>I Stand Corrected
>Reader Comment:
hi, Im 15 and Unschoolde, and I think from reading your exsperience on unschooling that you did it all wrong! Read ‘The Teenage Liberation Handbook’ by Grace Llewlyn. She was actually a englich teacher, and she HATES schools, so she would actually SHOW and TELL you everything about unschooling, and how to do it. just a thought. Just read this book, and have your stepdaugters read it, and maybe you could do what she says and try Unschooling again, GOOD LUCK!
This girl seems very nice, but her comment says more about my concerns about unschooling (not HOME schooling. UNschooling) than I ever could. It really frustrates me that there’s a 15-year-old out there whose parents are preparing to send her out into the world without the ability to spell or write complete sentences. She deserves better than that.
>And of course all children emerging from public school can write lovely, complete, grammatically correct sentences and spell well to boot!.I’m not an unschooling proponent, or even a homeschooling one. But there are good, bad and indifferent educations to be had no matter how or where the child is schooled. And pretty much no teenager today is writing what you or I would call correct English when within ten feet of a computer. Email (and online writing in general) has its own (lack of) rules.
>I’m amused that there’s a rulebook for unschooling. Can you spell “contradiction?”
>YOWZA. Poor girl had no idea she was going to prove a point. But umm… yeah, she did.
>I don tink her parents done her no good.
>Stuntmother, it’s well-known that there are plenty of kids in the public school system whose parents are uninvolved in their children’s educations. But if a parent chooses to unschool, he/she is (we hope) taking the educational responsibilities onto him/herself- and as someone who sees the writing of many different kinds of teens on a regular basis, I’d say that it’s extremely likely her parents have been neglecting her potential in the writing/spelling area, and that she’d probably do better following a curriculum, whether it’s in public, private or homeschool.This is the only age that she can get help in these areas without feeling embarrassed or behind everyone else. I hate to think of her struggling to educate herself in writing and grammar as an adult simply because her parents didn’t educate her now.
>Based on some of the reading I did when I was researching the ‘unschooled’ movement, there is way too much ‘take yourself seriously’ defensiveness. I’m also thinking that SOME of these kids are going to be the most unbearably egotistic self-centered pains in the ass EVER.I guess it might work with a few people, but most of the kids I know would be majoring in PS2, the mall, and girls (or boys, depending on the gender). The ‘poor’ sincere child that wrote you might really think that things like sentence structure and spelling are unimportant in the great scheme of learning. I dunno, but I can kinda picture the parent of this young person beaming with delight that she stood up for unschooling and overlooking the obvious.There is a GREAT method of child-directed studies. It’s called Montessori and it has structure. It is a cliche, I realize, but kids aren’t mature enough to create their own strucure. That’s our job as parents and teachers.
>Of course, the comment was also anonymous without a link…Signed with a name, but for all we can tell this was posted by someone against unschooling trying to make a point.
>I doubt it, though. It’s too sincere. This girl was obviously trying to help me do a better job of unschooling my girls. Poor thing.
>I started to write “Ha hahaha” but then realised it looked a bit freaky! The comment from Miss Unschoolde is hilarious and gave me my first laugh for two days!!
>COuld have been a typo…let’s give her the benefit of the doubt.Or she could have written like most teens do:U R 2 Fny. lol. C-U l8tr.Omg, that shorthand bullshit drives me batty.
>Actually the short hand thing is a major complaint amoung many English teachers. Kids these days have a tendency to use them more then proper English.
>To think our future rests in hands like those…
>Whoops. Sweet kid,with a great idea, but too bad she proves why parents need to be a part of their child’s education. I have no problem with children being schooled or unschooled, but I do have a problem with a 15 year old not spelling correctly. Use spell check if you must…
>I thought this post was a joke…but it’s not. My experience tells me that a 15 year old should have a better understanding of written language then she displayed in her e-mail. I can tell she has heart and that’s an excellent trait for a writer. She needs to become a much better writer in the next 3 years before she goes out to get a job-any job. I am sure that her employer won’t allow her to learn those basic skills “on the job”. My very best to you sweetie, if you don’t learn it now you will have to learn it later and it costs over $50 am hour at that point…I know from experience!
