Unschooled kids more likely to go into the arts, tech, science

Homeschooling is the key word. I’ve run into this sort of thing with self-directed G&T programs and Hampshire college, but not in home schooling.

[quote=“earnestinebrown, post:15, topic:40839, full:true”]I feel like the system beats your natural inclinations out of you and pushes you in certain directions.[/quote]So it’s a bit like life in general, then.

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Why would they have no concept of history? At least in the US, I would think they would have a better chance of really learning history instead of the repetitive narrow version of it that’s taught for the first 12 years in public schools.

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I don’t know about that. Why would unschoolers be less interested in history than public school kids? If you’re not interested in history, being forced to temporarily memorize random facts about it for a year or two in your youth will produce the same effect in adulthood as not studying history at all.

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Hewitt also wrote a piece for the August? issue of Outside.

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Who’d want to study history when you can choose whatever else you’d like instead? A few, perhaps. Not most. And you’ll end up with a generation of uninformed voters.

That’s what I was looking for! I read that.

But…we already have uninformed voters. The current and traditional method of creating informed voters has generally failed to do so since about forever.

And who’d want to study history? Lots of kids! Of course, lots of kids don’t. The ones who do should be able to study the parts of history that interest them the most, instead of getting turned off of history by the rigid guidelines at school. The ones who don’t should be able to spend their time studying things that interest them.

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Disapproves.

“You! Yes, you! Stand still, laddie!”

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Who’d want to study history when you can choose whatever else you’d like instead?

You don’t seem to understand the type of individual that actually thrives in this kind of environment. i.e. one that wants to learn because they are interested in things. I’m also going to assume you have a personal distaste for history.

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I home schooled my kid from 3.5 to 6. She wanted to read at that age, and I’m like, ok, let’s do this. She entered 1st grade reading at the third grade level. Her math was high too, though I just did what the workbooks said. Funny thing was, in the beginning I had to make sure she was reading, vs just reciting a book we had read to her or she had read ~3 times.

Anyway, I am a bit leery of unschooling, as I think at an early age there needs to be some clear structure and Inquisition of the basics. Also, how do you know if you like or are good at something if you aren’t exposed to it first? I think in older kids who have the basics down and want to focus on certain interests it is a good thing. I have also seen a show (I think it was a Wife Swap) where some hippie “unschooled” and his daughter couldn’t read text messages from friends, and his boys interests were basically video games.

I know, I know, one parent’s half assery shouldn’t condemn the concept. I would just caution this isn’t a good fit for all children, and I would personally use it primarily for older kids. Note that with a structured home school environment you can make time for personal interest focused things.

I don’t get people who don’t like history. It’s basically story time full of interesting things.

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I don’t get people who don’t like history. It’s basically story time full of interesting things.

I think it can have a lot to do with the way one comes by it. For instance, if I’m interested in chemistry and am studying the bosch-haber process I’m one moments curiosity from being off and running on industrialization and 2 world wars.

If I’m sitting in a classroom and somebody is beating the story of Columbus sailing to America into my head for the 6th year straight, yeah. I’m not so interested.

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Most unschooling parents very consciously expose their kids to as much as possible in order to determine what to pursue.

Absolutely. I think sometimes people read articles about unschooling or homeschooling or some other education alternative and take it as saying we should replace public school with that thing. But of course, the point of these alternatives is that they work for some kids. Just like public school works for some kids. No method works for all kids. And that’s why it’s important for the millions of kids who are in public school, but utterly miserable there, to know that there are lots of different paths that lead to a happy, fulfilling adulthood.

Some day, I hope we don’t need to refer to any education as “alternative,” because there will be so many different kinds of education which meet the needs of so many different kinds of students.

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Followed by a test where you are asked to remember all of the annoying minutia (dates, full names, unimportant characters) or fail.

I love learning about history, but I hate memorizing all of the VP picks for the presidential losers since 1796.

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Public education kills intellectual curiosity, creativity, and motivation. The further I get away from high school, the more things I find interesting.

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There can be humanities nerds…

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This is why people think they don’t like history… The dead white “great” men version most people get in schools is so boring and tedious. No wonder why lots of people don’t care about it.

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Exactly. In school, history is too often treated like the Periodic Table of Elements, a rigid structure to be memorized, instead of what it really is: lots of great stories about people with strong personalities winning and losing on a grand scale.

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In my freshman high school world history class we only had to remember two dates - 1066 and 1215. Those two stuck with me. We did need to remember the order of other events and generaly who the people were but the teacher felt that the memorization of tons of “facts” wasn’t as useful as the flow. Turns out you remember some of the other things anyway when it is taught that way.

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