Google, Montessori & Unschooling
[Guest post by Lee Stranahan]
(Hey Pattereaders — I’ll have more to say about the political implications of some of this stuff in a later post, but I thought I’d set up a little bit about homeschooling and specifically ‘unschooling’ here first.)
I was reading an article about Larry Page today and I came across an interesting quote. If you don’t know Page’s name right off the bat, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the cofounders of Google. This past week, Larry Page took over as CEO of Google from Eric Schmidt. It’s potentially a turning point for Google similar to when Steve Jobs returned as the CEO of Apple.
But leaving aside the business machinations, listen to this…
“You can’t understand Google,” vice president Marissa Mayer says, “unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids.” She’s referring to schools based on the educational philosophy of Maria Montessori, an Italian physician born in 1870 who believed that children should be allowed the freedom to pursue their interests. “In a Montessori school, you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do it that afternoon, not because the teacher said so,” she says. “This is baked into how Larry and Sergey approach problems. They’re always asking, why should it be like that? It’s the way their brains were programmed early on.”
There are lots of potential jumping off points in that article, but I’m going to riff on one of my pet topics – education.
I’m a Montessori kid. This was a big deal to my mother, who made sure that my brother and I – born in 1969 and 1965, respectively – both attended Montessori schools. I mention these dates because many modern-day Montessori schools are just more or less "progressive preschools" that bear very little actual resemblance to Maria Montessori and her original techniques. This watering down of Montessori techniques have already started by the 1960s but it’s gotten much worse.
The idea that “you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do it that afternoon, not because the teacher said so” is a very good summary of growing trend of unshooling, too — only substitute the word "parent" for "teacher.”
In my brain – apparently programmed to ask "why should it be like that?" — I think what a huge positive impact it would have on our society if our children were allowed the freedom to pursue their interests. In my little tribe of Stranahans, we have tried to do this by homeschooling/unschooling our kids but I often think about ways this could be implemented on a much wider level.
Here’s a clip from my upcoming documentary Unschooling : The Movie.
I often hear, “Well, not everyone can homeschool.” Sometimes when people say this, they mean that not every parent is qualified to be a teacher but this implies a model of homeschooling where the "teacher" is the all-knowing authority who needs to constantly mold and direct the children. That’s exactly the paradigm that unschooling rejects. Every parent is "qualified” to be able to provide encouragement and materials for their children to be able to pursue their own interests, especially in the digital age where anyone with a computer and an Internet connection has access to more resources than any Ivy League student had access to just 10 years ago.
The other main meaning of “not everyone can homeschool” is that many people have put themselves into a lifestyle that doesn’t allow it, for example one where both parents work outside of the home. But honestly, that’s a choice so saying people who make that choice "can’t" homeschool is a misnomer. They could but they choose not to.
I think it’s more accurate to say, "Not everyone should homeschool.” This is doubly true with unschooling. If you believe it’s a bad idea, you shouldn’t do it. If you have a spouse that is trying to talk you into it, work out all those issues first.
If you want to homeschool but can’t figure out how your kid will get into your old alma mater if they didn’t attend a normal school then I think you’re a real bad candidate for unschooling. The entire idea of pre-planning outcomes for your child is really the opposite of the unschooling philosophy. If your goal is to help your child’s natural interests and talents unfold, you can’t really do that with a predetermined destination in mind.
But for parents who are ready to trust that their kids will find their own path and willing to create an environment that encourages that…well, thanks for the whatever the big ‘what if’ innovation they come up with in 2021.
– Lee Stranahan
Great stuff.
I like to let my mind ponder seemingly random things. It’s paid off in some odd ways, often just with the satisfaction of feeling comfortable within seeming chaos.
In the course of managing people, it has been most rewarding to guide my team towards finding their own way to completing tasks.
SteveG (cc5dc9) — 4/10/2011 @ 10:24 amThere is some risk there, a lot actually, but I’ve also been treated to some ingenious and inventive solutions. The sense of accomplishment and the new foundation of understanding just radiates from the guys when they get to these points.
