I’ve heard that talking about parenting can fetch you a bunch of caustic feedback, but I’m going to do it anyway.
My son Austin is five. The kid is brilliant. I know that all parents think their kids are smart, but this is no joke.
Austin knows how to do the basics of multiplication and division. His vocabulary rivals mine (“celtic punk” and “pneumatic tube” were probably among the first 100 phrases he learned, no joke). And for some reason, out of the aether, he’s got this fantastic artistic ability. The other day he was copying a detailed illustration out of one of his Transformers books (it was a plane air-dropping Optimus Prime into battle) and was doing it freehand, without tracing, and did a better job than when Robin tries to draw stuff at his request.
This year he’ll go off to kindergarten, and he’s going to be bored as a motherfucker. He got bored with preschool over a year ago, and the fact that he’s the oldest kid in his class isn’t helping. They have to move at the speed of the slowest kids, so as not to leave anyone behind. You get a spectrum of kids with different abilities, but it’s one class with one teacher… and so one size must fit all.
I find myself wondering about this, and other things I’ve never thought about when it comes to school, and education, and development.
All the things I’ve always taken for granted as immutable truths — school starts at five and continues for thirteen years, college follows high school, job follows college — are suddenly coming into question.
All at once, I’m no longer sure that what I learned in school is what I’d most like for my kids to learn.
This is the fault of you online weirdoes.
I’ve met a lot of entrepreneurs in this last year. And entrepreneurs are wackos. They’re not normal; they break the rules; they’re shit out of their minds. You spend enough time around people like that and suddenly it becomes really obvious that:
1. They owe their success not to their knowledge of Greek history or geometry, but to something closer to wily “street smarts” — an understanding of human nature and human motivation.
2. They’ve been able to do what they’ve done not because of their ability to memorize facts and take tests, but because of their willingness to try things that most people won’t try.
3. They achieved not because of any ingrained sense of wanting to be secure and safe, but in spite of it.
I don’t think school is bad, but I don’t think it taught me the most important things that drive me today, either. I think I spent thirteen years learning what the state wanted me to learn, and then another five learning what the previous thirteen years had led me believe the world wanted me to learn.
And then I think I set that aside, recalled a lot of good times (and some bad) from those years, and then, bit by bit, re-learned what I needed to know in order to do what I do today.
I ask myself, what has been the most important stuff I’ve learned? Was it history, math, and science? Was it home ec, or literature, or business management 101?
Or did it come from experience at the School of Hard Knocks?
And so I wonder: What would be the curriculum at Johnny’s Entrepreneurship School?
So let’s think about that. I’d offer:
1. Independence and self-confidence.
A successful entrepreneur has to be able to be able to look at his situation and his surroundings and then do what he thinks he should do in spite of the opinions of others. Nobody around you will take you seriously when you say you want to create an internet shoe empire, so you have to have the nards to do it anyway.
2. Fierce (almost stupid) determination and a willingness to make big mistakes.
Nobody gets everything right the first time. An entrepreneur has to be willing to take a leap of faith with the full knowledge that his venture may fail. Successful people have to be willfully irrational about their ideas, and have to be able to learn the tough lessons that can only be taught through failure.
3. Faith.
In spite of failures, an entrepreneur has be willing to keep going on faith alone. And when faced with blood-chilling obstacles (like financial upsets), he needs the ability to determine if they’re actually worth detouring around, or if they’re what they are a lot of the time: phantom obstacles that don’t really exist.
4. Creativity.
Successful people need to be able to come up with a lot, lot, lot of ideas and possible courses of action. Many of these ideas will and should break existing molds.
5. Optimism.
Some of the successful folks I know have caustic exteriors, but all believe deep down that what they’re doing is right and will all work out in the end. By contrast, I’ve met people who don’t truly believe the glass is half full or that things will eventually turn around. Those people will never make it.
5. Flexibility.
A successful entrepreneur has to be able to be totally packed, dressed, and ready to move in one direction, encounter a new bit of information, and go in the opposite direction instead.
6. Problem-solving ability.
Problems are everywhere when you work on your own, and because you’re forging a new path, there’s usually nobody to ask how to solve them. Entrepreneurs need to be able to develop solutions to problems, no matter how varied and wacky those solutions may seem.
7. An enterprising and capitalistic spirit.
All of the successful people I know have something good to offer the world and have the balls to ask people to pay for it.
8. An ability to follow your instincts and live by your wits.
An entrepreneur has to learn to trust his gut, and then keep trusting it on the fly. Many of the things I’ve done — including some of the best things, yielding the best results — have been done on a whim. I do most things for no other reason than that they feel right to do.
I could go on and on. But succinctly, if someone is really good at the above skills, I’d wager that they’d do fairly well as an entrepreneur, or as a trailblazer in any field.
The problem I have is that I don’t know how well schools teach those things.
Enter the ridiculous concept of unschooling
Those wacky online weirdoes I mentioned? A lot of them do what’s called “unschooling.” I thought it was just a clever word and only recently learned from Lee Stranahan what it actually means.
Unschooling is not formally teaching your kids. It’s guiding and supporting them, but letting them find their own path, and largely letting them do what they want to do with their time each day.
I don’t know if I like this idea.
And I don’t know if I don’t like it, either.
It intrigues me, though, and I want to learn more.
It makes me wonder if a kid who had no interest in trigonometry or symbolism in literature could grow up without ever learning those things and be okay.
It makes me wonder if an artistic kid who found ways to get people to pay a pittance for his sketches at a very young age would eventually find a way to turn that ability into a thriving creative business.
And it makes me wonder if you took a kid with a desire to do something outside of the box and put him in school — where he was instructed to sit still, be quiet, and study the lesson of the day so that he could pass a test — if he’d lose that desire to do something outside of the box.
It makes me realize that a traditional education prepares you for a job, and that it seems like so many people want to get out of their jobs and do their own thing.
It makes me wonder if the most important things I ever learned in my life, for my life, were learned in a classroom or outside of one.
