
Would You Unschool Your Child?  - DuncanKinney
http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/2010/09/would-you-unschool-your-child/
======
tommynazareth
This page isn't loading for me, but to answer the question: absolutely.

My whole goal of becoming financially independent is based on my desire for
two things: the freedom to continue my own 'unschooling', and the ability to
invest all of my time and energy into my family. Sending my children to a
detention center five days a week is incompatible with the sort of family life
I'd like to have.

The biggest argument for sending kids to school is that it gives them an
opportunity to socialize. I'd agree with this in a limited sense. Yes, they
get to be surrounded by other children, but socialization outside of
sanctioned time periods is punished (I spent a lot of my time in school
sitting in 'timeout' in the hallway), and the socialization that occurs in
such an unnatural setting is probably not optimal - in fact, it's common in
America to refer to immature social settings as being 'high school'. I have
friends who were home schooled, and they had no trouble meeting friends during
their school age years.

I'd let my kids go to school to see what it is like, provided they know enough
not to buy in to it, and they are going just to have fun and make friends.

* I'm a little reluctant to make this claim, since I am not yet a parent, but it all boils down to this: there is no way in hell that anyone cares more about my children's education and personal development than I do, so I am the best candidate for assuming that responsibility.

~~~
reader5000
Agreed, one of the ironies of school is that one of its sole conceivable
benefits is socialization, which is heavily punished and restricted. I have no
idea where it was agreed upon that sitting passively listening to middle-aged
people lecture for six hours a day is in anyway helpful to a young person, but
whatever.

~~~
DuncanKinney
This socialization comment is one that my coworkers always brings up. "They're
breeding serial killers" he half-jokes.

I wasn't very well socialized in school. Maybe that's why I was interested in
writing this story.

~~~
tomjen3
Thats kind of funny, until you realize he is actually right.

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris would not have been serial killers if they had
not be so mercilessly bullied in school.

Granted most people don't end up as serial killers, but they do end up pretty
ruffled and with psychic scars for the rest of their life.

The irony is that if geeks actually did kill more people they would have women
falling all over them in prison.

~~~
tokenadult
_Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris would not have been serial killers if they had
not be so mercilessly bullied in school._

Causation for that has not been rigorously demonstrated. But, agreed, the
school social environment they were in is described by press reports as having
been toxic even before they brought their weapons to the school.

------
mquander
My contribution: If you're doing this, and you have a smart kid, for God's
sake, buy a lot of books, buy every book you can think of and put it in your
house. I can point at three quarters of my interests and trace them straight
back to books I picked off the shelf when I was 10. My parents had a lot of
books, but even so, I ended up having to re-read the ones that were
interesting to me instead of pushing further and learning more as a kid.

I think that if Amazon.com had existed and someone had given me a $500 gift
card to last the duration of my childhood, I would be a lot smarter and
better-educated than I am today, having established a better foundation.

~~~
edanm
This is the thing I'm most excited about for the future of the internet.
Forget Amazon - anyone with an internet connection has access to audio and
video lectures, notes and classwork from Harvard, MIT and others. Almost
anything you want to learn can be picked up online, and (illegal though it is)
any book you want to read can be found online.

But the best part is, _this hasn't sunk in yet_. So few people understand that
the world has gotten to a stage where you can get a university-level education
by yourself, based on what you feel like learning, from the comfort of your
own home.

I love this for two reasons. Firstly, I imagine that 20 years from now, when
this fact starts changing the world, that the world will be a much better
place for it. And secondly, as a person involved in tech (and
entrepreneurship), I have the ability to take part in the creation of this
brilliant future. A great time to be alive, I think :)

~~~
whyenot
_But the best part is, this hasn't sunk in yet. So few people understand that
the world has gotten to a stage where you can get a university-level education
by yourself, based on what you feel like learning, from the comfort of your
own home._

