Abolish Schools
July 8, 2020 4:52 AM Subscribe
Is Unschooling the Way to Decolonize Education? "As more and more people across the nation call for an end to institutionalized racism, the realization is that for equity to take root, every level of our society needs to change. Institutions that perpetuate white supremacy, including schools, will need to change or be abolished in their current form."
I was unschooled. My father was a big bundle of mental health issues and internalized self loathing which he projected on me. My father was the only adult accessible to me for half my waking hours.
Unschooling is incredibly dangerous and people advocating it are setting up the conditions for failures on the part of parents to have no backstop whatsoever. It is a gross lie: it is the claim that parents are inherently trustworthy.
Unschooling fucked me up.
posted by PMdixon at 5:57 AM on July 8, 2020 [71 favorites]
Unschooling is incredibly dangerous and people advocating it are setting up the conditions for failures on the part of parents to have no backstop whatsoever. It is a gross lie: it is the claim that parents are inherently trustworthy.
Unschooling fucked me up.
posted by PMdixon at 5:57 AM on July 8, 2020 [71 favorites]
OK, last comment for a while, as I don't want to dominate this too much. I can see a mode of unschooling that's about setting up a flexible new thing.
Imagine something like funding a library/community center/counseling center in each community, staffed with a nice, even ratio of care experts (social workers and social program staffers, medical and child psychology professionals, etc.) and people in the community (parents, community pillars and elders, etc.) with the budget to bring in outside speakers and talents as needed.
You could have a community-elected board oversee them, but perhaps with one or two appointed outside reporters to ensure oversight or with strict term limits to avoid recreating entrenched power dynamics and inequities. And, yes, you'd need regulation: the strictly religious community doesn't get to tell LGBTQIA+ kids that they're inherently "wrong" or "bad," for example.
Just as "abolish the police" really means "replace the police and correctional institutions and personnel with community members and those better suited to community care needs," so too should "abolish schools" mean something similar.
posted by kewb at 6:13 AM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]
Imagine something like funding a library/community center/counseling center in each community, staffed with a nice, even ratio of care experts (social workers and social program staffers, medical and child psychology professionals, etc.) and people in the community (parents, community pillars and elders, etc.) with the budget to bring in outside speakers and talents as needed.
You could have a community-elected board oversee them, but perhaps with one or two appointed outside reporters to ensure oversight or with strict term limits to avoid recreating entrenched power dynamics and inequities. And, yes, you'd need regulation: the strictly religious community doesn't get to tell LGBTQIA+ kids that they're inherently "wrong" or "bad," for example.
Just as "abolish the police" really means "replace the police and correctional institutions and personnel with community members and those better suited to community care needs," so too should "abolish schools" mean something similar.
posted by kewb at 6:13 AM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]
I'd worry that unschooling today would just mean a lot of videogames and youtube videos about shallow topics, honestly. That's already what most of the kids do when they are in school.
posted by subdee at 6:19 AM on July 8, 2020 [12 favorites]
posted by subdee at 6:19 AM on July 8, 2020 [12 favorites]
Quite a lot of what is ailing public schooling could be fixed if we simply funded education properly, and detached funding from property taxes.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:25 AM on July 8, 2020 [87 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 6:25 AM on July 8, 2020 [87 favorites]
Suddenly, people everywhere were “homeschooling,” and despite the immediate stress of the life-altering change, and harsh words of caution from a Harvard Law professor that unregulated homeschooling is dangerous, 40% of parents now say they are more likely to homeschool when the COVID-19 crisis is over.
We've been homeschooling for eighteen years and counting. People were suddenly crisis-schooling, not homeschooling. Homeschooling doesn't have to be terribly elaborate, especially in the elementary grades, but going from zero-to-everything nearly overnight was a lot to ask kids, parents, teachers, and administrators.
posted by jquinby at 6:29 AM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]
We've been homeschooling for eighteen years and counting. People were suddenly crisis-schooling, not homeschooling. Homeschooling doesn't have to be terribly elaborate, especially in the elementary grades, but going from zero-to-everything nearly overnight was a lot to ask kids, parents, teachers, and administrators.
posted by jquinby at 6:29 AM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]
...which I would have noticed the article mentioned had I read all the way to the bottom. :/
posted by jquinby at 6:30 AM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by jquinby at 6:30 AM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
You could have a community-elected board oversee them, but perhaps with one or two appointed outside reporters to ensure oversight or with strict term limits to avoid recreating entrenched power dynamics and inequities. And, yes, you'd need regulation: the strictly religious community doesn't get to tell LGBTQIA+ kids that they're inherently "wrong" or "bad," for example.
Isn't this just a standard US school board but with stricter oversight? The FPP article is about doing child rearing and educating in the absence of external institutions, not with better ones than we have now. If there is still an outside check on the parents then we are not talking about Unschooling as that term is typically used (and I've been letting myself be triggered by this thread for no reason.
In y'all's new world which adults do children learn are safe to come to if their parents are mistreating them? How do they learn that? If the phrase mandatory reporter does not appear in a discussion of unschooling it is frankly not treating the potential harms seriously.
posted by PMdixon at 6:32 AM on July 8, 2020 [11 favorites]
Isn't this just a standard US school board but with stricter oversight? The FPP article is about doing child rearing and educating in the absence of external institutions, not with better ones than we have now. If there is still an outside check on the parents then we are not talking about Unschooling as that term is typically used (and I've been letting myself be triggered by this thread for no reason.
In y'all's new world which adults do children learn are safe to come to if their parents are mistreating them? How do they learn that? If the phrase mandatory reporter does not appear in a discussion of unschooling it is frankly not treating the potential harms seriously.
posted by PMdixon at 6:32 AM on July 8, 2020 [11 favorites]
In y'all's new world which adults do children learn are safe to come to if their parents are mistreating them? How do they learn that? If the phrase mandatory reporter does not appear in a discussion of unschooling it is frankly not treating the potential harms seriously.My hunch is that the author of this piece would have very little faith in the current child welfare system's ability to protect children of color. I think that she would say that system was as likely to perpetrate abuse as stop it, and so "what would we do without this institution that protects children" is not a valid argument.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:37 AM on July 8, 2020 [7 favorites]
Cool. Then say that explicitly. Different children will be harmed in different ways under different abusive systems. I tend to think that "parents always know what's best for their children" harms more children more badly than "there need to be mechanisms by which children can seek refuge from abusive parents." I'll also note that the conversation is about schools not welfare. I am saying that this author's proposal will most likely result in a higher number of children with no recourse against the abuse they are suffering than at present. I am saying this because I underwent the experience being advocated and it resulted in a profoundly unescapably abusive environment - one thing that's left out here is that there's a big difference between the isolation possible in urban and rural settings. It's a lot more difficult to have no possibility of even talking to another adult in urban settings than when they are literally miles away.
posted by PMdixon at 6:46 AM on July 8, 2020 [33 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 6:46 AM on July 8, 2020 [33 favorites]
Then why not fix the system so that it better protect children of color rather than societally abrogate the responsibility of protecting all our children? And the first way you do that is to decouple school funding from the local tax base. When schools in rich neighborhoods have way more money than schools in poor neighborhoods, of course the schools in poor neighborhoods are going to have worse outcomes. And we can definitely look at ways to improve the schools. But the notion that all parents can educate their children to fit into the contemporary world better than teachers with advanced degrees is laughable. Homeschooling is why the right-wing evangelical movement is so ignorant in this country.
posted by MythMaker at 6:46 AM on July 8, 2020 [27 favorites]
posted by MythMaker at 6:46 AM on July 8, 2020 [27 favorites]
It worries me that leftish people are surveying American life and thinking that atomizing further into families and individuals is a positive change. If there is a mass movement to pull out of schools and educate in the home I will interpret that as the end of the possibility of a broad-based civic life in the US.
Schools are some of the only civic structures we have left. They are not solely about education provision as this article portrays. They are also food service, sports/physical activity clubs, friends, parent involvement, child care, health check ups, voting sites, and on and on. How will homeschools replicate these important societal functions? I know they will not and cannot but I think it is important to explicitly acknowledge that there is nothing that will step in and fill these voids should we vacate the schools.
posted by scantee at 6:47 AM on July 8, 2020 [114 favorites]
Schools are some of the only civic structures we have left. They are not solely about education provision as this article portrays. They are also food service, sports/physical activity clubs, friends, parent involvement, child care, health check ups, voting sites, and on and on. How will homeschools replicate these important societal functions? I know they will not and cannot but I think it is important to explicitly acknowledge that there is nothing that will step in and fill these voids should we vacate the schools.
posted by scantee at 6:47 AM on July 8, 2020 [114 favorites]
And this is without getting into the question of whether communities already damaged by white supremacism and colonization may not be replicating that damage in some ways.
Worrying about institutional schooling reinforcing colonialism is all very well, but it can also reinforce diversity, interdependence, and equality. Everyone retreating to their own silos leads to a best case where it’s simply the children of white supremacists who inherit their biases unexamined. The worst case is that every child views other races as the unknown ‘other’, with the all the biases that entails.
It’s not fair for minority children to have to serve as life lessons for their majority counterparts, but children who don’t get those lessons can grow up to be very dangerous indeed.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:50 AM on July 8, 2020 [10 favorites]
Worrying about institutional schooling reinforcing colonialism is all very well, but it can also reinforce diversity, interdependence, and equality. Everyone retreating to their own silos leads to a best case where it’s simply the children of white supremacists who inherit their biases unexamined. The worst case is that every child views other races as the unknown ‘other’, with the all the biases that entails.
It’s not fair for minority children to have to serve as life lessons for their majority counterparts, but children who don’t get those lessons can grow up to be very dangerous indeed.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:50 AM on July 8, 2020 [10 favorites]
Eh...I come from a culture that sees traditional education as a ticket to guaranteed and successful employment. For them, unschooling would sound like hippie-dippie bullshit, and a one-way ticket to homelessness. And in my parents' traditions, girls were expected to leave their education to take care of domestic and farm duties. I don't like the whole "well traditionally self-directed and people learned on their own" take! "Traditionally" people had to work and education was the province of the upper classes for a lot of cultures.