If my kids learned the entrepreneurial skill set I outlined above, and then only the book learning they chose to pursue, would that be enough?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, yet they just keep coming to me.
How much conformity is good? I think there’s value in learning how to sit still and be quiet, how to take direction, how to subordinate your id’s desires occasionally to the needs of others. I think there’s value in not always being the leader. But how much is enough? And more importantly, how much is too much?
What it really boils down to is, could I trust the base human instincts of my kids, with guidance from us as parents, to figure things out? Because that’s what it ultimately comes down to: deciding whether or not “what they are inclined to learn” will lead to a good place.
And having faith along the way, I suppose. Lee told me that his kids, who are unschooled, sometimes play video games all day. And that would be hard for me to sit quietly through.
But then he says that they’ll noodle with the Rock Band guitar and decide to pick up the real guitar. They’ll run across something here or there and start reading philosophy. They’ll see how Dad makes a living by working at home and doing what he loves, and become interested in (and inspired by) doing the same.
Ditto the experiences of Pace & Kyeli and their son.
And ditto the mindset of Naomi, who I know is all geeked up over this issue and wondering what to do with her own kid.
Ditto others. And others. And others. Rule-breakers all.
I don’t know where this will lead for our family.
But I do know that I’m not where I am because of what my schooling prepared me for. I’m here because in many ways, I did the opposite.
Your turn. Discuss.
My partner in crime Lee Stranahan and I will be launching our new course, Question the Rules: The nonconformist’s punk rock, DIY, nuts-and-bolts guide to creating the business and life you really want, starting with what you already have, on Wednesday, April 28.
It’s ridiculously jam-packed: 5 course modules on how to rock your business and life as an entrepreneur who colors outside the lines, and over a dozen interviews with successful rule-breakers whose names you’ll recognize.
If you’re a punk rock entrepreneur (and I know you are), you’ll want to check it out here because we’re offering an immediate free bonus prior to launch day.
Sounds like you need to read some John Gatto:
Modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:
* Obedient soldiers to the army;
* Obedient workers to the mines;
* Well subordinated civil servants to government;
* Well subordinated clerks to industry
* Citizens who thought alike about major issues.
…
In Prussia the purpose of the Volksshule, which educated 92 percent of the children, was not intellectual development at all, but socialization in obedience and subordination. Thinking was left to the Real Schulen, in which 8 percent of the kids participated.
http://www.nevadamidwife.com/HomeSchool/publicschoolnightmare.html
And if that sounds a bit radical, consider his description of the modern U.S. school system: http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
Sorry, no easy answers here. But definitely something to think about when thinking about public schools.
Wow! (in my Christopher Walken voice)
My oldest daughter, Gina, is 5 too and I think her and Austin could be twins. This exactly the same situation we’re having.
We put her in K4 simply because she was ready for school by age 2 and she could already have a conversation with you better than most 5 year olds. We’ve already been told that she would do very well in 1st grade if we wanted to advance her that far, but the whole age thing would just be too much I think.
I couldn’t agree more about the teaching. I feel like Gina goes to two different schools every day. The one we pay for and the one that actually matters. I’m sure you can figure out which is which. I don’t force anything on her at all, she’s just honestly curious and she asks better questions than most of the adults I know in business.
All I can say is that being a parent has made me both incredibly proud and very curious about what I really hold to be important.
Heavy stuff. Hard stuff. Sending my kids off to school was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And my oldest (who will graduate THIS YEAR) totally revolted, making it so much harder. I had to carry her in fireman style, kicking and screaming everyday for a month, she hated it so much. But. I felt she needed to be socialized,and to know what the world thinks she is supposed to know.
I was a teacher for a few years, and just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t punish children for curiosity or for needing to move or for having “mechanical smarts” instead of “book smarts.” No matter how much I wanted to be around kids, I couldn’t do it in the school setting. What the state and the administration wanted felt so wrong I could not be the agent of delivering it, especially to kids who weren’t getting lessons in “going against the grain” at home.
There has to be some sort of middle ground. For my own (extended) family we create it by sending our kids to school and pretty steadily teaching them subversiveness at a low, innocuous level throughout their lives. All of my cousins are ridiculously creative; none of us are what society would consider financially successful – yet.
The Montessori method is a pretty good compromise – learning is self-directed, but there is also direction and guidance. It might be a good option if you decide unschooling is a little to unstructured for you.
Thanks for the analogies to business. It’s tough to comtemplate how live could be if…I hadn’t had to sit still and study the books, or my kids had had time to pursue their interests more fully or we had all gotten direction on how to use our passionate interests to create businesses.
I’ve been wondering about this myself. My kids are 14, 13, and 11 and are all in public school. At this point, they’re all happy. Recently, I brought up the concept of unschooling, because I think it’s very interesting. They looked at me like I had a hole in my head:)
I have to disclose that I’m a special ed teacher and left my job last year because I was so frustrated with how that program is run – and also because of the parents who don’t want to help their own kids, but would rather bitch because the school can’t fix them.
I don’t know what the right answer is. I don’t think my kids are being indoctrinated into any one way of thinking, because as a parent, I feel I have a much greater influence on them. I’m very much about the same things you mentioned above, so I think they will be comfortable doing whatever it is that they want to do.
Obviously, there’s not a right answer for everyone. That’s the hard part. You just do what you think is best for your own kids and if it’s not working, then change course. Just like in business, I guess.
I also think it’s important to be supportive of other parents and their decisions for their kids, whatever they may be. It’s hard enough to choose what you think is best, let alone to be judged by people who are clueless.
The great thing about kids is that they’re resilient. You’re going to make mistakes for sure, but they’ll be fine both because of it, and despite it.
That was a ramble wasn’t it:)
Debbie Ferm
I don’t have kids, but this post is absolutely brilliant in my mind. Interesting to hear about your 5 year old son and I’m guessing he’ll do something like invent a cure for cancer
.
