Grand Forks area talk un-schooling their children
November 13, 2012 at 2:00 am in Grand Forks Herald
Un-schooling is a type of home schooling that some parents use as an alternative to sending their kids to public or private schools. No specific curriculum is used.
The unconventional approach to education promotes learning that’s driven by the child’s interests and occurs at the child’s own pace. Continue Reading
Sounds interesting, and I have no doubt that these children will score high on college entrance exams. This however leads to a question will they be able to engage in a structured University environment when and if they choose to obtain a degree?
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While there is plenty of discussion regarding the benefits and detriments of public schools, home schooling and now un-schooling, one common thread between successful students is constructively engaged parents. Regardless of where children are taught, if their parents are constructively engaged in the learning process children will do well. Home schooling and un-schooling work because parents in those settings are constructively engaged in the learning process, whether it is formal home schooling or less structured un-schooling. I suspect that those children would also do well in public schools because their parents would be constructively involved in that setting too. Yes, there are exceptions and there are some people who lack the skills necessary to home school their children but by in large people who make that choice have the skills and desire to make it successful.
That is not to say public schools are not as good when measured on an individual student basis. Students in public schools who have constructively supportive parents excel. Unfortunately there are parents who are not constructively engaged in the education process and see school as an extension of daycare (yes, that is a gross exaggeration, but you get the point). Good teachers and self-motivated students can overcome poor parenting, but that is a struggle that most students lose. My definition of constructively engaged includes parents providing proper nutrition and rest, parents using proper grammar, parents reading to their children and assisting with their homework, parents encouraging school activities, parents monitoring their child’s progress, parents being physically active with their children and parents having knowledge of what their children are doing. All of these things can be provided by parents regardless of their economic or social circumstances.
The real question is not which method is better, the question is how can each setting be improved to provide the best opportunity for every student. In my opinion the solution is simple to articulate but would be very hard to implement; encourage parents to be constructively engaged. We have created a public education system that does not encourage parental participation but facilitates a lack of participation.
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What I want to know is what’s going to happen when these kids get jobs and the boss tells them to do something they don’t want to do? Any statistics on that?
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Realist, good questions. Perhaps someone will be able to unearth a study that has been done and share it with us. I can share my own personal observations having had three sisters, one who was a public school teacher, one who home schooled her children and one who is/was a “free spirit” single parent who sent her child to public schools. As you can guess, my sister who was a public school teacher thought home schooling was a terrible idea, an opinion shared by most of the family including myself; there were a lot of predictions on how the home schooled kids wouldn’t get proper socialization. As it turns out you could put all of my nieces and nephews in a room full of other kids and there wouldn’t be any way of telling who was home schooled and who went to a public school. As for what happens when a kid gets told by their boss to do something they don’t want to do, I think the response has much more to do with how the child was raised and little to do with whether they were home schooled or attended traditional schools. My nephews who were home schooled are very hard workers and very polite, not because they were home schooled, but because that is how they were raised to be. In contrast, the son of my “free spirited” sister who went to a public school would be the very last nephew I would hire to do any work.
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Met them all. Weird family. Some socialization would do them a world of good.
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