Unschooling and other alternatives

Yes, it's about 10 grand a year for a Waldorf school.

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What might be the difference between a Waldorf school and a school that is a

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Member of Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA).

?

There is a AWSNA school in my neighborhood and it isn't that expensive.

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That's an entry level school wanting to become a Waldorf.

http://www.awsna.org/awsna-membership.html

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Thank you CJane. That was really helpfull!

I wrote to them for more info and now I have a new question to ask.

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Here's an article I found on the school with some information removed...

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The residents of XXXX, Oregon, are no strangers to technology. Intel is a major employer in the area, and half of the state's high tech jobs are located in XXXXX County. But in the heart of Oregon's silicon forest, an interesting paradigm shift has occurred.

XXXXX School in XXXXX stands out as a cultural anomaly. Around 30 percent of the students at the elementary school have parents who work in the high tech field, but at school these students don't use computers. There are no computers at XXXXX.

"There are families here that are involved in the high tech industry that are choosing to have their kids involved with a growing process with no tech or little tech," said Lauren XXXXXSheehan, director of XXXXX School.

XXXX is a part of the Waldorf Education program, which emphasizes the arts, handicrafts, reading, and math. When it comes to computer skills, XXXXXl's philosophy is that the skills should be taught in the home -- not in the classroom before the high school level.

"Personal interactions is what's lost if you give that time over to the computer," XXX said.

XXXX and XXXX subscribe to the XXXXX philosophy, choosing to pay the $X per child tuition instead of sending two of their children to the nearby public school, which includes computer-assisted learning.

"For my children, I want them to learn computers when they are older, when they've gone through some other experiences," XXXXX said. "I don't want them to fill up their childhood with just computer experiences at the expense of other things."

XXXXXX is a longtime software programmer, while his wife, XXXXX, is a former technical writer. Both of their school-age children attend XXXXXX.

"I'm happy with not using all these computers. I think it would be kind of ridiculous to give everybody a computer to take home to do their homework on. I'd much rather do my homework with paper and pencil," fifth-grader XXXXX said.

The XXXX-XXXX home is not devoid of technology. The family has a wireless LAN and a laptop and frequently goes online to check on overdue library books.

They also have mice -- the old-fashioned kind -- and music.

"There's all kinds of things kids can do rather than play computer games," XXXX said, pointing to the children's cello. "The kids seem to be finding their own way, investigating the world, and learning about the world without computers."

Because they are both high tech professionals, XX's parents say they know firsthand the addictive nature of computers and the Internet.

"They are somewhat addicting, and for young children that don't have all of the faculties that we have as adults, I don't think they can determine how much of something is not good for them," XXXX said.

"We are providing a balance to our world, which is saying to children and us parents, 'Hurry, make your child become an adult as fast as possible and make them become as good as they can [be],'" XXXX's XXXX said.

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I'm very interested in unschooling, homeschooling, Sudbury Valley and Montessori schools. I'm seriously considering these alternatives for my own kids once the time comes. The reason is that I spent about 11 of my 13 public school years as an outcast. I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy's kids the "valuable social interactions" I experienced in this role. When I started college, finally able to direct my own learning, I felt as as relieved as a prisoner regaining his freedom after a 14.25-year sentence. (13 years served in school, 1.25 years in compulsory military service.) All the skills that I possess and value today -- physics, computer programming, English-speaking, the literature background, piano playing -- I learned in an un-schooled environment after school hours. So, for my own, yet-to-be-conceived kids, I'd prefer to expand the unschooled parts of my education, which worked for me, and spare them the public school part of my education, which failed me.

But since Boomerang asked about the opinion of professionals, not the victims of said professionals, I won't give any specific advice at this point. This post is really just a long-wound way of saying "bookmark".

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sozobe wrote:

As a concept, I'm not completely against it. I think there are people who can do it well.

The problem is that I think those people are few and far between, and that there are too many people who are doing it, NOT well.

I agree, but suspect the same is true of most teachers, whatever institution they teach in. In the non-representative sample that is the teachers who taught me, the few I actually learned something from were all unpopular. Most students disliked them because their standards were too tough. All principals disliked them because they weren't obedient enough to our Dilbertesque school regulations, and to the pointy-haired bureaucracies enforcing them. If you're a good teacher, why put up with this? You have plenty of other professional opportunities to pursue. It's rare for good teachers to maintain their professional standards and their motivation for long in public schools. The ones who do have my highest respect. But I suspect they're as rare as good parents for unschooling, perhaps rarer.

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boomerang wrote:

I wrote to them for more info and now I have a new question to ask.