But you can't, at least not in the biological sciences, unless your home has
an autoclave, ultracentrifuge, laminar flow hood, etc. Same could be said for
civil engineering, chemistry, or any other discipline with a lab or field
component.

~~~
DennisP
Suppose there were facilities to rent lab space by the hour?

You'd need some formal training on safety issues but maybe you could get
educated a lot more cheaply then with the full university system.

------
SandB0x
Wait wait wait. I don't understand this. Unschooling simply seems to mean
"being a good parent". Can someone explain the distinction? The Unschooling
website doesn't help me either:

"Unschooling is following your children's lead...Unschooling isn't a method of
instruction, it's a different way of looking at learning..."

Outside of school, my parents encouraged and helped me to learn interesting
subjects, play musical instruments, paint, build things with Lego, play
sports. When I asked my dad about computers he taught me Pascal. They did all
this not because school was bad (it was great actually), but because they
wanted to support me. I thought that's just what good parents are meant to do.
What do the Unschooler people think parents do by default?

~~~
tptacek
Doesn't "unschooling" mean "unstructured homeschooling"? People who believe in
unschooling generally aren't sending their kids to school at all.

I think this might get tricky because "unschooling" is a new-ish term, and is
pretty overtly trying to pick up steam as a "movement" or a "sensibility" or
an "ethic" and is deliberately being inclusive; no doubt someone on HN is
going to chime in and say they're an unschooler who sends their kids to public
K12.

~~~
joshkaufman
I think most people use "homeschooling" in the sense of re-creating a school
environment at home - assignments, textbooks, tests, etc. At least one of the
parents is expected to take on the role of the teacher, with all that implies.

"Unschooling" does away with most of the conventions of traditional schooling,
and tries to give kids as much freedom as possible to explore and learn on
their own, under the assumption that kids learn better that way.

There may be more or less structure involved, at the discretion of the
parents, but the parent is more of a facilitator and less of an teacher. The
theory is that the trappings of school get in the way of actual learning, so
unschooling tries to remove as many unnecessary obstacles as possible.

~~~
tptacek
Yeah I believe you and I'm sure this is all great (as a parent of 2 school-
aged handfulls, "good luck with that", as they say).

My point is just that unschoolers aren't sending their kids to a big brick
building full of professional teachers.

------
joshkaufman
My wife and I are expecting in December, and we're planning on some variation
of unschooling for our children, starting at an early age. Based on the
research we've done, it's a straightforward way to get better educational
results for your kids if done properly.

We're planning on some variation of the "Robinson Curriculum"
(<http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/>), which in essence is a simple daily
structure of (1) a daily math lesson, from the Saxon math series or similar,
(2) daily reading, based on their interest but with a few recommendations, and
(3) daily writing about any topic that interests them, which is then proofread
and corrected by the child.

"Socialization" is pretty much a non-issue, as far as I'm concerned. The above
structure takes a few hours a day, so there's more than enough time for play
and structured activities like sports or music if they're interested. As
tommynazareth commented, the socialization in schools is mostly negative.

The key seems to be striking a balance between a clear and simple structure
and letting your child follow their interests. It also requires some self-
control by the parents - it's better to let your kids struggle at times when
they find hard problems than immediately jump in and help them. The parent
isn't doing the teaching - they're helping the child learn to self-educate,
which is a major difference.

I want my children to be able to think clearly, learn essential skills, and be
able to teach themselves anything they're interested in learning. I don't
believe the public school system is capable of doing that, which is why we're
looking to do it ourselves.

~~~
marknutter
I've never met a home-schooled kid who wasn't social awkward. I really hate
the current education system, but I also recognize that the social skills
developed there are almost as important as the formal education kids get..
perhaps even more so.

~~~
joshkaufman
I think a child's social skills are very influenced by the _type_ of
environment at home.

Many families homeschool because they want to intentionally "protect"/isolate
their children from the mainstream. This is very common with religious
families that choose to homeschool so their kids (1) are exposed to the
family's values and belief system to the exclusion of others, and (2) aren't
corrupted by the evils of the outside world. That's a perfect recipe for
social awkwardness.

Isolation is not a primary component of the homeschooling/unschooling
approach. In fact, if your goal is to expose your kids to as many cool things
and people as possible, more unstructured time doing things in the real world
may actually make them more socially skilled than their peers.

~~~
fr0sty
This is just as unfair a characterization of home-schoolers as the GP.

