Saturday, July 03, 2010

Ignorant, reactionary comments to Unschooling



There are a lot of out right rude, reactions to unschooling; most of them based on fear of the unfamiliar- the different.
Here are some choice reactions that I have picked from a bunch of comments to
Looking back on Unschooling with Kate Cayley (video we made a few years back). I picked these because they are reflective of the type of thinking that you will encounter from people who do not really want to understand what unschooling is about. Beware! You might find yourself getting angry but it's worth reflecting on these comments because they can help us communicate better about unschooling to those people who are genuinely interested. Here goes;
In all honesty, unschooling is ridiculous. Sure, formal education is flawed (and so is homeschooling), but it's a hell of a lot better than complete absence of education. Unschooling parents have honest, honorable intentions, but they are horribly depriving their children of a critical need.
And honestly, there is only a minority of colleges (and scant if any exceptional ones) that would accept "unschooled" applicants.
Things are only getting more competitive and I would not base a kid's future on admissions criteria that change every year. What happens when that college no longer accepts a portfolio and an essay? Your response to my post tells me that unschooled kids have to avoid standardized test... possibly because they perform poorly?
So, she's a "writer, theatre direction, and teacher".Are there any physicians, engineers, or organic chemists who were "unschooled"?

But what about the subjects you are not passionate about? Do you just then learn nothing about them? If so, how will complete ignorance of whole swaths of human knowledge help you?

And what makes you think kids who do go to school don't learn passionately? Do you think they just sit there like blank robots, taking in only what is set before them? Do you think they don't find interesting subjects to pursue as far as possible?

Just because the education system needs to be better doesn't mean you should do nothing your whole life.

So you think that if you have a passion for biology you'll do biology and basically ignore every single aspect of life? You're screwing yourself! Schools teaches you how to work under pressure, this doesn't (hence you're never going to have a 'real' job). Schooling helps you become more well-rounded, this doesn't. Schooling basically teaches you the essentials of life beyond reading and writing at a gr.6 level, this, unfortunately, does not.

Why didn't she unschool herself through university ? she implied that she went there, i'm not sure if it was to clean toilet bowls.

Most educated parents have full time jobs, & wont have time to do this. I think i can safely assume, religious nut jobs & uneducated parents will mostly do this, to detriment of their child.

Okay I think I'll stop there. This is starting to get depressing. As you can see, there's quite a bit of ignorance around unschooling that we have still to overcome.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Are you planning to address how we can repsonde to these ignorant reactions? Love to hear some good come backs!

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