Do you believe homeschooling is a good option to prepare your children for the adult world?3/29/2021
Asked to answer on Quora.com
Yes, for several reasons: It focuses on real learning as opposed to preparing for exams. So much of the school work is done in the service of exam preparation. It makes it seem that the only reason for learning anything is to take an exam. This often deadens learning for students. It preserves curiosity. Closely connected to the first point, homeschooling leaves room for students to remain curious. All kids begin with a vibrant sense of curiosity about the world. Homeschooling does little to crush this. Homeschooling emphasizes that one of the most important reasons to learn is for its own sake. Or, as the physicist Richard Feynman put it, for "the pleasure of finding things out." It allows for flexibility. If a homeschooled child is really into doing some writing you don’t have to stop and say “Time for math now, put away your writing.” No, you can go with the flow and allow kids to dig deeper into subjects or activities. It connects learning with life. Learning can occur in the classroom, but school sometimes gives the impression that learning can only occur in the classroom and that is not true. Homeschooling allows opportunities for learning wherever they appear in life: at the grocery, driving in the car, exploring nature, going to the bank, the post office, or anywhere. It is social in a real-world way. One big question people often ask about homeschooled kids is “What about socialization?” As if school is the place for this. But, school socialization is, like much of school, artificial. Where else in real life will you only socialize with people your age? Homeschooling presents opportunities to socialize in the real world with a wide variety of people, younger and older than you. Homeschooling allows for flexible education in general. Finally, homeschooling recognizes that people are different and learn in different ways. There’s no reason to think that every six years must be able to do the same things or know the same things. Some kids learn things faster and others slower. People have different preferences, aptitudes, and goals. Homeschooling accommodates those by allowing individual families the flexibility to provide learning for their kids in the best way for them. Albert Einstein once said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Academia is currently in the midst of a great deal of change and, I fear, they won’t be able to adapt to this change without an infusion of ideas from outside the academy. Here are some important books that might provide some new useful ideas.
Drive by Daniel Pink: This book discusses motivation and illustrates the importance of cultivating intrinsic motivation as opposed to external motivation. As educators, we need to recognize the importance of tapping into what are intrinsic motivations for our students as well as ourselves. The external motivation of grades, test results, and outcomes will not be sufficient to motivate students for long-term lifelong learning. To help students with that educators will have to tap into intrinsic motivation. Uprising by Scott Goodson: This book is about “movement marketing” and addresses how the formation of movements can lead to important changes in society as a whole and what can be done to foster these movements. Education reform has now taken on the form of just such a cultural movement and colleges have a role to play but only if they understand what is going on in the broader movement of education reform and recognize how to positively embrace these changes. The Seven-Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler: Semler is the leader of a revolutionary company called Semco. Their organization and company policies often fly in the face of conventional wisdom about how a company should be run and how much autonomy employees should have. Semler epitomizes the idea that we need new thinking to solve old problems. As he puts it, there's "something fundamental about organizations and … leadership that makes it almost impossible for people inside a business to change their industry.” To be educational leaders in the coming years, colleges and universities are going to have to embrace ideas outside of their domain. Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton: This may seem a surprising book to recommend to educators but his chapter on education is well worth reading and understanding. As de Botton puts it educators have premised their activity on the flawed notion that simply telling students something through a lecture once in their late teens and early twenties will have long-lasting educational value. As de Botton points out, there's a great difference between a sermon and a lecture! Religions realize that to truly educate people you need ritual, repetition, and emphasis on the practical value of lessons. While educators often give lip service to these, they are not as good about practicing them. Educators could learn a lot from preachers and priests about how to administer lessons! It's often easy to dismiss ideas from those who are not experts in your field. But, ignoring useful insights from outside one's discipline can turn out to be short-sighted and blinding. There are many, many good works being published that could offer new ideas and ways of thinking about what we, as educators, do in the classroom. Question asked and answered on Quora.com.
