I’m curious to see some studies comparing “unschooled” kids to those who attended a school. What are their prospects in life, how happy are they overall, and what do they think of their experience. Anyone know of any?
Anecdote not sufficient I think. Results likely vary. Curious about overall picture.
nostr:npub1cly0v30agkcfq40mdsndzjrn0tt76ykaan0q6ny80wy034qedpjsqwamhz is an unschooling parent.
Yep, seen her notes. My guess is she’ll have nice things to say.
As an adult after being a schooled kid. I wish my parents had the time to homeschool me, they would have been good at it, but they both worked full time just to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. I hated school, the teachers, the uniform, the conformity, the bullies, the greyness of it all. Did you have a good experience? Are you considering unschooling/homeschooling?
Not considering currently. My school experience was not great but also wasn’t too terrible. I was never bullied, though there have been assholes here and there. I hated the classrooms. That being said, I think some of the experience may have been necessary and even useful. Dealing with unpleasantness in itself is a useful life skill.
Schools are run by the state. I know plenty of parents, teachers and pupils who would all rather private education. Life has plenty of unpleasantness even without school. Homeschooling is a luxury and I understand why people accept “free” state schools.
Hey 👋
Of course I'm going to chime in! 🤣
There is an overwhelming exodus out of the government school system. Daily, people are asking questions about #homeschooling and #unschooling which I think is fantastic for the kids. They are sooo lucky their parents can see an opportunity to do better things with that precious time as a child. ✨
In all of this, over the 8 (almost 9) years I've home educated, the most common sentiment for families leaving the school system is "I wish we did it sooner." 🫶
Each family operates differently and some might just not be able to make it work. It does take a lot of sacrifice as one parent will need to be around a lot of the time which may result in a one income home or the second income part time or weird hours.🧡
The only really negative experiences I've heard about tend to be from people who had parents who neglected them and didn't offer any educational experiences or people whose parents may have had significant and likely untreated/unmanaged mental health issues. 💜
What I like to ask people is, in your adult life, how much do you use that you actually learned in school? 😅
Usually, only teachers use the stuff they learned in school. Most office positions need the skill of LEARNING. And learn you tend to do on the job. School most often erodes the LOVE OF LEARNING. Whereas unschooling encourages children to follow their interests and go deep. 🥰
We teach our children that it doesn't matter if you change course when you're an adult. The most important skill is knowing how to learn and enjoy the process. 💫
Some books on the topic I've read / listened to that are fantastic are:
Hold on to your Kids - Gabor Mate
Free to Learn - Peter Gray
Weapons of Mass Instruction - John Taylor Gatto
My end point is, school takes 5-8 hours a day, five days a week, 40 ish weeks of the year for 12 years of their lives. So they can learn stuff they could learn in 10 minutes a day while they are small up to an hour or two a day as they are older (or on the job as an adult). And this time is essentially taken from the parents, often contributing to the breaking down of society as kids need their parents... Now days parents are constantly working. Kids are raising each other and it's a bit like Lord of the Flies. In much of the developed world youth bullying and suicide is at all time highs. 😭😭😭
I prefer to self custody my children's education & keep this valuable, precious time with them for myself rather than leave them in the custody of strangers who are trying to teach 10-30 kids in a classroom where it's set up that less than 10% will actually thrive. 💛💛💛
As a Catholic I prefer the idea of the parish local school than pure home schooling, as I heard some cases of children that group home schooled and they feel a big lack of socialization when around 14 yo.
If (very ifly) I ever have kids, they will not be put through the meat grinder of the US "education" system.
They will, however, be grounded in a very classical education and will certainly learn enough math to not be retarded when it comes to building stuff.
I'm very squiffy on some of the concepts of the "child led education." children do not know WTF they need to know in order to get a job and earn a living. I certainly am supportive of letting them pursue interests that they develop, but... Reading, writing, retoric, and math through geometry are the basics and they will learn those things. After that... 🤷♂️
“Unschooled” is such a wide definition. So many variables there. Depending on sample you’d get very different results
I don’t really know what it means
Let say I want to compare two methods and see which one delivers best “life results”. I would need to ensure that the sample I select for both are actually representative of the method.
So let’s assume that on one hand I have “public school attendees” and on the other I have “unschooled”. Public school attendees (within the same country) received very similar education to each other due to standardized curriculum and such. The “unschooled” might have received extremely different kinds of “non school education”
One one hand you have a biased sample, on the other you have a noisy sample. Hard to make sense of it.
Unschooling means different things to different people. Extremely hard to make sense of the value of it all, if any.
Brilliant question, & one I was looking to answer as a dad with young kids
I loved this book, which takes a good data oriented approach
Free to learn - Peter Gray
https://www.amazon.com.au/Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct-Self-Reliant/dp/0465084990
Thanks Jake!
I don't think unschooled people believe in studies any more nostr:npub198krwyj8uc63n9auvx56gtc7gk60lmm63cgxd7j62nev3yquqk3shkew2s
I think the same, how can you measure happiness - I can just say from my experience (and makes sense,), yes, unschooled kids are over all happier, sucessfull and healthy. And we should stop comparing schooled humans to unschooled humans, that's interesting for a short while, but doesn't make sense 😉 <3 <3 <3
In addition, who would fund the study? If the unschooled did it, it would be difficult for those in traditional education to trust it, and of course, if it were funded by the government, it would mean nothing to the unschooled. So, what would be the real purpose?