Practically speaking I don't see how any sort of homeschooling/unschooling is workable at all right now for any dual-income household, unless one parent quits to focus full-time on the child(ren). It's barely workable for me right now, and we are well off and literate, with plenty of books in the home!
posted by toastyk at 6:52 AM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]
Practically speaking I don't see how any sort of homeschooling/unschooling is workable at all right now for any dual-income household, unless one parent quits to focus full-time on the child(ren). It's barely workable for me right now, and we are well off and literate, with plenty of books in the home!
posted by toastyk at 6:52 AM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]
In this magical unschooling future, do we just not have day jobs?
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:01 AM on July 8, 2020 [38 favorites]
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:01 AM on July 8, 2020 [38 favorites]
did this person learn how to write an essay at unschool
posted by saladin at 7:01 AM on July 8, 2020 [17 favorites]
posted by saladin at 7:01 AM on July 8, 2020 [17 favorites]
did this person learn how to write an essay at unschool
Could we not with the credentialism? Thanks!
posted by PMdixon at 7:06 AM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]
Could we not with the credentialism? Thanks!
posted by PMdixon at 7:06 AM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]
“For so many in Black culture, the way that we identify success and validation is through how much we produce or perform, and that goes back to enslavement, [when] our safety relied on how much we produced,” says Akilah Richards, the co-founder of Raising Free People and board member of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education. “There is a genetic and social imprint,” of that. To look at children solely as their capacity to produce and perform in school perpetuates that imprint, she explains. What if we don’t focus on classroom performance, or on obtaining degrees, but on what each person’s brilliance is? (my emphasis).
Come on now. A genetic imprint?
Leaving aside the fact that I'm pretty sure that identifying success and validation through classroom performance is not a unique Black cultural characteristic. Isn't that just a generic middle class characteristic?
posted by atrazine at 7:10 AM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
Come on now. A genetic imprint?
Leaving aside the fact that I'm pretty sure that identifying success and validation through classroom performance is not a unique Black cultural characteristic. Isn't that just a generic middle class characteristic?
posted by atrazine at 7:10 AM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
People were suddenly crisis-schooling, not homeschooling.
That is a much better way of describing my "homeschooling", thank you. I felt like I was doing a disservice to people who are doing effective homeschooling by describing my half benign-neglect / half impatient-noob-instructor as "homeschooling".
If this pandemic has taught me anything it is that unless your kid is one of those rare early-blooming auto-didacts, you are putting their future in peril by trying to half-ass your way through crisis-schooling. I'm only a marginally productive human when working towards my own goals, but throw the responsibility of my kids education into my daily schedule and it is a slow moving disaster.
I love our local public schools, and I need them back so bad.
posted by pol at 7:29 AM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]
That is a much better way of describing my "homeschooling", thank you. I felt like I was doing a disservice to people who are doing effective homeschooling by describing my half benign-neglect / half impatient-noob-instructor as "homeschooling".
If this pandemic has taught me anything it is that unless your kid is one of those rare early-blooming auto-didacts, you are putting their future in peril by trying to half-ass your way through crisis-schooling. I'm only a marginally productive human when working towards my own goals, but throw the responsibility of my kids education into my daily schedule and it is a slow moving disaster.
I love our local public schools, and I need them back so bad.
posted by pol at 7:29 AM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]
Considering the trend of 'don't give them a platform' - given the unschool platform features deeply religious and anti-vaxxers - should this unschool be given a platform because the claimed benefit is greater than some religious educations/anti-vaxxers.?
The qualifications for one person cited this article is a parent and deep thinker on education.
As an appeal to authority - how is being a "deep thinker" supposed to have readers differ to her words and ideas?
In the article there is “For so many in Black culture, the way that we identify success and validation is through how much we produce or perform, and that goes back to enslavement, [when] our safety relied on how much we produced,” In America your safety is dependent on the abstraction to income as an expression on your productivity. This kind of abstraction of what is or is not enslavement had a Republican party talking point about "wage slavery" with groups like the Knights of Labor back in the day. Now the author of this article says: What if we don’t focus on classroom performance, or on obtaining degrees, but on what each person’s brilliance is? Getting that job which abstracts to productive value as abstracted as an income should now just be income based on brilliance? That sounds like a fresh new hell for employment - how does one determine "brilliance"? Because what is going to happen in the brave new Unschooled world will be the same effect in the job market when people have learned a skill set VS not having a formal degree in the same skill set.
Education has been called a gatekeeping function of the middle and upper class to keep their childern in said classes. If there was formal 'unschooling' then what is the "deep thinkers" plan to prevent HR departments from not deciding to hire the 'unschooled' VS only selecting people who have stacked paper deep showing they were not 'unschooled'? And as said upthread: In this magical unschooling future, do we just not have day jobs?
how is this unschooling not a further form of job gatekeeping? And as courts/society tie child rearing to women, how is the unschool effort not a form of sexism VS women by dening equal access to the job market?
posted by rough ashlar at 7:35 AM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
The qualifications for one person cited this article is a parent and deep thinker on education.
As an appeal to authority - how is being a "deep thinker" supposed to have readers differ to her words and ideas?
In the article there is “For so many in Black culture, the way that we identify success and validation is through how much we produce or perform, and that goes back to enslavement, [when] our safety relied on how much we produced,” In America your safety is dependent on the abstraction to income as an expression on your productivity. This kind of abstraction of what is or is not enslavement had a Republican party talking point about "wage slavery" with groups like the Knights of Labor back in the day. Now the author of this article says: What if we don’t focus on classroom performance, or on obtaining degrees, but on what each person’s brilliance is? Getting that job which abstracts to productive value as abstracted as an income should now just be income based on brilliance? That sounds like a fresh new hell for employment - how does one determine "brilliance"? Because what is going to happen in the brave new Unschooled world will be the same effect in the job market when people have learned a skill set VS not having a formal degree in the same skill set.
Education has been called a gatekeeping function of the middle and upper class to keep their childern in said classes. If there was formal 'unschooling' then what is the "deep thinkers" plan to prevent HR departments from not deciding to hire the 'unschooled' VS only selecting people who have stacked paper deep showing they were not 'unschooled'? And as said upthread: In this magical unschooling future, do we just not have day jobs?
how is this unschooling not a further form of job gatekeeping? And as courts/society tie child rearing to women, how is the unschool effort not a form of sexism VS women by dening equal access to the job market?
posted by rough ashlar at 7:35 AM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
The results show that 40% of families are more likely to homeschool or virtual school after lockdowns
The survey was conducted by RealClear, who might have an agenda. Beyond that, while they're described as being only moderately right wing, a quick scan of their recent stories shows that they're pushing strongly right wing narratives.
Roughly 40% of the country also thinks that Trump is doing a great job too. Taking their kids out of schools is a good way to keep them from experiencing diversity, learning things that conflict with their parents' beliefs, and get sex ed or help working through LGBT issues.
On the other side of the fence, most people I'm friends with are thinking, "wow, teachers really do a lot for us, we should probably pay them more."
I knew quite a few people that were homeschooled by both left and rightwing parents. The really bright ones who were going to succeed pretty much anywhere turned out fairly fine, though usually with some socialization issues. But the average or below average intelligence ones from rightwing families fared poorly in the real world because what they learned had been filtered by their parents.
There are some kids that thrive in unschooling, but they tend to be the ones from wealthy families who have the resources to provide their kids with opportunities, live in areas with excellent libraries, museums, etc., and have time to spend teaching and mentoring them. It would be a disaster in households where the parent or parents work multiple jobs just to survive, live in areas without good public facilities, or are indifferent to their children's learning.
posted by Candleman at 7:44 AM on July 8, 2020 [18 favorites]
The survey was conducted by RealClear, who might have an agenda. Beyond that, while they're described as being only moderately right wing, a quick scan of their recent stories shows that they're pushing strongly right wing narratives.
Roughly 40% of the country also thinks that Trump is doing a great job too. Taking their kids out of schools is a good way to keep them from experiencing diversity, learning things that conflict with their parents' beliefs, and get sex ed or help working through LGBT issues.
On the other side of the fence, most people I'm friends with are thinking, "wow, teachers really do a lot for us, we should probably pay them more."
I knew quite a few people that were homeschooled by both left and rightwing parents. The really bright ones who were going to succeed pretty much anywhere turned out fairly fine, though usually with some socialization issues. But the average or below average intelligence ones from rightwing families fared poorly in the real world because what they learned had been filtered by their parents.
There are some kids that thrive in unschooling, but they tend to be the ones from wealthy families who have the resources to provide their kids with opportunities, live in areas with excellent libraries, museums, etc., and have time to spend teaching and mentoring them. It would be a disaster in households where the parent or parents work multiple jobs just to survive, live in areas without good public facilities, or are indifferent to their children's learning.
posted by Candleman at 7:44 AM on July 8, 2020 [18 favorites]
I love our local public schools, and I need them back so bad.
Yeah, we don't need to 'unschool', we need to de-localize education so that everybody actually gets the education that they're entitled to.
posted by eclectist at 7:46 AM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]
Yeah, we don't need to 'unschool', we need to de-localize education so that everybody actually gets the education that they're entitled to.
posted by eclectist at 7:46 AM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]
Oh, and the article's sources talking about that study link to The American Federation for Children, which is a DeVos funded conservative school privatization 501(c)(4).
posted by Candleman at 7:52 AM on July 8, 2020 [14 favorites]
posted by Candleman at 7:52 AM on July 8, 2020 [14 favorites]
When it works, unschooling works because you have a good match between a child's interests/passions and the resources available to them to learn. But this assumes not just availability of resources but also the child's own good mental health and ability to be guided through "sticking points" when they are learning.
Anecdotally, I have members of my extended family where the father is a doctor and the mother is a former elementary school teacher, who are also adherents to a particular form of Catholism. The mother stayed home to unschool ("of course.")
