Hey everyone,
I caught this interesting segment this morning on the Today show. The story covers unschooling, a method of homeschooling that involves no testing and no structured lesson plans. Learners decide what they want to learn when they want to learn it and drive their own learning process.
My initial impression was that the girls featured in the segment seem very well adjusted, but is unschooling an effective way to engage learners and prepare kids for college and the workforce? On the other hand, if done properly, is unschooling actually a MORE effective way to engage learners than our current school system? I am somewhat conflicted about it- I definitely see the value in self-directed learning, but I guess it's hard to immediately embrace a method that's very different than what most of us are used to. I imagine it also depends a lot on individual families (i.e., whether parents can provide the right structure for unschooling and kids are self-motivated, independent learners).
Interesting concept and I can see where one would be conflicted. It seems like the engagement is there, but there's a lack of learning test-taking skills that are necessary given higher education still uses that system for evaluating who should be admitted to an university/college. So I can see where there would be a gap in their learning, but only if the parent decides to ignore the fact that their child will eventually need to take some sort of assessment test. I do like the way the parents in the segment were allowing the girls to learn about what interests them as individuals. The question regarding preparing the girls for SATs and such wasn't asked of the parents directly. So I'd be curious, given the parent both excelled at school, to know if they have considered college entrance exams and if they've at least talked with their daughters about what it means to take a test. And there are test prep courses for these sort of things, so I'd speculate they'd be willing to spend money on the training necessary to help their daughters succeed. It's definitely hard to say yay or nay on the idea without more information or some means of measuring if unschooling can prepare someone for adult life.
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