What is the question? Is it, "would I deprive my kid of a potential high-tech job by sending him to a school without computers?"? My answer as a high-tech worker would be "no, not necessarily". But I'm not sure if that was the question you wanted to ask.

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Thank you for giving your "unprofessional" opinion, Thomas!

What happened to you is what I worry about with Mo -- that school itself becomes torture. Already he says "I don't want to go to school - it's too hard for me" and I know it isn't the actual work that is too hard because I see him zoom through it at home.

I know exactly what you mean about the freedom of college. I could never get on a degree track because there was just so much offered that I wanted to learn and I didn't want to spend my hard earned dollars on classes like "Freshman Composition".

The other side of the social coin is not a very pretty place, is it? It hurts just reading about it. I've never really experienced either side of social so it is very good for me to hear about what happens when it does and doesn't work.

My other questions is -- where are they on the Waldorf accreditation scale. The no-computer thing doesn't bother me but that was the only article I came across about the school so far.

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I know this must be so difficult, and it would be so great to say "!" and have that be the answer and Mo lives happily ever after.

I just don't have nearly enough information, though. About Mo, about the school, about other schools, about anything.

It's totally possible that the school is not the right fit for Mo, and that he's in for an entire school career of misery if boomer doesn't step in.

It's also possible that Mo needs more time to figure out stuff that he WILL be able to figure out. Stuff like how to respond when someone says "Hey, Mo's at the 'bad'" table," or "Mo's stupid!" (This is conjecture, but from other things boomer has said it seems that one of his current responses is to hit the kid who says it.)

From what little I do know, I think that professionals should be working with Mo to help him get through these difficult situations, and that avoidance of those situations will just cause larger problems down the line. Say that he is taken out of school -- will he be homeschooled/ unschooled straight through to high school? If no, at what point would he be going back to school? Will the issues be resolved by then or will they just be more entrenched and more difficult to deal with?

And if the plan is to teach him straight through to college, what about then? Will he go to college, and face these issues there? Will he skip college, and face the issues when he works? Will he not work at all...?

Boomer makes light of her own social limitations but they seem to allow her to function quite well -- to excel in a social field like professional photography, to bring together neighbors, to be a beloved member of an online forum. I don't have enough information, so I can't tell, but it seems like Mo is at some risk of not having nearly the skills that you (Thomas) or boomer have -- which would impact him in many, many ways.

I know those are outsized, scary questions, that might seem too big to process now, while facing the relatively simple issue of less joy taken from coloring and reading. But that's part of what's in my head as I respond.

All of this applies much more to taking him out of school completely than to finding a school that has more freedom to teach him in ways that are best for him. I'm a great proponent of the promise of public school but if for example a higher teacher/ student ratio would have real benefits for Mo and can be only found at another kind of school, I see that.

My concern there is a lesser one, the idea of stability, getting used to things (in a good way, too). Knowing the route to school, recognizing people, knowing where the drinking fountain is -- those can all be elements of comfort. I have the feeling (though again, I don't have enough information) that Mo will have a transition period at any school he goes to, as he gets used to it. And that the transition period may be independent of the potential fit of the school.

I really feel out of my depth, though, which is why I keep going back to the idea that my advice probably isn't worth much, and that it needs to be someone on the spot, a professional who knows or can gather all of the necessary info, to offer useful advice.

Mo has a fabulous advocate in boomer and I know she's just in research mode now -- I'm confident that she will figure out the best direction for Mo, whatever it may be.

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Actually, Waldorf students fared better in SAT tests than their peers,
mainly due to having learned creative thinking and being able to make
logical conclusions much better than textbook learners.

I am still a firm believer that children need the social interaction in
school, especially when behavioral issues are present, and I am speaking
from experience with my child. We've had a rough time in preschool,
kindergarten and first grade, but there was light at the end of our tunnel
and I am convinced that the school environment and peers were a huge
part of the success.

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sozobe wrote:

Say that he is taken out of school -- will he be homeschooled/ unschooled straight through to high school? If no, at what point would he be going back to school? Will the issues be resolved by then or will they just be more entrenched and more difficult to deal with?

I don't know, so the best I can do is share experiences from my own family, which I do know something about. When me or my sisters were sick, it was my mothers policy to have friends bring over the homework. She would then work through the textbook covering the material we needed to do the homework, and had us write it, just as we would have if we hadn't been sick. My grandmother had the same policy when my mother was sick. Because of post-World-War-II malnutrition, that was often a significant part of the school year, in one case the greater part of it. In all four cases -- me, my sisters, and my mother -- the pedagogical result of this was that we returned to school ahead of our class.

