Hopefully I won't get in trouble for posting a few paragraphs of this... to see the whole article go to:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/10/03/unschool/
click the button at the top to watch the advertisement, and then click another link to go to the article...
Endless summer
Unschooling is a
radical branch of home-schooling where kids control what and when they
learn -- free of teachers, schedules and tests. Unschoolers say it's
intellectually empowering. Critics call it irresponsible.
By Sarah Karnasiewicz
Oct. 3, 2005 |
Celine Joiris has
never failed a test. Never eaten crappy cafeteria food. Never been
picked last during gym. It's not that she's a supernaturally lucky
16-year-old -- she's simply never been to school. "I like the idea of
studying, but school is just like incarceration," she explains. Her
brother Julian, 17, agrees. "My approach is, planning, schedules -- OK.
Tests, OK. College, OK. Whatever. But I don't really want to think much
about it," he shrugs. "I can't tell you where I'll be in two years."
What's that? A smart 17-year-old without a plan? A bright, middle-class teenager who's not stressing out about SATs and admissions essays? In an era when college prep begins in preschool and adolescents need Palm Pilots to manage their after-school activities, such nonchalance has the power to shock. What about all those stories about home-schooled kids dominating national spelling bees and hogging spots at Harvard? Surely "whatever" is not in their vocabulary.
|
But Celine and Julian Joiris are not your typical home-schoolers -- they are unschoolers,
followers of a radical approach to education that rejects not just the
routines of traditional school, but the authoritative ideology it
represents. Unschoolers make up approximately 5 to 10 percent of all
home-schoolers. They learn without teachers, curricula or exams;
rather, their whole lives are laboratories in which skills and smarts
are acquired piecemeal, through casual interaction with the world
around them.
article continued online at the above link.
Recent Comments