Somehow boring manual labor becomes interesting and mentally challenging. Leaders emerge…
Please get a twitter button!!!! Would you please consider one.
jann (d0b176) — 4/10/2011 @ 11:05 amLee, this is a thoughtful and insightful post.
The entire idea of pre-planning outcomes for your child is really the opposite of the unschooling philosophy. If your goal is to help your child’s natural interests and talents unfold, you can’t really do that with a predetermined destination in mind. But for parents who are ready to trust that their kids will find their own path and willing to create an environment that encourages that…
It would seem you are a John Holt follower…as much more leaning toward Charlotte Mason, I don’t see it as an either/or situation and planned outcomes can be a reasonable goal: My home schooling was with the intent of not only helping my child’s natural interests and talents unfold and tapping into her natural curiosity about the world around her, but also recognizing that I was responsible (as well as her dad) for her spiritual and moral development, including self-discipline requiring nurturing, training and development. There were indeed planned outcomes – a well-rounded child who knew right from wrong, developed morality and principles, etc. These were all integrated to some degree or another into our studies. Our worldview couldn’t help but come into our daily learning because ultimately God was able to be found in everything.
To me, the ultimate beauty of home schooling is that the *whole* being is taken into consideration – not just the academic, nor the intellectual, but the child is recognized as a whole person with a spiritual nature to be recognized and nurtured. I’ll just add that it was nearly impossible at times to know when actual *schooling* was taking place, such was the atmosphere of an ongoing flow of curiosity leading toward studying, and just simply living our lives together.
Dana (9f3823) — 4/10/2011 @ 11:43 amThe Progressive “experimental” schools that made such an impression at the beginning of the 20th Century may have had good ideas, but an awful lot of their success was due to their being self-selecting samples; nobody sent their kids to one who wasn’t interested in education. Similarly, home-schooling may have fine ideas at the core, butI seriously believe that its success rate is largely due to the same effect; nobody does it who doesn’t care if their child grown up to be an ignorant little savage.
Like many sound ideas, the Montessori model has been watered down to a handy one sentence summation that is exactly wrong. That sentence is “Learning should be fun.”
The problem with this is that HAVING an education is fun. Acquiring one, especially at the early stages, is tiresome and annoying. The basic rules of math and spelling and grammar aren’t “fun”, and very little can be done to make them so. But if you don’t master them, then from an educational point of view, you are a cripple. They are the tools you need to master anything else. Anything fun.
And if teachers are opposed to slogging through the ‘boring’ stuff and are always looking to switch off to something ‘fun’ then the students are getting shortchanged.
A really good teacher can use the Montessori system to inculcate the boring basics. A mediocrity will simply preside over Happy Play Time and graduate rank after rank of ignorant and barely housebroken little ankle-biters.
What to make of this, I can’t say I know. But we do need to deal with it. Learning the basics, unless you have a really unusual mind, is tiresome. Teaching the basics is as bad or worse. Yet any societal system needs to take this into account.
C. S. P. Schofield (8b1968) — 4/10/2011 @ 12:17 pmThank you for the post!
I’m looking forward to the film, and also to further discussion of homeschooling and unschooling in particular.
We were relatively loose with our (6 homeschooled) kids, but never approached unschooling. We were concerned with covering major subjects (reading, math & science) so we gave significant structure to those areas.
Teflon Dad (51022d) — 4/10/2011 @ 12:23 pmSome can. Some can’t.
Some will. Some won’t.
That matrix explains all regardless of the style of education.
Torquemada (fccc6f) — 4/10/2011 @ 12:30 pmThose who can, do;
AD-RtR/OS! (5b0e13) — 4/10/2011 @ 12:45 pmThose who can’t, teach;
Those who can’t teach, write curricula.
Certain subjects are indeed structured and rote, but the smart home schooling parent recognizes that with the curricula demands, there is always the opportunity and freedom to utilize one’s own creativity to tailor-make the material, thus assuring full-learning is taking place and not moving ahead until mastery of the subject is accomplished.