~~~
joshkaufman
What part do you think is an unfair characterization - that some parents
prefer to isolate their children for religious/moral reasons, or that doing so
can lead to social awkwardness?

According to a 2001 U.S. Census survey, 33% of homeschooling households cited
religion as a factor in their choice, 14% objected to what the school teaches
(i.e things like evolution), and 9% cited morality. (See data at
[http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/...](http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/twps0053.html#data)
and
[http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/...](http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/tab05.txt))

In a 1999 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, only 48.9% of
US homeschooling parents cited "Can give child better education at home" as
the primary reason for homeschooling. That means 51.1% of homeschooling
parents in the US think their kids would get a better education at school, but
choose to homeschool for other reasons, which are primarily religious/moral in
nature.

I'm not saying all homeschooling parents (which includes all religious
homeschooling parents) want to isolate their children. The point is that, for
a non-trivial percentage of parents, removing their children from the
mainstream _is a primary motivation for homeschooling_.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"That means 51.1% of homeschooling parents in the US think their kids would
> get a better education at school"_

No, that's not what it means.

It means 48.9% thinks "better education" is their main reason for
homeschooling. For the other 51.1%, "better education" is not the main reason,
but may still be on the list.

It's true that a non-trivial percentage want to isolate their children from
the mainstream, but please do not misrepresent the statistics to make your
point.

~~~
joshkaufman
That was what I thought at first too, until I double-checked the study. If you
look at the data here
([http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/...](http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053/tab05.txt)),
the cumulative percentage is 214.2%. That means it wasn't a "multiple choice,
pick one" question - it was a "mark one or more reasons" question.

That means that 51.1% of parents surveyed did not mark "quality of education"
as a reason they chose to homeschool - it was on the list as an option they
could have marked, and they chose not to pick it. That's pretty telling, IMO.

~~~
bugsy
Parents can also believe that homeschooling does just as good a job as other
schools.

Because they don't list that their motivation was that they can do better than
a public school does not mean that they believe they will do worse.

Consider the case of someone sending their child to a French immersion school.
Most would not say that the immersion school is better than all other schools,
but that doesn't mean they believe they believe it is worse. Likely they are
sending their children there because they want them to learn to speak French
fluently, not because they believe other schools are worse.

Here's a more recent study from the US Department of Education:

[http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/TableDisplay.asp?Tabl...](http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/TableDisplay.asp?TablePath=TablesHTML/table_4.asp)

This 2003 study is considered to be far superior to the 1999 one cited for
reasons discussed in this article:

<http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/parentsreasons.asp>

For example, on the 1999 study two flaws listed are "when faced with an open-
ended question, parents may not have recalled or responded with all of the
reasons for homeschooling that were applicable to their situation" and
"parents were not specifically asked to report their primary reason for
homeschooling".

As you can see the 2003 study addresses these procedural errors and breaks out
factors cited at all separately from those cited as primary concern.

The most listed factor for both was environmental factors in other schools,
meaning "safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure". This was a concern of
85.4% of families, and the most important factor for 31.2%.

Dissatisfaction with academic quality of other schools was a factor in 68.2%
of families, but a primary reason in only 16.5%

Regarding the assumptions made previously that any included component of
religious or moral instruction implies isolationism and a lack of
socialization, that claim is not supported by studies.

