That was a wonderful read, thank you! I'd like to have kids one day and I'm very interested in unschooling them. If I were to find a woman that was generally open-minded but skeptical of unschooling, do you have any resources, statistics, books, or other evidence in support of unschooling or similar approaches? I plan to do research on this but if you happen to know of anything you'd recommend, I'd appreciate that. It seems most research of alternative schooling is on homeschooling.
You might look at the literature on the Sudbury Valley School and other schools modeled on it, starting with the Wikipedia article, since that's probably the only place to find much on unschooling. What I would like to find and haven't is a book or article on unschooling or the Sudbury model written by an outsider rather than a partisan.
The Sudbury model combines freedom, unschooling, with democracy — the school is run by vote of the students and staff, including hiring. I approve of freedom, have mixed views of democracy. It has failure modes, one of which we encountered, which is why we eventually shifted to home unschooling. If you decide to do it you could either do it at home or try to find or found a school.
I have a good deal about unschooling on my blog, but most of it is here, aside from most of the comments. The problem is that my empirical evidence is limited to our two children.
It's a long story, but basically one staff member plus her daughter, who was the oldest kid in the class, plus I assume some allies, got control of the JC, the court system, and used it to punish or drive out students who they wanted to control or didn't approve of.
That is, of course, a very one sided account of what happened. We left. I think the school lasted another six years, which was longer than I expected, and I don't know the details of what led to its eventual closing.
When our daughter wanted to learn harp we found a harp teacher for her — and now our daughter is being paid to teach harp to someone else. When she wanted to learn Italian, which my wife doesn't know and I knew very poorly, we arranged for her to take a class at the university where I was teaching, as I think I mentioned.
Other people commenting on my blog when I discussed that there mentioned a kid, presumably a teenager, taking classes at a local community college. That has two further advantages. It provides grades that can be used as evidence when applying to college. And if he takes enough classes there he can reduce years in college, and their cost, by a year or two — end up with two years of community college, then transfer to a four year school for two more years.
Also, if you know other families that are home unschooling, you can offer to teach one of their kids something in exchange for their teaching your kid. And one commenter on my blog mentioned his son, who was interested in computers, apprenticing at a local computer shop. The closest we can to that was our daughter, who was thinking of possibly being a liberarian, volunteering at a local library.
Thank you, Professor Friedman, I think this is also very inspiring to Chinese society. Although most of what you said is the status quo in the United States, many Chinese parents are still superstitious about national public education...
Also, my English is not very good, please forgive me.
The idea that public schools are designed to impart academic knowledge is a pretense. The most important things public schools teach is how to endure, and inflict cruelty.
Cruel people are necessary in any society to serve as a buffer against cruel people from other societies. The Prussian education system, upon which the American one is based, was created to remedy the mediocre way Prussian soldiers were fighting in wars. They weren't MEAN enough, and this was and is a security issue.
School shootings are an example of public education working too well too fast. We want them shooting the enemy, not each other.
Knowledge is power, and power in the hands of mean people is a dangerous thing. This is why we are not taught things like critical thinking, or decision theory or finance. It is why they turn learning into a repulsive chore, to be avoided at all costs.
When I was 15, I read "the teenage liberation handbook" which is a book about unschooling aimed at teens. Afterwords I told my Grandparents (my gaurdians at the time) that I planned on getting my GED and leaving school early, going on to community college. My grandmother began to cry and then became angry, telling me that if I graduated early she would force me to get a minimum wage job instead of attending community College. My grandfather became angry, he made up an irrelevant story about how nobody hires people with GEDs and only an actual high school diploma would work. There behavior was shockingly out of character and I was perplexed as I was distraught. I finished up school after switching out of my honors classes and using the extra time available to study on my own, using libraries and the internet.
Meanness is ugly but necessary. It was not my place to be an enlightened, free-spirited intellectual. It was my place to be a mean, nasty, violent-minded person who protects people from other mean, nasty violent-minded individuals. Either by fighting and dying in a war or inventing new ways to kill people and break things that might contribute to our nation's security.
Someday, as a reward for this gross, but necessary task, I hope to be reincarnated as a child who is treated the same way as your children were. I believe now it was God who hardened my grandparents hearts because I was trying to take a shortcut to my reward without paying what I owed.
> In the standard model of schooling, someone else decides what is true and you believe him. Living by that approach is dangerous in the real world and not entirely safe even in school: Many of us remember examples of false information presented to us by teachers or textbooks as true.
An amusing anecdote from my own schooling: We were told to order the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages in historical sequence. I put Iron last and was told this couldn't be right, as Bronze took two different ores and was too complicated for Iron societies. I tried to argue that iron is a superior material and they wouldn't switch, but was unable to convince him. To be fair, though, I was confident here primarily because _that's the order in Runescape_, an even more pointless video game than Pokemon. (I was, of course, correct, but couldn't find any citation to prove it, even with time.)
