Radical Unschooling: On the news

[Anthony Roman Inga]

I was yahoo today, surfing through videos, and I was pleasantly surprised to find this: 

http://news.yahoo.com/video/health-15749655/extreme-parenting-radic...

First time I saw something unschooling related on the news. From this video, I'm glad to hear that unschooling has grown a bit more. I also found the reporters' reactions a bit funny, but what you can expect? It's a small group. Any opinions on this video?.

[Scott]

Slinky said:

I am not sure how I feel about glen beck supporting homeschooling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EsGZOGQIqI&feature=channel

We don't have cable so I haven't seen Beck, or this show that was criticizing him, the Young Turks. What the Young Turk guy says about Thomas Jefferson being an advocate for modern compulsory state schooling is misleading. Jefferson's intentions for his Academical Village was pretty close to Holt's description of unschooling. The Academical Village was intended to be both voluntary and completely self-directed, with no grading, requirements, curriculum, or authority -- extending even to the architecture of the place supporting those goals. Jefferson did support establishing free public schools supported by taxes. I have seen no indication that these were meant to be mandatory. This was to support his belief that an ignorant populace could not self-govern.

Beck's claim that Jefferson was homeschooled is a bit off. Jefferson's parents were very wealthy and he was taught by private tutors at whose homes he lived (not with his parents!) from age 9 to 16, and then as a 16 yr old adult, was admitted to the College of William and Mary.

On the same Young Turks channel that was linked to with the Beck critique there is a more recent piece by them in which they replay the entire Good Morning America piece, then launch into a tirade where they label parents that practice unschooling as irresponsible, "deluded" and "ignorant".

Personally, I see this as a coordinated media propaganda campaign, and will not be surprised to see "legislation to fix the problem" proposed at some point along the path of the manufactured hysteria.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYZrho7Th68

[Anthony Roman Inga]

I saw the follow-up of ABC's interview with the Biegler family, and it did shed more light on how the family directs learning, and they mentioned how it wasn't "anything goes". It wasn't shown so much as a "crazy" or "dubious" concept as portrayed by the reporter's reactions from the first segment when they had a more thorough interview with the parents. I liked how they answered questions brought up by viewers who weren't familiar with or had uncertainties with unschooling. And that, I believe made it more lucid and cleared some misconceptions, or misunderstandings of unschooling. However, I was disgusted with The Young Turks' takes on unschooling. I found Cenik Uygur's initial reaction even worse than reporters' from ABC. He was very flippant and ignorant towards the premise. It was not unlike some of the people's fears and bias. With such declarations that a child would not or cannot "automatically" learn by his/herself. He did describe himself as a perfect example of one receiving formal education.

[Miriam Skipworth]

I agree, unschooling is so far from the norm for most people that they fear it.

Andréanne said:

This is a very typical media representation of a different idea, complete with creative editing. I am sure they chose specific clips and different bits to feature in their text blurb to manipulate the portrayal of unschoolers. Anything that appears to portray a group that is "not in compliance" in a bad or suspicious light, will garner better ratings. The reactions tell the whole story. The media knows that they will get better ratings and higher viewer/readership if they tell the majority exactly what they want to hear. The majority of the public does not want their ideas about traditional education and traditional parenting styles to be challenged by the non-traditional being portrayed particularly positively. That would be seen as too threatening.
Society at large is not ready for unschooling. It is different from anything most of us have ever heard of, it is unknown. Things that are unknown, no matter how good they may be in principle or how good they are in reality, are very scary to most people. The result is fear, anger, and a desire to squash whatever is making them uncomfortable in order to reassure themselves that their comfortable, traditional idea is the right one and the ONLY right one. It's threatening to consider things differently when you are so emotionally invested in tradition and don't know anything else.

[Fawn Klein]

I like that the Young Turks took interest in the ABC news story about Unschool. They took enough interest that they explored the concept. They were unschooling themselves! They just don't realize it.
Their interest led them to do another episode that I liked better than the Young TUrks 1st episode.
http://www.examiner.com/x-5445-Politics-in-Education-Examiner~y2010...
It was enjoyable to see they kept plugging away at it. Trying to figure things out. Plus, It all started with a horrid ABC report.


Anthony Roman Inga said:

I saw the follow-up of ABC's interview with the Biegler family, and it did shed more light on how the family directs learning, and they mentioned how it wasn't "anything goes". It wasn't shown so much as a "crazy" or "dubious" concept as portrayed by the reporter's reactions from the first segment when they had a more thorough interview with the parents. I liked how they answered questions brought up by viewers who weren't familiar with or had uncertainties with unschooling. And that, I believe made it more lucid and cleared some misconceptions, or misunderstandings of unschooling. However, I was disgusted with The Young Turks' takes on unschooling. I found Cenik Uygur's initial reaction even worse than reporters' from ABC. He was very flippant and ignorant towards the premise. It was not unlike some of the people's fears and bias. With such declarations that a child would not or cannot "automatically" learn by his/herself. He did describe himself as a perfect example of one receiving formal education.

[C. D. Eagle]

It is nice it is getting noticed... sadly the reaction is pretty negative from the "experts". These news clips are also very biased. They try to make it look like the kids do nothing but "play" so in the mainstream parents eyes the kids learn nothing... obviously this isn't true. To be honest... as unschooling gets more attention I can bet some state is going to try and create legislation to get it banned or make it harder to successfully accomplish. I have a friend in the UK who says that is happening there (he was unschooled).

[Anthony Roman Inga]

I predict the same thing as well, if unschooling becomes more pronounced, it will blow up with debates and controversy. There might be journalists tring to portray unschooling in such a negative light. On a different subject, I think Jim Gilliam did a great job on the debate, he really handled it well.

C. D. Eagle said:

It is nice it is getting noticed... sadly the reaction is pretty negative from the "experts". These news clips are also very biased. They try to make it look like the kids do nothing but "play" so in the mainstream parents eyes the kids learn nothing... obviously this isn't true. To be honest... as unschooling gets more attention I can bet some state is going to try and create legislation to get it banned or make it harder to successfully accomplish. I have a friend in the UK who says that is happening there (he was unschooled).

[Meredith]

Happily unschoolers have found ways to live their lives and still appease government regulations even in places where there's a lot of "reporting" to do. As far as the state is concerned unschooling is a type of homeschooling, so the biggest issue in that regard is knowing your local laws and checking in with area homeschoolers to see how to handle them and what the useful loopholes may be.

A common loophole is that of the "private school" for instance. There are a variety of ways that works, but "private schools" are often exempt from the regulations applied to "homeschoolers". In some places families can become private schools and thus be exempt from school and homeschool legislation, in others there are pre-approved schools where one may register as a "satellite" of the school and file a minimum amount of paperwork.

Plenty of people besides unschoolers don't want to have the state telling them how to raise and educate their kids.

[Joy K]

It's true that in England (I'm in Wales) the present government was trying to make some changes to the educational policy and all homeschoolers could have been affected by it. It didn't go through but it did make us all aware that home educators (as we are known here) are now on the radar. So far as I know there has been no understanding by people in the government that there are such different ways of home educating.