Dana (9f3823) — 4/10/2011 @ 1:05 pmMany of tomorrow’s leaders of industry, politics, and society, will graduate from Mom’s Sewing-room and One-room School-house, and we will be better-off for it.
AD-RtR/OS! (5b0e13) — 4/10/2011 @ 1:22 pmBah. We had our pre-K youngster in Montessori for just that reason, the reputation of how great and advanced they were. Basically, at that age they just let the kids play all day. He learned nada, except a disdain for authority or order of listening to instructions or conforming to a routine (which I do not see as a bad thing). We pulled him out after 6 months and put him in our local Catholic school, which my sister and 3 nieces attended, and at 4 he can read (beginner books of course) to himself, knows his numbers and basic arithmetic, phonics, all the pre-K things he should know and a lot of stuff other kids learn in 1st grade or beyond (and light-years beyond his public-school peers, one of his playfriends is in 2nd grade and cannot read a lick nor add one-digit numbers, nor does she know the value of coins, I didn’t bother ascertaining her other short-comings).
I also found Montessori teachers to be fussy, easily flustered and really unable to handle a good-hearted but very spirited 4 year old. His Catholic school teachers (he’s now been there for EC-4 and pre-K and will enter Kindergarten next year) are firm but VERY kind and understanding and he’s made great progress in listening, following instructions, cooperating with his classmates and teachers, etc.
Yes, it’s the parent’s responsibility to teach these things, but if he is going to school 5 hours a day where they let him do whatever he wants, then he comes home and has to listen, obey and follow instructions, you are fighting with what he’s learning in school instead of school reinforcing what he hears at home. Plus, they teach moral lessons, catechism and Bible stories, which I think is good for any kid, regardless of whether you are religious or not. You’d have a hard time convincing me Jesus’ teachings would not be a positive thing for any Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim or secular humanist’s child.
I was raised Catholic but lapsed, but we have started attending again (you get a break in tuition if you attend church regularly, which is a shitty reason to go to church but it got us back into it, so there’s that) with our 5 year old and our 1 year old and although the modernist leanings of today’s Catholic church annoy me no end, I still think it’s a positive thing, both the church and the schooling. Teachers can’t replace parents, but they can certainly reinforce each other. At Montessori I couldn’t detect any moral suasion at all, I don’t believe they concern themselves with that. They just let kids basically do what the hell ever they want to do, and I can’t imagine that’s good for any child, I don’t care how bright they are.
docweasel (3914b8) — 4/10/2011 @ 2:09 pmDana,
I agree 100%. Indeed, that’s always been the problem with Montessori, Open Classroom, or whatever the latest fashion has been at any given time. A Good, Motivated teacher can teach most kids the basics under most circumstances that don’t amount to child abuse. But Public Schools are necessarily going to be run on and by mediocre teachers. It’s all very well to say that educating the young is the most important job on earth, so the best and the brightest should be the teachers, but the best and the brightest frequently have something else that they would like to do. Not to mention a deficiency of the patience necessary to deal with some of the little monsters without hitting them with a chair.
Regimentation, and repetition were not instituted in schools because they were best for students, They were instituted because – always with honorable exceptions – school teachers tend to be drones.
Home schooling will not be attempted by drones, by and large.
C. S. P. Schofield (8b1968) — 4/10/2011 @ 2:30 pmdocweasel,
Respectfully — all the things you say are negatives — like letting kids play…those asre the POSITIVES in my opinion. That’s the oint of what I wrote..
Stranahan (708cc3) — 4/10/2011 @ 2:36 pmCPS,
What your theory suggests — that learning reading isn’t ‘fun’ so it needs to be a slog, for example — isn’t true in practice for me or any of the other unschoolers I know or have interviewed. I watched my never-been-to-school son Jack learn to read on his own, naturally.
Stranahan (708cc3) — 4/10/2011 @ 2:43 pmIf that’s one of your daughters Lee you have plenty of reason to be proud.
She obviously had already internalized some attitudes about achievement that gave her self-motivation for her unschooling.
