You will have to register to read it, but it’s free.
Steph said,
Hi Kris,
I can’t find your e-mail address, but I wanted to let you know the book Blood on the River arrived. Thank you SO much. I appreciate your generosity and support. 
Steph said,
I thought it was a good article overall. Like Jove, I wish they (and others who try to explain unschooling) would offer a better sense of the full spectrum.
I liked this part:
“In some ways it is as ancient a pedagogy as time itself, and in its modern American incarnation, is among the oldest home-schooling methods.”
I wish they had explored this a little further. They just made the statement then let it fall flat. I think this is a relevant point - for many generations children have learned alongside parents without the need for classrooms and canned curricula.
I got a kick out of their description of one of the ways the kids learn math - they deposit a little allowance money into their “accounts” each week. We do the same thing.
paradisefound said,
Steph, Jove, I agree. I didn’t have time to say much this morning, but I am flummoxed by the fact that these reporters seem to search high and low for the most radical unschoolers out there. I know that it shows just how extreme one can be with unschooling, but I think that there’s room to show that unschooling can be such a variety of things - without compromising the article. People who are not well versed in education possibilities or alternatives see radical unschoolers as too far across the void, you know?
Some of the radical unschoolers I’ve met are doing so with great success, but I think many people who consider themselves to be unschoolers do things that would make radical unschoolers cry “schoolish!”. I guess that’s the flip side - show an eclectic unschooler in an article and the radical unschoolers will be saying, “that’s not exactly right…”
It’s a tough sell to the non-homeschooling public, all around.
Steph, glad you got the book. If you like it, do me a favor and review it on Amazon (seems to be my soapbox of the month).
throwingmarshmallows said,
Steph, Jove, I agree. I didn’t have time to say much this morning, but I am flummoxed by the fact that these reporters seem to search high and low for the most radical unschoolers out there. I know that it shows just how extreme one can be with unschooling, but I think that there’s room to show that unschooling can be such a variety of things - without compromising the article.
>>>>>>>>>
I think that you are expecting way too much from a short article. Unschooling is such a hard thing to get your mind around, even for homeschoolers that I am not surprised that it comes across as radical.
Having been interviewed about homeschooling and had other friends interviewed (even about unschooling) I am realizing that what winds up being in the article may or may not be exactly how things were discussed.
The reporter decides which quotes to use and how to slant the article. One of my friends who was interviewed for a news report on unschooling got a lot of flack because the clip showed her kids sitting around the table doing “school work”. She said that they got tons of footage of her kids all over the house and then at the end the reporter asked to get a shot at the kitchen table. And that was the shot that got in the piece.
I actually thought that unschooling was portrayed really well in this article. I really liked a lot of the quotes. What scares me is the “expert” opinion which warns that this type of education is legal and so if folks are not comfortable with it they need to change the laws! Eek!
Sometimes I think that it is just better for us to fly under the radar. Different tends to scare people. Instead of looking into how and why so many folks would choose this “radical” way of learning they immediately decide it can’t work.
Sorry this got so long…
paradisefound said,
I totally agree that sometimes flying under the radar would be better for us all!
I know it’s hard to get all of the information into an 800-word article and yes indeed, there’s a lot of information to process with unschooling.
you said:
“The reporter decides which quotes to use and how to slant the article. ”
And I think this is the crux of the problem. This particular article was better than others I’ve read, but if a reporter chooses to focus on what s/he considers the oddity of an unschooler’s day, that’s what is portrayed to the general public. The public sees that “odd” behavior as characteristic of all unschoolers, rather than recognizing that there are as many versions of unschooling as there are people doing it. I think it’s the duty of a good reporter to show different sides of a story if s/he’s going to address something as diverse as home education, and unschooling specifically.
It’s tough - I think that reporters who don’t know about unschooling will have a really hard time making it make sense to readers in the short amount of time they are allotted to research and write the story. But I do wish they’d delve a little deeper beyond the usual ‘unschooler who excels’ & the ‘unschooler who has no guidance and will surely land in jail’ subjects.
As an aside, the last time I was interviewed about homeschooling, the journalist who interviewed me asked tons of questions about how my kids learn, how we do it, etc, etc. The quote that ended up in the magazine? A joke I made about my house and the fact that it hasn’t been clean since I started homeschooling. Nice, huh?
Andrea (admin) said,
And in response to your aside, i was once interviewed for well over an hour (and the reporter wound up very abrasive and confrontational and ticked me off) and the final version of the fluff-piece had me saying basically my neighbours thought we were weird and you had to be a little nuts to homeschool.
paradisefound said,
Ha! Andrea, that’s funny. Just as blood, guts, and hype sells the 5:00 news, dirty houses and nutso sells home education articles, eh?
RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI
JoVE said,
November 26, 2006 @ 2:41 pm
Pretty good article but the following things (not unique to this article bug me):
1) why pick the most radical libertarian unschooler as the example; so many unschoolers I meet online use some structure and/or encourage their kids to look into particular things but that doesn’t get a mention at all
2) when comparing to schooled kids, there is so much variation in acheivement amongst schooled kids and widespread recognition that the school system is failing large numbers of kids that I don’t see how homeschooling could be worse. It would be impossible to know whether any particular child would be better off in school or not.
3) At the end of the day, I think folks find it really scary that they DIDN’T have to put up with the boring, waste of time, or even downright awful aspects of school. As my kid’s 8 year old friend said when we first started homeschooling “Everyone thinks school is boring but no one is going to homeschool me.”