>I have a Bebo account so I can “spy” on my younger bro and sis and I see what Sonia is talking about with the “new shorthand” (it made my ‘list’ of top 20 annoyances). But it’s like typed gibberish – not just misspelled words. Anyway, if she was trying to make a point about how wonderful Unschooling is, she really should have tried to come across sounding smarter. That little ‘abc’ with the check mark…yep, just click that…there you go!mhm gg ttyl mwah!
>Oh My Gosh!
>Typos aside, she actually has a very good reading recommendation. Grace Llewellyn’s book “Guerilla Learning” is the one that started my own family on the path towards homeschooling. We don’t unschool, but the book outlines a very compelling defense of the movement. And it gives a great picture of what a good unschooling home would look like. Spelling is a stickler with me, too. (God help me if I have typos in this response) But she had a great point; she’s unschooling, she’s defending it, and she’s pointing the rest of us to a good resource about it. Show me a 15 year old girl defending her education and referencing non-fiction resources on her education, and I’ll show you someone who’s getting exactly what they need from school. Except maybe spelling.
>My first thought was that the reader’s post was an attempt to be funny, and essentially agree with the absurdity of “unschooling”. It seems anyone that unschooled would not be able to figure out how to post! I’m from the ever educationally superior state of Pennsylvania, and had never heard of “unschooling” until I found your blog through Mason Dixon Knitting!
>If my (unschooled) daughter were to write you a message, it would be similar to the one everyone’s having a wonderful time scourging and laughing at. Consider this…maybe many unschooling students are dyslexic, or twice exceptional, or have some Learning Differences that mask a bright gifted child behind the facade of laziness or ‘stupidity’. So the school system treats them as slow when really their mind wants to go fast.Perhaps, because the school system as it currently runs, asks parents to ‘wait until the child is a few MORE grades behind before we start helping them’, there are many kids out there who are getting help and encouragement now rather than 4 years down the road when they don’t care anymore and have forgotten how amazing they are. So, my significantly dyslexic daughter cannot spell, cannot punctuate, and sometimes sentences get switched around. When I took her out of school she couldn’t read, either. It was never my aim to be a radical anything, but here I am, video game playing, TV watching, honest to goodness unschooler, and my daughter is reading, writing her own stories, doing math instantaneously in her head that she would take hours to do on paper (and which caused her huge amounts of anxiety). She is living a whole happy life in spite of her disability and in spite of people who enjoy judging someone by a misplaced comma or misspelled word. I tell her often that Einstein, Newton, DaVinci…they all had to find their own way and prove themselves to people, it’s too bad that the stress of dyslexia comes from other peoples ignorance and expectations.
>I realize that this comment is coming WAY after the fact, but felt the need to comment anyway.You are just looking at the parent's opinion of unschooling. I am currently 15, and am frankly appalled with the notion. I do not think that public school is exactly the best education that I can recieve, but I have learned more than just the 'structured' curriculum has set out to teach me. I have learned to deal with people that I do not like, to do things that I may not think are important, but ultimately are necessary. I have learned to respect authority, even if I do not think they deserve it.Not only have I devoloped invaluable social skills, but I have developed who I am. I read about unschooling, and they say that it is based on the child finding themselves. I find this to be ridiculous. If I had not gone to public school, I would not be who I am today. Because of school, I joined choir, and have found it becoming a bigger passion than I had ever thought it would be. I also joined the band. I have met friends that I would have never known otherwise that have changed my life forever. When I think about being unschooled, I can only think about how angry I would be at my parents if they had done that to me. Public schools may be structured, but then so is the world. I motivate myself with the classes that I want to take, classes where I can learn things that I would never learn on tv, or even from my parents. I have met teachers that not only teach me the information, but have taught me how to genuinely love to learn.Sorry about the rambling, however this is years ago so I doubt anyone will read this anyway. Oh, and I am 15 and like to think that I can put a sentence together quite well, so please don't put me and others in one group labled "teenager" just because of my age.