A few years ago they were visiting and one of their children, age 13, spent a long time trying to tell me some things about my former area of study that were super, super, wrong, and when I dragged out the source material to point it out, threw a fit and ran down the street. It was clear from that discussion that he had no historical or social context for the text.
In the (warm and caring) conversation that all the adults present had afterwards, the father, who is an MD, said that unschooling was really hard and the kids mostly played Minecraft and World of Warcraft and he said he kept meaning to teach them science but it hadn't happened yet. However, things were going "really well."
It was at that point that I realized that homeschooling in that particular way does a couple of things:
- there's no assessment or evaluation of the teachers/parents involved. So if you're teaching something wrong, or aren't covering something, or run out of time/energy, there are no standards that will hold you to your commitment. I know most homeschooling parents are pretty committed at the start, and that there are groups to help them, but that's not the same as the way I have gotten better in my career which has often been held accountable for results, and mentored by those who know more.
- every unschooled kid is at the top and bottom of their own class. While I think there are great aspects to that for exploratory learning, I'm not sure it helps for academic rigour or for gaining perspective. For example, my family's white, and none of the kids in either homeschooled family I know have been introduced to any of the indigenous or Black writers that my kids have. In the Catholic homeschooled family queer history was eliminated, for example.
At this point, their 6 children, now in their late teens and twenties, have moved forward as follows. Two of the boys are working in a series of menial-type jobs where they leave/are let go on a regular basis, although I think their parents are funding their start in a roofing business soon. The third, who is on the autistic spectrum, isn't currently working or studying. One of their girls is studying to become a doula and another is working in a day care. The last is still unschooling. None of the 5 who have 'finished' have gone to tertiary-level education of any kind.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:55 AM on July 8, 2020 [12 favorites]
Anecdotally, I have members of my extended family where the father is a doctor and the mother is a former elementary school teacher, who are also adherents to a particular form of Catholism. The mother stayed home to unschool ("of course.")
A few years ago they were visiting and one of their children, age 13, spent a long time trying to tell me some things about my former area of study that were super, super, wrong, and when I dragged out the source material to point it out, threw a fit and ran down the street. It was clear from that discussion that he had no historical or social context for the text.
In the (warm and caring) conversation that all the adults present had afterwards, the father, who is an MD, said that unschooling was really hard and the kids mostly played Minecraft and World of Warcraft and he said he kept meaning to teach them science but it hadn't happened yet. However, things were going "really well."
It was at that point that I realized that homeschooling in that particular way does a couple of things:
- there's no assessment or evaluation of the teachers/parents involved. So if you're teaching something wrong, or aren't covering something, or run out of time/energy, there are no standards that will hold you to your commitment. I know most homeschooling parents are pretty committed at the start, and that there are groups to help them, but that's not the same as the way I have gotten better in my career which has often been held accountable for results, and mentored by those who know more.
- every unschooled kid is at the top and bottom of their own class. While I think there are great aspects to that for exploratory learning, I'm not sure it helps for academic rigour or for gaining perspective. For example, my family's white, and none of the kids in either homeschooled family I know have been introduced to any of the indigenous or Black writers that my kids have. In the Catholic homeschooled family queer history was eliminated, for example.
At this point, their 6 children, now in their late teens and twenties, have moved forward as follows. Two of the boys are working in a series of menial-type jobs where they leave/are let go on a regular basis, although I think their parents are funding their start in a roofing business soon. The third, who is on the autistic spectrum, isn't currently working or studying. One of their girls is studying to become a doula and another is working in a day care. The last is still unschooling. None of the 5 who have 'finished' have gone to tertiary-level education of any kind.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:55 AM on July 8, 2020 [12 favorites]
...the biases of majority white-administered schools are on display, whether those biases are unconscious, supported by district-approved textbooks or enshrined in law.I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday. I wish there were some practical way to ensure diversity in school administrations and faculties at all levels. At the same time, if I was a BIPOC who was an educator or school admin, I would absolutely not have wanted to go live in the kind of all-white community I grew up in.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:04 AM on July 8, 2020
Isn't this part of what the right is doing, defunding public schools in favor of niche charter schools with less oversight?
posted by waving at 8:28 AM on July 8, 2020 [22 favorites]
posted by waving at 8:28 AM on July 8, 2020 [22 favorites]
When we grew up and went to school
There were certain teachers who would hurt the children
In any way they could
By pouring their derision upon anything we did
Exposing every weakness
However carefully hidden by the kids
But in the town, it was well known when they got home at night
Their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them
Within inches of their lives
Sing along, everybody!
[You! Yes, you! STAND STILL, LADDIE!]
posted by Huffy Puffy at 8:33 AM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
There were certain teachers who would hurt the children
In any way they could
By pouring their derision upon anything we did
Exposing every weakness
However carefully hidden by the kids
But in the town, it was well known when they got home at night
Their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them
Within inches of their lives
Sing along, everybody!
[You! Yes, you! STAND STILL, LADDIE!]
posted by Huffy Puffy at 8:33 AM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
Weird how willing many people are to consider reconstructing the workplace, but see the schools as somehow immutable.
posted by No Robots at 8:36 AM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by No Robots at 8:36 AM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
Weird how willing many people are to consider reconstructing the workplace, but see the schools as somehow immutable.
Weird seeing complete removal as the only possible mutation.
posted by PMdixon at 8:38 AM on July 8, 2020 [33 favorites]
Weird seeing complete removal as the only possible mutation.
posted by PMdixon at 8:38 AM on July 8, 2020 [33 favorites]
I was homeschooled as a result of bullying. My parent was ill equipped to serve as a teacher and the curriculum - Abeka - was biased. I was able to stay in line with my peers because my school was bad, I was bright and it felt like we were being retaught the same thing year after year there to me. If it’s relevant, we were black the whole time. I worry about children as potential vectors for the disease in a traditional classroom environment but also worry about these kids being profoundly set back.
posted by Selena777 at 8:39 AM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 8:39 AM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]
This
Anecodotally, I have a close friend (a teacher married to a teacher) who has spent most of the last decade+ worrying over nieces/nephews "unschooled" by well-educated hippies that tend toward a "they'll do what they think is cool" benign neglect. The kids are now mid-late teenage years and struggle with basic literacy and math, to say nothing of social skills/life skills which are almost entirely absent. The parents have absolutely no idea what to do with them and the kids are terrified of the world. I mean this genuinely, and not at all in some pearl-clutching way, but I honestly don't know what they will do.
posted by thivaia at 8:42 AM on July 8, 2020 [18 favorites]
Anecodotally, I have a close friend (a teacher married to a teacher) who has spent most of the last decade+ worrying over nieces/nephews "unschooled" by well-educated hippies that tend toward a "they'll do what they think is cool" benign neglect. The kids are now mid-late teenage years and struggle with basic literacy and math, to say nothing of social skills/life skills which are almost entirely absent. The parents have absolutely no idea what to do with them and the kids are terrified of the world. I mean this genuinely, and not at all in some pearl-clutching way, but I honestly don't know what they will do.
posted by thivaia at 8:42 AM on July 8, 2020 [18 favorites]
Public school serves so many different functions. Some of them - like food security, socialization, time away from home, exercise, fundamental educational building blocks like language and math and art and music - are good. Others - like angolcentric indoctrination, the school-to-prison pipeline, socioeconomic segregation via property tax funding - are bad. The core concept that education is a foundational human right that should be provided for by government is one worth holding on to.
Why? Because deconstructing a major institutional apparatus like public schools will, like every other service we remove from the public sphere, disproportionately impact those without the resources to provide it for themselves. How does a single parent home school their children? What if there is no homeschooling group in the neighborhood? What if the parent is illiterate? The list goes on and on.
Like, everyone is home schooling right now, right? And who is faring the worst? Those without resources. If anything this pandemic has underlined the fundamental role public schools play in child-rearing. Saying we should tear it down is just another example of highly privileged thinking.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:49 AM on July 8, 2020 [45 favorites]
Why? Because deconstructing a major institutional apparatus like public schools will, like every other service we remove from the public sphere, disproportionately impact those without the resources to provide it for themselves. How does a single parent home school their children? What if there is no homeschooling group in the neighborhood? What if the parent is illiterate? The list goes on and on.
Like, everyone is home schooling right now, right? And who is faring the worst? Those without resources. If anything this pandemic has underlined the fundamental role public schools play in child-rearing. Saying we should tear it down is just another example of highly privileged thinking.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:49 AM on July 8, 2020 [45 favorites]
Related breaking news: N.Y.C. Schools, Nation’s Largest District, Will Not Fully Reopen in Fall
About four months after 1.1 million New York City children were forced into online learning, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday that public schools would still not fully reopen in September, saying that classroom attendance would instead be limited to only one to three days a week in an effort to continue to curb the coronavirus outbreak.posted by gwint at 8:51 AM on July 8, 2020
The mayor’s release of his plan for the system, by far the nation’s largest, capped weeks of intense debate among elected officials, educators and public health experts over how to bring children back safely to 1,800 public schools.
The decision to opt for only a partial reopening, which is most likely the only way to accommodate students in school buildings while maintaining social distancing, may hinder hundreds of thousands of parents from returning to their pre-pandemic work lives, undermining the recovery of the sputtering local economy.
Still, the staggered schedules in New York City schools for September reflect a growing trend among school systems, universities and colleges around the country, which are all trying to find ways of balancing the urgent need to bring students back to classrooms and campuses while also reducing density to prevent the spread of the virus.
Is Unschooling the Way to Decolonize Education?
No.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:09 AM on July 8, 2020 [17 favorites]
No.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:09 AM on July 8, 2020 [17 favorites]
Schools need fixing
and support really well those parents well equipped to home school properly
and be there for kids that need protection grom their toxic families.
It's a lot to ask I know, but schools are all we got to ask
posted by goinWhereTheClimateSuitsMyClothes at 9:14 AM on July 8, 2020 [4 favorites]
and support really well those parents well equipped to home school properly
and be there for kids that need protection grom their toxic families.