How does this apply to Boomerang? I'm not sure. But based on my impresson of Boomer on this board, she seems to have much in common with my mother and my grandmother, and nothing with the scary religious fanatics who give homeschooling a bad name.

Sozobe wrote:

And if the plan is to teach him straight through to college, what about then? Will he go to college, and face these issues there? Will he skip college, and face the issues when he works? Will he not work at all...?

In my experience, college is a much better environment than high school for not being "one of the boys" in. There is cliquishness and mobbing there, too, but it's much easier to drop out of the clique system and find friends on your own terms. I would expect that socializing problems are easier to face there. As for work, it tends to bring you together with people you share interests with. (You can choose your job, but you can't choose your school or your class in school.) Also, you have the option to work freelance, where issues of fitting in are again much easier to face than in the command-and-control environment conventional schools depend on.

Sozobe wrote:

I don't have enough information, so I can't tell, but it seems like Mo is at some risk of not having nearly the skills that you (Thomas) or boomer have -- which would impact him in many, many ways.

That cuts both ways though, in terms of leaving him in his current school or taking him out.

Sozobe wrote:

Mo has a fabulous advocate in boomer and I know she's just in research mode now -- I'm confident that she will figure out the best direction for Mo, whatever it may be.

Now this is a point we fully agree on. And for what it's worth, you don't seem out of your depth at all. I don't think anyone has the final answers here, including professionals, and the best we can do for boomer is give her as many perspectives and gut-feelings as we have so she can puzzle a picture together on her own.

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CalamityJane wrote:

I am still a firm believer that children need the social interaction in school, especially when behavioral issues are present, and I am speaking from experience with my child.

Just out of personal curiosity, what do you think about social interaction outside of school? Do you consider it an equal source of social skills? Or is there something about school that makes its kind of social interaction uniquely valuable?

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Thomas, when I say "issues" in the paragraph you quoted, I'm talking far less about learning per se but behavioral issues, which boomer says have been a problem for Mo. Craven has talked about this too -- that he was homeschooled and then went to a regular high school and was constantly getting in fistfights over "yo mama"-type insults. He had social interaction, but not of the kind that prepared him for dealing with that kind of negativity.

A year off of school, especially midway through, simply doesn't have the same sort of impact on that kind of socio-cultural learning that being taken out this early would have. You and your sisters had already learned a bunch of things, and could then just return. Same with your grandmother.

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LittleJane has always gone to private schools, hasn't she, CJane?

I guess the big question is how long do you try something before you start looking at alternatives? Just a little longer or longer than that? Longer?

I believe in public education but I'm not convinced that Mo is doing his best in that environment.

Two examples:

He loves loves loves his music class. There are three kids in the class. He's doing really well in the class. You don't have to twist his arm to go or to get him to practice his lesson.

Last week he wrote our neighbor, Bachelor #1 a letter that said "Dear E, Me and my dad are going motorcycle riding on Sunday. Will you go with us? Love Mo." (okay his spelling was goofier than that but you get the idea).

In class he writes "I like dog."

As to college, I suppose that will be up to him when the time comes.

As a side note -- photography is one of the most solitary professions around. I spent most of my youth and a good chunk of adulthood locked in a small, dark, room happy as a clam.

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boomerang wrote:

I guess the big question is how long do you try something before you start looking at alternatives? Just a little longer or longer than that? Longer?

It's a big question all right. I don't know the answer.

I'll try to quickly summarize some of what I'm saying to both Thomas and boomer:

I'm not categorically against homeschooling or unschooling. I think that if there are existing behavioral problems, though, those need to be dealt with rather than avoiding the social contact that is a catalyst. Nobody is going to be able to get through life without encountering conflict, and being able to deal with conflict is too important of a skill.

That's about homeschooling/ unschooling.

When it comes to finding another type of school that better fits Mo's interests and way of learning, I have far fewer concerns.

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Does Mo have conflicts with his peers in the street? How does he resolve them, or fail to resolve them?

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Sometimes he hits people who make him mad but that's getting better since we discovered the rock and roll method of anger management (put your hands in your pockets, give them the "look", and stroll away).

He's also learning to be a tattle-tale so that grown ups will step in and solve any and every dispute.

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boomerang wrote:

Sometimes he hits people who make him mad but that's getting better since we discovered the rock and roll method of anger management (put your hands in your pockets, give them the "look", and stroll away).

He's also learning to be a tattle-tale so that grown ups will step in and solve any and every dispute.

Is this substantially different from how his neighborhood peers settle disputes with each other?

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The neighborhood kids are allowed to settle their own disputes 99% of the time.

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Unschooling and other alternatives

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