Now on to discussion about conformity, rules, etc. I was just thinking about this a few weeks ago. I come from a fairly conservative community and in most Indian families they think your out of your mind if you don’t become a doctor, engineer, or lawyer. After all how else would you pay the bills? Mention the idea of becoming an artist, muscian, writer or filmmaker and you’ll be met with resistance. If an Indian kid doesn’t happen to have a high level talent in any of these areas, we’re told “This is good as a hobby, but it’s just a hobby. You can’t do this as a career.” In many ways, I wonder how many potentially brilliant artists, musicians, writers, etc does the world miss out on because of the social rewards in conformity. Your idea of the things that we should teach in school really are a paradigm shift that people will have to embrace.
I don’t know if you ever saw the movie, Accepted. It’s a pretty interesting movie where a guy creates a college because he gets rejected everywhere. The experiment in education that he conducts is asking people what they want to learn and then taking all of the funds from their tuition and applying it to their area of interest. When you think about it, even a few companies have started to explore this kind of thinking, like Google with its 20% time. The truth is we need paradigm shifts in education, if we intend to get the most of out of our future generations.
@Srinivas I loved “Accepted”. That would be an interesting idea, to use it as the starting point of a serious discussion of the value of college.
If anyone is interested in learning a little more about unschooling, I have a project called Unschooling : The Movie that has a few really interesting videos you can watch for free at http://www.UnschoolingMovie.info featuring unschooled kids, unschooling parents and Seth Godin. ,
Conventional schooling isn’t for everyone, but not all kid geniuses are capable of success in a “choose your own education” type of environment…
I think one of the keys to unschooling is that you’ve been schooled. You’re familiar with both sides, can take what you like and leave the rest (ie. “doing the opposite” of your formal preparation). Exploration and experimentation are crucial to a gifted child, though sometimes structured scenarios are exactly what is needed in order to learn how to break away…
Short answer: there is no universally correct answer. Like everything else, it’s trial, error and sometimes a whole lotta luck…
I love your thoughts on this and can hardly wait to see what you and Lee come out with!
I would add Critical Thinking to your curriculum offerings. My daughter learns faster than the majority in her class – she also thinks deeper. While public schools speak to the significance of critical thinking in the classroom … many teachers respond to it with comments like, ‘don’t be rude’ or ‘that’s disrespectful’ or ‘are you going to be an attitude/behavoural problem again today?’.
With so many students to teach at so many levels of development and behaviour … the working reality is often ‘hear me, repeat back what I’ve said/written, keep the momentum going so I can get through the curriculum, don’t disrupt the classroom by opening avenues of discussion, etc.’. Divergent thinkers are often seen as challengers vs pioneers.
I’d just like to add that some structure and boundaries are important to children. They need parameters within which to operate, expectations to which they must responsibly strive. Knowing your child as you do, you’ll make the boundaries as flexible or tight as necessary for the circumstance at hand … but I do believe boundaries of some kind should be in place.
Your son is already ahead of the game. You ‘see’ him – his strengths, his gifts, his potential, his needs. You’re also looking through the right end of the telescope – it’s not about how to fit him into the existing school system … it’s about how will he best learn. Very inspiring!
Johnny, I don’t even have or necessarily want a kid, and I’ve been thinking a lot about this same topic lately.
I think it’s because I’ve had such a hard time fitting in in the “working world” and doing things the way I was taught to. Now, I’m finally trying to make my own go at working for myself and realizing that all the skills and lessons I’m learning we’re completely glossed over in the education that I got.
In fact, I can distinctly remember the challenges that we’d have in Physics classes in high school where the kids that bent the rules on their projects were reprimanded and the best mediocre project always won the challenge.
When I think about that now, I realize that I would never want my own child to grow up in a system like that. I feel like there are really only a few socialization skills and very basic competencies that someone needs to learn before they’re capable of forging their own path. By forcing them down one after those basic skills are acquired, we’re missing out on an entire world of creativity that’s being “learned out” of children.
Reading Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin, really cemented some of these ideas for me. I don’t know a damn thing about parenthood, but I’d recommend it.
Having BEEN one of these kids, this is an issue I think it’s probably worth parents losing a little sleep over.
When I was in kindergarten, they skipped me a few grades because I was bright. Naturally, being two years younger than everyone in my class did not make it easy for me to make friends. Everyone was hitting social-dealings landmarks at far different times than I was. I wound up reading in a corner a lot.
When I hit twelve, they decided that my lack of social skills was probably more of a concern than my need to be academically challenged, so, going on the assumption that I could continue to challenge myself in a small-classroom, lots of individual attention, independent learning environment, they kept me in seventh grade for THREE YEARS so I would wind up with my age group again.
By the time I was in high school, I had learned a few things about knowledge.
I learned that you could get straight A’s if you were pretty bright without ever doing your homework at home. You never had to study for a test. You never had to do anything your classmates did. I learned that the knowledge was only useful so far as the next test and that it was okay to forget it after that. I learned that knowledge was useless.
I went to college never having learned how to learn. I graduated college not much better off.
That’s what unschooling seems to be about. Teaching your kids that knowledge is valuable to them, to their aspirations, to their vision of the world. That knowledge is something more than the required curriculum. That it expands far beyond the ten problems you have to do for homework this week.
As a freelancer and an entrepreneur, I have a whole slew of things right now that I want to do, and I’m aware I need to educate myself on certain subjects in order to do those things.
But I never learned to think of knowledge for MY sake. Knowledge was always for school’s sake, for its own sake. I understand logically that knowledge is incredibly valuable to me, and yet teaching myself to sit down for a few hours every day to attain the knowledge I need to get what I want is incredibly difficult.
Mostly because this is a concept I only learned last year. The idea that knowledge could be tangibly valuable to the pursuit of my dreams was completely foreign to me. They don’t teach you that in school. They don’t teach you this anywhere.
This is all the long way of saying, keep working at it, Johnny. Do your best to come up with something that seems to suit the way your son thinks and interacts with the world, something that will teach him that knowledge isn’t just there because the teachers say this is what you have to learn to get an A.
You learn so you can build the world you want to live in.