It's a lot to ask I know, but schools are all we got to ask
posted by goinWhereTheClimateSuitsMyClothes at 9:14 AM on July 8, 2020 [4 favorites]
While I agree that our schools need serious reform, and that changing to a more just funding model would be a good step in that direction, eliminating public schools just seems like it would reinforce and strengthen inequality. You'd better believe that anyone with the ability to do so would be sending their kids to private schools, while those without that option would do what? Struggle as best they could to find something, anything, while also working two jobs and trying to scrape together enough to keep their kids fed? I mean, it sounds highly unlikely that this would level the playing field. It would just make the gate-keeping that much more difficult to overcome for the unprivileged.
posted by dellsolace at 9:34 AM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by dellsolace at 9:34 AM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]
some parents have turned to homeschooling when they realized other children in their child’s class were heavily medicated
This is where I stopped.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:38 AM on July 8, 2020 [22 favorites]
This is where I stopped.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:38 AM on July 8, 2020 [22 favorites]
How is this not asking parents to be all things to their children? Yes, schools are in need of serious change to carve away systemic bigotry and massively increase accessibility. And yes, even the paradigm of something like grades or teacher-student hierarchies need to be deeply scrutinized on the regular. But how can home schooling or unschooling be something to aspire to on a wider societal basis without it just becoming ad-hoc private school by unqualified stressed adults who have other priorities too?
Homeschooling families often group up with others to cover gaps in knowledge or do group activities like sports and music - and it's still super hard on the parents let alone the kids. Most parents don't have an education in education, not to mention childhood nutrition, psychology, physical health... Most parents don't have the connections or resources to help a kid who isn't a self-motivated Matilda badass to know how to follow an autdidactic trail. These days a huge number of parents suddenly can't afford rent. And yet the burden is now on them to be all things at all times, to be somehow aware of their own biases and gaps in knowledge, a calm observer of their own kid's strengths and weaknesses? And they should be doing this in a time when communities are ever more tenuous and harsher to outsiders? No thanks.
posted by Mizu at 10:15 AM on July 8, 2020 [15 favorites]
Homeschooling families often group up with others to cover gaps in knowledge or do group activities like sports and music - and it's still super hard on the parents let alone the kids. Most parents don't have an education in education, not to mention childhood nutrition, psychology, physical health... Most parents don't have the connections or resources to help a kid who isn't a self-motivated Matilda badass to know how to follow an autdidactic trail. These days a huge number of parents suddenly can't afford rent. And yet the burden is now on them to be all things at all times, to be somehow aware of their own biases and gaps in knowledge, a calm observer of their own kid's strengths and weaknesses? And they should be doing this in a time when communities are ever more tenuous and harsher to outsiders? No thanks.
posted by Mizu at 10:15 AM on July 8, 2020 [15 favorites]
It troubles me that this article effectively brushes off a large and very public face of un/homeschooling with its two quick sentences about California parents turning to homeschooling "after California decided to reform its teachings in public schools on sex education" and "after the state passed a new vaccination law. Those sex ed reforms include teaching about consent, ongoing HIV education, and gender neutral/GLBTQIA inclusive language. The vaccine law strictly limits the use of medical exemptions and investigates doctors who write large numbers of them. Both of those sound like eminently reasonable measures for greater civic good to this socialist and medical professional, but what do I know?
I'm not anti-homeschooling as an absolute rule. But it strikes me that homeschoolers of the demographic I see in this article, usually decently-off educated leftists with crunchy leanings but not full on anti-vax, can sometimes come off a little "doth protest too much" precisely because the overwhelming face of the movement is one of conservative Christianity, skepticism about science and medicine, and the intersections of the two. It seems disingenuous to present yourself as a sensible homeschooler without reckoning with reckoning with stories like Educated and groups like the Home School Legal Defense Association, which has strong ties to fundamentalist colleges and republican politicians, blocking even the mildest attempts at regulation.
posted by I am a Sock, I am an Island at 10:28 AM on July 8, 2020 [13 favorites]
I'm not anti-homeschooling as an absolute rule. But it strikes me that homeschoolers of the demographic I see in this article, usually decently-off educated leftists with crunchy leanings but not full on anti-vax, can sometimes come off a little "doth protest too much" precisely because the overwhelming face of the movement is one of conservative Christianity, skepticism about science and medicine, and the intersections of the two. It seems disingenuous to present yourself as a sensible homeschooler without reckoning with reckoning with stories like Educated and groups like the Home School Legal Defense Association, which has strong ties to fundamentalist colleges and republican politicians, blocking even the mildest attempts at regulation.
posted by I am a Sock, I am an Island at 10:28 AM on July 8, 2020 [13 favorites]
I also agree with Stoneweaver. I'll add that the project of removing systemic racism in public schools isn't new, and has been attempted by a number of diverse scholars since the 60s across a number of approaches. Deschooling is something I've seen rise to prominence that often seems to ignore or sideline other approaches that have been studied which don't involve wholesale abolition of public schooling. Three examples I can think of off hand are cooperative design of schooling, the community schools movement, and action-based educational research. None of these is a pancaea, and each has its own history of successes and failures. The degree to which deschooling is presented as a singular solution without recognizing the previous work makes also makes me suspicious of it as a movement...
posted by codacorolla at 11:23 AM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by codacorolla at 11:23 AM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
Y’all want to decolonize your children without decolonizing yourselves and that’s just not going to work.
Yah. It says a lot when people upthread measure the success of homeschooling by whether or not those students molded themselves into a neat little cog in the system. Just because some people don't end up in a job with a 401K and 2 weeks paid vacation doesn't mean their education failed them. The fact that we look at people as having "failed" because they don't go to college and end up in a white collar job says more about us than them.
posted by nushustu at 11:28 AM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
Yah. It says a lot when people upthread measure the success of homeschooling by whether or not those students molded themselves into a neat little cog in the system. Just because some people don't end up in a job with a 401K and 2 weeks paid vacation doesn't mean their education failed them. The fact that we look at people as having "failed" because they don't go to college and end up in a white collar job says more about us than them.
posted by nushustu at 11:28 AM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
Denying your kids the ability to choose such a path if they choose because you failed to ensure they were well educated isn't a good thing. The kids that warriorqueen and thivaia described weren't well educated young people that made alternative life choices and decided to escape white collar hell, they were neglected by their parents and now lack the ability to succeed.
I'm a product of schools heavily influenced by unschooling and spent the early part of my adulthood not following the standard paths and living the life I loved scraping by in the arts. But when I developed a medical condition that required good insurance, I was damn well happy that I had quality schooling to fall back on. As was my cousin who spent the first decade and change of adult life living in national parks but is now a school teacher.
posted by Candleman at 12:11 PM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]
I'm a product of schools heavily influenced by unschooling and spent the early part of my adulthood not following the standard paths and living the life I loved scraping by in the arts. But when I developed a medical condition that required good insurance, I was damn well happy that I had quality schooling to fall back on. As was my cousin who spent the first decade and change of adult life living in national parks but is now a school teacher.
posted by Candleman at 12:11 PM on July 8, 2020 [16 favorites]
I just want to quote everything grumpybear69 said. Building a public institution like the public school system is hard and takes time and effort. We should really be careful about dismantling these systems because I guarantee they will take more time and effort to replace than they took to take apart.
posted by subdee at 12:17 PM on July 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by subdee at 12:17 PM on July 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
On a personal note, my cousins are homeschooled for religious reasons. Due to their deep involvement in their church, their socialization is just fine and they are also strong readers. Their math and science is weak so all fields that involve math and science are now closed to them. The oldest is working for family and married (at 19), the others are still in school.
As pointed out above, their mother (my aunt) stays home to watch them full time and this is a feature of homeschooling, not a bug.
I wouldn't use job outcomes as a measure of how well unschooling works because the job market is difficult for everyone in Gen Z, not just the homeschooled or unschooled. But for sure I think mathematical and scientific literacy will drop in a scenario where homeschooling/unschooling is more common, it's because of religious schooling that half of americans believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago.
I'm also a high school math teacher in an urban school, the outcome for a lot of my students when school was cancelled was they spent all day playing Roblox and just clicking through the assignments when they were multiple choice, and neglecting the assignments that weren't. Some of them (a lot of them) have jobs outside of school, so if homeschooling becomes common expect more students to leave school early to work. Very few of my students were able to follow a grade-level online curriculum on their own (AKA khan academy), most cannot self-teach from grade level math videos because they are not at grade level. Parents are working multiple jobs, they rely on the school system to educate their kids.
And this is a district that's 100 percent minority, where the school board and superintendant and all the school leadership is minority, and that takes decolonization of the cirriculum extremely seriously (last year, when there was an incident with a police officer wrestling an honors student to the ground, the entire school marched to the police station, teachers and administrators included, on a school day.)
But I just can't imagine anyone here supporting unschooling, the majority parents in this district are not interested in taking on this burden. There's already a lot of parents who work too much and leave the child-raising to screens, older children and the school system.
posted by subdee at 12:29 PM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]
As pointed out above, their mother (my aunt) stays home to watch them full time and this is a feature of homeschooling, not a bug.
I wouldn't use job outcomes as a measure of how well unschooling works because the job market is difficult for everyone in Gen Z, not just the homeschooled or unschooled. But for sure I think mathematical and scientific literacy will drop in a scenario where homeschooling/unschooling is more common, it's because of religious schooling that half of americans believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago.
I'm also a high school math teacher in an urban school, the outcome for a lot of my students when school was cancelled was they spent all day playing Roblox and just clicking through the assignments when they were multiple choice, and neglecting the assignments that weren't. Some of them (a lot of them) have jobs outside of school, so if homeschooling becomes common expect more students to leave school early to work. Very few of my students were able to follow a grade-level online curriculum on their own (AKA khan academy), most cannot self-teach from grade level math videos because they are not at grade level. Parents are working multiple jobs, they rely on the school system to educate their kids.
And this is a district that's 100 percent minority, where the school board and superintendant and all the school leadership is minority, and that takes decolonization of the cirriculum extremely seriously (last year, when there was an incident with a police officer wrestling an honors student to the ground, the entire school marched to the police station, teachers and administrators included, on a school day.)
