Home Schoolers Content to Take Children’s Lead - New York Times

Today’s New York Times carried an article about “unschooling,” a subculture in home schooling where the learning is led completely by the interests of the child.

a philosophy that is broadly defined by its rejection of the basic foundations of conventional education, including not only the schoolhouse but also classes, curriculums and textbooks.

Supporters of unschooling make a number of claims about public education with which I can easily agree–for instance, that “the way they do things in school is mostly for crowd control” or that “the important things that you need to know are important because they’re useful to know.” I can also agree with the importance of student choice, of having a genuine audience with whom you are trying to communicate, of authentic forms of assessment that match the kinds of things being assessed, and involvement in “real world” activities. Public education, as it is enacted in most parts of the country, does not adequately address these issues and concerns (along with many others). Nevertheless, I cannot join the crowd on the other end of this pendulum’s arc.

Of course, there are the social skills students gain by learning to navigatea mini-society of various backgrounds, ages, agendas, and interests. I’m not at all suggesting that the benefit of a heterogenous group outweighs the negative aspects of public education. Other mini-societies besides school can offer the same benefits, butonly if parents ensure their children’s participation in them and don’tallow them to “choose” to opt out. But more is at stake here than social skills.

We all need help and guidance from those who have gone before us–this is the essence of parenting and teaching, and it’s how a society not only survives but progresses. We all need things like structure and discipline. Should structure and discipline come from within? Absolutely. But it’s the job of the parent to help children develop these things. We need exposure to the range of possibilities out there, and it’s the job of mentors to reveal these things to children. We need a general background in the various disciplines of knowledge–not so much an accumulation of facts as an awareness of the concerns and methods of the various disciplines. It’s the role of teachers to make these things clear to students.

And in every case, we should be providing opportunities whereby the students not only encounter these things but encounter them within a context that reveals the significance of these things so students understand why it’s “useful to know.” To not instill self-discipline and structure, to not expose students to the range of possibilities, to not help students gain an understanding of the current disciplines, sounds to me like bad parenting/mentoring/teaching. It sounds like an abdication of responsibility.

Let me be clear: I do not think most public schools are getting it right, either. The solution may very well be a complete abandonment of our current system, or at least major reform. But abdicating the responsibility to lead seems dangerous for the child. While I agree with the mother who says: “We all desire to get up and learn to walk because it’s a useful skill to have,” I also know that most parents don’t leave the child struggling alone in the middle of the room until the child can “figure it out on their own.” Every parent I’ve ever seen encourages the child to walk, holds the child’s hands, stands two steps away and catches the child, then three steps, then five… until eventually the child is walking. Even after the child starts to walk, we don’t let the child wander into a busy highway …

Choice is good, but a lack of guidance seems like too much of a good thing.

technorati tags:reform, education, homeschooling, unschooling

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