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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - How could this go wrong: Radical Unschooling (Page 2 of 2)

Posted: 4/19/2010 11:31:16 PM EDT

[#1]

While I think the parents should be homeschooling, I'm all for somebody sparing my tax dollars from being sucked into the oblivion that is the public education system these days. What the commie media conveniently left out of the story is the fact (I'm assuming) that the parents have instilled in these kids that they have to do something productive after they're of adult age.

Posted: 4/19/2010 11:33:59 PM EDT

[#2]

You know those 4 Massholes who bought 5.152 acres in Culberson County, Texas and moved out there a week ago? They went to an organized unschool. So their parents PAID for unschooling.

A school without an .edu domain, instead falling under the non-profit .org domain? Unschool.

Posted: 4/19/2010 11:42:41 PM EDT

[#3]

Quoted:

Quoted:
It's like Montessori homeschool. From Hell.

At best those kids will get an extremely lopsided education. It seems more likely to me that they won't have much of an education at all if they can watch TV or play video games all day.

That's what I didn't get. If you want your offspring to become self-reliant young adults, unschooling is a great thing. However, if you feed them donuts and pay for their World of Warcraft subscription you're just creating larger children. Part of the freedom in unschooling is the freedom to try great and foolish things and fail miserably, but it seems that they're not really encouraging their kids to try much at anything at all. But they're their kids, and they can fuck them up any way they want. It's not my place to butt in.

For those who think young people can't handle responsibility, or need formal schooling: Benjamin Franklin (admittedly a minor figure in American history) could not remember a time at which he couldn't read, despite never having had formal schooling. David Farragut (another minor figure in the War of 1812 and the Civil War) was a midshipman in the US Navy at 9 years old, and had his first command of a ship at the tender age of...12. We expect too little out of our young people today.

I'm a huge fan of unschooling, since the whole idea of formal school was created by Bismarck to produce obedient soldiers in a fascist country.

You distort history heavily.

Both of the men you mention went through formal training programs, where they would have learned the same skills/values taught in school today...

Being a Midshipman in an Empire-Period Navy, for example... That's a military officer commissioning program by way of apprenticeship. No room for 'unschooled' free-spirits there - they would get flogged (literally)... Very regimented - follow orders, learn to work as a team (and to lead), do things when the Captain says, how the Captain says... And so on...

And as for Franklin, the environment he grew up in also involved formal training - again, by way of an apprenticeship system... I doubt his boss would have put up with much of the 'free spirit' crap, either...

As for your Bismark/Fascist comment - Fascisim didn't exist back then, and Prussia was just another European nation - ruled the same way they all were back then...

There is a difference between 'self-reliance' and anti-social selfishness.

So-called 'unschooling' teaches selfishness, not self-reliance.

Dave you get your subject matter knowledge and get the hell out of here!

Posted: 4/20/2010 12:11:01 AM EDT

[#4]

Quoted:
Former homeschooled student here. K-12. Did extremely well in college, all my employers have loved me. I can say from experience though that roughly 60% of the homeschoolers I've seen have done a crap job with their kids. Unschooling, homeschooling, don't do it unless you're going to try and raise your kids to be successful in TODAY'S world.

My mother failed miserably at homeschooling me and my brother. I chose to go back to school because I knew I wasnt learning. My brother continued to homeschool and just got his GED two years ago. Hes 23 now and is socially retarded and can barely hold down a job.

Posted: 4/20/2010 4:13:52 AM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:

You know those 4 Massholes who bought 5.152 acres in Culberson County, Texas and moved out there a week ago? They went to an organized unschool. So their parents PAID for unschooling.

A school without an .edu domain, instead falling under the non-profit .org domain? Unschool.

As misguided as they are, atleast the west Texas kids are doing something from which they can learn by failing. Attempting something and failing is learning... These kids are doing NOTHING, and they will learn exactly that by sitting on their ass and playing games and watching MTV...

Posted: 4/20/2010 4:18:14 AM EDT

[#6]

Sorry kids ... The illegals already filled all thoose jobs you will qualify for and will work 10x harder than you.... Go to school

Posted: 4/20/2010 4:29:41 AM EDT

[#7]

Quoted:

Sorry kids ... The illegals already filled all thoose jobs you will qualify for and will work 10x harder than you.... Go to school

NM... I'm a retard this morning.

Posted: 4/20/2010 4:42:50 AM EDT

[#8]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Former homeschooled student here. K-12. Did extremely well in college, all my employers have loved me. I can say from experience though that roughly 60% of the homeschoolers I've seen have done a crap job with their kids. Unschooling, homeschooling, don't do it unless you're going to try and raise your kids to be successful in TODAY'S world.

