article from Chicago Suntimes
[email protected]
Except for the "eating candy bars" bit, it's pretty good. A little
"academic'-oriented--- but I think that's what people need to bellieve.
~Kelly
You have to trust that the child will learn'
'Unschooling' movement leaves education choices up to kids
December 24, 2006
BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter
Eighteen-year-old Abby Stewart got word this month that she won early
admission to elite Princeton University, even though she has never set
foot in a high school classroom.
She also wrapped up a huge challenge -- dancing the Snow Queen role in
"The Nutcracker Suite" at the Athenaeum Theatre -- largely because she
has never set foot in a high school classroom.
Five years ago, frustrated with the pace and depth of a Chicago Public
School gifted program, Abby withdrew from eighth grade and entered
uncharted territory -- a branch of home schooling often called
"unschooling."
Under this ultimate form of "child-directed" learning, Abby used no set
curriculum. She called her own hours, worked at her own pace and, most
important, followed her own interests -- without taking tests or
receiving grades. Some days, she'd wake up, grab a bowl of cereal and
go back to bed with a book.
Since then, she has amassed a six-page reading list ranging from
Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species to Holt, Rinehart and Winston's
Calculus to 16 Shakespearean plays.
"I do exactly what feels right to me," says Abby. "If I want to just
read literature for three weeks or three months, that's perfectly fine
with my family."
The flexibility of unschooling made it easier for Abby to take ballet
classes six days a week, resulting in the shopping bag full of pointe
shoes in the corner of her Hyde Park bedroom and her recent role in
Ballet Chicago's Studio Company production of "The Nutcracker Suite."
Abby also volunteers three days a week at the Field Museum, where she
reduces animal carcasses to bones. Her first day at work, she was given
a pair of gloves and a scalpel and directed to the remains of a
Siberian tiger.
"Compared to a kid in high school with worms and frogs, it's pretty
heady stuff," said her dad, Dana Stewart, a sleep researcher at the
University of Chicago Hospitals.
'Delight-driven learning'
By some counts, Abby is part of a growing movement, at least in the
Chicago area.
Federal officials estimate that about 1.1 million students nationwide
were home-schooled in 2003, up a hefty 30 percent from four years
earlier.
Although numbers on unschooling are more difficult to come by, since
1999, at least five unschooling online support groups have sprung up in
Illinois, four of them concentrated in the six-county Chicago area,
said Melissa Bradford, founder of Many Rivers Unschooling, serving
mostly DuPage and Will counties.
"It's definitely growing. Look at our group," said Winifred Haun, a
choreographer and dancer who co-founded Northside Unschoolers of
Chicago in 2001 with some half-dozen families. Last year, membership
hit 100.
Unschooling is rooted in the ideas of education reformer John Holt, who
said children are innately curious and will learn what they need to
know when they need to know it.
That doesn't mean unschoolers won't ever take conventional classes.
Art enthusiasts may take art classes. Teens who want to go to college
may take community college classes first.
Unschoolers figure out what they want to do in life and then learn what
they need to get there. Advocates say they absorb material better by
learning it when they need it.
One unschooling Web site calls the approach "delight-driven learning."
Author Pat Farenga, a student of Holt's, calls it "the natural way to
learn."
"This is the way we learn before going to school and the way we learn
when we leave school and enter the world of work," Farenga writes in
Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Unschooling.
One Northside Unschoolers mom was seeking an alternative to the test
emphasis and heavy homework in her public school. Other unschooling
parents may want to avoid labels schools put on especially active kids
or late readers.
"The hardest thing for most people ... is that you have to trust that
the child will learn," said Mary Griffith, author of The Unschooling
Handbook: How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom.
"For those of us who had late readers, it was really hard. A lot of
unschooled kids don't learn to read when they are 6. Sometimes waiting
until they are 7, 8 or 9 is quite common," said Griffith.
"But once they learn to read, they read anything and everything."
'Noodling around'
The tools of unschooling in the early years are scattered across a
third-floor playroom of Winifred Haun's turn-of-the-century Oak Park
home.
Dice and board games help daughters Athena, 10; Iris, 5, and Selene, 2,
learn math -- and social skills. Pads of paper, pencils and markers are
there for writing and drawing. Books are omnipresent.
This "unschooling" morning, Iris and Athena have completed math
problems they asked their dad, Stephen Parke, a Harvard grad and
physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, to create.
"Iris was interested in 1 plus 1 is 2," Haun says, so Parke's worksheet
expands the idea all the way up to 50 plus 50. Athena's problems amount
to early algebra.
Selene plays on a futon as Iris works with her mom on sewing and Athena
announces "I need to practice my writing."
Athena has seen what she's missing -- and doesn't miss it.