We have never unschooled, but we have home schooled at times and cyber schooled as well as traditional public and private. Things I wonder about as a parent are valid in either setting, mainly in how one encourages a child to pursue interests rather than dabble in them, especially if a person has learning challenges that have escaped notice. What to do with the child who is interested in music for example, starts taking piano lessons, is talented and “finds it surprisingly easy”, and then is content with putting in mediocore effort. I don’t like the idea of forcing a child to practice long hours if they don’t want to, but then again if the child says they want to be a musician but wants to practice only 1/2 hour a day, at some point sooner or later that will simply be inadequate, even if innate talent is incredible.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 4/10/2011 @ 2:49 pmOr for example the child who loves to read, but would rather read and read easily engaging books (such as Harry Potter) and avoids other reading and avoids writing altogether.
Lee,
Please bear with me as it’s been a very long time since being involved in home schooling and I’m trying to recall the details of unschooling implementation so I might be off base, but, isn’t there a built-in tension between parent and child in this?
Example: At the very heart of unschooling is expectation that the child’s own natural curiosity and interests will lead the educational process for him.
There is little steerage from the parent, but rather theirs is to follow the lead of the child and provide opportunities to learn those areas of interest.
So what happens when the child is limited in their curiosity and prefers nothing than to read fiction all day?
What if they show no interest whatsoever in say, math?
For a time period it seems reasonable to wait for it to click with them and they decide on their own that they want to know more about numbers and such, but what if the child doesn’t become interested?
What if, instead, they resist more and more any suggestion of math and learning its basic foundations?
If the schooling, or unschooling, has been built upon the premise that the child’s natural interest and curiosity will determine ‘curricula’ studied, then doesn’t the lack of determined outcomes end up working against the child, rather than for him? What about the gaps?
(This is a different issue than say how public school assumes age 5 is the time for *all* children to begin reading, etc)
Dana (9f3823) — 4/10/2011 @ 3:05 pmBrinna isn’t one our ours — she’s an interview subject. She is great, though.
Kids — like adults — dabble in some stuff and dive into other stuff. We’ve found that our kids find things they want to get into deeply and we encourage that, often by just staying out of their way and giving them time and resources to pursue things deepluy.
Stranahan (708cc3) — 4/10/2011 @ 3:10 pmDana,
2 answers…
1) If the goal is some sort of balance where kids learn a lot of different things, I’d submit that traditional schooling is pretty much a failure at that, too.
2) But more importantly — I question the goal. I’m okay with someone who reads a lot of fiction but doesn’t like math (or vice versa). That’s how the world ends up with great fiction writers and great mathematicians.
Stranahan (708cc3) — 4/10/2011 @ 3:21 pmLee, I found your observations about the recent evolution away from Maria Montessori’s original vision to be interesting. I’ll say upfront that I don’t personally know any Montessori schooled kids. But I will put this out there: About 15 years ago the local Montessori got into a zoning kerfuffle with our small village. The “misunderstanding” and subsequent attempts at “grandfathering” the “unintentional mistake” which they had preciously been warned about (in writing) ended up in a lawsuit which cost a fair amount of money. Both the arrogance and appearance of ethical lapses that were shown by Montessori folks during this “musunderstanding” would make me think twice about ever putting a child I loved in their hands.
elissa (93f15e) — 4/10/2011 @ 3:24 pmIf the goal is some sort of balance where kids learn a lot of different things, I’d submit that traditional schooling is pretty much a failure at that, too.
For me the goal was a combination of exposing them to as much as possible to see what might elicit a response of interest and desire for further exploration as well as covering the basics. It wasn’t enough that they loved to read – they needed to know the particulars – the structure of a sentence, parts of language, etc. It wasn’t enough they loved sing-song counting and using manipulatives to add/subtract and count with but to also learn their math facts. My point being, coupled with the nurturing of their curiosities, a certain amount of structure and rote was necessary. I think too that planned outcomes can be a great help in gauging progress. And what determines successful progress does not have to be established by a curriculum or one with a Ed.D, but rather by an observant parent tuned in to their own child’s learning style and pace.
