This morning’s Baltimore Sun piece on the “unschooling” movement alludes to an unschooling conference being held in Maryland this month. Unschoolers have conferences?
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Practice What You Preach
by Robert PondiscioSeptember 3rd, 2009
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They’re unconferences.
Comment by Claus — September 3, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
I’m no “unschooler” but I know several families who follow that approach in their homeschooling. An “unschooling” conference is not an oxymoron because there’s no top-down imposition of required attendance at particular sessions. Families are free to choose to attend whatever session(s) they find interesting/useful.
I’ve got an “unschooling” friend whose daughter decided to study Advanced Placement Biology and is working from a traditional textbook. The difference between what they’re doing and a traditional school is that the daughter chose the subject matter and how she wanted to approach preparing for the AP exam. My friend is fine with that just as she was fine when her daughter chose a hands-on internship at a local marine science laboratory.
My friend is also fine with the fact that her daughter still hasn’t fully committed the multiplication tables to memory, which is something I personally do not agree with. The girl is certainly bright enough to memorize the tables if she were required to do so, and I believe that not having done it results in an inefficient use of time when she needs to solve problems involving math. I’ve seen her do this whole long convoluted process in order to arrive at the answer when all she really needs is just to learn the tables by heart.
In terms of there being no research on the effectiveness of “unschooling”, I would think that the research that has been done on graduates of the Sudbury schools would apply. I read a book on that topic a while back and the research findings indicated that the graduates by and large were successful as adults.
Comment by Crimson Wife — September 3, 2009 @ 2:20 pm
Maybe it’s an oxymoron like “public education.” Seriously, whatever some other parent wants to do is fine with me. I have children in public school and I also homeschool. The needs of the child in question ought to come first.
Comment by Mrs. C — September 4, 2009 @ 8:13 am