I was taking a spelling quiz in seventh grade. One of the words was "enthusiasm". I spelled it correctly, and got marked wrong (the only answer marked wrong on my entire copy of the quiz). I pointed this out to a few classmates; they said they got it right by spelling it "enthusiam". I pointed this out to the teacher. The teacher insisted "enthusiam" was correct. She was busy enough with other students that I was able to peek at her teacher's copy of the textbook. It said "enthusiam". I insisted that my spelling must be correct, since it's pronounced with that second S. This was not good enough at the time.
What ultimately was good enough was me telling my father about this incident at dinner that night, followed by him making a special trip to the school the next morning with his copy of a dictionary, and meeting with the teacher in private. I remember her apologizing to me in front of the whole class that day, although with a warning to "not get too big a head about it". (I might have had a reputation by then of disputing teachers' answers when I thought they were mistaken.)
What interests me about that incident today, is the disadvantage I had at the time, not only in being only 11 years old and arguing with adults, but also in raw experience. Back then, I did not know enough about how textbooks are produced, to be able to argue convincingly why and how they could be mistaken; I assumed pretty firmly that they were infallible, and remember being rather shocked when I saw the textbook's (mis)spelling and genuinely wondering whether I had been wrong myself all that time. I did not understand English well enough to be able to argue convincingly that one could plausibly suspect an error, simply by comparing the word "enthusiasm" to similar words - admittedly, it's hard for me even now to produce suitably similar examples (plagiarism? microcosm? paroxysm?).
I'm fairly certain today that the only reason I truly had for spelling it the way I did was experience: I had read the word enough times before in other books, but didn't remember exactly where. I think this is important, when I put myself in the position of the teacher. While it's legitimate to expect an English teacher to be well-read enough to notice a misspelling of any of thousands of words, it's still possible to miss a few, and to have a contingency when that happens. I don't remember, but she may have had just that, and asked me to produce an example of my own spelling, and when I couldn't, concluding that I deserved the red mark, not for "misspelling", but rather for failing to defend my answer.
That was a wonderful read, thank you! I'd like to have kids one day and I'm very interested in unschooling them. If I were to find a woman that was generally open-minded but skeptical of unschooling, do you have any resources, statistics, books, or other evidence in support of unschooling or similar approaches? I plan to do research on this but if you happen to know of anything you'd recommend, I'd appreciate that. It seems most research of alternative schooling is on homeschooling.
You might look at the literature on the Sudbury Valley School and other schools modeled on it, starting with the Wikipedia article, since that's probably the only place to find much on unschooling. What I would like to find and haven't is a book or article on unschooling or the Sudbury model written by an outsider rather than a partisan.
The Sudbury model combines freedom, unschooling, with democracy — the school is run by vote of the students and staff, including hiring. I approve of freedom, have mixed views of democracy. It has failure modes, one of which we encountered, which is why we eventually shifted to home unschooling. If you decide to do it you could either do it at home or try to find or found a school.
I have a good deal about unschooling on my blog, but most of it is here, aside from most of the comments. The problem is that my empirical evidence is limited to our two children.
Thanks. If you're willing to share, what was the failure mode you encountered with your Sudbury Valley School?
It's a long story, but basically one staff member plus her daughter, who was the oldest kid in the class, plus I assume some allies, got control of the JC, the court system, and used it to punish or drive out students who they wanted to control or didn't approve of.
That is, of course, a very one sided account of what happened. We left. I think the school lasted another six years, which was longer than I expected, and I don't know the details of what led to its eventual closing.
I can recommend the book "free to learn"
Thank you!
I very much enjoyed it.
I was wondering if you had a way to help your kids when they were interested in subjects you didn't know very well?
When our daughter wanted to learn harp we found a harp teacher for her — and now our daughter is being paid to teach harp to someone else. When she wanted to learn Italian, which my wife doesn't know and I knew very poorly, we arranged for her to take a class at the university where I was teaching, as I think I mentioned.
Other people commenting on my blog when I discussed that there mentioned a kid, presumably a teenager, taking classes at a local community college. That has two further advantages. It provides grades that can be used as evidence when applying to college. And if he takes enough classes there he can reduce years in college, and their cost, by a year or two — end up with two years of community college, then transfer to a four year school for two more years.
Also, if you know other families that are home unschooling, you can offer to teach one of their kids something in exchange for their teaching your kid. And one commenter on my blog mentioned his son, who was interested in computers, apprenticing at a local computer shop. The closest we can to that was our daughter, who was thinking of possibly being a liberarian, volunteering at a local library.