"I've been to school for a day. It was fun, but I like it here better.
In school, they just sat there while the teacher talked," Athena says.
Athena knows some question whether home-schoolers will develop the
proper social skills away from a classroom full of kids their age.
"I say home-schoolers do get social skills," Athena says. "I go to
choir where there's one other kid who's home schooled. And I go to a
home-schooling group where there are kids of all ages. And I have Girl
Scouts and ballet."
Haun said some days her kids "just noodle around, but they are
investing in days when they produce more."
Besides, she said, "You can teach your kid in 90 minutes a day what it
takes the school six hours. ... The other 4½ hours are, 'Stand up. Sit
up. Let's go to the bathroom. Let's take attendance. ...'
"If my daughter needs to know ... how to find her friend's name in the
phone book, I can take five minutes and explain to her about
alphabetizing," Haun said. "I don't have to test her. I know when she
can look up the name on her own."
In their teenage years, said Grace Llewellyn, author of The Teenage
Liberation Handbook, unschooling kids can study biology with a
textbook, in a community college or with software. Or they can befriend
a doctor and brainstorm on books to read or projects to do. Or they can
volunteer to work in a veterinarian's office.
"The sky is the limit," Llewellyn said.
The college question
Abby's dad and mom, a hospice social worker, gave their three children
a taste of school (all won admission to gifted programs), and
eventually let them decide if they wanted to stay there. All three
wound up pretty much unschoolers, with the oldest graduating from
Dartmouth in June.
Abby wanted to go to college, too, and plunged into subjects she'd need
to get there.
To prepare for the SAT college admission tests, she bought some test
prep books and took some old subject matter tests. She posted knockout
scores: an overall SAT of 2,350 out of 2,400.
To pad out her track record, she also took the SAT world history,
literature and U.S. history tests, scoring 800, 790 and 780,
respectively, on an 800-point scale.
Not all unschoolers or home-schoolers have Abby's scores, but on
another popular college admission test, the ACT, test-takers who
identified themselves as home-schoolers have scored a notch above the
national average for the last decade. This year, they averaged 22.4 on
a 36-point scale compared with a national average of 21.2.
Before Abby got the news last week that she had won early admission to
Princeton, she had researched applying to seven other colleges and
found them "pretty forgiving" about her lack of a traditional
grade-point average.
At Harvard University, admissions director Marlyn McGrath Lewis said,
unschoolers without transcripts can submit college admission scores,
and then "tell us what they have done in the way of academic
preparation for college, and we'll take it from there."
Some may wonder if unschoolers can adjust to the structure of college
life. After the regimen of ballet classes, Abby doesn't expect problems.
Unschooler Sam Dickey, 23, an Oak Park native now attending Beloit
College after four years at a community college, said he has no
difficulty making it to classes. He found he performs well on deadline
and is a "very good writer" despite never having written a research
paper before college.
But just like traditional schoolers, not all unschoolers want college.
Jan Hunt, an unschooling counselor who operates the Natural Child
Project Web site, said her unschooled son didn't go to college. He
started a computer consulting company instead.
"He continually beats us at Trivial Pursuit. He's an incredible
editor," said Hunt. "He can do any math problem in his head. I have the
proof in the pudding right here."
Not for everyone
Yet even advocates caution that unschooling is not for everyone.
"It's just kind of a scary way of doing things. Not many people are
willing to go out on that limb," said Dorothy Werner, founder of Home
Oriented Unique Schooling Experience, an Illinois home-schooling
support group.
"You have to trust that children want to learn. You can't believe that
children must be forced to learn," Werner said.
"Parents who need to be in control ... would have a hard time. If you
want your child to be learning the same factoids as the child next
door, unschooling is not for you."
Home-schooling researcher Michael Apple, an education professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, is "wary of the hype." He wonders what
unschoolers are really learning about people of other races, religions
and cultures.
"There is no public accountability," Apple said.
Counters unschooling author Farenga: "Who is going to be the commissar
of correct thought?"
William Schubert, professor of curriculum studies at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, home-schooled his daughter using a few unschooling
ideas.
He says unschooling can be positive, but requires time, resources and
"dialogue with ... well-educated people."
"We don't know that children are innately curious. The question is
open," Schubert said. Some unschoolers "may not get any further than
eating candy bars."
Unschooling may be easier for parents with the time and resources,
Farenga agrees, but "everyone can find that within their own little
sphere."
"I'm not trying to make this sound like it's easy," Farenga said, "but
it's not easy if your child is failing or hurting in school, either."
Abby and others insist every child has a passion waiting to be ignited.
"Every person has something they absolutely adore and would like to do
for the rest of their life," Abby said.
"If you can pinpoint that, and have your kids run with it, you'd be
amazed how excited your kids can be about learning."
rrossi@...
