Unschooling Formatted for TV

Unschooling was featured on the Today Show this morning and it was generally a fair portrayal of what it is and how it is done. The Bentley family, featured in the video segment, was particularly articulate and they were shown actively learning and doing things in their community; as a result, I don’t think the audience viewed unschooling as children doing nothing or as unparenting, which is a relief.

The education experts on the show expressed the standard concerns: unschoolers aren’t tested so how do we know they’re learning compared to their schooled counterparts? Parents may not be qualified to teach certain things. The kids could be isolated if they aren’t involved in activities outside the home. Aren’t there going to be gaps in their knowledge? By the way, these are the same concerns that are often raised about homeschooling in general, which proves to me, again, that homeschooling and unschooling are inextricably linked and efforts to separate them are not wise. Since most unschooling and homeschooling resources cover these questions in detail, as have I, I won’t respond to them here. 

It was good to hear Robyn Silverman, a teen and child development expert, note that unschoolers get into college with non-traditional transcripts, but it was disappointing to hear her say that unschooling is primarily for parents of “self-propelled” children. All children are born with self-motivation and a very common thread among unschoolers are stories about how they decided to unschool after their children went to school and became morose, unmotivated learners. They know their children weren’t this way before they went to school, so they view unschooling as a way to reinvigorate their children’s love of learning. Unschooling can work for any child and there are thousands of examples online and in print.

Further, both experts and the show overall make it seem like unschooling is a new trend, some recent development that doesn’t have a track record and is therefore somewhat dangerous to do with your children. There is no mention of John Holt and his creation of unschooling in 1977 after years of teaching in and writing about schools. There is no mention of the thousands of unschoolers who are now productive, adult citizens, some of them unschooling their own children now. There is no mention of teachers, in both alternative and conventional schools, who either unschool their children or take inspiration from it in their work. There is no mention that unschoolers are forging their lives earlier than those in school can, building up resumes and experiences that serve them well as adults, and that two-thirds of all American colleges and universities have admission procedures for homeschoolers/unschoolers. Indeed, according to U.S. census data only about 27.5% of all Americans have four-year college degrees, so it is odd that the media and society view getting into college as the ultimate sign of adult success. Shouldn’t we focus on how the 73.5% of Americans without four-year degrees find work, careers, and lives worth living instead of making them feel less worthy for not going or completing college? Uncollege is a concept that I hope gets further attention and it’s founder acknowledges the influence of unschooling on his thinking.

Further, unschooling is an option for families, not a mandate. You can try it and adapt it as you see fit; your kids can move in and out of school as necessary; you can do it for any amount of time. It is NOT school, which is why it is a true option for children who hate school, or don’t fit in, or find class too boring, or find class too challenging. I wish the experts had considered these issues instead of finding fault with unschooling because it does not follow conventional school techniques; that is the point, after all. As noted earlier, people often come to unschooling because their children were not flourishing in school, or because even though they did well in school (as the adult Bentley’s say they did in their segment) they want an education that is more involving for their children than marching through the steps of standardized curricula.

Unschooling is about learning and doing things that matter in the real world and in your life, and the Bentley family provides a great model of this for viewers. In six minutes, The Today Show condensed and analyzed an educational movement that has been growing for decades. Some day, I hope the deeper stories that lie beneath the surface of this one will be examined.

Unschooling Featured on the Today Show, Oct. 14, 2011

I have heard from the producer of the unschooling segment for the Today Show that it will definitely air tomorrow morning, Oct. 14, around 8:17 a.m. EST. Due to time constraints (they cut the segment in half), I am no longer being interviewed on the show. However, the Cottrell-Bentley family of AZ is featured as the unschooling family and they are dynamic and articulate; I'm certain they will present unschooling in the best possible light and I hope the Today Show does, too. Zoe Bentley's website, Exogeology ROCKS!, is a great example of how a young person can follow their interests and learn many things in an interdisciplinary fashion without following standard curricula or school protocols.