It’s a much easier lesson to learn when he’s five than when he’s twenty-five. I can attest.
your list of 8 covers our at-home curriculum quite well. we’re self-employed and work at home, too. it really does go hand in hand. you step off the path for yourself and your work/life and it only naturally follows that you’ll pull your kids off the path as well.
it’s really an attitude that you can craft yourself a completely custom life — and so can your kids.
Dear god. Like dava, I also taught for several years and like you, I’ve come to these exact same conclusions. If I were to do it all over with my kids, I’d unschool for sure. I’m so glad you’re thinking through this while there’s still time to make a difference with your boy.
The thing I keep coming back to is that he’s so incredibly artistic right now, and so fiercely independent. Kid is already thinking way outside of the box and questioning everything, which I suspect is the natural state for most children.
Give him a few years of being told what to do, what to pay attention to, and what to stop doing, and I’ll bet a lot of that goes away.
I never, ever, ever would have thought I’d be thinking about not sending my kids to school. NEVER. As recent as two months ago, I would have never considered some kind of nutty alternative schooling.
But things have changed somehow.
So much great discussion here. Keep it coming folks, and thanks.
Here’s another thing: My senior year in high school, I was told to read The Fountainhead, among other books. I hated it because I was being forced to read it. Over the summer, nonetheless — which was MY TIME, that the school was intruding upon.
I ran across that book years later and read it again — this time because *I* wanted to read it.
I really liked it. And I wonder how many other good books I’ve learned to hate… simply because someone was FORCING me to read them.
I’m not saying I would have loved my summer reading books (or even would have found them) on my own. But I do know that the resistance I put up when I was told what to do with my time made it impossible for me to like them as it was.
I was unschooled for most of my life — I’m now 25. I went to kindergarten, dropped out because I was struggling. I went to freshmen year of high-school, dropped out because it was boring. I finished college at NYU with a double major in 3 years easily.
I recently quit my day job, started a location-independent online business through my blog and grew my cash-flow to support myself in under six months.
I see so many people who went to school struggling with entrepreneurial concepts that I just take for granted.
It’s no wonder they do. I spent my entire youth learning everything I need to survive myself, they spent their entire youths being told what to learn. I’ve spent my entire life concentrating on what I feel is important, and they’ve spent their entire lives trying to be balanced in subjects they hate.
It’s definitely worth considering for you son. There are downsides and pitfalls. I’d definitely read as much as you can about the subject before you take the dive. It might be an interesting journey.
Fantastic article! We ‘unschool’ our 8 year old and she’s a published writer already (3 times over)
She can’t do her 2 times table and she never got on in school. We were told she was “unteachable” and that the school “didn’t know what to do with her”. Turns out she’s not a ‘yes’ person, or a sheep or one who follows everyone else or likes being told what to do much by teachers who know less than she does about how to be respectful to one another.
So we took her out and gave her the freedom she craved, told her she was great and could achieve anything she set out to do. So now she can write and draw and climb trees, nurse sick animals, knows all about herbs and gardening, reads until silly o’clock because she doesn’t HAVE to get up in the morning and most important of all she is H-A-P-P-Y and has dreams, aspirations and loves being in the Now.
My schooling never got me anywhere. Everything I’ve done since then that has bought be joy has been through self driven determination and knowing the right people
Great post – I’m wondering if you know anything about the phenomen that’s being called Indigo Children? Kind of interesting and at least worth looking at. My personal theory is that it’s just human evolution that’s giving us all these crazy-smart uber-creative kids (as well as the behaviors traditional schools tend to label as ADD, ADHD, etc., but may be efficient adaptation to living in a world that’s completely changing with every generation, especially in terms of information access and ability to make creative connections). Very frustrating to still be using a public school system essentially based on a model of homogeny, lowest common denominator and submission to authority. I’d also invite you to look into the Waldorf education system, which is much more holistic, creative and keeps being backed up by all the recent neurological research as an approach – and certainly embraces many of the principles you stated like independence, risk-taking, problem-solving, and creativity. Good luck! Parenting is the biggest challenge I think any of us will undertake and god knows there are no easy answers, but just questioning everything is a good start!
There is a fine line that separates letting your kids learn on their own and being apathetic. I know my parents always said “you can do anything you want” without giving any direction. I should be doing nothing but sitting on my ass watching TV. But enough about Thursday.
I just was never given much guidance outside of school work. I found out a few years ago that my dad was really pissed off that I wasn’t going to take over his business. I never knew that he had any plans on that front, so I didn’t know anything about the business. Now he doesn’t think that business school that I went to could have any positive influence on his business.
My point is this, if your kids show interest in something, give them the tools to see if they like it. If not, there is plenty of other stuff out there. Maybe they will be great at it. I like to gently push my kids towards things that they show interest in and it works fairly well. I don’t want to live vicariously through them or be disappointed when they don’t magically turn out like me. But I have my daughter writing fiction with me now….
Hi Johnny,
You don’t know me, but posts about alternative education act on me much like an electro-magnet, so here I am
I’m in Ireland, where non-traditional school models are very scant. Our boys are 5 and 2, and we’re planning to work unschooling into whatever routine we end up in. I’d love if they never went to traditional school, but if they want to try it, they can.
What I’d actually like would be a school along the lines of the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachussetts. Reading their website was my introduction to the whole concept of a radical alternative to the mainstream model, and it. Blew. My. Mind.
I also second the recommendation to read John Taylor Gatto. And – if I may! – Alfie Kohn, and John Holt (particularly How Children Fail and How Children Learn) are brilliant, IMHO.
Most of all, what I believe is that children vary. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
Good luck!
Justin – the first point you raise is spot on. That’s a line I need help in finding, and I plan to ask my unschooling friends about it. Is it okay to just let them sit around all day and watch TV all the time and play video games and do what looks like NOTHING? I’m inclined to think that’s a problem. So finding the line will be interesting.
Léan, you win the “most interesting name of the day” award. Glad you’re here!