Unschooling has been around for some time and continues to grow in popularity. As an unschooling dad, I can share with you some of the reasons why I prefer this method and I suspect they are the same for others who unschool. It is relaxed. For many kids school is a stressful environment. And, stress is not conducive to learning. Unschooling allows for a relaxed approach to learning. It lets us spend time with our kids: One of the best benefits of unschooling is that it allows families to have more time together. I have developed a very close relationship with my daughter that will last a lifetime. I have been able to do this because of unschooling. It preserves curiosity: If my daughter is curious about something (and like most kids she is, about many things) we can take the time to explore that. We don’t have to follow a preset curriculum or schedule. So, we can explore as little or as much about topics as we wish to on any given day. It blends in with the rest of life: School seems to encourage the idea that learning only occurs at certain times and in certain places. This is untrue. Learning happens all the time and everywhere. Unschooling allows kids to see this. We learn at home, at the store, in the car, in the park. Wherever you encounter the world you are learning. It is about learning: Unfortunately, for many kids school is about one thing: test preparation. Everything seems focused on this goal. Teachers must teach to them, kids must prepare for them and take them. But, unschooling doesn’t require testing. Instead, it encourages learning. Real learning, not memorization or test preparation. It is social: A common misconception about homeschooling is that it does not allow for socialization. Of course, this is untrue since unschoolers spend much more time in the real world than school kids. In school, socialization is forced and occurs only with others of your age. That’s not real socialization. Socialization is about voluntarily engaging with people of all different ages and backgrounds. That’s what we do every day when we go to the park to play, go to the store, talk to people at the bank, and much more. My daughter is happy, relaxed, and learning. She knows more at her age than I did when I was her age! And, she has fun learning. It is not a chore. It’s not working. It’s how we interact with the world. It is stories, activities, reading, observing, thinking, and talking. So, I think more and more people will discover unschooling as they look for ways to be close to their kids, help them preserve their curiosity and love of learning, and develop the skills that will help them thrive in the complex world we live in. A recent Report Shows US Students’ Skills Falling Behind Others. Much about this is not news. But, several interesting points are made in the article:
“Google has found it is increasingly hiring people without college degrees because the signal of the credential is no longer as clear as it used to be that someone is job-ready” I've made this argument before myself. The college degree used to be a signal for a set of skills that the graduate had. Today, not so much. What students have to do to get a degree is not closely related to the kinds of skills they need. All students have to do is pass exams, write papers, and do other closely guided tasks which leave little leeway for failure, ambiguity, or risk. For the ones who make it through this, it does not ensure problem-solving or critical thinking skills. "Students have had decisions made for them instead of having to make their own decisions. With their hands being held throughout the college process, they haven’t had the experience to learn these real-world skills." One of the root causes of this is a lack of trust. Colleges don't trust students to be able to learn, engage in trial and error, and succeed without copious amounts of hand-holding. Worse, this though is that colleges can't trust students. They are not allowed because of the many rules and regulations they have to comply with to become accredited. These rules and regulations are a large part of the reason why students have decisions made for them. As educators, we have to write legal contract length syllabi for our students, we have to attach rubrics to every assignment and thoroughly document learning outcomes. The result: students become good at following these rubrics and little else. I am hopeful that as the growing population of unschoolers comes of the college-age that they will reject this model of learning. After all, they have never been in a situation where they have had their handheld throughout their learning. They have been trusted to learn on their own, follow their interests, dig deeper into topics, and engage in real-world problem-solving. Google already recognizes that students can do these things without a college degree. Others will surely follow and take an interest in hiring the growing population of students who are learning without schooling. Schools, on the other hand, will continue to deny what is happening, look for solutions in the wrong places, continue to demand documentation, assessment, rubrics, and hand-holding. And continue to charge high prices for poor results. How long will that last? History seems to be one of those subjects that many students dread learning and have no interest in. It's a shame really since we live with pieces of history all around us and understanding this is an important part of understanding the world as it is today.
A large part of the problem is with how history is taught. Of course, history seems boring the way the textbooks and many teachers present it. But, there are other ways to teach history to engage students' interests and there are other ways to learn history if you're an independent learner. Here are a few suggestions. 1. Learn history backward. Most history textbooks start at the beginning which makes intuitive sense. But, why not begin with today and work backward. I don't know of any history teachers who do this but I think it would be an intriguing way to run a history course. Pick any event happening now and look for its causes. Then look for the causes of those causes and so on. Pretty soon you are hundreds of years in the past and knee-deep in history. You can't help it because if you want to understand why something is happening now the answer will be in the past. 2a. Start with where you live. Everything around you has a history. Just look around your home. Do you have a fireplace? If so, it has a history. Electric lighting? An open floor plan? Even your furniture has a history that you may already refer to by historical eras without even thinking about it. Perhaps your sofa is Edwardian. Your glassware is Victorian. Perhaps you have Regency flatware. History surrounds you. 2b. Start with where you live. Your local community has a history as well and learning more about it will help you feel more connected to your community. When was your town or city founded? By whom? Why? All of these questions are entryways to a discovery of history. 3. Learn history by exploring another subject. Do you find history boring but find some other subject fascinating? Start there. No matter what it is, that subject has a history and you've probably already learned something about it. So, you're already enjoying learning history. I once had a student tell me that she did not like history at all but enjoyed science. So, I pointed out that any area of science she was studying had a history and that history was important for understanding the science of today. Even seemingly non-academic topics of interest have a history. Any hobby you have or sport you play has a history and learning about it might provide useful and surprising insights into your interest. You might be thinking that you prefer doing an activity rather than learning its history but don't think about it in those terms. Look at learning a subject's history as a way of improving your performance. Start by asking a simple question: Why? Why do they suggest I do such-and-such that way? Why do I use this equipment? Any why question will lead to some history. Above all remember that as an independent learner you don't have to read textbooks and take exams. Just go where your curiosity and interests lead you. See where things lead. If you follow them with interest, they'll probably lead to some history. |