------
roqetman
Tried it. Didn't work for my children. As the article says though, it's not
for everyone. My kids are super-smart, but lazy, and unfortunately need
structure. I homeschooled them for several years, but both of them asked to go
to "real" school eventually, one by the age of 6 and the other by 8 (they were
about 2 years ahead of the other kids when they enrolled). I think that it's
worth the experiment though, but be prepared for the unexpected as you're
dealing with an individual, not an ideal.

~~~
mturmon
Such a smart comment. The ideals matter, but so do the individual kids. What
works for some may not work for your kids, or for you as a parent. Being
adaptive gives better results than following the One True Way. Especially with
a thing like "childhood," which is so idealized -- it's easy to get carried
away.

Also, as a parent, you have to remember that your issues about school (too
strict, too unstructured, too much bullying, not enough recess, whatever) are
likely to _not_ be the issues of your kids.

You shouldn't be making their educational choices to compensate for
retrospectively-understood mistakes in your own education.

------
nicholasjbs
As a life-long unschooler, I'd answer with an emphatic yes (though I don't
actually plan to have kids of my own). Letting me direct my own education was
without a doubt the single greatest thing my parents did for me in life.

"Last year Shea’s son wanted to do more math so, deviating from the strict un-
schooling line of thought, they placed him in an online math course."

This sentence struck me as odd. This could only be construed as "deviating
from the strict un-schooling line of thought" (whatever that means) if they
placed their son in the course against his will. But the article explicitly
states that he was interested in learning more math. Many of the unschoolers I
know take take formal classes in subjects that interest them.

------
dnsauve
While I love the idea of homeschooling and unschooling, I can't quite figure
out how people do this while still managing to pay their bills. Wouldn't this,
in essence, take up a significant portion of your day, preventing you from
working?

~~~
tbrownaw
My mom stayed home with us while Dad worked (now that we're all grown she got
a new job, the sort that has a commute and is counted in GDP). I think the
other homechool families in the area did the same thing.

This being HN, I suppose another option would be for one parent to run some
sort of e-business that allows them to have an opposite schedule and take
turns working vs being with the kids.

------
kls
We Homeschool, My wife is a full time mom, she was a practitioner so has a lot
of Bio background. I Freelance, and generally work from home. I have a friend
here in my home town that came back from the valley after a successful exit
who introduced us to the concept of unschooling.

I was extremely skeptical of homeschooling in general, when my wife decided
that we should do it. But with the gangs, drugs and actual lack of eduction
being taught in schools I decided that we would probably be doing them no
harm.

After a few years of homeschooling and the return of my friend who was
unschooling his children we decided to give unschooling a try. Before
homeschooling there is no way that you could have convinced me that some hair
brained idea like let you kids choose what they want to do would ever work.

It has changed my perception of how children learn now. My 4 year old is
putting together robots and working out logic with a Lego Mindstorm, set and
my 12 year old is well into Algebra and rivals any professional graphic artist
or digital media professional I have ever seen.

Most of the kids that we know in the homeschooling and unschooling social
circles enter into collage at between 14 and 16 years of age. Something is
obviously working here.

~~~
jsharpe
As always, correlation is not causation. I was unschooled, and a lot of people
get into it precisely because school is simply too slow for their kids. It
isn't surprising that these kids would go on to be very bright.

------
sumeetjain
_"...un-schooling is learning without the trappings of a formal schooling
arrangement. It is the act of trusting your child’s natural curiosity to teach
them what they need to know. This is not to say that you abandon your children
at the playground and pick them up at the end of the day, mind you. Instead,
the parent plays a critical role as a resource who is there to answer
questions, to talk with and to provide support."_

I like this article. It's an explanation of one of the many ways in which
people are decentralizing their lives (Other ways include the returns and
growth of local food and entrepreneurship).

Of course, decentralization of education means that parents and/or local
communities _have_ to be more involved in their children's educations. But I
think the larger point is that in order to do that, people need to be less
involved with other things. I hope I live long enough to see the culture shift
towards smaller lifestyles with an emphasis on more diversity and creativity.

------
brlewis
Unschooling seems vaguely defined, but it seems to sit on the child-initiated
end of the spectrum. Traditional schooling is at the teacher-initiated end.
I'm a fan of the Montessori style, which is near the middle. It's a great
balance of freedom and structure.

~~~
lotharbot
One of the keys to both Montessori style instruction and "un-schooling" is the
recognition that children learn at their own pace. Sometimes their brains
aren't ready for a particular topic, and trying to get them to learn it too
early can do a lot of harm (much like "learning" a physical activity before
the muscles and bones are ready for it), or at the very least won't do much
good. On the other hand, when a kid is ready to learn a topic, he may pick it
up much more quickly than the lesson plans expect. Teacher-initiated
schooling, with its curriculum and standards boards, usually doesn't have the
flexibility to accommodate different kids' different readiness to learn
different topics.

