed to document that their kids get instruction in the following subjects every year English Language Math Science Social Studies PE Heath Art Music Twice a year, homeschooling parents meet with public school employees for a "review". The kids do not need to come, but you can bring them if you like. In my case, the reviewer was a Pupil Personnel Worker, who had been pulled from his regular job for the day. At the meeting, you are supposed to explain what you did for each each subject for the time since you last were reviewed, and show 2 pieces of documentation. I took photos and screenshots and made PDFs for all my documents, so all I brought was an iPad, but some people bring whole crates of stuff. To give you a sense of the kinds of things that count, for English, I brought a paper that my son had written about a novel he read, and a screenshot of a grammar test he had taken in his online English class. For science, I brought a photo of a 3D model of a leg bone he had built. For PE I brought a log he had taken of the exercise he did over a 2 week period. For art, I brought a photo of a set he helped build for a theater production. For music, I brought a screenshot of the facebook page of the theater where they listed the cast for a musical. The reviewer doesn't ask you how many hours you spent on a subject. The materials you bring don't have to show that the kid is on grade level. For example, I forgot to bring math documentation, so I quickly pulled up two iPad apps we had done to review previous grade level work before starting Algebra 2 this fall. These were quick easy things, like a memory game to review times tables, that I did as a warm up the first week of school, and far below my kid's assigned grade, but they were accepted without question. I did explain, because I was kind of embarrassed to not have more challenging work to show, but I didn't have to. You don't leave the materials. Just spend 15 minutes reviewing them. I would imagine that most unschoolers would find that in the course of a year, their kid would have had meaningful experiences in each area. Whether it's a video of the kid swimming across the pool as PE documentation, or a score report from an online strategy game that you claimed as math, or a campaign flyer that they distributed while volunteering as an example of social studies. I know for me, that if my child was truly going for entire years without picking up something I could label as "math", whether it was measuring as part of a carpentry project, or playing a strategy game, then that would probably be a sign that I needed to stop unschooling, at least for math. Most of the parents I know who unschool long term do so because they find that their kids do seek out varied experiences on their own, when provided with a rich and stimulating environment. |