Perhaps the unschooler is braver and more trusting of their children’s innate curiosities than the more traditional home schooler. I don’t know. But I am always encouraged to see parents still believing that home is often the best place to learn. And that parents are often the best teachers around.
Continued success – whatever form that may take! – to you and the little Stranahans.
Dana (9f3823) — 4/10/2011 @ 3:41 pmOur child had (has) PLENTY of time to play. I don’t send him to school to play, and at the tuition costs Montessori charged I damn sure wasn’t paying for him to play: a typical free Government subsidized pre-K does that. We sent him there to LEARN. I for one think Montessori is vastly over-rated and wrong-headed in their approach. Our child learns more now, is better behaved and we pay less tuition. Win win win.
docweasel (3914b8) — 4/10/2011 @ 4:23 pmMy granddaughter is currently being home schooled/unschooled after attending Montessori school for almost three years. She progressed satisfactorily at Montessori but is blossoming at the “un-school”. I bought her a Kindle on her 8th birthday and she simply devours books. I kept the account in my name and every once in a while I will buy a book that I think she should read or would like and it is downloaded immediately. She always lets me know if she liked it and would like more of the same.
On her last birthday (11th) I bought her a nice laptop and am surprised at her depth of research of a subject. She has a passion for reading, loves history and geography, hates math and loves science. She reads and writes at a level far beyond her years and her ability to research subject matter is astonishing for someone of her years.
I am strongly in favor of “letting children learn.”
rls (5e657b) — 4/10/2011 @ 5:31 pmUnschooling is an interesting concept, but what about children with learning disabilities? I’m always heartened to hear about children who thrive in alternative schooling environments, but it always seems that those children don’t appear to have any impediments to learning. Both of my kids have dyslexia (specifically dysgraphia). You mentioned in an earlier post that your children taught themselves to read. That’s wonderful and I’ve know children like that, but I’m not sure that would ever have happened with my children.
Sheridan (8ed71b) — 4/10/2011 @ 5:50 pmI agree with your concern and experience, Sheridan, but I can’t say a structured learning environment helped much in our experience; though I am sure the specific situation and expertise of teachers working with a learning disabled child makes a ton of difference.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 4/10/2011 @ 6:26 pmAnother excellent reason to home school. Nanny state lunchroom rules. Parents not allowed to send their kids to school with lunches from home.
Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.
and,
During a recent visit to the school, dozens of students took the lunch but threw most of it in the garbage uneaten
Oh, plus
The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-school-lunch-restrictions-041120110410,0,2614451,full.story
elissa (93f15e) — 4/10/2011 @ 8:23 pmStranahan,
I would greet your assertion with cries of joy, except for one thing. Please note; I don’t accuse YOU of this for one instant. I just say it’s out there.
There is a zombie loose in modern educational theory. In spite of literally decades of studies – going back to the 1930’s if I recall correctly – showing it to be absolute tripe, it simply will not die. Its names have included See-Say and Whole Language Instruction. What it does, if adhered to closely, is reduce English to an idiographic language, with each word being an entirely separate symbol for the child to learn. It never attempts to tech children to break the phonetic code that reduces English to a set of 26 symbols and their (admittedly numerous) interactions.
I don’t know why education professionals keep reviving this stinking corpse, but they do. And it cripples children. The English language is by far the largest on earth – 650,000 words and phrases in the latest OED, vs 60,000 to 80,000 for latin languages and similar numbers for most everything else. Building an english vocabulary one word-symbol at a time is simply doing things the hard way. But it does allow ‘teachers’ to get children ‘reading’ quickly, and only people who know what to look for will see what’s wrong, and why the early ‘progress’ drops off.
Teaching kids Phonics IS a slog, or can easily be one. Once the child has broken the code, teaching reading becomes a breeze, and learning to read is largely a matter of reading things that are a little harder than you’ve read before. But making them repeat what often seem to be nonsense syllables is drudgery. I never did it. I learned to read by being scary smart about language, and to this day don’t know what the rules are. I just muddle through. And I really think that if my (public) school had properly emphasized phonics – even at the risk of boring me for a while – I would have a lot less trouble trying to pick up other alpha-betic languages. I am really only literate in English, but I’m old enough now to know I should be something more.