Within the context of child-initiated learning, it's certainly worthwhile to
have someone introduce a child to new topics, inspire them to learn, and
provide answers to their questions. Some amount of structure and some amount
of teacher initiation is useful.

With my own children, I plan to be somewhere on the un-schooling-to-Montessori
end of the spectrum. Figuring out where will be a learning experience for me,
too.

~~~
bmj
This is true, and homeschooling with some sort of curriculum is a nice
balance, I think. My wife and I follow a "classical" curriculum with our kids
at home, but at the same time, we are flexible according to what works and
what doesn't, and what they enjoy. And, hopefully, we're developing and
nuturting their intellectual curiosity.

------
kenjackson
If I was unschooled as a child, I think my every minute would have been
playing basketball and Atari.

It would seem to me, that children need a good deal of direction. I was
curious as a child, but I don't think I was curious about math, until I
learned about it.

And I think this actually gets worse in high school. Where I'd probably do
math/programming 24/7 and never read another non-technical book. Or study any
history, biology, chemistry, music, etc...

Seems like you need a good balance. The parent needs to be more than simply a
resource. The parent needs to be... well a parent. Someone who guides the
child to areas that they might be interested in, even if the child doesn't
know it. And in some cases pushes the child.

~~~
nickpinkston
They say "not to say you abandon your child at the playground". Every kids
plays the "why" game with their parents. They're naturally curious assuming
they're stimulated. You can feed this curiosity and see where it takes them.
If they love sports, see if they're interested in reading about the greats, or
looking at stats, etc.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>Every kids plays the "why" game with their parents.

So far my eldest lad hasn't, perhaps for one day, I think it's because I kinda
overload him with questions and suggestions as to why things might be, trying
to stimulate him to think of possible answers.

He does come up with some humdingers though - "how do we move our arms",
"what's water made of" were two of his most recent. I'm not sure that he took
in all of the info on motor-neurons or realised that he should be surprised
that H and O gases combine to a room temperature liquid.

Re your last sentence, I always loved sport but (despite doing Maths at Uni)
have never been in the least bit interested in statistics related to it.
Horses for courses, or something.

------
petercooper
Because the article mentioned not memorizing the alphabet, I thought I could
ask a question I've been pondering on a while.

Beyond looking at print indexes and dictionaries, is there any compelling
reason to learn the _order_ of the alphabet anymore? Lists are often in
alphabetical order but it's not a strict requirement to know the ordering to
use those lists, and most datasets online have search. As do digital
dictionaries. Could the relentless switch to all-digital content make the
alphabet only a cute, optional thing to memorize?

~~~
geuis
I think teaching your kids the alphabet isn't asking for too much. And
whatever you do, don't mix up the letter order.

I was unlucky enough when I was a young kid (5 or 6) to be enrolled at a
school for a few weeks during the start of the year while my parents were
moving. (We were staying with family in a different town than the one we were
moving to).

The teacher started the year by helping us learn to read. I could already read
a little at this point, some of the other kids couldn't yet. She went through
this process by teaching random letters from the alphabet. x, b, and k one
day, and g, p, s the next.

This confused the _hell_ out of me. It also did no service to the other kids
who were trying to learn. After a couple of weeks of me telling my parents
about it seeing my reading comprehension actually getting _worse_ , they
pulled me from the school for the last week until we moved, if I remember
correctly.

And to put this all in perspective, I have always been a voracious reader.
There was barely a moment growing up that I can remember not being with a
book. In school I was always at least 2-3 years ahead of most of my peers when
it came to reading, language, etc. I'm lucky I didn't have to keep that one
backwards teacher.

~~~
petercooper
_I think teaching your kids the alphabet isn't asking for too much._

I agree. I was doing a little thought experiment, though, to analyze why that
is. I don't like believing something without knowing the value of believing it
;-)

 _And whatever you do, don't mix up the letter order._

This, though, I am unsure about.