Steve Jobs and Growing Without Schooling

I fell in love with the Macintosh from the start. I own one of the first 128K Macs created; it has the Mac team’s signatures etched inside its case. I remember trying to convince John Holt in 1984 to bring the Mac into the office for creating Growing Without Schooling magazine and our other publications; John was skeptical. I used to lug my 128K Mac from my apartment to the Holt office to show how it could be used, and it wasn’t easy. Though touted as a portable computer, the original Mac needed to be carried in a large, square, padded container and it weighed a lot. I garnered lots of funny looks as I squeezed onto rush-hour trains with this huge bag slung over my shoulders. But I felt the effort was worth it. I worked with rubber cement, typewriters, and razors to create our publications in those days and I immediately grasped the elegance and ease of using a Mac to do the same. Of course, the software for laying it out took time to develop (anyone besides me remember MacPublisher, the first layout program for the Mac?), so it wasn’t a quick solution, but I could at least create advertisements (MacPaint and MacDraw) and articles (MacWrite) for HoltGWS on my Mac, and I did. We eventually became an all-Mac office (see photo) and remained Apple users even during their direst corporate moments in the nineties.

However, in recent years I came to respect Steve Jobs more as a person than as a corporate and technology visionary. That’s because of his openness about his background, revealed most in his commencement speech to the graduating class of 2005 at Stanford University.

I quote parts of this speech in some of my talks, and I want to share them with you today in case you haven’t read them. I use Jobs’ words to allay people’s fears that they might be constraining their children’s options and growth in the future by unschooling them now. Like the Mac, iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, these words are worth considering because they can reduce stress and make your life a little easier and a little more fun. Steve Jobs:

I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Stop trying to connect the dots for your children’s future and stay focused on your present time with them. Trust children, and yourselves. Thank you, Steve Jobs.

HoltGWS.com update, Catholic Unschooling, and Illich Video

I’ve been overwhelmed with good wishes, support, and requests for help since I launched the new www.holtgws.com site, which is why I haven’t been able to do much of anything else since it officially went live on Sept. 14. I’m rather surprised at how emotional I get when I read the materials we produced at HoltGWS; this is even truer when I review the photos, audios, and videos of John and my friends and colleagues from years past. It has taken me nearly a year to get the site to the point it is today, and I’m still surprised by some thought or memory that comes back to me as I work with the materials. It’s been ten years since we officially ceased publication of GWS and the distance does help me from getting too blubbery about its demise, but I’m still surprised at the emotions that get stirred by an old photo or reading an old letter.

 It is especially nice to have so many old friends and subscribers get back in touch with me. It is very encouraging to hear from parents whose children are now adults in their 30s and 40s describe how GWS and unschooling made such a positive difference in their lives. Indeed, as I create the first newsletter for the site I plan to reprint some of those letters, and to create a section on the site for GWS veterans to share their stories with those who are just starting, or are in the process, of homeschooling/unschooling. As momentum and publicity build about the site I look forward to hearing from more old timers.

I’m also still trying to decide which platform to use for a discussion forum for the site: Facebook (so many people are on it already), Google Plus (the Hangout video chat feature could be a leg up on Facebook), Tumblr (blog comments on steroids), or a stand-alone BBS that is located on the site—all have their pros and cons and I’m befuddled. If anyone has thoughts or opinions on which platform would be best to use, I’d appreciate you getting in touch with me.

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Suzie Andres informed me of a book promotion her friend Sue Elvis is doing. Elvis will be giving away three copies of Suzie’s book A Little Way of Homeschooling: Thirteen Families Discover Catholic Unschooling. You can enter by going to her blog, Stories of an Unschooling Family.