But I just can't imagine anyone here supporting unschooling, the majority parents in this district are not interested in taking on this burden. There's already a lot of parents who work too much and leave the child-raising to screens, older children and the school system.
posted by subdee at 12:29 PM on July 8, 2020 [9 favorites]
But I have heard recently, the idea that STEM schools are racist because minority kids tend to do worse in STEM programs. All I can say is we need science and math and it's not a good idea to stop teaching these subjects just because the outcomes aren't what we wish they were, yet.
posted by subdee at 12:35 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by subdee at 12:35 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
We didn’t just have No Education until white people came along to civilize us. If you want to decolonize via education that is hard work, and it is a return to traditional systems not the absence of any systems. And unschooling =/= homeschooling =/= decolonization. Y’all want to decolonize your children without decolonizing yourselves and that’s just not going to work.
I question White America's commitment to Actual Decolonization, even the people that claim that they want it. They don't want to decolonize their children, they just have a vague sense that decolonization is one of those Things They Should Support.
More concerningly, and I'm sorry if I missed this in a previous comment, is the fact that the ongoing deconstruction of public schools as public-funded institutions for the public good is being carried out through an aggressive, decades-long campaign of privatization, appropriation of public monies for unaccountable private businesses, and demonization of the very idea of public school.
This article hugely oversimplifies some things, sort of gets some things kind of right, and rather suspiciously ignores one of the most important and noteworthy structural trends in public education entirely. This comes across as grossly tendentious in a way that inspires profound mistrust.
posted by clockzero at 12:40 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]
I question White America's commitment to Actual Decolonization, even the people that claim that they want it. They don't want to decolonize their children, they just have a vague sense that decolonization is one of those Things They Should Support.
More concerningly, and I'm sorry if I missed this in a previous comment, is the fact that the ongoing deconstruction of public schools as public-funded institutions for the public good is being carried out through an aggressive, decades-long campaign of privatization, appropriation of public monies for unaccountable private businesses, and demonization of the very idea of public school.
This article hugely oversimplifies some things, sort of gets some things kind of right, and rather suspiciously ignores one of the most important and noteworthy structural trends in public education entirely. This comes across as grossly tendentious in a way that inspires profound mistrust.
posted by clockzero at 12:40 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]
subdee: But I have heard recently, the idea that STEM schools are racist because minority kids tend to do worse in STEM programs. All I can say is we need science and math and it's not a good idea to stop teaching these subjects just because the outcomes aren't what we wish they were, yet.
So as a fellow high school math teacher in an urban school I think I need to call you out on this point. I don't think critiques of STEM magnet schools or of math courses write large as racist ever imply we should stop teaching those subjects. I think they call for examining (with students!) the ways in which mathematics has racist roots and has been used to racist ends. There's pretty convincing evidence that most measures of student achievement have racial and cultural bias, and may not be telling us what we wish they were. Moreover, the very notion that test scores (or other similar targets) are a/the way to measure good education is really not something I can agree with.
I think this is exactly where the work in decolonization is. I think it's not going to get done through unschooling, as clockzero said better than I can above. I think the US public education system is worth salvaging--I admit I have a financial interest in it continuing to survive, but I also think throwing it out will end up causing more harm than good. But in order to support that, I really have to be on board with some major revisions to the way we think about school, and I think it isn't a bad idea to consider claims of structural racism seriously before dismissing them.
posted by thegears at 12:45 PM on July 8, 2020 [11 favorites]
So as a fellow high school math teacher in an urban school I think I need to call you out on this point. I don't think critiques of STEM magnet schools or of math courses write large as racist ever imply we should stop teaching those subjects. I think they call for examining (with students!) the ways in which mathematics has racist roots and has been used to racist ends. There's pretty convincing evidence that most measures of student achievement have racial and cultural bias, and may not be telling us what we wish they were. Moreover, the very notion that test scores (or other similar targets) are a/the way to measure good education is really not something I can agree with.
I think this is exactly where the work in decolonization is. I think it's not going to get done through unschooling, as clockzero said better than I can above. I think the US public education system is worth salvaging--I admit I have a financial interest in it continuing to survive, but I also think throwing it out will end up causing more harm than good. But in order to support that, I really have to be on board with some major revisions to the way we think about school, and I think it isn't a bad idea to consider claims of structural racism seriously before dismissing them.
posted by thegears at 12:45 PM on July 8, 2020 [11 favorites]
Sorry primalux and thegears, I was repeating information I'd heard second hand. Like I said before I teach in a 100% minority district and we have our own STEM school with 100% minority students that's mostly grant funded. The last thing I want to do is derail this thread by speaking carelessly. I'll retract my whole comment.
posted by subdee at 1:12 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by subdee at 1:12 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
We unschool. My 7 and 12 year old daughters have never been to school. Trying not to feel defensive, as I do think there is a lot of room for criticism in the anti schooling movement. And I think that opting out of the system is only one of many valid choices.
I have been in the unschooling/homeschooling community long enough to see outcomes of all types. I have seen radically unschooled kids launch spectacularly into adulthood as awesome well rounded people. I have seen kids fail to transition into any kind of independence at all. This is true for all of the public school kids in my life as well. Maybe it's just part of raising kids in general?
The are many reasons we decided to unschool (atypically autistic daughter, flexibility, genuine enjoyment of each other's company) but one factor is the ability to opt out of the mainstream capitalist American narrative. It is absolutely possible to raise anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-abelist, anti-patriarchy children while sending them to school, but (especially in AZ) it takes a lot of work and deprogramming. Even in the more diverse and well meaning schools, our system is designed to teach lessons I don't want my kids learning.
My worth is dependent on my intelligence.
My worth is dependent on how hard I work.
My worth is dependent on what or how much I produce.
My worth is relative to the worth of the others around me.
That easily displayed and measured knowledge of a subject is better than deep understanding.
That a snapshot of one's current understanding of a subject should have great weight on future success (testing)
These are (some of) things that I absorbed from the system. As someone who has dealt with various levels of disability in my life It has been hard work unpacking these from my psyche to reclaim a sense of self worth. I don't want that for my kids.
I really do understand unschooling is not the answer for everyone. Or even most people. And I would never advocate for public schools to be abolished or defunded. We need to reform our education system to be anti-racist and anti-oppression. With flexibility to serve children as individuals. But until we do that, people (especially those being oppressed by the system) should be able to opt out. I know many people can't do that and my ability to even make that choice is a privilege.
And yes, there are absolutely people out there who keep their kids out of school for terrible reasons. To have control over their children. To keep eyes off of their family to cover up their abuse. There are many others who turn a blind eye to those abusers because they are invested in the idea of homeschooling as an unqualified "good" and don't want to bring attention to the bad actors among us. I lost my entire homeschooling support network 3 years ago (of secular, ostensibly social justice oriented unschoolers) after they refused to remove a known abuser from our group. We were given the choice to stay and be quiet or leave. We left, and reported, but the mother was warned by group leaders ahead of time and able to put on a facade for child services.
There needs to be oversight or some sort - to keep kids safe. But, honestly - schools can be pretty bad at keeping kids safe also. I was sexually assaulted at school as a teenager and nothing was done. I hope things are slightly better two decades later, but like most progress - I'm sure it varies across the country. I know I am still consistently hearing of cover ups in my local districts.
Anyways - TLDR
Our education system is not serving large portions of the children it is supposed to be serving. Both through lack of funding and (in my opinion) inherent negative values like competition and compliance baked into the system itself. Until we fix it, people should be able to opt out. Especially those damaged the most by it.
posted by Lapin at 1:41 PM on July 8, 2020 [14 favorites]
I have been in the unschooling/homeschooling community long enough to see outcomes of all types. I have seen radically unschooled kids launch spectacularly into adulthood as awesome well rounded people. I have seen kids fail to transition into any kind of independence at all. This is true for all of the public school kids in my life as well. Maybe it's just part of raising kids in general?
The are many reasons we decided to unschool (atypically autistic daughter, flexibility, genuine enjoyment of each other's company) but one factor is the ability to opt out of the mainstream capitalist American narrative. It is absolutely possible to raise anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-abelist, anti-patriarchy children while sending them to school, but (especially in AZ) it takes a lot of work and deprogramming. Even in the more diverse and well meaning schools, our system is designed to teach lessons I don't want my kids learning.
My worth is dependent on my intelligence.
My worth is dependent on how hard I work.
My worth is dependent on what or how much I produce.
My worth is relative to the worth of the others around me.
That easily displayed and measured knowledge of a subject is better than deep understanding.
That a snapshot of one's current understanding of a subject should have great weight on future success (testing)
These are (some of) things that I absorbed from the system. As someone who has dealt with various levels of disability in my life It has been hard work unpacking these from my psyche to reclaim a sense of self worth. I don't want that for my kids.
I really do understand unschooling is not the answer for everyone. Or even most people. And I would never advocate for public schools to be abolished or defunded. We need to reform our education system to be anti-racist and anti-oppression. With flexibility to serve children as individuals. But until we do that, people (especially those being oppressed by the system) should be able to opt out. I know many people can't do that and my ability to even make that choice is a privilege.
And yes, there are absolutely people out there who keep their kids out of school for terrible reasons. To have control over their children. To keep eyes off of their family to cover up their abuse. There are many others who turn a blind eye to those abusers because they are invested in the idea of homeschooling as an unqualified "good" and don't want to bring attention to the bad actors among us. I lost my entire homeschooling support network 3 years ago (of secular, ostensibly social justice oriented unschoolers) after they refused to remove a known abuser from our group. We were given the choice to stay and be quiet or leave. We left, and reported, but the mother was warned by group leaders ahead of time and able to put on a facade for child services.
There needs to be oversight or some sort - to keep kids safe. But, honestly - schools can be pretty bad at keeping kids safe also. I was sexually assaulted at school as a teenager and nothing was done. I hope things are slightly better two decades later, but like most progress - I'm sure it varies across the country. I know I am still consistently hearing of cover ups in my local districts.