Also, I still can’t spell for sour owl-pellets.
I assume that you have at least as good a grasp of phonics as I do. I assume that you try to pass it along, even if in a catch-as-catch-can basis. But when we are talking about mass-produced education we are, sadly, not talking about lots of one-on-one instruction by motivated teachers. We are talking about one drone watching over a bunch of energetic little heathens, and that is where repetitive instruction works.
While it is an exception, but not the rule, home schooling will work, pretty much however it is formatted, because the parents are motivated to make sure their child gets the basics. But if home schooling would work on every level of society, people like Joseph Priestly (who first worked on how to teach English to classes of english speaking children) wouldn’t have had to create (first) charity schools and (later) public schools.
Another thought; Teaching the basics of something you already know well yourself is very often a drag. you have to remember all the steps you haven’t thought of for years. I’ve run into this on every new job I’ve ever had. What seems perfectly obvious to an old-timer is anything but to a newbie, and the old timers often can’t tell what’s wrong.
C. S. P. Schofield (8b1968) — 4/10/2011 @ 9:15 pmLee, oh how I LOVE this discussion! I am Patterico’s little sister, and I homeschool. I do not unschool, but lean toward that direction with experiential learning. I have to admit I watched one of the programs about unschooling and came away with a bad taste in my mouth. The parents they showed were not parenting! Their children were not ones I would want to be around, and it appeared that the parents cared more for whether the kids were happy than if they were becoming mature, useful members of society. Just my two cents.
I have loved reading your posts! So glad you joined Patterico’s blog. :o)
lilsis (1c6e81) — 4/10/2011 @ 9:33 pmlilsis,
You hit on a point that I’ve considered throughout the unschooling part of this post: at what point does discipline get forsaken in lieu of ensuring the child gets to do what they choose?
I’m not clear on the lines because discipline and learning (to me) go hand-in-hand as much as creativity/imagination and learning.
Perhaps that’s a primary difference between home schooling and unschooling – home schooling parents lead based on their firsthand knowledge of and insight into their child while the unschooling parent steps aside to follow where their child leads. Does that make the child in charge? It would appear to. And if so, does that impact the child/parent relationship outside of unschooling – say, on a practical level like when trying to get them to do their chores?
Dana (9f3823) — 4/10/2011 @ 9:50 pm==does that impact the child/parent relationship outside of unschooling – say, on a practical level like when trying to get them to do their chores?==
Dana–in raising the issue of discipline you have articulated exactly the part of unschooling that apparently I do not get and therefore worry about. The concern of creating overly self or inner focused kids who may end up having a hard time coexisting with legitimate authority. Not all of these kids will be artists or entrepreneurs. In adulthood some will surely have supervisors and a social hierarchy to deal with. How do they learn that survival skill and how to use it if all they have ever experienced is the freedom to do what they want, when they want? Perhaps the age at which unschooling starts is the key?
elissa (93f15e) — 4/10/2011 @ 10:21 pmDana and Elissa, the show I watched had the parents basically pandering to the kids. Don’t want to go to bed? Okay, stay up as long as you want. Sleep on the floor? Okay. House is a mess? You don’t want to help clean? Okay, we’ll do it.
What those parents didn’t realize is that kids WANT to be useful parts of a community. Useful parts of their FAMILY. However, they need guidance.
Kids brains also need guidance in development. We aren’t born with the capacity to make every decision. That comes with time…and experience (which is guided by our parents.) When parents make decisions based on emotions, rather than learning about when their kids are developmentally ready for certain freedoms and responsibilities, in my opinion it is doomed to fail.
There are always exceptions to the rules, and not all kids that are given no discipline will become selfish and unable to function in the reality of society. Me? I don’t want to take the chance that my child won’t be the exception.
