A parent's job is to prevent their children from taking risks which have consequences beyond the child's ability to cope. E.g. my father spanked me (once!) because I crossed the road without adult supervision. My justification? "But I didn't get hit!" was insufficient for me to escape the spanking.
This is true for unschooling as well as anything else.
My children were unschooled. My son got a BA and MA in math in four years, and had enough credits for a BS in computer science, but was missing a requirement. My daughter got a PhD in sociology getting 4.0 grades or better (UConn lets professors give a 4.1 presumably for the students who really deserve a 4.0 when the other students didn't -- grade inflation is to blame).
When I was very young, about 7 or 8, (so this would have been about 1990) my teacher for some reason showed our class a movie about an unschooled girl. I remember it as a fairly slow and subtle drama, and therefore I can’t think why she chose to show it to a class of 7 year olds.
It depicted a family that unschooled their kids, and a bureaucracy that tried to prove they were therefore unfit parents. A climactic scene was the teenage girl having to prove in front of a court that she could read. Which she did, but with tears streaming down her face. I can’t recall the resolution - and I guess it’s possible we never finished it!
I’ve never been able to find this movie again. It would have been a UK made-for-TV drama.
Btw I don’t have any particular point with this, I’ve been very interested to read your posts on this and I’m quite sympathetic to the idea! Just something that came to mind 🙂
A parent's job is to prevent their children from taking risks which have consequences beyond the child's ability to cope. E.g. my father spanked me (once!) because I crossed the road without adult supervision. My justification? "But I didn't get hit!" was insufficient for me to escape the spanking.
This is true for unschooling as well as anything else.
My children were unschooled. My son got a BA and MA in math in four years, and had enough credits for a BS in computer science, but was missing a requirement. My daughter got a PhD in sociology getting 4.0 grades or better (UConn lets professors give a 4.1 presumably for the students who really deserve a 4.0 when the other students didn't -- grade inflation is to blame).
When I was very young, about 7 or 8, (so this would have been about 1990) my teacher for some reason showed our class a movie about an unschooled girl. I remember it as a fairly slow and subtle drama, and therefore I can’t think why she chose to show it to a class of 7 year olds.
It depicted a family that unschooled their kids, and a bureaucracy that tried to prove they were therefore unfit parents. A climactic scene was the teenage girl having to prove in front of a court that she could read. Which she did, but with tears streaming down her face. I can’t recall the resolution - and I guess it’s possible we never finished it!
I’ve never been able to find this movie again. It would have been a UK made-for-TV drama.
Btw I don’t have any particular point with this, I’ve been very interested to read your posts on this and I’m quite sympathetic to the idea! Just something that came to mind 🙂