Anyways - TLDR
Our education system is not serving large portions of the children it is supposed to be serving. Both through lack of funding and (in my opinion) inherent negative values like competition and compliance baked into the system itself. Until we fix it, people should be able to opt out. Especially those damaged the most by it.
posted by Lapin at 1:41 PM on July 8, 2020 [14 favorites]
And though my comment was already way too long, I meant to add that my homeschooling group that was starting to form (as a replacement for the icky one) before Covid derailed everything does include at least one Black mother who has specifically stated that decolonizing her children's education is a goal. And I guarantee that she isn't just hoping that quitting school is all she needs to do.
posted by Lapin at 2:05 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Lapin at 2:05 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
If anyone - particularly teachers! - is interested in learning about decolonizing education (and other aspects of their life), The University of British Columbia offers an awesome free online course (MOOC) called Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education.
posted by urbanlenny at 2:43 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by urbanlenny at 2:43 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
If a building is infested with cockroaches, one way to solve the problem might be to burn down the building?
I daresay that the re-thinking of education is an overdue project. Certainly those aspects of education which maintain an advantage for select groups have -long- needed to be rooted out.
Earlier today I saw a claim that public schools are about 'leftist indoctrination'. Yes, reading and writing, a knowledge of history, sex education *are dangerous* to those clinging to the status quo. (Thus the rain of chimeras like vouchers and Charters and deVos.)
What kind of schooling would the unschooled devise? What kind of air does a mask filter? I'd say that those who choose to be in the control group are not fit to do any judging.
posted by Twang at 2:50 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
I daresay that the re-thinking of education is an overdue project. Certainly those aspects of education which maintain an advantage for select groups have -long- needed to be rooted out.
Earlier today I saw a claim that public schools are about 'leftist indoctrination'. Yes, reading and writing, a knowledge of history, sex education *are dangerous* to those clinging to the status quo. (Thus the rain of chimeras like vouchers and Charters and deVos.)
What kind of schooling would the unschooled devise? What kind of air does a mask filter? I'd say that those who choose to be in the control group are not fit to do any judging.
posted by Twang at 2:50 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
Huffy Puffy: In this magical unschooling future, do we just not have day jobs?
Candleman: Oh, and the article's sources talking about that study link to The American Federation for Children, which is a DeVos funded conservative school privatization 501(c)(4).
stoneweaver: Decolonization means something. It is not the woke word of the month. It will not be achieved passively like this.
These three factors really worry me about this article.
Homeschooling or unschooling is generally an option for privileged families, where one or more adults can spend significant time with their kid(s). This is also generally easier with neurotypical kids who don't have other considerations and needs that factor into their education.
Because once parents or guardians have full-time jobs, and/or are unable to effectively teach their child or children, unschooling or homeschooling isn't really an option. Or it's pursued at the detriment of the child.
Also, by leaving the (underfunded, and in some ways/ places broken) system to support your kid(s), you're not benefiting society, you're looking out for your own. And unless you have the training and support to do that well, you're not even able to look after your own. Yes, you should be able to opt out, and if you have the resources to be able to support your child, that's great for you and your family. But that's different than abolishing school as an institution, and different from decolonizing education.
In my biased* opinion, public schools are a core part of a functional society, and not only because (in the US, at least), they've been expanded to provide food and stability for kids whose lives otherwise lack those things many people take for granted, as well as medical and mental health support (when the school is funded to provide these services), but because in public schools, kids are literally in it together, supported (via taxes) by the public at large.
But like so many public institutions in the US (outside of the military), they are underfunded, and have been for decades. Teachers are insulted with dumb phrases like "those who can, do; those who can't, teach," uttered by people who gripe about how much "time off" teachers get (they're unpaid in the summer, it's not a paid holiday; and teachers generally spend many hours out of class to prepare and grade materials, including in their "holiday" time). And education is another political battleground, where creationism is pushed to be taught as a valid theory.
None of this is me disagreeing with the fact that standardized history and social studies are largely presented from the view of the colonizers, and focused on white men as decision-makers. And English lit standards are focused heavily on the stories by white males. Yes, let's tear that down and build something new.
But there are still core truths like math and science, immutable facts that need to be taught and taught well, if not for direct implementation in later life, but for broader problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
If your family or social group are able to cover all that, and provide an unbiased, well-rounded education from elementary through high school, you're likely some of the fortunate few. That is your privilege. Not everyone has that option. And not every parent or guardian is even focused this highly on education, to consider how biased and racist public education as a broad system can be. As is clear from current pushes to get kids back into schools, they're not overly concerned about the safety and practicality of traditional in-class schools in this pandemic period, they're looking to re-open child storage ("COVID:19 — Guilt and the Breaking Point of Teachers" an article on Medium).
Yes, I'm saying that having an invested, caring parent or guardian is a privilege. Those kids have to rely on public schools for so much that is lacking elsewhere in their lives.
* I'm biased because I am the son of an elementary school teacher, and I spent my afternoons wandering around the school campus as a kid as my mom continued to work. I still see the investments made by teachers daily, as my wife is a high school math teacher, and she's devoted to the future of her kids, making videos when she'll be out of the class and knows there won't be a qualified substitute to teach the subject. She's spent her weekends helping her students get through materials that they were struggling with, just so they'd graduate. I really wish that every kid had the opportunity to design their education to some degree, but there are still plenty of kids who won't even get a high school diploma, let alone get into college, so this feels like it's another effort that will reward those with some form(s) of privilege.
Citing a DeVos conservative school privatization org as source, using "decolonization" as headline hook to talk about racism without actually discussing what it means to decolonize education, and including well-known individuals as anecdotes of why unschooling is the solution without really addressing the fact that many families are struggling to keep kids home now and find a way to work, all undermines the idea that this is about addressing societal racism at all.
If you can have your kids opt out of the system and still provide them the education to survive and thrive in the world, great. But the system is still broken, and opting out isn't fixing anything.
[I'm sorry for my sloppy use of "you," "us," and "them" -- I don't mean to make this about individuals in this thread, but talk about general trends, options, and views.]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:03 PM on July 8, 2020 [17 favorites]
Candleman: Oh, and the article's sources talking about that study link to The American Federation for Children, which is a DeVos funded conservative school privatization 501(c)(4).
stoneweaver: Decolonization means something. It is not the woke word of the month. It will not be achieved passively like this.
These three factors really worry me about this article.
Homeschooling or unschooling is generally an option for privileged families, where one or more adults can spend significant time with their kid(s). This is also generally easier with neurotypical kids who don't have other considerations and needs that factor into their education.
Because once parents or guardians have full-time jobs, and/or are unable to effectively teach their child or children, unschooling or homeschooling isn't really an option. Or it's pursued at the detriment of the child.
Also, by leaving the (underfunded, and in some ways/ places broken) system to support your kid(s), you're not benefiting society, you're looking out for your own. And unless you have the training and support to do that well, you're not even able to look after your own. Yes, you should be able to opt out, and if you have the resources to be able to support your child, that's great for you and your family. But that's different than abolishing school as an institution, and different from decolonizing education.
In my biased* opinion, public schools are a core part of a functional society, and not only because (in the US, at least), they've been expanded to provide food and stability for kids whose lives otherwise lack those things many people take for granted, as well as medical and mental health support (when the school is funded to provide these services), but because in public schools, kids are literally in it together, supported (via taxes) by the public at large.
But like so many public institutions in the US (outside of the military), they are underfunded, and have been for decades. Teachers are insulted with dumb phrases like "those who can, do; those who can't, teach," uttered by people who gripe about how much "time off" teachers get (they're unpaid in the summer, it's not a paid holiday; and teachers generally spend many hours out of class to prepare and grade materials, including in their "holiday" time). And education is another political battleground, where creationism is pushed to be taught as a valid theory.
None of this is me disagreeing with the fact that standardized history and social studies are largely presented from the view of the colonizers, and focused on white men as decision-makers. And English lit standards are focused heavily on the stories by white males. Yes, let's tear that down and build something new.
But there are still core truths like math and science, immutable facts that need to be taught and taught well, if not for direct implementation in later life, but for broader problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
If your family or social group are able to cover all that, and provide an unbiased, well-rounded education from elementary through high school, you're likely some of the fortunate few. That is your privilege. Not everyone has that option. And not every parent or guardian is even focused this highly on education, to consider how biased and racist public education as a broad system can be. As is clear from current pushes to get kids back into schools, they're not overly concerned about the safety and practicality of traditional in-class schools in this pandemic period, they're looking to re-open child storage ("COVID:19 — Guilt and the Breaking Point of Teachers" an article on Medium).
Yes, I'm saying that having an invested, caring parent or guardian is a privilege. Those kids have to rely on public schools for so much that is lacking elsewhere in their lives.
* I'm biased because I am the son of an elementary school teacher, and I spent my afternoons wandering around the school campus as a kid as my mom continued to work. I still see the investments made by teachers daily, as my wife is a high school math teacher, and she's devoted to the future of her kids, making videos when she'll be out of the class and knows there won't be a qualified substitute to teach the subject. She's spent her weekends helping her students get through materials that they were struggling with, just so they'd graduate. I really wish that every kid had the opportunity to design their education to some degree, but there are still plenty of kids who won't even get a high school diploma, let alone get into college, so this feels like it's another effort that will reward those with some form(s) of privilege.
Citing a DeVos conservative school privatization org as source, using "decolonization" as headline hook to talk about racism without actually discussing what it means to decolonize education, and including well-known individuals as anecdotes of why unschooling is the solution without really addressing the fact that many families are struggling to keep kids home now and find a way to work, all undermines the idea that this is about addressing societal racism at all.
If you can have your kids opt out of the system and still provide them the education to survive and thrive in the world, great. But the system is still broken, and opting out isn't fixing anything.
[I'm sorry for my sloppy use of "you," "us," and "them" -- I don't mean to make this about individuals in this thread, but talk about general trends, options, and views.]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:03 PM on July 8, 2020 [17 favorites]
There's a deep conversation to be had about this re: deschooling, because deschooling is not "get rid of schools", but to challenge the linkages and to understand whether schools, education, teaching, and learning are actually all similar.