My mother failed miserably at homeschooling me and my brother. I chose to go back to school because I knew I wasnt learning. My brother continued to homeschool and just got his GED two years ago. Hes 23 now and is socially retarded and can barely hold down a job.

This 'unschooling' story, and posts like yours, make me realize that while I believe in personal freedom,

there is a point where people go too far and unintentionally hurt children.

They showed the map of regulated home schooling states and it made me uncomfortable to see I live in a 'red' one, which means 'highly regulated'... but on the other hand, hearing those kids talk made me uncomfortable too. Those kids aren't going to function well at McDonalds, not even as customers.

I'm pretty pro-homeschooling but some people are really bordering on child abuse.

Just like locking a little kid in a dark closet when they're bad.

Certain things you just don't do because of the damage it causes, and I believe 'unschooling' is firmly on that side of the line.

Posted: 4/20/2010 4:42:57 AM EDT

[#9]

Quoted:
I was talking to some of my students who make passable grades even though they don't work at it. I told them that they are making a terrible mistake by not developing good work habits. A sharp mind, a good memory, and good speaking skills will carry you only so far. At some point you will need to work to improve your skills and do a job. If at 18 you've never worked at anything, you are really screwed.

Did the thought ever occur to you they're not working hard because they've got no reason to?

Grades 10-12 I worked out what the bare minumum of work I had to do for a passing grade was, and did only that. Freed up more time for me to dedicate myself to pursuing other endeavors, mostly making money. As soon as my grades tanked once I implemented this policy (I'd been the recipient of several academic achievement awards prior to that), I was grilled and accused of everything from drug use to having an abusive family - the administration could not fathom that having a high mark provided me no motivation, when they passed slackers same as they passed hard workers. Hell, in my perspective public school did more to reinforce an environment of slacking than it did hard work.

Yeah, I pretty well skated through most of school - funny, just because I didn't work hard at school, I've done exceptionally well in the working world.

Posted: 4/20/2010 4:45:12 AM EDT

[#10]

This might work for 10% of todays kids.

I worry that the other 90% are going to use that free time to party and steal cars.

Posted: 4/20/2010 4:45:21 AM EDT

[#11]

April 18, 2010

Cultural Marxism in Education: The Gathering
Revolt

By Chuck Rogér

For
decades now, American schools corrupted by cultural
Marxism have been
eroding the moral fiber and judgment skills of schoolchildren. Unless
sensible parents and teachers put a stop to the indoctrination, today's
free speech-crippling political correctness, tolerance of immorality,
and lack of knowledge of our country's birth will continue to grow until
America is no more. To stop the indoctrination, parents and teachers
must understand how cultural Marxism came to permeate school curricula.

In
the 1920s and 1930s Italian
Marxist Antonio
Gramsci, who
argued that traditional values must be obliterated in order to free
"oppressed" social groups, called for
eliminating social decorum and
glorifying perverse behavior in order to destroy the Western middle
class and collapse society from within. Translated into today's
terminology, the plan prescribed the commandeering of news and
entertainment media, religious and financial institutions, organized
labor, health care, and education.

Gramsci's
cultural Marxism began
to reach throughout society when Frankfurt University's Institute
for Marxism ––
renamed the Institute
for Social Research and informally called the Frankfurt
School –– fled
Nazi Germany, took up temporary residence at Columbia University in
1933, and then, during World War II, began using Gramsci-derived "critical
theory" to
"deconstruct" American society. German-born philosopher-writer Herbert
Marcuse and other Marxists carried cultural Marxism beyond Columbia, and
progressives adopted the disease as a weapon of "change" to be deployed
within the education system.

Education
system, indeed. The Frankfurt School's
specialty was political correctness. The goal was to control social
discourse on culture, politics, and economics and hush debate over
middle-class moral decay. A critical tactic dictated by political
correctness –– demonizing people who question progressive wisdom –– is
illustrated by today's Democrats and media calling tea-partiers racists
and extremists for wanting to shrink government. The same kind of
one-sided thought control renders schoolchildren captive to left-wing
agendas.

In
the mid-1950s, Marcuse drove political correctness to new depths, proclaiming it unacceptable to
criticize any manner of sexual behavior. Marcuse's Eros and
Civilization urged people to engage in "perversions" to soften
the
sting of capitalism's alleged enslavement. The new and improved
political correctness became a darling of progressive education schools,
rounded out the arsenal aimed at mainstream America, and ushered in
early-childhood sex education that facilitates premature and unhealthy
sexual experimentation.

