I think sometimes that we all underestimate this fact, which helps to explain why kids from more well-to-do families with maybe a more enriched environment outside of school, do better on assessments than poor kids, lacking that same learning-rich environment outside of school.

I keep thinking of John Holt’s assertion that it is only what we choose to learn that we really retain. The rest we forget after the test (if we are good students) or before the test (if we are not).

Thanks so much for starting this blog. I think I’m going to thoroughly enjoy reading your perspective and I love your commitment to dialogue. That has always been my ideal, but it’s so hard to find others willing to put the same level of commitment into writing and sharing in this medium as I typically do, so I’m finding myself a bit burnt out. Still I will try as much as possible to keep up with your blog and dialogue as I’m able. I think what you’re doing is very important. Are you going to start developing a blogroll (a list of other blogs that you read and enjoy?)

The Teenage Liberation Handbook was an amazing guide for me when I discovered it my freshman year of university. I wish I had discovered it earlier. It helped me realize that my education really had nothing to do with the formal setting I was in and was all about how I approached life. It really changed how I approached everything and I recommend it to people whether they’re thinking of unschooling or not.

Just last night I was reading through a lot of the documents my former schools and the special education departments had written about me. In first grade I was “lost” and often seemed to be daydreaming, they said, and apparently that was a problem. I had “difficulty following directions” but what if I simply preferred to explore things myself, in my own way, rather than take direction from others? This possibility was never accounted for. They always saw what they wanted to see, saw problems and difficulties, but never saw the possibility for ME to be who I was MEANT to be.

That is where I come from in all of this. I KNOW that I am not just a freak of nature. These so-called problems that countless other children are having in school are really just suppressed strengths and possibilities and people being thrown into a procrustean bed. “You’re just different,” they tell me. NO. That’s not it. The problem here is people assuming they know what is best for other people, especially smaller people, and that those smaller people DON’T know what’s best for them.

Your middle school experience resonates with me. I would have been better off without it… without the anxiety of so many convoluted relationships with both peers and superiors, not to mention the total waste of time. Even now I am glad I didn’t take the time to do my homework in those years, though my teachers would reprimand me for it. I’m sure there some treasure within me that I would not have if I had instead done as I was told and took time to diligently do my homework. It irritates me when people think I’m “smart” because I went to school. If I am smart, I’d say it’s true in spite of going to school. Few people take that seriously, and if I wasn’t so self-aware, I probably wouldn’t have realized it myself. For me, real learning happened in the summer. School was just a time of being bored and watching everybody else catch up and learn everything I already knew (and a lot of other mundane stuff that didn’t matter to me).

Ah, seventh grade. I got C’s or D’s in my English class that year. Then, when I scored perfectly on an English standardized test, my teacher started respecting me more, and my grade magically and mysteriously rose. There are no valid and accurate assessments, as far as I’m concerned, unless they genuinely involve real listening, real empathy, and a real caring relationship between two or more people.

Otherwise you’re just expecting someone to be able to answer questions in a way that you’ve deemed appropriate and correct, and not only that, you leap to certain often erroneous assumptions about why these questions were not answered the way you wanted them to be answered.

We have a 6-grade son that was in public school until last year when we decided to homeschool, and we are moving ever closer to eclectic/unschooling.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about unschooling past the younger elementary years. I completely can picture, when kids are little, how they would learn through life – math in cooking and shopping, as the typical example. I’m not sure how to extend this, for example, to algebra – even if you learn through nature and the internet and not a textbook, it doesn’t seem to me that it just falls in your lap as a normal part of life in the same way, for example, fractions would. I can see, depending on personality, how some youth would get excited about learning complex concepts that they will need for where they want to be in life and go after them….but I don’t see this happening here (yet), other than watching great science shows (thank goodness). (there is a health issue of chronic fatigue that complicates the situation).

I’m wondering if any of the books or resources you’ve found address the situation where the youth, even after a fairly long “deschooling” period, isn’t interested in pursuing learning opportunities, even around areas of strength (in this case science and math)? I don’t want to discount the value gained by activities such as hobby crafts (painting models, etc) and video games, as I do feel there is some…but it feels insufficient. Any thoughts?

Thanks again for your blog! I’ll RSS it but I rarely read my feeds… Keep reminding us on UUHomeschoolers every once in a while