________________________________________________________________________
Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and
security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from
across the web, free AOL Mail and more.
"academic'-oriented--- but I think that's what people need to bellieve.
~Kelly
You have to trust that the child will learn'
'Unschooling' movement leaves education choices up to kids
December 24, 2006
BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter
Eighteen-year-old Abby Stewart got word this month that she won early
admission to elite Princeton University, even though she has never set
foot in a high school classroom.
She also wrapped up a huge challenge -- dancing the Snow Queen role in
"The Nutcracker Suite" at the Athenaeum Theatre -- largely because she
has never set foot in a high school classroom.
Five years ago, frustrated with the pace and depth of a Chicago Public
School gifted program, Abby withdrew from eighth grade and entered
uncharted territory -- a branch of home schooling often called
"unschooling."
Under this ultimate form of "child-directed" learning, Abby used no set
curriculum. She called her own hours, worked at her own pace and, most
important, followed her own interests -- without taking tests or
receiving grades. Some days, she'd wake up, grab a bowl of cereal and
go back to bed with a book.
Since then, she has amassed a six-page reading list ranging from
Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species to Holt, Rinehart and Winston's
Calculus to 16 Shakespearean plays.
"I do exactly what feels right to me," says Abby. "If I want to just
read literature for three weeks or three months, that's perfectly fine
with my family."
The flexibility of unschooling made it easier for Abby to take ballet
classes six days a week, resulting in the shopping bag full of pointe
shoes in the corner of her Hyde Park bedroom and her recent role in
Ballet Chicago's Studio Company production of "The Nutcracker Suite."
Abby also volunteers three days a week at the Field Museum, where she
reduces animal carcasses to bones. Her first day at work, she was given
a pair of gloves and a scalpel and directed to the remains of a
Siberian tiger.
"Compared to a kid in high school with worms and frogs, it's pretty
heady stuff," said her dad, Dana Stewart, a sleep researcher at the
University of Chicago Hospitals.
'Delight-driven learning'
By some counts, Abby is part of a growing movement, at least in the
Chicago area.
Federal officials estimate that about 1.1 million students nationwide
were home-schooled in 2003, up a hefty 30 percent from four years
earlier.
Although numbers on unschooling are more difficult to come by, since
1999, at least five unschooling online support groups have sprung up in
Illinois, four of them concentrated in the six-county Chicago area,
said Melissa Bradford, founder of Many Rivers Unschooling, serving
mostly DuPage and Will counties.
"It's definitely growing. Look at our group," said Winifred Haun, a
choreographer and dancer who co-founded Northside Unschoolers of
Chicago in 2001 with some half-dozen families. Last year, membership
hit 100.
Unschooling is rooted in the ideas of education reformer John Holt, who
said children are innately curious and will learn what they need to
know when they need to know it.
That doesn't mean unschoolers won't ever take conventional classes.
Art enthusiasts may take art classes. Teens who want to go to college
may take community college classes first.
Unschoolers figure out what they want to do in life and then learn what
they need to get there. Advocates say they absorb material better by
learning it when they need it.
One unschooling Web site calls the approach "delight-driven learning."
Author Pat Farenga, a student of Holt's, calls it "the natural way to
learn."
"This is the way we learn before going to school and the way we learn
when we leave school and enter the world of work," Farenga writes in
Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Unschooling.
One Northside Unschoolers mom was seeking an alternative to the test
emphasis and heavy homework in her public school. Other unschooling
parents may want to avoid labels schools put on especially active kids
or late readers.
"The hardest thing for most people ... is that you have to trust that
the child will learn," said Mary Griffith, author of The Unschooling
Handbook: How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom.
"For those of us who had late readers, it was really hard. A lot of
unschooled kids don't learn to read when they are 6. Sometimes waiting
until they are 7, 8 or 9 is quite common," said Griffith.
"But once they learn to read, they read anything and everything."
'Noodling around'
The tools of unschooling in the early years are scattered across a
third-floor playroom of Winifred Haun's turn-of-the-century Oak Park
home.
Dice and board games help daughters Athena, 10; Iris, 5, and Selene, 2,
learn math -- and social skills. Pads of paper, pencils and markers are
there for writing and drawing. Books are omnipresent.
This "unschooling" morning, Iris and Athena have completed math
problems they asked their dad, Stephen Parke, a Harvard grad and
physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, to create.
"Iris was interested in 1 plus 1 is 2," Haun says, so Parke's worksheet
expands the idea all the way up to 50 plus 50. Athena's problems amount
to early algebra.
Selene plays on a futon as Iris works with her mom on sewing and Athena
announces "I need to practice my writing."
Athena has seen what she's missing -- and doesn't miss it.