My son struggled in school all his life. He is SEN, and the line about classes being dumbed down to the lowest level is wrong. The classes are dumbed down to the AVERAGE child. Your child would be bored out of her skull and lose the ability to think for herself because she would be jumping ahead all the time and being told off for it. My son left school in a purple rage every day because no-one would explain things properly to him, they wouldn’t repeat things enough times for him to get the basics. He left school at age 10 with an educational ability of a 5 year old. he couldn’t read because of un-diagnosed dyslexia, he eventually self taught himself to read age 11, once the pressure was off to perform. We had to go back to addition and subtraction in his maths because he just didn’t have the basics, but we have barrelled ahead and done 4 years work in two years, he still has problems with his memory, but at least now he will be able to work out how much carpet he will need for his flat in the future. We are not strict un-schoolers (autonomous in the UK) in that there are a few set subjects we do 4 times a week, but the rest of the time its up to him what interests he follows.
The best thing about Home Education is the lack of stress now. For those of you who dread the thought of the 6 weeks holidays, keep this thought in mind. Do you actually like you kids company at the END of the 6 weeks? Could this be because they have finally de-stressed from school and are finally the people they should be? That is what happened here. We finally got our son back, not the raging, frustrated, bullied shell of a child the school handed back to us every day, but the ‘sunny’ child who was the light of our life, that we thought we would never see again. We can also ensure that he grows up with manners, it’s rare in the UK now to find a young person who will shake a hand when being introduced.
I could go on for hours, if Home Schooling doesn’t work there is always school as a safety net, where it should be, in the background, not a major factor of a families life that controls who, what and where we want to be for generations.
I imagine that the video-game problem might be pretty handily solved by simply not having those things available. It’s kind of like the dieting advice, don’t keep anything in your house that can tempt you.
I got rid of my TV and haven’t gotten a new one because I know that if it’s there, I’ll wind up watching it. Not there? Don’t even miss it.
So if you’re worried about playing video games or watching TV all day, maybe it’s worth considering just not having those things in your house? Or if you’re going to have a TV/video games, only have stuff you wouldn’t mind him using. My parents somehow rigged our TV when we were little so that it only played PBS. Educational programming, we were allowed to watch until our eyes fell out. I suspect the same could probably apply to educational video games and so forth.
Oh, this one goes straight to the heart for me. Children and education are my passion, so excuse me if I ramble on below. My kid is not as advanced as yours, not even close. I just hate the school system he’s in. I’ve had an issue with it before he ever entered it.
I found great preschools for my son, who emphasized creativity, inquisitiveness, and how to be a person instead of just shoving worksheets and facts at him. One of the programs was even bilingual. All the kids in his class ended far more advanced, free-thinking, yet still with a measure of discipline as to not be disrespectful.
Then came kindergarten. He lost his ability to speak a second language, kept going over what he already knew, and was bored. He was lucky to have a lovely teacher who adapted to her students and assigned different work for different levels of advancement. But, now that he’s in 1st grade, I’m the one who has to give him work that isn’t a repeat of what he already knows. There is no semblance of social responsibility or ethics being taught to him. None of the kids are learning to do what is right because it’s right. They aren’t encouraged to go further or to lead in any way.
My son’s best friend missed the bday cutoff date, so despite the fact that the kid is functioning at 3rd grade level and already went to kindergarten, this year they did not let him into 1st grade in the public system. He’s currently attending a private school, but it’s just another example of how f***ed up the system is.
Not every parent can afford to homeschool/unschool, but if it’s a possibility, I encourage it. Kids can be socialized through sports or community activities. However, I do believe that pushing kids into unusual situations is good for them. There are things I was exposed to in school that I probably wouldn’t have sought out on my own and I ended up enjoying and actually using int he long run. You also need to learn how to deal with things you don’t want to do, but might need to.
The problem is when schools (or anyone) assume that all kids are the same. It’s ridiculous to assume that all 7 year olds will be at the exact same level. You’ll have to spend some time bringing others up to speed, cater to those who are WAY to far ahead and still keep into consideration their social maturity level.
There are children who won’t want to be entrepreneurs when they grow up. I’d go as far to say that kids who will grow up to be lawyers, doctors, dentists, etc. would need to go through a system, because the profession itself functions on a standard that needs to be taught. That isn’t to say they wouldn’t benefit from a little more encouragement to think critically, because schools are definitely lacking in teaching that these days.
Personally, I benefited from going to school. However, beyond elementary school, I went to private schools that encouraged all the things you listed as being necessary to an entrepreneur. {Oddly enough, one of them was a catholic school, but because the students came from affluent families, it was expected that we’d all start our own businesses, so we were taught as such.}
I’d like to see a school that emphasized personal attention to students, foreign languages, different learning styles, travel… mixed in with some of the usual curriculum. I think we should all learn personal finance before we turn 18; it should be part of the curriculum. I think before you turn 18, you should know how to do research, how to speak another language, how to deal with different kinds of people, and how to manage your money and do your taxes… carajo that list could go on for days…
There’s always going to be a kid who is extraordinary and won’t fit in a school within the area, but right now, I feel that MOST kids don’t fit into the school provided for them. That’s tragic and infuriating to me. We might not get it perfect, but we can do a hell of a deal better.
Curious, are there any magnet or art based schools around you? {Montesorri is good, too.} If unschooling or homeschooling isn’t possible for you, or just too much, perhaps that’d be an option?
Excuse me for being rude… but that is YOUR kid and you seem to know he’s going to be bored out of his gills but your sending him ANYWAY.
“I think there’s value in learning how to sit still and be quiet”
at five? really? is it necessary? Don’t you think it could be learned through experience?
“how to take direction, how to subordinate your id’s desires occasionally to the needs of others.”
Personal choice. Taking direction is a matter of wanting to follow directions. I don’t see any harm with my kids not learning how to blindly follow directions in a classroom. They happily play with their peers and I witness the give and take that “leading” and “following” require. I also witness personal choice, and learning it in their own time… when they need it.
“I think there’s value in not always being the leader.”
Why do you think unschooling means always being the leader? Maybe you have a misconception of what it actually looks like?
