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Jon's Homeschool
Resource Page
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Unschooling
is a word coined by negating the idea of schooling; it starts off with a
negative definition. What, specifically, is it about schools that unschoolers
want to do without?
Quelques
reflexion sur le sens du mot, une forme negative…mais que justement ne veut-on
pas??
a tou/te/s les ami/e/s qui ont subitune
dizaine d'annees d'anglais a l'ecole (et donc en general… ne le parle pas..) comme pour liedloff vous pouvez vous aider
des contresens proposés par systran et power translator… en attendant les
ameliorations la page pseudo francais
est la……
The School Organization dans le cadre scolaire
· Breaking up the day
into learning time and play time.
· Starting and
stopping learning (or shifting topics) according to an externally-imposed
schedule.
· Telling students
what they should care about.
· Telling students
when they should care about it.
· Telling students
what is good enough.
· The complex
hierarchy with the student at the bottom.
The De-humanizing Aspects of Schools
· Having to ask
permission for basic human needs.
· Having to supply
"acceptable" excuses for absence or lateness.
· Routine abridgment
of human (constitutional) rights.
· Standing in lines,
waiting for everything: food, water, attention of the teacher, time on the
computer, etc.
· Group rewards and
punishments.
· Neglect of
individual gifts and problems.
· Moving at the sound
of a bell.
· Students coming to
view themselves as products, moving down a 12-year assembly line, with bits of
knowledge poured in or bolted on by others as the belt moves along. Seeing the
primary responsibility for their education as being in the hands of others.
Isolation from the Real World
· Segregation by
chronological age.
· Separation from
family.
· Isolation from the
working world.
· Isolation from the
effects of age and disease.
· "Free"
education isolates children from economic reality.
· Subject matter is
divorced from context.
Schedule Rigidity
· Having to be in
school at certain times means you can't see the World Cup or a solar eclipse if
it happens during the school day, and you can't see the late show or a lunar
eclipse if you have to get up in the morning.
· Having to be in
school limits your ability to travel.
· Having to be in
school limits your ability to do any time-consuming worthwhile
activity.
Note that
these issues do not address the questions of "problem schools." They
are unrelated to questions of crime, drugs, threat of violence, time spent in
forced commuting, illiterate teachers, etc. The problems unschoolers
specifically care about exist (to a greater or lesser extent) even in
"good" schools.
Moreover,
many educational reform proposals act to make these problems worse. Improved
security measures increase the dehumanizing aspects of school
"discipline". "Back-to-basics" programs increase the
rigidity of the curriculum, and often further divorce it from context.
"Mainstreaming" programs exacerbate the effects of a
one-size-fits-all curriculum, and often take up huge fractions of teachers' time
and energy. Many reformers want to increase the number of hours in a schoolday
or schooldays in a year, eliminating the chance for a student to educate
himself in the off hours. The solution to the problems inherent in
mass-produced education is not more of the same.
Unfortunately,
telling what unschooling isn't doesn't tell what it is. In some ways, all
homeschooling is unschooling -- we don't isolate our kids from life, or move at
the sound of a bell, or require permission slips, or neglect the individuality
of our children. Where unschoolers differ from other homeschoolers is the
extent to which we let children be responsible for their own education.
Unschoolers
believe that the natural curiosity of a healthy child, given access to a rich
environment, will lead the child to learn what he or she needs to know. When
learning comes about as a result of the child's desires, it is
absorbed easily, enthusiastically, openly. The child works harder because he is
doing what he thinks is important, rather than what someone
else has told him is important. New knowledge starts with a context
because it fits in with things the child already cares about. Learning driven
by real desire is so much more efficient than passive absorption that
unschoolers can tolerate much more exploration, dabbling, dawdling and play
than can curriculum- inflictors. The unschooling literature abounds with
stories of children who paid no attention to math or reading for their first
ten years and then caught up in just a few weeks.
When learning
is imposed from without, there are many deleterious effects. The child may not
be ready for the material or may be beyond it; the child may resist it, either
because he has something better to do or just out of general orneriness. When
you force a topic, you short-circuit precisely the volitional
parts of the mind that are critical to real learning. You may produce
memorization, but cannot effect understanding. You risk the child developing a
dislike for the topic, for the teacher, and even for learning itself.
Child-driven
learning is fundamentally active. Children are doing things
because they have taken responsibility for carrying out the actions needed to
fulfill their desires. Unschooling is centered around the idea of learning,
with the student as the center of action and the source of activity, rather
than on the idea of teaching (with the teacher as the center of action and the
source of activity). Not only does this make the learning more effective, but
it encourages the child to develop virtues: independence, self-reliance, and a
sense of responsibility. The child learns that if he wants something to happen,
he has to make it happen.
As Jim
Muncy pointed out in his "spectrum of unschooling" post [home-ed
mailing list, summer of '94], homeschoolers unschool to varying degrees.
Unschooling families do not set up miniature classrooms, with time set aside
for studying, a parent playing the role of teacher, formal lesson plans and
imposed curricula. Beyond that limit, we differ in how much order we try to
lend to the learning process. "Radical" unschoolers impose little or
no structure, though books and such are available to act as guides. Others
allow children to learn what they wish, but provide strong organizational
assistance to help the children reach their goals. (Assistance can take the
form of lessons, or workbooks, or even assigned projects.) Some families use
curricula for some subjects (often math) but are freer with others. Most try to
squeeze learning out of the activities of everyday life. The common bond is
acknowledging that the enthusiastic participation of the child is the most
important single factor in the child's education.
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Part of Jon's Homeschool Resource Page This essay was written by
Eric W. Anderson <ElWanderer@aol.com> |
…retour a la page d'accueil de – vens
"vivre ensemble /unschooling" - vens