I appreciate hearing your experiences but I'm not convinced one teacher's
approach invalidates the technique. With the synthetic phonics approach that's
common here in the UK, the focus is typically on learning letters in relation
to their use in simple words (like 'cat'). The order of the alphabet isn't
ignored, but this is left till later when the names of the letters are covered
(this comes after learning all of the "sounds").

I still need to do a lot more reading into this, but my own daughter's
approaching the stage where she'll be interested in specific letters and I was
planning to focus on the sounds she takes an interest in and their associated
representations and worry about the "alphabet" somewhat later on. Phonics is
not without its detractors though so, as I say, I need to do more reading ;-)

------
Alex3917
"The current K-12 educational system exists, generally speaking, for two
primary reasons. First, its scalability makes it easy for the state to educate
its citizens, and second, it gives children and teens a shared public space
where they learn to interact with others and hopefully pick up some societal
norms."

This is completely wrong. The five functions of school are generally
recognized to be Training, Sorting, Socialization, Caretaking, and FRPL. The
author doesn't even get partial credit, because each function affects how each
other function is implemented. So a school system whose only roles were
teaching and socialization would have essentially zero in common with our
school system today.

"Influential books in the un-schooling canon include Deschooling Society by
Ivan Illich"

The thesis of Illich's book is (IIRC) that one of the biggest flaws of society
is that each area of life is dominated by only a few major schools of thought,
and these schools of thought tend to favor the elites. The book isn't even
about education, let alone unschooling, albeit a lot of his examples are about
education merely because it turns the title into a clever pun.

In any event, do you really want to be taking advice from someone whose
clearly never actually read a book about education, or any of the vast amounts
of research?

~~~
crpatino
I would down vote you if I could.

1) The article does not say that the main function of K12 system is to be
scalable. It says that scalability was an important concern on how the system
was designed to accomplish its functions. You are comparing apples to oranges.

2) What is FRPL in the first place? or your full 5 list for the matter. Most
of your audience is not a M.Ed. but most are smart enough to follow your
argument if you take the time to present it. Please spare us the letter soup.

3) The idea that only the pundits and experts have the right to express an
opinion about the subject is not one very favorable in this forum. Do not
disqualify the argument because it lacks the "proper credentials".

~~~
Alex3917
1) I was sort of ignoring the scalability part and responding as if it just
said education and socialization. The author never mentions scalability again
in the article, so it's not even clear why it's there.

2) FRPL is free and reduced price lunch. One of the main reasons why schools
exist is to feed children whose parents wouldn't otherwise have enough money
to feed them. In many parts of the country kids gain weight throughout the
spring and fall, and then come back a lot thinner after winter and summer
break because they don't get very much food at home. But designing schools to
fulfill has a huge effect on the pedagogical and other functions of school.

3) I'm not criticizing the author for lacking the proper credentials, I'm
criticizing him for being wrong.

------
bugsy
A lot of the controversy comes from the reality that there's no single
definition for unschooling so it can range from montessori style progressive
education in which facilitators help the independent learner explore a
curriculum of their own choosing, right through keeping the children chained
in a basement and fed raw potatoes and water. Everyone would agree the latter
is abuse and not really homeschooling or unschooling, but the minute fraction
of parents with children chained up in basements are of course going to claim
that the children are homeschooled in order to explain why they aren't in
school.

In between there are parents who allow their children to play in meadows each
day as Rousseau recommended, to run their own private web business at age 11,
as well as those who feel that watching TV and playing video games for several
hours a day is educational.

Overall, most unschoolers produce kids more educated and capable than public
school graduates.

This is mostly possible due to the poor state of public schools in general,
which comes from trendy theories and government muddling rather than any lack
of funding or talent.

------
tallanvor
I would not consider "unschooling" or home-schooling for a child, nor do I
think it is a good option for the majority of children.

People love to malign the public school system, but the truth is that in most
places in the western world children have the opportunity to get an excellent
education. The problem is that more and more parents don't seem to take the
time to teach their children to respect others, be it authority figures,
peers, or anyone else. Children who are taught by their parents that it's fine
to be disruptive (at inappropriate times, at least), ignore their
responsibilities, and generally think it's ok to do whatever they want make it
harder for the other children to learn.