Thank you, Professor Friedman, I think this is also very inspiring to Chinese society. Although most of what you said is the status quo in the United States, many Chinese parents are still superstitious about national public education...
Also, my English is not very good, please forgive me.
The idea that public schools are designed to impart academic knowledge is a pretense. The most important things public schools teach is how to endure, and inflict cruelty.
Cruel people are necessary in any society to serve as a buffer against cruel people from other societies. The Prussian education system, upon which the American one is based, was created to remedy the mediocre way Prussian soldiers were fighting in wars. They weren't MEAN enough, and this was and is a security issue.
School shootings are an example of public education working too well too fast. We want them shooting the enemy, not each other.
Knowledge is power, and power in the hands of mean people is a dangerous thing. This is why we are not taught things like critical thinking, or decision theory or finance. It is why they turn learning into a repulsive chore, to be avoided at all costs.
When I was 15, I read "the teenage liberation handbook" which is a book about unschooling aimed at teens. Afterwords I told my Grandparents (my gaurdians at the time) that I planned on getting my GED and leaving school early, going on to community college. My grandmother began to cry and then became angry, telling me that if I graduated early she would force me to get a minimum wage job instead of attending community College. My grandfather became angry, he made up an irrelevant story about how nobody hires people with GEDs and only an actual high school diploma would work. There behavior was shockingly out of character and I was perplexed as I was distraught. I finished up school after switching out of my honors classes and using the extra time available to study on my own, using libraries and the internet.
Meanness is ugly but necessary. It was not my place to be an enlightened, free-spirited intellectual. It was my place to be a mean, nasty, violent-minded person who protects people from other mean, nasty violent-minded individuals. Either by fighting and dying in a war or inventing new ways to kill people and break things that might contribute to our nation's security.
Someday, as a reward for this gross, but necessary task, I hope to be reincarnated as a child who is treated the same way as your children were. I believe now it was God who hardened my grandparents hearts because I was trying to take a shortcut to my reward without paying what I owed.
> In the standard model of schooling, someone else decides what is true and you believe him. Living by that approach is dangerous in the real world and not entirely safe even in school: Many of us remember examples of false information presented to us by teachers or textbooks as true.
An amusing anecdote from my own schooling: We were told to order the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages in historical sequence. I put Iron last and was told this couldn't be right, as Bronze took two different ores and was too complicated for Iron societies. I tried to argue that iron is a superior material and they wouldn't switch, but was unable to convince him. To be fair, though, I was confident here primarily because _that's the order in Runescape_, an even more pointless video game than Pokemon. (I was, of course, correct, but couldn't find any citation to prove it, even with time.)
Another anecdote here:
I was taking a spelling quiz in seventh grade. One of the words was "enthusiasm". I spelled it correctly, and got marked wrong (the only answer marked wrong on my entire copy of the quiz). I pointed this out to a few classmates; they said they got it right by spelling it "enthusiam". I pointed this out to the teacher. The teacher insisted "enthusiam" was correct. She was busy enough with other students that I was able to peek at her teacher's copy of the textbook. It said "enthusiam". I insisted that my spelling must be correct, since it's pronounced with that second S. This was not good enough at the time.
What ultimately was good enough was me telling my father about this incident at dinner that night, followed by him making a special trip to the school the next morning with his copy of a dictionary, and meeting with the teacher in private. I remember her apologizing to me in front of the whole class that day, although with a warning to "not get too big a head about it". (I might have had a reputation by then of disputing teachers' answers when I thought they were mistaken.)
What interests me about that incident today, is the disadvantage I had at the time, not only in being only 11 years old and arguing with adults, but also in raw experience. Back then, I did not know enough about how textbooks are produced, to be able to argue convincingly why and how they could be mistaken; I assumed pretty firmly that they were infallible, and remember being rather shocked when I saw the textbook's (mis)spelling and genuinely wondering whether I had been wrong myself all that time. I did not understand English well enough to be able to argue convincingly that one could plausibly suspect an error, simply by comparing the word "enthusiasm" to similar words - admittedly, it's hard for me even now to produce suitably similar examples (plagiarism? microcosm? paroxysm?).
I'm fairly certain today that the only reason I truly had for spelling it the way I did was experience: I had read the word enough times before in other books, but didn't remember exactly where. I think this is important, when I put myself in the position of the teacher. While it's legitimate to expect an English teacher to be well-read enough to notice a misspelling of any of thousands of words, it's still possible to miss a few, and to have a contingency when that happens. I don't remember, but she may have had just that, and asked me to produce an example of my own spelling, and when I couldn't, concluding that I deserved the red mark, not for "misspelling", but rather for failing to defend my answer.