And those 8 things you listed early in your article. Do you REALLY think your kid is going to learn that in school? Really? Why put his life on hold until he’s 18. Why not let him be who he is, right now?
I don’t know… I hope I give you something to think about. I came here from Twitter, I saw your about me page and I said “Wow, here’s a guy who does things his own way”. I love that in people. Sense of self, independence, an attitude that says, “fuck it, I’m going for it”.
Then I read the post on Unschooling and I sighed as you stated your were sending your kid off to his very first brush with forced conformity, Kindergarten.
Think about it.
Lots of excellent comments on an inspiring a well thought out post, thanks. I’m a granny now, but i ‘home schooled’ all my children (3 girls and 1 boy) for a great part of their education, and they’re all doing great, with much much more adaptability than most of their contemporaries. The only one who has really struggled to be fulfilled and happy is the eldest, who went to school at 5, and like Austin was way ahead – and got held back. We only home schooled her briefly, in her teens, but she was already convinced by the authourities at school that she was ‘stupid’ (huh? reading at 3 is stupid?! WTF?)
We did a mix of some formal teaching, and learning through experience – a great excuse to visit museums, art galleries etc! My 2 nd daughter, whom i taught at home from 12 through to College at 18, is now a high-flying English teacher in Hannover, Germany, teaching specialised English to business CEOs, lawyers etc. My 3rd daughter, who is dyslexic, was also written off by her school as ‘stupid’ went on from home schooling to Bradford University, where she gained an honours degree in Forensuc Archeology, then threw it all up to run her own art gallery in Edinburgh! My son is a manager at one of GB’s biggest department stores, and preparing to start his own coffee business – not bad for a bunch who were discarded by the system!
You know Austin best, do what you believe fits him, each child is unique.
Socialise = going out and playing, when older going out for a meal or a drink with friends, meeting like minded people. Can be learnt anywhere, starting at toddler groups and expanding though Home School groups, playing in the street, guides and scouts etc.
Socialization = Learning the rules and mores of the life you are living. Manners, acceptable behaviour, when to shake hands. Not taught in schools, unless you class the ‘shut up sit down and behave’ ‘or the give me all your money or I will knife you’ as learning the rules and mores of society.
Heather, I think you misread my post. This is HARDLY a knock on unschooling. If anything, it’s PRO-unschooling. I’m surprised that you feel the way you seem to.
This is new to me. I was raised in school, did my time, and always thought that was the way to do it. I’m raising questions; I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I have NOT decided one way or the other. Take another read.
Johnny, I think you misunderstood Heather’s post. I think she’s saying that if you see public school as the soul-sucking structure it is, then why are you even thinking about sending your son?
I do have an idea… why not give unschooling a try for a year? It’s easy enough to send him to public school after that.
Also, Montessori and Waldorf are both decent alternatives.
I went to 12 different schools growing up, and skipped three grades in the process. This gave me a really interesting perspective on how much the “necessary” curricula differs from place to place. (It also gave me the chance to do a social studies unit on Japan three consecutive years.)
I was amazed by what was considered vital in one place and wasn’t considered at all in another. I was amazed by the difference between schools in affluent areas and schools in poor areas. And I was amazed by the fact that, with the exception of French, bouncing around with no respect for continuity did absolutely nothing to delay my academic advancement.
I learned my multiplication tables in grade two, and again in grade three, and again in grade four. (I didn’t take grade five, so who knows what would’ve happened there?) I learned about the second world war from the perspectives of two different countries and got a hell of a lot of conflicting information as a result. And when I got to seventh grade in an advanced placement program in a rich neighborhood in Edmonton, Alberta, I realized I was the only kid in the room who knew what an adverb was.
What I really learned, though, was that the idea that these dudes know what the fuck they’re doing with our children is shamefully, systemically flawed. What your kids learn about math was figured out by some dude 30 years ago. What your kids learn about language was supposed to be what some other dude figured out 30 years ago but their teacher this year finds it too much of a pain in the ass so she’s doing it her own way. What your kids learn about sitting still, paying attention, and subordinating the id was figured out 200 years ago in a Prussian war-zone.
It is horribly, horribly, horribly broken. Unschooling’s no cakewalk either, especially when you don’t have a support system in place yet. But if I’m going to fuck up my kids, I’d rather do it by letting them play too many video games and watch too much TV than by sending them to an essentially unknowable abyss that admits to doing its level best to take everything unique and bright and special out of them.
Fuck that shit, man. I’d rather he doesn’t know how to sit still.
I loved reading your processing through all of this. And it is a *process* to go from a schooled mindset to the understanding of unschooling. (The process itself is called “deschooling”.)
I enjoyed school until high school. That’s when I became bored and disillusioned and left to unschool. Of course, we didn’t know any homeschoolers, let alone unschoolers, so what I did looked a lot like dropping out to others and we had no way to argue their point. But I had a sense of empowerment that you don’t find in kids who feel they’re going to grow up to be losers because they don’t have a high school degree. I didn’t feel like a dropout. I felt like I was “opting out” of a crap system and finding my own way…someone else termed it “rise out”. It made me independent and opinionated and stubborn, all attributes that have served me well, TYVM.
Fast forward and I’ve owned my own businesses and live a joyful and exciting life. It wasn’t always easy but I wouldn’t change a damn thing. I love my life and I truly think that my passion and determination came from the empowerment I received from leaving school.
My ten year old sounds like your 5 year old. He went to a private school for 2.5 years. It was hell. He became very depressed and disillusioned and still struggles to let go of that worldview 3 years later. But everyday of unschooling has seen him growing and learning and loving life more and more. There are some days he plays video games all day long; there are other days he reads or plays with animals or builds things. Most days are a combination of many things. And since we’ve been traveling, no two days are the same. He asks endless questions (something he stopped doing after being told to stay quiet in class), and is fiercely independent.
Unschooling is not for every family or every child within every family (some kids may choose to go to school). If you can’t give your child a supportive, rich environment, free from judgments about his time and/or pressure to perform, and with unlimited access to resources, it might not be the best situation for anyone involved.
