Trapped in a Paradigm
BevK November 29th, 2006
http://www.usnews.com/usn…unschooling.htm
Maybe you’ve read Bonnie Erbe’s column, “Unspooling ‘Unschooling’” in which she declares her inability to believe that unschooling will allow children to become productive members of structured society.
My hunch, however, is that very few parents are practically equipped with the teaching skills necessary or the stores of information required to help a child build a strong foundation in grammar, history, physics, biology, languages, physical education, math, etc. For that, it seems one must attach some sort of structure to intrinsically unstructured unschooled learning. It’s an entirely larger question whether “unschooled” kids can enter the real and highly structured (or schooled) world and succeed without the requisite navigational skills.
Most adults don’t believe it’s possible for children to teach themselves a variety of subjects, math being one of the chief most on their list. With very little assistance, Abraham Lincoln was able to educate himself. In his own words, “My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, literally [sic] without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals, still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond “readin, writin, and cipherin” to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard [sic]. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.”
I’m not an unschooler, but I have seen unschooled adults who were making their way in structured society. No, I take that back. They were excelling in structured society. It’s the difference between believing that you can learn only when taught by someone else and realizing that learning is not dependent on anyone but the person who needs to learn. All the teaching in the world will do no good with a reluctant learner. It’s the old in one ear out the other, retain it for the test and dump, learning mentality that plagues the kids in our government schools. They don’t see their education as something worthwhile to them. The ones that do, or who haven’t had the love of learning drummed out of them, do well in school.
Hat tip: Homeschool Buzz
