Major Newspaper Stories about Unschooling

Here are two good articles that discuss homeschooling. One, in the Hartford (CT) Courant, focuses on unschooling. Though the headline makes it seem like the article will view unschooling as a way to reform school, the article itself is more about one family and their journey to unschooling, and how North Star and other options can help families with self-directed teenage learners.

The Chicago Tribune did a story about homeschooling, with a focus on unschooling. The article was aimed at non-homeschooling parents, as the subhead indicates: "Supplement your child's education by stealing a few pages off the home-schoolers' playbook." Interesting how both stories intersect on the issue of how non-school activities and places can supplement or replace conventional schooling for children whose parents are not able to fully commit to homeschooling.

Homeschoolers in the News and in College

Amy Milstein, an unschooler living in Manhattan, sent me this good article and video about homeschooling done by a local PBS affiliate. It is, I think, an honest, even-handed portrayal about why and how homeschooling and unschooling are done. The interview at the end of the video, with two unschoolers who did well in college, should be interesting to all parents who worry about their unconventionally raised children getting into higher education.

On that note, this recent article will also be of interest: 15 Key Facts About Homeschooled Kids in College.

Participate in Dr. Peter Gray’s Unschooling Research Survey

Dr. Peter Gray, whose Freedom to Learn blog is well known to many unschoolers and homeschoolers, is conducting a research survey specifically about unschooling. I’ve met and worked with Peter several times, I have reviewed this survey, and I’m comfortable disseminating it. Peter notes:

Attached here, as a Word document, is the survey.  If you are still willing, I ask you to download the document, fill it out by typing directly on it, and then email it back to me, still as a Word document.  My sincere hope is that publications resulting from this survey will produce a greater understanding of unschooling.

If at all possible, I ask that you return this within the next two weeks.

Download the Word document, Unschoolers Survey

Gallup Poll and CNN Story: Schooling Down, Unschooling Up

These two news stories, one a Gallup poll report and the other from CNN, show us how hard change is to make, but also how it gradually occurs despite institutional resistance.

"Near record-low confidence in public schools" is the headline for the Gallup report. From the report:
"Public schools currently rank in the middle of the pack of institutions tested -- 8^th out of 16 -- in the general range of the presidency, U.S. Supreme Court, and medical system. The current rating is down significantly when compared with confidence levels seen throughout the 1970s and at points in the late 1980s, when about half or more Americans expressed confidence in U.S. public schools." Since 2005 only 34% of those polled "say they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in public schools."

It is no surprise that people are losing their faith in our institutions, which increasingly seem to benefit themselves and their benefactors more than the people they are supposed to serve. What is surprising, to me, is how the common remedy for schools goes unquestioned: do more of the same, only do it more intensely. More tests, more school days, more teacher testing, more bureaucratic hoops disguised as educational needs. It makes me wonder if any of the "small is beautiful," people-centered reforms that have been ignored for decades will ever stand a chance of being tried by institutional education.

However, I'm heartened, as always, by the growth of homeschooling, alternative schooling, and, most important, of unschooling. This recent story by CNN reports the growth of these alternatives; perhaps the 66% of citizens who do not have confidence in public schools will stop waiting for someone to give them an option and demand access to what over 2 million homeschooled children have: authentic learning in the real world, with support as needed from adults.

Unschooling in the News

While homeschooling generates a lot of media stories, there is definitely an increase in the number of stories devoted to unschooling in recent time. Here are a couple you might want to know about.

1) National Public Radio did a feature on unschooling, written by a 16 year old. It begins:

I didn't have a reason to read until I was 10, so I didn't. Eventually, when I did learn, it wasn't because of a book, test, a teacher — or even because I was embarrassed I didn't know how. I learned to read because of a card game I wanted to play called Magic the Gathering.

In order to play this new and exciting game, I had to be able to read about the different characters on the cards. I'm 16 now and I learn what I want to learn, when I want to learn it, and not always in the conventional ways.

You can read or listen to Sam Fuller’s complete segment on NPR's site.

2) Dr. Carlo Ricci, publisher of the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Studies, is interviewed on Canadian television. The interviewer asks many of the usual questions that both homeschoolers and unschoolers typcially get ("What about socialization? What about getting into a well-known college?") and Dr. Ricci responds to these inquiries with clear, authoritative responses.