Schools are often carceral mechanisms that replicate carceral/policing structures - grades, detention, suspension, expulsion, and part of the deschooling project is to examine how the norms set in schools may not be about a project of LEARNING per se.
Are there ways we can orient our institutions about learning? This is the question. As someone who teaches, I firsthand feel the incredible amount of trauma around schooling, and think that it is utterly important to talk about how the ways in which we LEARN
"Deschooling" is a term particularly widespread and thought about by Ivan Illich, and I really think bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress and Paulo Freire are really important to read as well.
If part of the carceral state, the prison industrial complex, has been about ways of capture, control, enslavement, then I do think that there is a decolonialist project in this that is about unlearning the "master's tools" in order to rethink modes of education. Deschooling isn't a privileged "let's get rid of schools", it's about examining this deeply. Or in other words: "How come schools, ostensibly about teaching and knowledge, use tools and techniques from prisons and police that are about hurting people?"
There's a lot of folks who write about this, but I've been learning a lot from La Paperson's A Third University Is Possible, which explicitly tries to understand and imagine the history and future of a colonialist and decolonialist education, well as the history and impact of of colonialist education in Indigenous societies.
posted by suedehead at 3:56 PM on July 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
Schools are often carceral mechanisms that replicate carceral/policing structures - grades, detention, suspension, expulsion, and part of the deschooling project is to examine how the norms set in schools may not be about a project of LEARNING per se.
Are there ways we can orient our institutions about learning? This is the question. As someone who teaches, I firsthand feel the incredible amount of trauma around schooling, and think that it is utterly important to talk about how the ways in which we LEARN
"Deschooling" is a term particularly widespread and thought about by Ivan Illich, and I really think bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress and Paulo Freire are really important to read as well.
If part of the carceral state, the prison industrial complex, has been about ways of capture, control, enslavement, then I do think that there is a decolonialist project in this that is about unlearning the "master's tools" in order to rethink modes of education. Deschooling isn't a privileged "let's get rid of schools", it's about examining this deeply. Or in other words: "How come schools, ostensibly about teaching and knowledge, use tools and techniques from prisons and police that are about hurting people?"
There's a lot of folks who write about this, but I've been learning a lot from La Paperson's A Third University Is Possible, which explicitly tries to understand and imagine the history and future of a colonialist and decolonialist education, well as the history and impact of of colonialist education in Indigenous societies.
posted by suedehead at 3:56 PM on July 8, 2020 [8 favorites]
Also: the metaphor I've used is to think of schools and learning as restaurants and cooking. Imagine a society where nobody cooks. Everyone goes to restaurants to eat out, all the time. Society is oriented around restaurants.
One day, you decided to cook at home. It's hard, because in this future there are no consumer-facing grocery stores, you can't buy knives, cutting boards, stoves. You might not even have a stove in your home. But still you manage to cook. And a friend sees what you're doing and says, "oh, are you opening in a restaurant in your home?"
No, no you're not. You're actually cooking at home, for yourself and your family. Cooking and nourishment shouldn't be seen through the lens of "restaurants". Restaurants are lovely and helpful, but they sure as hell shouldn't be the only way in which we access and legitimize nourishment.
To move this back to learning. We operate in a structure where education and degrees are legitimized by academic institutions, and upwards mobility often equals access to educational institutions, schools. But what about learning in other ways? How can we decouple learning and schools? And how is the idea of the "school" as an institution, or the idea that "you learn at schools" a narrative that is deeply woven into our societies?
Could the school be a place where we learn to learn with each other? Where we focus on learning and exploration, not teaching and progress, in convivial ways?
posted by suedehead at 4:24 PM on July 8, 2020 [11 favorites]
One day, you decided to cook at home. It's hard, because in this future there are no consumer-facing grocery stores, you can't buy knives, cutting boards, stoves. You might not even have a stove in your home. But still you manage to cook. And a friend sees what you're doing and says, "oh, are you opening in a restaurant in your home?"
No, no you're not. You're actually cooking at home, for yourself and your family. Cooking and nourishment shouldn't be seen through the lens of "restaurants". Restaurants are lovely and helpful, but they sure as hell shouldn't be the only way in which we access and legitimize nourishment.
To move this back to learning. We operate in a structure where education and degrees are legitimized by academic institutions, and upwards mobility often equals access to educational institutions, schools. But what about learning in other ways? How can we decouple learning and schools? And how is the idea of the "school" as an institution, or the idea that "you learn at schools" a narrative that is deeply woven into our societies?
Could the school be a place where we learn to learn with each other? Where we focus on learning and exploration, not teaching and progress, in convivial ways?
posted by suedehead at 4:24 PM on July 8, 2020 [11 favorites]
Critical education theorist Michael Apple on unschooling (2018 interview transcript):
To me the issue is what do we to collectively? The vast majority of students in the United States will never see a self-directed learning program or an unschooled program. They will go to regular public schools, which, by the way, were victories, not only defeats. African-American and Latino and indigenous people were forbidden from going to school. So let's remember that the school is the last truly public institution. Everything else is being privatized. And there's massive attacks on teachers and schools, turning them into voucher plans and for-profit schools. And to the extent that the unschooling movement grows, it actually, unfortunately, and certainly not consciously on the part of its participants, it contributes to the attacks on teachers and schools. And it will lead to defunding of public schools, which will be a disaster for many more children than will see an unschooling programposted by audi alteram partem at 4:48 PM on July 8, 2020 [14 favorites]
This is the "let them eat cake" argument of public schooling debates.
posted by MiraK at 6:29 PM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by MiraK at 6:29 PM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]
I totally understand the appeal of unschooling.
Schools have failed a lot of people, and it’s failed poor black kids the hardest. My brother and I were both homeschooled. Me, because I was chronically ill and the school refused to accommodate me. My brother, because he was harassed, threatened, and lied to by a police officer who was trying to get him to “admit” to threatening to bomb the school because some other kids had accused him of it, and those kids were “good kids” who “don’t lie.” We are both white. This is hardly a blip compared to the abuses many black children experience in the school system. I wouldn’t blame any parents wanting to take their kids out of school for mistreatment such as this, as my mom did.
But. But, but, but. Homeschooling meant, as others pointed out, lack of adults to reach out to when abuse occurs. I distinctly remember commenting on a free range kids blog, asking for help, because they seemed like the sort of people who would care (I don’t think I ever got a response). It also meant standards were whatever the hell my mom wanted. I literally never learned American history, because we proceeded in order and spent so much time on Biblical history that by the time I graduated high school we had only gotten as far as the Renaissance. I literally learned how electricity worked last year. In my third gear of graduate school. I just had a call with my mom, who is still homeschooling my brother. History for next year is going to be a semester of civics (great, except I’m sure it’s not going to be skewed from a Trump supporter) and a semester of... the history of beekeeping. Which, great, it’s related to his interests, but also, jesus christ. There’s also the problem that my mother was not college educated, and there were many topics she straight up could not teach me or help me with. My high school years were basically “here’s a textbook, here’s a workbook, go.” I know that’s not what unschooling is supposed to be like. But it still requires the parent to understand enough about a topic themselves to work through it with the child, and that’s just not the case for many parents. Plus, just knowing it doesn’t mean you’ll be good at teaching it. That’s a skill, and I’m not a fan of expecting all parents to become skilled yet unpaid teachers.
The one thing I’ll give homeschooling is that, because of the aforementioned skill problem, I got really really good at self directed learning. So college and graduate school have been actually a lot easier for me than many of my peers in terms of learning new material. But my assumed high school knowledge base is, uh... pretty off.
All that to say, I absolutely understand and will not judge individuals for choosing to homeschool/unschool their children due to abuses suffered in the school system. Will it work out? Maybe. But it is not a societal solution and we should be seeking to fix schools, not shove the responsibility off on untrained, unpaid parents as a whole.
posted by brook horse at 6:30 PM on July 8, 2020 [21 favorites]
Schools have failed a lot of people, and it’s failed poor black kids the hardest. My brother and I were both homeschooled. Me, because I was chronically ill and the school refused to accommodate me. My brother, because he was harassed, threatened, and lied to by a police officer who was trying to get him to “admit” to threatening to bomb the school because some other kids had accused him of it, and those kids were “good kids” who “don’t lie.” We are both white. This is hardly a blip compared to the abuses many black children experience in the school system. I wouldn’t blame any parents wanting to take their kids out of school for mistreatment such as this, as my mom did.
But. But, but, but. Homeschooling meant, as others pointed out, lack of adults to reach out to when abuse occurs. I distinctly remember commenting on a free range kids blog, asking for help, because they seemed like the sort of people who would care (I don’t think I ever got a response). It also meant standards were whatever the hell my mom wanted. I literally never learned American history, because we proceeded in order and spent so much time on Biblical history that by the time I graduated high school we had only gotten as far as the Renaissance. I literally learned how electricity worked last year. In my third gear of graduate school. I just had a call with my mom, who is still homeschooling my brother. History for next year is going to be a semester of civics (great, except I’m sure it’s not going to be skewed from a Trump supporter) and a semester of... the history of beekeeping. Which, great, it’s related to his interests, but also, jesus christ. There’s also the problem that my mother was not college educated, and there were many topics she straight up could not teach me or help me with. My high school years were basically “here’s a textbook, here’s a workbook, go.” I know that’s not what unschooling is supposed to be like. But it still requires the parent to understand enough about a topic themselves to work through it with the child, and that’s just not the case for many parents. Plus, just knowing it doesn’t mean you’ll be good at teaching it. That’s a skill, and I’m not a fan of expecting all parents to become skilled yet unpaid teachers.
The one thing I’ll give homeschooling is that, because of the aforementioned skill problem, I got really really good at self directed learning. So college and graduate school have been actually a lot easier for me than many of my peers in terms of learning new material. But my assumed high school knowledge base is, uh... pretty off.