Since
the 1960s, Gramsci's ghost has been creeping
throughout education schools on the backs of the rabid academic herd. A
list of ideological progeny reads like a "Who's Who" of collectivist
ideologues: Pentagon bomber William
Ayers,
anti-homework and anti-competition preacher Alfie Kohn,
America-hater Noam
Chomsky, communist Van Jones, and progressive Bible-thumper George
Lakoff, to name a
few. Education, social studies, and literature curricula burst with
gibberish on social, environmental, and climate justice as well as
multiculturalism, diversity, moral relativism, and moral equivalence ––
all derived in some way from cultural Marxism.

Though
cultural Marxism has
gained momentum in education for forty years, the freedom-loving,
self-reliant character of a reawakened America soul can stop the disease
cold. So camouflaged has been the use of Gramsci's brainchild that most
education school indoctrinees –– K-12 teachers –– have never really
weighed the consequences of conditioning students to reject a moral and
prosperous America. While education is home to a disproportionate number
of anti-capitalist and often anti-American progressives eager to
"change the world," the majority of teachers are traditionalists unconsciously following the
herd. Loud and informed parents can sound the necessary wake-up call.

Parents
have long known that
something was wrong but have accepted the deterioration of children's
morality and common sense for the sake of the "tolerance" that
progressive educators demand. The self-censorship inherent in political
correctness has silenced parents for fear of being branded "intolerant,"
"mean," "overly judgmental," or, heaven forbid, "conservative."
Meanwhile, the accountability-killing approaches of John Dewey, Gramsci, Ayers, Kohn, and other
leftist zealots have subverted school curricula and programmed
collectivist robots to fill positions of influence in government,
society, business, and education.

But
traditional teachers who
understand the treachery in setting children adrift in failed utopian
constructs are growing restless. One of my readers, a teacher, tells of a
school principal seeking not "traditional teachers," but "facilitators"
that would "let the students decide what to learn, when to learn and
how to learn." Another teacher describes "in-service days" during which
consultants preach the need to eliminate deadlines, "promote
collectivism," allow "cheating ... [as] cooperative learning," and use
"progressive teaching methods." According to the teacher, frustration
over the incessant nonsense runs so high that "if there were no fear of
retribution, many [teachers] would let [their outrage] fly!"

But
there is something else
besides simple cognitive dissonance that moves progressive educators to
promote cultural Marxism. What motivates someone to knowingly push
collectivist approaches that cause guaranteed economic devastation and
misery? In truth, the progressive psyche houses the unbridled arrogance
required to believe that students indoctrinated by progressive teachers
will be the first kids in the history of the world to march forth and
tease beautiful miracles from ugly theory.

In
the final analysis, though
progressive educators cling to cultural Marxism, Gramsci's middle
class-slayer, most teachers don't believe that Western society is bad,
America worse, and capitalism the worst. Dear teacher, please gather
your wits. Please behold the professors who taught you to fill students
with contempt for the Western middle class. The professors harbor
contempt for you, the Western middle class teacher. Dear parents, please
abandon silence and support teachers who want to abandon fear in order
to join you in bringing a close to the darkest decades in the history of
American education.

Posted: 4/20/2010 4:47:08 AM EDT

[#12]

One of the worst ideas I've ever seen.

I would tentatively say "OK" if conditions like this were like well kids, you are going to mom/dad's business everyday and get the "education" you will need to take over the business, where they would interact with people, partners, employess, etc. to at least learn to conduct themselves professionally and articulate in a business environment.

This is lunacy, especially since the 20 nothings of today have that everyone wins, I'm a winner, sense of entitlement.

and

Posted: 4/20/2010 4:54:39 AM EDT

[#13]

Quoted:

I was talking to some of my students who make passable grades even though they don't work at it. I told them that they are making a terrible mistake by not developing good work habits. A sharp mind, a good memory, and good speaking skills will carry you only so far. At some point you will need to work to improve your skills and do a job. If at 18 you've never worked at anything, you are really screwed.

truth

Posted: 4/20/2010 4:59:39 AM EDT

[#14]

That's ridiculous. Don't look at this as homeschooling. It gives legitimate homeschoolers a bad image. We have friends who say that have an "unschooler" philosophy, but they still have a curriculum. They just don't try to force a certain amount of learning into a limited amount of time.

Posted: 4/20/2010 5:45:47 AM EDT

[#15]

I went through an "Academically Gifted" Elementary school program run by hippies. They weren't as far gone as "Unschoolers", but they had a pretty non-traditional approach. Luckily I also had a Dad from the Red Foreman school of parenting to counter the BS.

I remember bringing home a test where I scored a 95%, the highest score in the class, and my Dad's response was, "Let's talk about the 5%."

Kids need expectation to live up to, IMHO.