But if you can create an environment that encourages curiosity (even when it’s inconvenient- which it often is), one that supports each person as Who They Are (even if they aren’t at their best in that moment), one that takes into consideration every family members needs without putting any one persons’ ahead of the others (but still giving some extra courtesy for those who are younger and still learning), one full of interesting resources and ideas and people and experiences and TIME (your time specifically)…well then I’m sure you all will love it as much as we do.
Some things to keep in mind:
1. Some kids will go through a time of “doing nothing”…or what looks like nothing. Sometimes this is a necessary downtime to process new things or prepare for mental shifts. Sometimes it’s just downtime. Either way, it’s okay. My best advice to anyone who’s kid wants to “do nothing” but video games or TV is to DO THEM TOGETHER. Seriously. Amazing stuff happens when we connect with our kids and their activities.
2. Natural learning happens in spurts. Some kids may not read until they’re 12 but will go from illiterate to the Harry Potter series. This happens in most areas of knowledge and from what I’ve seen the big learning tends to happen in passionate leaps and extravagant bounds as they hit their teen years. So it’s okay to not worry for a long time; simply sit back and be amazed.
3. It’s okay for kids to never learn their multiplication tables. Or ever love reading. The natural curiosity of humans means they will love *something* and never being told it’s of no value, they will likely learn how to do it well and without constraints (on their time, passion or ingenuity).
Ask questions, ponder, debate and be open. Meet some local unschooling families, especially with older kids. Attend some conferences. And know that if you ever change your mind your child can always go back to school and will likely be ahead of the game (or catch up so quickly you realize just how cool not going to school can really be). Or if he goes to school, he can always be withdrawn (although his deschooling process may not be much fun).
Good luck with whatever you choose. If you keep your child in mind (and social expectations out) I’m sure you’ll all end up happy.
Chris has it on the nose.
I didn’t see your article as anti-unschooling at all. What I did see, and I could be completely wrong, that you had planted a tree that you were having trouble seeing around. And maybe YOU didn’t plant that tree. Maybe your 13 or more years of compulsory schooling did.
Don’t get me wrong. I liked your article and it always makes me happy to see someone else on the verge if giving their child a life they deserve. It just makes me happier when that leap of faith taken. I can tell you from experience that it’s the single most awesome thing I’ve ever done.
Support systems are out there. Lots of them are online, some in person. Get your butt to an unschooling conference.
Sorry you misunderstood me.
Very interesting piece – and I think that the best thing for anyones’ kid is to see what they respond well to, which might be the entrepreneurial stuff from dad (or mum) and the academic stuff from school.
I’m trying the entrepreneurial stuff myself now, and not doing too well at it so far. Luckily my schooling has been part of the journey that means I can earn a pretty good wage whilst I try my hand at other things (I even took a year out aged 34). School didn’t teach me everything (I dropped out inbetween GCSEs and A-Levels), but the qualifications did open doors. And when the limited qualifications I had stopped opening doors, then I went back and got more (whilst still working full time). This time I got the best results out of 400 students – because I could apply my real-world working knowledge to the theory stuff.
Knowing how to write and structure a report, how to do research, how to do maths is all useful stuff for most people in business as employees or employers or one-man entrepreneurs. It’s not necessarily fun to learn, but it can help you do work you do enjoy, whatever form that takes.
Kids should not be denied mainstream knowledge and skills. However, if we can expose them to the world of possibilities that allow them to think for themselves, be creative and fearless, etc – well that is even better. We don’t have jobs for life any longer. The more breadth and ‘skills’ we can give our children, the more freedom they’ll have to try their hand at a multitude of things throughout their lives.
Heather – It’s all good. We will certainly NOT be conventional in whatever we do, but we do need time to process. You have to understand how deeply engrained the idea of “kids go to school” is in me. It’s actually amazing to me that this even ended up on my radar.
That’s pretty close to the point, I think. Years ago, the idea of going off to be a freelancer was absolutely absurd. No one DOES that. I think it’s going to take us a little while to wrap our heads around the idea of alternative schooling, too.
Just like freelancing, though, it’ll probably be the thing that we can’t believe we ever did without.
One more thing to add:
I’ve noticed a lot of parents IRL have a belief system that the best thing to do, when willing to unschool, is to ask the kids. I wanted to bring up a fundamental problem I have with that.
Little children are sold a concept of school that is complete and total bullshit. The average four-year-old thinks school is recess and Spider-Man lunch boxes and cubby holes with your name on them.It’s lots of time to do arts and crafts with their friends — or soccer, if that’s their bag, it’s the belief that friends are a guarantee, with the added bonus of riding a shiny yellow bus twice a day.
It’s like spending three years talking about how great Disney World is and then asking if they want to move to Florida. When moving day comes, the realization is swift and the betrayal is harsh.
I have a son with Asperger’s Syndrome who helped me put the rubber to the road. I just COULDN’T justify bringing him to a building where he was showing such an inability to handle the sounds, smells and stresses of his school environment and was being punished as a bad kid for his issues.
The day I took him out of school we skipped all the way home (even though later I went into the bathroom and cried with the enormity of what I thought was going to happen.) After time, trial and error, we are doing a virtual school where only 3 hours of actual school is required and we can work on his strengths towards a different type of life. One where he can grow and develop as the type of person he is.
I have always felt like an outsider and proudly let my freak flag fly. For my child, however, I feel his hurt deeply inside every time he has been rejected. I celebrate this new paradigm through technology and open minded discourse where this stuff matters less and less in the end
I get that. I was there. My knee-jerk reactions are usually a product of being in the exact same place at one point.
If it helps your processing…. remember that Kindergarten isn’t mandatory in some places. Maybe something to check out.
Good luck!
One other thing has come to mind reading this discussion through the day: my children rapidly developed lives independant of me, my husband and our family at school. Much to the chagrin of some teachers, I left school mostly to them; it was their thing and I only intervened if specially requested. They always did fine – as many have pointed out, it’s not hard to do well at school.
