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Against Homeschooling - Why Unschooling is Better
Homeschooling is generally much better than public schools, and homeschoolers generally do better in college and universities than their public-schooled counterparts. But what does that mean? Is it that homeschooling is better than public schooling, or does it just mean that homeschooling is LESS BAD than public schooling?
In public schools, you go there every day and do a lot of worksheets and whatnot, and you get homework too. In a homeschool, you can never really "get away" from schoolwork. You live with your teachers 24/7 - what if they want to use every available opportunity to bring your attention to some work?
In public schools, your time at school is structured in a specific way... with homeschooling (depending on your parents), your home time may be structured in a specific way too. Possibly in a way that you don't like. And (once again, depending on your parents) there may not be anything you can do about it.
One argument that quite a few parents use against public schools, and in favour of homeschooling is having the ability to control what their kids are exposed to. So you may be a lot more sheltered than you'd like - they might be holding you back. Granted, public schools do this as well. But if your parents are fanatically religious and you're not too optimistic about the whole thing, that could be a bit of a problem. Especially if they try to use religion in every single worksheet.
So it would seem that homeschooling can be very much like public schooling in a lot of ways... but it doesn't have to be. There is another form of homeschooling called Unschooling - which is basically where you follow your own interests and teach yourself whatever you want, whenever you want. No schedules, worksheets or tests unless you actually want them. This is learning in its purest form - learning because of intrinsic motivation - because you want to, not because you need to do well on some test or please your parents or anyone else.
What do you think?
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Posted in: Commentary on January 3, 2010 @ 9:14 PM
Tags: Alternatives, Homeschooling, Parents, Unschooling
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We have just started homeschooling our two youngest children. We do a couple of maths and english worksheets in the morning, which takes about 20 minutes. We also have another class scheduled in the afternoon but we rarely actually do it. The rest of the time the kids do their own thing. I suspect the classes are more for my benefit than theirs - I will feel better knowing they can read, write, add and subtract.
i think this post is under-researched: there's a lot more to both sides, that must be taken into account, than this. which underlines what can be the major flaw in any schooling, home- un- or worksheet.
I think it's so awesome that this site is talking about unschooling: letting kids in school know about what alternatives there are! And I definitely agree that unschooling is a much better option than homeschooling. I believe in freedom: thus I think homeschooling generally provides more freedom than school, so is slightly better, yet unschooling provides the most freedom of all, making it my favourite choice!
.-= Idzie´s last blog ..The Cons of Unschooling =-.
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