All that to say, I absolutely understand and will not judge individuals for choosing to homeschool/unschool their children due to abuses suffered in the school system. Will it work out? Maybe. But it is not a societal solution and we should be seeking to fix schools, not shove the responsibility off on untrained, unpaid parents as a whole.
posted by brook horse at 6:30 PM on July 8, 2020 [21 favorites]
I posted this as someone whose now-adult children were unschoolers. I am currently raising two children in foster care who go to public school. I hoped to read a variety of viewpoints and Metafilter does not disappoint!
I agree the article was vague about unschooling. Having gotten to know hundreds of unschooling families quite well through both my personal and professional life, I will say that there are unschoolers of every socio-economic background, and very few who unschool for religious reasons. That group tends towards structured homeschooling and no oversight. It is exemplified by HSLDA, the Home School Legal Defense Association, mentioned by I am a Sock, I am an Island above. Unschoolers have actively worked against H$LDA. The vast majority of those I know seek to make the world a better place through politics, activism, volunteering, and community involvement, and are not people who think ‘fuck the other guy, we only care about ourselves’.
I do agree with many points made above, though, and believe this is an article that needs to be read with a critical eye. However, it is the first article I have seen in 21 years that centers Black unschooling families, and in the context of the present times, I found it a catalyst to thinking further about what education might look like if our collective goal was to support learning, family life, community, and equity. What would it look like if schools were replaced with active libraries, community resources, cooperative learning environments that support working parents, and ready access to culture and civic life, as well as UBI , food security, and a strong safety net for every person? The article did not specify that something would fill the gap left by schools, but I felt it invited us to think further than, ‘get rid of schools’.
Would it be a perfect solution, keeping every kid safe and ensuring each got a top-notch education? No. But school is also not that solution, and to me it is worth making space in my mind to consider radical ideas about family life, education, and what we value as a society. In the U.S., kids (and particularly underprivileged kids) are not being well-served by schools as they currently exist. Students regularly graduate high school without having gained basic literacy. Police are active in our schools. Racism is ever present in our curriculum. None of the changes that have been made to schools (and there have been so many, over the years) have solved those problems. For sure the first thing that would have to change is school funding, but that doesn’t seem to be any less of a pipe dream than schools being replaced by unschooling.
posted by ruetheday at 7:10 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]
I agree the article was vague about unschooling. Having gotten to know hundreds of unschooling families quite well through both my personal and professional life, I will say that there are unschoolers of every socio-economic background, and very few who unschool for religious reasons. That group tends towards structured homeschooling and no oversight. It is exemplified by HSLDA, the Home School Legal Defense Association, mentioned by I am a Sock, I am an Island above. Unschoolers have actively worked against H$LDA. The vast majority of those I know seek to make the world a better place through politics, activism, volunteering, and community involvement, and are not people who think ‘fuck the other guy, we only care about ourselves’.
I do agree with many points made above, though, and believe this is an article that needs to be read with a critical eye. However, it is the first article I have seen in 21 years that centers Black unschooling families, and in the context of the present times, I found it a catalyst to thinking further about what education might look like if our collective goal was to support learning, family life, community, and equity. What would it look like if schools were replaced with active libraries, community resources, cooperative learning environments that support working parents, and ready access to culture and civic life, as well as UBI , food security, and a strong safety net for every person? The article did not specify that something would fill the gap left by schools, but I felt it invited us to think further than, ‘get rid of schools’.
Would it be a perfect solution, keeping every kid safe and ensuring each got a top-notch education? No. But school is also not that solution, and to me it is worth making space in my mind to consider radical ideas about family life, education, and what we value as a society. In the U.S., kids (and particularly underprivileged kids) are not being well-served by schools as they currently exist. Students regularly graduate high school without having gained basic literacy. Police are active in our schools. Racism is ever present in our curriculum. None of the changes that have been made to schools (and there have been so many, over the years) have solved those problems. For sure the first thing that would have to change is school funding, but that doesn’t seem to be any less of a pipe dream than schools being replaced by unschooling.
posted by ruetheday at 7:10 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]
what education might look like if our collective goal was to support learning, family life, community, and equity
These are literally the standards by which educators are evaluated in Massachusetts (I can't speak to other states because I don't work there). Whatever structural and individual failures there may be (and there are certainly many), it's disingenuous to suggest that this is not the goal.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 6:53 AM on July 9, 2020 [6 favorites]
These are literally the standards by which educators are evaluated in Massachusetts (I can't speak to other states because I don't work there). Whatever structural and individual failures there may be (and there are certainly many), it's disingenuous to suggest that this is not the goal.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 6:53 AM on July 9, 2020 [6 favorites]
However, it is the first article I have seen in 21 years that centers Black unschooling families,
A question and then an observation.
Given the use of Rethinking Schools* material in homeschooling and therefore something you should have been exposed to - why is their 30 years of publication on such topics NOT able to provide such an article before now? Where did the crew who has (had?) The Onion staffers fail to provide such a POV?
When we interact with the world we do that with our own filters attached. One of the people cited sure seems to have a set of filters on the world that if anyone who is in anyway white or tied to what she sees as whiteness is saying or doing something that is preventing her from doing what she wants is proof of the power of racism putting her down. And such a filter on world events can lead you to claiming that peeing in the bushes is white oppression in America. Oh and if one pees outside that’s privilege in the US of A with such a filter set attached. With such a filter attached that means the medical establishment is NFG and you end up presenting to others that turpentine is a medicine and you can eat your way to preventing malaria.
What would it look like if schools were replaced with active libraries, community resources, cooperative learning environments that support working parents, and ready access to culture and civic life, as well as UBI , food security, and a strong safety net for every person?
And nearly every one of those is worthy of its own FPP on The Blue. And as this economic contraction starts to bite the new graduates of college with the expense they have taken on will result in parts of the old 2008 discussions about such on The Blue will happen once again.
*Rethinking schools comes up on The Blue a few times. If one searches that you can find I've come to the conclusion, though, that either settling for our present system, or advocating a system which breaks down public education, end up in the same place: privileging the already privileged, punishing the already impoverished. which seems to be a good argument for a state enforced system the US of A has because without that the quoted observation is the most likely outcome.
posted by rough ashlar at 8:39 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
A question and then an observation.
Given the use of Rethinking Schools* material in homeschooling and therefore something you should have been exposed to - why is their 30 years of publication on such topics NOT able to provide such an article before now? Where did the crew who has (had?) The Onion staffers fail to provide such a POV?
When we interact with the world we do that with our own filters attached. One of the people cited sure seems to have a set of filters on the world that if anyone who is in anyway white or tied to what she sees as whiteness is saying or doing something that is preventing her from doing what she wants is proof of the power of racism putting her down. And such a filter on world events can lead you to claiming that peeing in the bushes is white oppression in America. Oh and if one pees outside that’s privilege in the US of A with such a filter set attached. With such a filter attached that means the medical establishment is NFG and you end up presenting to others that turpentine is a medicine and you can eat your way to preventing malaria.
What would it look like if schools were replaced with active libraries, community resources, cooperative learning environments that support working parents, and ready access to culture and civic life, as well as UBI , food security, and a strong safety net for every person?
And nearly every one of those is worthy of its own FPP on The Blue. And as this economic contraction starts to bite the new graduates of college with the expense they have taken on will result in parts of the old 2008 discussions about such on The Blue will happen once again.
*Rethinking schools comes up on The Blue a few times. If one searches that you can find I've come to the conclusion, though, that either settling for our present system, or advocating a system which breaks down public education, end up in the same place: privileging the already privileged, punishing the already impoverished. which seems to be a good argument for a state enforced system the US of A has because without that the quoted observation is the most likely outcome.
posted by rough ashlar at 8:39 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
« Older Ron responded, "There are 168 hours in a week." | Frog and Toad are Friends Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
But the article is much less effective at making a case that "unschooling" is any kind of solution, and dismissive of any potential problems with unschooling approaches. Take, for example, this part of the argument: Click the link, and you'll see that the Harvard Law professor points out that most homeschooling is unregulated, and that there's evidence of a strong correlation between unregulated homeschooling in the U.S. and "child maltreatment."
This article's retort is...well, parents are warming up to homeschooling, so it must be good! It does nothing to address the actual evidence and arguments made by the opposing side.
Bizarrely, the article later argues that dropping kids off at community centers like libraries should not raise fears for parents because..93% of abusers are not strangers, but people known to the child. That, of course, doesn't work very well with the general argument that the family and community are inherently better for the child than institutions, and does fit with that Harvard Law professor's concerns about unregulated homeschooling enabling child maltreatment.
The article's explanations of unschooling also come across as vague, sometimes contradictory. It's about letting your child explore their own brilliance, what they want...but for some cultures it'll reflect their values of filial piety and be hierarchical, but institutional schooling is bad because it enforces age divisions. If un schooling is whatever anyone wants it to be, then it's nothing at all. Its really irritating to see a quote such as this one -- "We don’t have enough experience to test [unschooling results] statistically, but enough anecdotally to say it works well.” -- presented as if it were serous evidence for the article's thesis.
More generally, this article is full of the exact same kinds of survivorship bias examples -- so-and-so didn't go to school, and they became a huge success! -- that libertarian techbro types use to argue that college is worthless, ignoring the many, many more people who don't reach those heights of success.
More than that, the big take from the article is about halfway down: This is, and always has been the problem with unschooling models: they work when the community and the family actually have the resources and knowledge to make it work, and they fail horribly when the community and the family lack these things. And this is without getting into the question of whether communities already damaged by white supremacism and colonization may not be replicating that damage in some ways.
The article does acknowledge that, noting that "communities of color, Indigenous, and immigrant communities might need more resources or might need to approach unschooling from different perspectives." But this tends to make the concept of unschooling still more nebulous and incoherent, except as the abolition of existing educational institutions.
Demonstrating that a system is deeply inequitable does not demonstrate that the absence of that system would create equity. This article isn't very good at escaping that pitfall.
posted by kewb at 5:52 AM on July 8, 2020 [111 favorites]