They are nearly grown and I’m quite sure either of them could make it through the world without my help if they had to. School contributed to that. I’m not a huge fan of the system and cheer anyone who has the balls to try something else, but it did help my kids develop an independence they might not have had otherwise.
I can look at this from about 40 different angles. I’m a high school English teacher by trade, which stereotypes me as one of the worst of the conformists.
I’m also a renegade by nature, and someone who insistently rubs up against rules and regulations and wonders why things have to be the way they’ve always been and thinks the past ways aren’t good enough for today’s kids.
I also also have a almost 16-month-old daughter I want to learn to think for herself, to be strong-willed, and to be independent. I don’t know what we’re going to do with her when she gets to kindergarten age and wants to play celtic punk.
I don’t know the answer.
Clicked over through twitter-
We are in love with unschooling but haven’t always been. I recently wrote about our process going from conventional parenting and schooling to the unconventional, take a read if you think it might help.
http://serendipitymama.blogspot.com/2010/03/beginnings.html
Good luck with whatever you decide-
Really interesting post and comments. I don’t have kids (and not sure I plan to) but I remember reading a magazine article about unschooling when I was in middle school and thinking it made a lot of sense.
One thing I wonder about is if unschooling can potentially hurt a kid’s chances who grows up and DOESN’T want to be an entrepreneur. It’s not for everyone, and I’m sure there are kids who even left to their own devices would want to grow up and work in the business world or be scientists or something like that. So what happens when you apply for that job and you don’t even have a high school degree? Am I missing something essential about the way unschooling works? Do you get some kind of equivalent degree?
Johnny,
I come from the Twitter-verse as well and wanted to stop by and give you some comfort in your “What the hell am I thinking?!” thinking. I come from a family where the shame of the family is my uncle who didn’t finish high school because they didn’t figure out he was dyslexic until 11th grade. He was beaten for years and years because he couldn’t read and when he found out it wasn’t his fault, he dropped out and told his parents what they could do with that belt.
I finished high school myself (despite hating every moment of it) because I couldn’t bare the shame of dropping out. I ended up graduating in the bottom 10% of my class because a series of bad things happened to me and I ended up homeless. When trusted adults suggested that I drop out, I quit talking to them. I couldn’t believe any reasonable person could suggest not finishing school.
Here I am a dozen years later with four adopted teenagers, all of whom are unschooled. It took me some time, I started “schooling at home” homeschooling because I thought I was supposed to. Finally, I got tired of fighting my youngest to do his schoolwork and one of my kids said, “Mom, I really love to learn and if you would quit telling me what to learn and when, I would be doing so much more than the minimum you require.” Yeah. She was 12 at the time.
I started exploring unschooling and came up with a list fairly similar to yours, only mine included basic things one NEEDS to know to get by in life, such as reading and understanding contracts, tracking income and expenses, etc. Even then, you probably know as many people as I do who can’t do some of those things.
In the end, I realized that all I really want for my kids is for them to be happy. Now and in their futures. My job as a parent is to help them achieve this now and give them the tools to get it for themselves later. No matter what happiness looks like to them, their happiness is paramount. When I realized this and realized that what would make me happy (they were all doctors or lawyers or some such) is not necessarily what would make them happy, well I simply EASED up.
They are a happy bunch of teenaged unschoolers who pursue art, music, drama, reading, writing, programming, animal/child care, and science as interests that they may like to make money with someday. In the interim, they randomly go out and do the fast food jobs to make some extra spending money.
Oh, and did I mention they’re happy?
Also, for any of you who want to know more about unschooling, I also very much enjoy the blog of Dr. Peter Gray titled “Freedom to Learn.”
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn
I recommend scrolling down to the bottom and starting with the first few posts.
I struggled in school while testing off the charts.
Schools are the same way for my kids now.
Here is some further material to support your thesis:
A blog post by @Joi Ito http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2010/02/28/formal-vs-infor.html
More from his sister Mimi Ito @Mizuko : http://www.itofisher.com/mito/
And the must see videos from
@SirKenRobinson
[My most retweeted video url in 4 years on Twitter]
http://bit.ly/2lGahe
New, 5 minute update from Ken:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ko-m6K2dz0
Hope these help,
Ed
Two more things to add to your reading list: Mindset and Drive. They both have some almost scary insights that I think are incredibly important for anyone spending time with kids. Nurture Shock has some good stuff as well.
My Little Dude loves his school and it’s doing really good things for him. When they start squishing him into a box, we’ll be done with that. As I think you may know, it’s a French school, and the bilingual environment has been pretty amazing. But he’s close to fluent now, so if we decide it’s not right any more even in 1st or 2nd grade, I know he’ll keep the language.
Well, school taught you to read and write, and look where that got you
It also taught you calculus. Sure, you got bored in some classes, but you also had the occasion to learn how to concentrate, to do hard work without being deterred by the boring stuff (even wacko entrepreneurs have to deal with accounting), to socialise with a bunch of other kids, to fall in love in your early years, and to observe your teachers.
School can quell your enthusiasm if you let it do so. But it can also teach you to structure your thoughts and to think critically (or maybe I just say that because I went to a good one) and in all cases, a prime observation field to acquire those wily street smart skills.
My stepmother was a bright child and could have jumped a level, but she did not and good plenty of time for leisure instead. She became a ballet dancer then a researcher in law.
I think Naomi just wrote the mission statement for the unschooling movement:
“If I’m going to fuck up my kids, I’d rather do it by letting them play too many video games and watch too much TV than by sending them to an essentially unknowable abyss that admits to doing its level best to take everything unique and bright and special out of them.
Fuck that shit, man. I’d rather he doesn’t know how to sit still.”
Don’t even get me started. Actually I don’t really have to say much as I’m thinking all the things you wrote but not exactly sure what I’m going to do. There actually IS an “entrepreneurial” charter K-12 near me that I could send my kids to: http://www.ivyacademia.com/academics.cfm?subpage=203701 but that kind of freaks me out too. What if my kid wanted to do something skilled, like medicine or law? Course my husband went to med school and now he builds websites with me. Hmmmmm