This morning around 8:30 am, I was drinking my second or third cup of coffee, having already been awake for about 3 hours. I needed a breather from my already long day and so I chose to peruse the internet news sites. Within a few minutes, I began salivating with anticipation about the blog I would write this evening. By chance I happened upon a story on CNN.com titled: "Unschoolers learn what they want, when they want."
I must be honest......I didn't have the slightest idea what an Unschooler was but I was hooked!
For those of you who are sitting there saying what the heck is an Unschooler (as I was), let me explain. An Unschooler is a student, well actually a young person, who gives up on being a student in the traditional educational system. The weird thing is as I was reading this article I found myself saying: "When I was in high school these students were known as dropouts." Instead of "dropping out" these youngsters decide to be home schooled or enroll in schools such as the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts. In either setting, these adolescents choose when they want to study and what they want to study.
Schools such as the Sudbury Valley School, don't require students to take classes. The "teachers" are not even really teachers...they have no teaching background and they just kind of mentor the youths. The school has no rules unless they are voted upon in a democratic fashion by the student body and the students are free to sit around talking, playing video games, and surfing the net. Then as the students in the article noted: "most eventually find their way around to learning."
Midway through the article, I was shocked....... as I imagine many of you may be at this point. But then the article began pointing to success stories from across North America, where young students decided that the traditional educational system was not for them and they simply decided to become un-schooled. Some of these success stories include: a pre-med student at Harvard, a Geologist, a Mathematician, and a successful entrepreneur. (at this point I was just flabbergasted)
Then I started to realize, that I can kind of see the point of some of these kids and their parents. Education never has been and probably never will be a one size fits all model. Every good teacher knows that. Sometimes, the best teaching in any classroom is to just let kids explore, imagine, and even fail on their own. Some of the most enlightening experiences for young students often occur when they are testing what they have learned in other classes not because they are forced to for some test........but instead because they just genuinely want to know how things work.
So, a part of me can see how unschools such as these can work for certain individuals. For that matter Study by App, LLC was founded on a principle of ensuring that students had access to the type of learning they needed.......when they needed it most.
Obviously, adolescents left to govern themselves without some semblance of guidance is probably not the best approach....as most "schooled" individuals found out by reading: "Lord of the Files." But perhaps kids do need a bit more freedom. Perhaps, it is the rigidness of standardized testing and the present day school environment that has just left so many potential schoolers with a bad taste in their mouths.
Maybe both types of schools could learn a thing or two from each other?
No comments:
Post a Comment