Why unschooling?

I had a new experience on Friday. After 14 years of homeschooling, and 12 as a committed unschooler--the first two were spent trying to figure out what we were doing--I was in a situation where being an unschooler was applauded. Wow. John Taylor Gatto, former New York Teacher of the Year, was applauding unschooling parents.

That felt good.

I've spent years feeling like I needed to defend what I was doing with my kids. Even as our results have proved that unschooling works, I have experienced a doubling-down of criticism, especially from other homeschoolers. I've never asked for atta-girls, or pats on the back; so I was stunned by how nice it was to get that unsolicited affirmation.

Gatto said some other things that really resonated with me:

We live with "a palette of unexamined assumptions" including the idea that "lurking behind anything worthwhile is standardized tests, GPAs and college." These assumptions have "allowed us to become our own jailers." Wow, again. This is so true, and echoes many of the conversations that I've had in the past few years with people who think about education. Gatto pointed out that it is still true that many highly successful people--names everyone knows: Gates, Jobs, Dell, to name but a few--didn't go to college or dropped out.

We have come to value credentials over learning, and hoop-jumping over knowledge and understanding. And it is imprisoning millions in a cycle of under-achieving when they don't measure up and student loan debt when they do.

The way to break out: "There has to be a substantial amount of your educational program that only fits you." This is the key to unschooling. It is absolutely personalized. And it cannot be done in institutional school. It is not what institutional schooling is for. That has a different purpose.

This doesn't preclude college. In fact, so far both of my unschooled high school graduates have chosen to attend college, because it fits them. Both have chosen to be history majors, one added a minor in English, the other is considering German and political science as possible minors. But that is another post.

I think Gatto's quote also challenges us to consider what is "worthwhile." Our society seems to consider only material or career success as worthy of pursuit. I would argue that there are other pursuits equally worthwhile, which do not depend on tests and GPAs. Parenting, growing food, and working with the hands come to mind, as a beginning.

Gatto

These are a few posts that I put on my main blog last year, but I decided that I want them here, too.
Almost exactly a year ago, I posted some thoughts that I had upon reading John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction. Gatto has long helped bolster the "why" of our homeschool adventure. Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend a homeschool conference where he was speaking. The session was way too short, but I did glean a lot from his talk. I think it's going to make its way into a number of blog posts.

If you are a fan of conventional, institutional schooling, I'll again warn that you may not like what I'm going to say. I used to be a fan, but not any more. Gatto has done copious amounts of research into the history and background of American education. His many years as a teacher in public schools gave him a front row seat.

So what's the bottom line? Our government schools exist for the express purposes of destroying the imagination, weakening family ties, and separating children from their parents. They exist to create willing, unquestioning workers and consumers. Learning is incidental.

This is the background. The next few posts will include things that Gatto said and things that I've been thinking, and how they have connected.

Added: My friend Cheryl has some thoughts on Gatto, his book, and schools.

School and ADD/ADHD

Ned Vare has a post at School is Hell about a subject near and dear to my heart, ADD/ADHD.

I especially like this quote from his friend, Jerry Mintz, who has the website The Education Revolution.

You got a person who has a psychiatric illness in a public school that requires medication from a multibillion-dollar industry, but when you put him into an alternative school environment, not only does he not require the medication, but the disease seems to vanish and he does very well. The question is, then, where is the disease? And I have firmly, solidly come to the conclusion that the disease is in our schools. It's not in our kids.

Yes, yes, and again yes. Some people think and learn in a way that is not compatible with the way schools choose to teach. So their way of thinking is treated as a disease. They are drugged so that they can better conform.

I am the diagnosed ADD parent of two, possibly three, sons who would certainly have been drugged if we were part of the public school machine. It drives me crazy to see so many parents unquestioningly give their children--especially their sons--psychoactive drugs for most of their childhood because they are behaving like children. Why as a society do we try to shove children into a box instead of making the box fit the child?

For us, one of the huge benefits of homeschooling is that we have been able work with our children's strengths and around their weaknesses.

And contrary to the doubts of the critics we've faced, as pre-teens and teens the boys can all function just fine in a regimented classroom situation when they choose to do so.