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 âfactsâ wasnât 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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âHe was satisfied with the number of responses, but cautions that, as with many social science studies, the necessarily limited collection method may have produced a biased sample that may not represent the entire population of unschoolers. Such studies can nevertheless yield useful insights, he says, especially when considered in concert with other data, such as other surveys, or patterns that emerge from anecdotal accounts.â
All I needed to see in the article. Itâs a collection of interesting anecdotes, your mileage may vary.
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Or also, lots of people who are now lost to history, with or without strong personalities, winning and losing on a grand scaleâŚ
This is true, too. Iâll bet that some of the very best stories in history will never be heard.
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Corey should know better than to post articles about self-selected surveys and âresearchâ which is published in books rather than in the peer-reviewed literature.
I mean, âResearcher who supports unschooling finds that other people who support unschooling think unschooling is goodâ is not a terribly interesting result. Especially when I donât see the actual data posted anywhere.
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Yeah. Itâs always neat when someone is able to unearth something and write a great narrative using history from the bottom up. This is a great example of that - I love, love, love this book:
I didnât major in statistics, but these results seem questionable at best, totally biased at worst.
Iâm still far too uninformed to say either way on unschooling, but did anyone else think of the film âSurfwiseâ when reading this?
BTW, if you havenât seen it, and this topic interests you, watch âSurfwise.â
I went to an âalternativeâ middle-high school, which I think falls within his definition, and my experience kind of supports these findings. My school gave kids a great deal of freedom. Classes were scheduled like college courses, so we were in classroom only 2-4 hours a day. The rest of the day we were expected to study and research, but it was mostly grabass.
We had a vast number of creative kids, as well as techie kids, and there was a lot of overlap. We also got kids with discipline issues, but they often turned out to be bright kids who got bored and got high and got busted. About 95% of my class went on to college.
I donât have any statistics at all, but of the dozen Iâm still in touch with, thereâs a tech millionaire, a professional musician, a fantasy author, a professor of physics⌠and some corporate drones such as myself. A pretty high number of self-employed, compared to everybody.
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I remember watching a documentary about this place:
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That looks amazing, thanks so much for the tip!
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The data is linked to in the linked article.
http://jual.nipissingu.ca/2013/01/12/year-2013-volume-7-issue-14/
I donât think the point was to interview people who support unschooling, so much as it was to interview people who were actually unschooled. There are too many people who reflexively oppose unschooling as something that just canât prepare kids for adulthood. And while I donât think one can extrapolate too much from a limited study like this, itâs fair to say it acts as clear evidence that unschooling can work.
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I thought the father in âSurfwiseâ wasnât paying as much attention to his kidsâ wants and needs as he could or should have been. It was his way or the highway and I think thatâs a terrible foundation for an education.
Also, I donât think there were any âresultsâ in this study, other than a description of what the unschoolers who were interviewed reported. The âlikely to go into arts, tech, scienceâ angle is kind of distracting from the interesting information contained in the study.
Honestly, the dead white âgreatâ men history is the stuff I like. Does that make me a bad person? I love reading about battles and invasions, and major events, that sort of thing. Things like Simon Schamaâs History of Britain, Richard Holmesâ War Walks, or The World at War fascinate me.
I didnât like history at school because it was all about poor kids in Victorian workhouses and the Kayapo (as mentioned elsewhere, had to do Humanities, not History). Bored me to tears.
Yes, my school was modeled on Summerhill, not that we kids cared.
Not at all. Lost of history nerds love the dead white great men stuff - go look at the history section in a B&N sometimes⌠thatâs what sells. But the way itâs taught is often boring and dry. And Iâd argue that âhistory from belowâ doesnât need to replace the grand narrative, but it should complicate it. The question isnât how did some people in charge hurt or help those poor victorian kids, rather itâs a question of âhow does the interactions between the poor victorian kids and the elites making policy shape historical eventsâ. So, I get my poor kids and you get your great men. And itâs all about change over time and what is the engine of that change.
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Iâd probably do a lot better now, too, since Iâm noticeably less militaristic than I was when I was 14âŚ
I think a balance is needed. So when studying the Industrial Revolution the stuff that interests me (and was missed out) is the individual stories of people like James Watt, Richard Trevithick etc, but you need to contrast that with the effect on e.g. those poor Victorian kids, or the environment. 14 year old me would still have been bored by those, but old me can recognize the importance of knowing about themâŚ
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Oh there are certainly lit nerds and others, but Iâm trying to picture a philosophy nerd and my brain canât seem to handle the idea. You might need special instrumentation to spot that one.
Aikimo, I agree. I wasnât using âSurfwiseâ as an example of unschooling, it was just the most recent and vivid example that Iâve seen of an alternative upbringing. The children were very much left to their own devices and I think because the father was so oblivious to his children it might have been beneficial for them to have a more structured education, for the attention alone. With things like this though, itâs impossible to say whether things could have been different or better than the way they actually turned out.
In terms of the âstudy,â I feel like itâs more of a first person account of what it was like for people to grow up âunschooledâ rather than a comparison between public schooling, private schooling, home schooling, and/or unschooling. Also, people who fell through the cracks or didnât succeed in their unschooling I feel had no incentive or no reason to even be aware of this study, which is why I think it should only be seen as testimony to the success of unschooling on these particular individuals and not as a system of education.
But again, this is an extremely complex matter which makes us question what we expect from education, how we measure success and happiness, and the role of our upbringing and education in our overall quality of life as an adult. Making things even more complicated is then taking these beliefs and then using them to help shape the life of another, specifically our children.
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Thatâs how it often is with assumptions, completely off the mark.