The field of education has evolved over hundreds of years, and there are
plenty of researchers working hard to find better ways to teach children. I
certainly don't agree with all the methods they are trying today, but that
doesn't mean that I feel many parents can do a better job.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>Children who are taught by their parents that it's fine to be disruptive (at
inappropriate times, at least), ignore their responsibilities, and generally
think it's ok to do whatever they want make it harder for the other children
to learn.

The system tends to reinforce the behaviour by not ejecting those who are
disruptive to the severe detriment, IMO, of those others who are not.

------
euroclydon
We're unschooling, but with backstops on reading. If the kids don't want to
read for several days in a row, then unfortunately we're going to have to find
a way to compel them to. They're young, and reading is the predicate for
everything; if we can get 'em into it, hopefully this unschooling will pick up
steam.

~~~
tokenadult
A good book for developing reading skill and getting kids hooked on reading
(it has worked for all four of my children) is Let's Read: A Linguistic
Approach.

[http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-
Bloom...](http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-
Bloomfield/dp/0814311156)

------
j_baker
I like the idea and feel that a significant number of students (including
myself when I was in school) would benefit from it. I think the majority of
students are better off with some kind of formal education. Now, whether we're
providing the appropriate formal education is another question entirely.

------
hnal943
This sounds a lot like the Montessori philosophy

------
davidcuddeback
When I have kids, I might consider this. One of my big fears is that I may not
be the most qualified person to teach my children. The idea of un-schooling
actually reminds me of a program that I went through in elementary school.

When I was in elementary school, I was identified as a "gifted" pupil. Once a
week, I was removed from regular class for a few hours and sent to the GATE
program (Gifted And Talented Education). It was run in a way that my natural
curiosity led me to learn things that were considered above my level. For
example, one of the activities that GATE provided was being able to draw
pictures by plotting coordinates. You would be given a set of instructions
that looked like:

    
    
        (2,2)
        (2,6)
        (6,6)
        (6,2)
        (2,2)
        STOP
        (2,6)
        (6,2)
        STOP
    

That would draw a square with a diagonal line through it. Of course, they had
more interesting pictures than this example, such as a horse. Naturally, I
wanted to draw these pictures, so I learned how to plot coordinates. Later, I
discovered a more challenging set of pictures--the coordinates involved
negative numbers, and the grid included all four quadrants of a Cartesian
coordinate plane. My teacher gently nudged that it's more advanced, but when I
wanted to try anyway, she taught me about negative numbers and I was
successful at plotting the negative coordinates. This was all while my peers
who were not attending the GATE program were still learning basic arithmetic.

Later, in 4th and 5th grade, I was put in a full-time GATE class. This was a
regular class in elementary school, which was comprised entirely of "gifted"
pupils. It wasn't free-form like the weekly GATE sessions, but it was
structured in a way that helped gifted pupils more than a regular classroom. I
think the GATE program is partially responsible for me excelling in math. When
I arrived at junior high (6th grade), I was placed in the _advanced_ 7th grade
math--honors pre-algebra.

There's a little bit of information about the GATE program here:
<http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/gt/gt/>, but that resource is mostly bureaucrat-
speak.

Another resource that helped me excel in math was my 2nd grade teacher. I was
picking up math faster than the other students, so my mom suggested that I ask
my teacher for something more challenging. I did, and my teacher gave me a
different assignment from the rest of the class. (I don't remember today what
those assignments were--probably double digits when the rest of the class was
learning single digits.) I remember during a car ride home asking my mom and
older sister how to multiply double digit numbers. They explained it to me and
wrote down a few problems for me to work out.

The tl;dr version of my comment is: I completely agree with the premise that a
child's natural curiosity is an excellent catalyst for learning. If you're
lucky, you might find a resource that nurtures your child's curiosity, even in
the institutionalized school system.

~~~
ScottBurson
"One of my big fears is that I may not be the most qualified person to teach
my children."

Maybe not "the most qualified", but you sound pretty smart to me, and there
are a lot of thoroughly unqualified teachers in the school systems. I think
you'll find you can pick up anything you need to know pretty quickly.