I am NOT blasting unschooling…I don’t know enough about it to have a firm opinion. What I AM slamming is unparenting I guess. Once again, just my two cents on a subject I am fairly passionate about!
lilsis (1c6e81) — 4/11/2011 @ 6:34 amWhenever questions about unschooling come up, the first thing I do is ask for a fair comparision — in other words, does the problem exists for non-unschooled kids.
So — take chores. Obviously, kids not being helpful around the house is a problem that exists in plenty of households…it didn’t come into existence recently.
My son Shane is 18 and was unschooled most of his life. He’s tremendous helpful. Daughter Olivia is 11, unschooled…and not so helpful right now. Jack is 9 and so-so. I don’t think any of it really relates to unschooling but it’s more a function of age and personality, not mostly age.
When I was on the road working on the Pigford doc, Jack would help me set up video equipment. He ended up in the Rep. Steve King’s office and meeting lots of lawyers and farmers. That was all a ‘chore’ for him — it wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do, but I needed help carrying stuff.
I guess the only unschool principle is that he wasn’t so burdened with this work that he didn’t have time to pursue his own fillmaking, which involves Legos.
Lee Stranahan (708cc3) — 4/11/2011 @ 6:45 amA question, Lee. If any of your kids ever do choose to embark on a career path that requires a resume, do you expect that on it they will note that they were home schooled or that they were unschooled. I guess I’m trying to think through how a hiring manager or an admissions dean might respond to those two different scenarios.
elissa (5aefd1) — 4/11/2011 @ 7:20 amI’m a homeschooler and sort of subscribe to the unschooling philosophy.
I do not believe that kids should be allowed to do whatever it is they please with little discipline. As parents, we’re there to guide our kids and help them become as independent as possible, and also to make the best decisions in life.
That said, I wholly embrace the unschooling idea of allowing children to choose what it is they want to study and how they want to study it.
The longer I’ve been a parent, the more I’ve come to realize that society trusts children far less than they deserve. Most kids are very capable, and allowing them to choose what it is they want to learn is a great way to foster responsibility and enthusiasm for their work. It’s the best way to go, IMHO.
Jewels (c7b6c5) — 4/11/2011 @ 7:33 amI home-schooled my son, now in college. (He’s doing well so far.)
Every kid has their own unique talents and weaknesses, and the best thing about homeschooling is the tailoring possible.
I believe it really helps to have the idea one is working for one’s self as much as to please others.
Rigor, pushing the limits of a talent or subject, is a value. Some carry this drive inwardly and others need nooging, and some need a both a little pushing and a little leaving alone.
SarahW (af7312) — 4/11/2011 @ 8:12 amShould read “some need both”, not “some need a both.”
Some need a reading glasses or laser treatment for floaters.
SarahW (af7312) — 4/11/2011 @ 8:15 amI thought you meant “some need a bath”
(just kidding)
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 4/11/2011 @ 5:17 pmThank you for this post, Lee. I have recommended your excellent article to a friend who homeschools his children. I hope my friend becomes a regular reader here. Please, no jokes about regularity.;-)
Felipe (d37996) — 4/11/2011 @ 7:22 pmUnfortunately, or fortunately to provide parents with enough variety, the Montessori name is not trademarked. Any school can call themselves Montessori without putting into practice any of her ideals. Even being “accredited” by AMS or AMI does not guarantee authentic Montessori, though it does give a little more assurance that the teachers have been exposed to her work. The key for parents is that they need to visit the school and see whether that is the right environment for their family and their child. My philosophy for my school is that if Dr. Montessori did not say or do it, we do not (except, of course where she could not have possibly known about things, such as technology). We lose many families for staying true to this, families that don’t yet trust their children to be in charge of their own learning. So, I understand why some schools choose to “water down” to maintain enrollment. If families have gone to one Montessori school and do not find it meets their needs, I always suggest that they do not give up on the method all together. It is not the method that is flawed, it is the school. Montessori is the ONLY scientifically supported method of education. Current neuroscience research keeps supporting this, research that she never had access to. It is how children’s brains work. While schools can be watered down because it is what families want, their are still authentic Montessori schools out there.
Tammy Chabria (71866f) — 4/12/2011 @ 8:39 am