The Unschooling Conspiracy
BevK November 29th, 2006
Over at Spunky Homeschool, Spunky is concerned. “Call me paranoid, but there seems to be an unschooling conspiracy taking place in the media; all with the intention of creating a little negative buzz about unschooling (and by inference homeschooling) as a legitimate educational choice for parents.”
http://spunkyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2006/11/unschooling-conspiracy.html
I think part of the answer lies in this article by the woman who pretended to unschool her kids for a day.
It’s enough to make me want to keep the kids at home for good, but then I’d have to home school them. And everyone knows home schooling families are weird. Flowered-dress-wearing, backyard-grown food-eating, snake-handling weird. Just ask my 16-year-old.
“What comes to mind when I say ‘home schooler’?” I asked her on the way home from school yesterday.
“Nerd,” she replied without hesitation.
Good to know that all that promotion of diversity in the public schools is turning out such open minded kids. Or is this just a case of the bigotry being taught from home. …I digress.
Homeschoolers are now the smart kids that other kids don’t like because smart kids are nerds. Jeanne, Spunky’s commenter, hits the nail on the head when she says that coming after unschoolers is just a means of coming after all homeschoolers. Educrats and their political bedfellows have learned it’s hard to question homeschooling when homeschoolers do so well on standardized tests and many colleges find them great candidates for admission. They can’t use the homeschooling turns out uneducated adults mantra.
Even within the homeschooling community, the pros and cons of unschooling are discussed in often loud and derogatory terms. It’s easy to think that unschooling is a bad idea if you’re stuck in the rut of thinking in only schoolish terms about education. Certainly, those outside the homeschool movement are more inclined to schoolishness than your typical homeschooler. Regulating to keep unschoolers from ruining their children’s lives is an easy sidestep around the homeschoolers-do-fine-as-adults reality. Which only means that unschoolers and other homeschoolers need to start sharing more about the success stories of unschoolers who have gone on to secure adult lives. It’s also true that unschoolers won’t get much help from many homeschoolers who themselves believe that unschooling is a problem for homeschooling. Whatever you think about HSLDA, they’ve done a good job of batting down the homeschooling must be evil attacks that used to be standard in the press. Maybe it’s time for someone at NHEN to start submitting editorials to the New York Times. They do a wonderful job if supplying answers to reporters that come to them. If they’re not already doing so, maybe it’s time to be more proactive.
Meanwhile, all those who think unschooling leads to uneducated adults might try reading up a bit on the subject.
Suggested Reading
Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Kids a Real Education With or Without School
The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World As Your Child’s Classroom
Homeschooling for Excellence