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Another bittersweet moment for me occurred the weekend before I launched the HoltGWS site. I was in PA with a group of friends to attend a farewell symposium for Lee Hoinacki, a great person who is also a writer, thinker, farmer, and activist. One of Lee’s books, El Camino: Walking to Santiago de Compostela, is a moving philosophical and spiritual reflection about his pilgrimage and his thoughts about modern society that I find to be particularly powerful. Lee and Ivan Illich were close friends; indeed, many at the symposium felt Lee helped make Ivan’s work more understandable to them, including myself.

Gene Burkart and I drove down together, as we have several times before, and we decided to take the scenic route instead of the more direct highway route. Despite the bad weather we had faced right up to the day before we left, we were assured that all roads were now clear. Nonetheless, we got more than we bargained for—severe flooding in New York and Pennsylvania from the Susquehanna River caused a couple of detours for us that opened our eyes. As we neared Binghamton, in particular, many homes, malls, and gas stations could be seen on the river-side of the road, engulfed by at least four feet of water. It was an eerie experience. The weather was gorgeous—clear sky, mid-seventies for temperature—yet there was all this devastation floating near us. The scenic route doubled our driving time due to these difficulties, but it also gave us more time to talk.

One thing Gene told me about was a blog he had recently discovered about Ivan Illich: New Scare City. He mentioned it again to the group in PA, and then again as we drove back to Boston a couple of days later. I have since gone to the blog many times and have enjoyed all the history and posts about Illich and his work that Winslow, the site’s author, creates. Most recently he put up a video of Illich that he found in the Internet Archive. The archive describes it: “Ivan Illich, in the 1984 Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture conference titled "What Makes a City: Water and Dreams," explores the human conception of water through history, which leads to the inspiration of his book H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness."

Ivan did not like to be filmed or photographed; he once described photographs to me as a modern version of collecting scalps. Winslow writes, “We're not aware of any other such video showing Illich speaking publicly. A good number of audio recordings of him are available, but not video, as far as we know, probably as a result of Illich's well-known aversion to being recorded. (‘Modern-day pornography,’ he testily described the recording of his ‘conversation’ about de-schooling with an evangelical audience in the 1970s.)”

It is quite ironic to me that after our drive through the flooded areas to say farewell to Lee, with Ivan in our hearts and minds the whole way, that a rare video of Ivan would appear on the subject of water: H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness. It appears as two videos below.

John Holt: April 14, 1923 to September 14, 1985

Sept. 14 is the anniversary of John Holt’s death. He would have been 88 had he lived, but he died at the young age of 62 from cancer. In honor of his memory, and to support those who act upon John’s ideas and further them, I have revised the www.holtgws.com website. All the issues of Growing Without Schooling magazine are now online and available for free, as well as many articles, video and audio recordings, and photographs that have been out of the public eye since we closed HoltGWS. In the case of the video and audio recordings, some have never been available until now.

If you take the time to explore the site you will discover John’s thoughts about how schools could be better, how unschooling and homeschooling are self-selecting and self-correcting activities that do not need central authorities to dictate content and standards, and how his goal was not to create an insular education movement for children but rather “A life worth living and work worth doing—that is what I want for children (and all people), not just, or not even, something called ‘a better education.’”

At a time when education reform is about technocratic fixes and students are just test scores to be processed by the school machine (there are teachers in schools who resist or ameliorate these issues for their students but they are outnumbered) it can be disheartening for me to remember John. After all, things have gotten worse for students, not better, since John died. Sure, we can point to test scores that may have improved as a result of billions of dollars being spent and regulations that keep children in school longer, but what of their lives? Compared to 1985 when John died, more children live in poverty, have broken homes, do not have health care, and suffer from a lack of community and free play in their lives; children now read less and less for pleasure, are less civically inclined, and they face jobless recoveries while trying to pay usurious college-loan debt.

But John was not a pessimist, and he believed that if shown another way to help children learn and grow some people would choose it. You can read about John’s “Nickel and dime theory of social change” in the first issue of Growing Without Schooling. If you do so, I hope you will continue reading through the site and gain courage and ideas about how you and your children can forge lives worth living, not lives handed to you based on your school test scores.