"I've been to school for a day. It was fun, but I like it here better.
In school, they just sat there while the teacher talked," Athena says.
Athena knows some question whether home-schoolers will develop the
proper social skills away from a classroom full of kids their age.
"I say home-schoolers do get social skills," Athena says. "I go to
choir where there's one other kid who's home schooled. And I go to a
home-schooling group where there are kids of all ages. And I have Girl
Scouts and ballet."
Haun said some days her kids "just noodle around, but they are
investing in days when they produce more."
Besides, she said, "You can teach your kid in 90 minutes a day what it
takes the school six hours. ... The other 4½ hours are, 'Stand up. Sit
up. Let's go to the bathroom. Let's take attendance. ...'
"If my daughter needs to know ... how to find her friend's name in the
phone book, I can take five minutes and explain to her about
alphabetizing," Haun said. "I don't have to test her. I know when she
can look up the name on her own."
In their teenage years, said Grace Llewellyn, author of The Teenage
Liberation Handbook, unschooling kids can study biology with a
textbook, in a community college or with software. Or they can befriend
a doctor and brainstorm on books to read or projects to do. Or they can
volunteer to work in a veterinarian's office.
"The sky is the limit," Llewellyn said.
The college question
Abby's dad and mom, a hospice social worker, gave their three children
a taste of school (all won admission to gifted programs), and
eventually let them decide if they wanted to stay there. All three
wound up pretty much unschoolers, with the oldest graduating from
Dartmouth in June.
Abby wanted to go to college, too, and plunged into subjects she'd need
to get there.
To prepare for the SAT college admission tests, she bought some test
prep books and took some old subject matter tests. She posted knockout
scores: an overall SAT of 2,350 out of 2,400.
To pad out her track record, she also took the SAT world history,
literature and U.S. history tests, scoring 800, 790 and 780,
respectively, on an 800-point scale.
Not all unschoolers or home-schoolers have Abby's scores, but on
another popular college admission test, the ACT, test-takers who
identified themselves as home-schoolers have scored a notch above the
national average for the last decade. This year, they averaged 22.4 on
a 36-point scale compared with a national average of 21.2.
Before Abby got the news last week that she had won early admission to
Princeton, she had researched applying to seven other colleges and
found them "pretty forgiving" about her lack of a traditional
grade-point average.
At Harvard University, admissions director Marlyn McGrath Lewis said,
unschoolers without transcripts can submit college admission scores,
and then "tell us what they have done in the way of academic
preparation for college, and we'll take it from there."
Some may wonder if unschoolers can adjust to the structure of college
life. After the regimen of ballet classes, Abby doesn't expect problems.
Unschooler Sam Dickey, 23, an Oak Park native now attending Beloit
College after four years at a community college, said he has no
difficulty making it to classes. He found he performs well on deadline
and is a "very good writer" despite never having written a research
paper before college.
But just like traditional schoolers, not all unschoolers want college.
Jan Hunt, an unschooling counselor who operates the Natural Child
Project Web site, said her unschooled son didn't go to college. He
started a computer consulting company instead.
"He continually beats us at Trivial Pursuit. He's an incredible
editor," said Hunt. "He can do any math problem in his head. I have the
proof in the pudding right here."
Not for everyone
Yet even advocates caution that unschooling is not for everyone.
"It's just kind of a scary way of doing things. Not many people are
willing to go out on that limb," said Dorothy Werner, founder of Home
Oriented Unique Schooling Experience, an Illinois home-schooling
support group.
"You have to trust that children want to learn. You can't believe that
children must be forced to learn," Werner said.
"Parents who need to be in control ... would have a hard time. If you
want your child to be learning the same factoids as the child next
door, unschooling is not for you."
Home-schooling researcher Michael Apple, an education professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, is "wary of the hype." He wonders what
unschoolers are really learning about people of other races, religions
and cultures.
"There is no public accountability," Apple said.
Counters unschooling author Farenga: "Who is going to be the commissar
of correct thought?"
William Schubert, professor of curriculum studies at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, home-schooled his daughter using a few unschooling
ideas.
He says unschooling can be positive, but requires time, resources and
"dialogue with ... well-educated people."
"We don't know that children are innately curious. The question is
open," Schubert said. Some unschoolers "may not get any further than
eating candy bars."
Unschooling may be easier for parents with the time and resources,
Farenga agrees, but "everyone can find that within their own little
sphere."
"I'm not trying to make this sound like it's easy," Farenga said, "but
it's not easy if your child is failing or hurting in school, either."
Abby and others insist every child has a passion waiting to be ignited.
"Every person has something they absolutely adore and would like to do
for the rest of their life," Abby said.
"If you can pinpoint that, and have your kids run with it, you'd be
amazed how excited your kids can be about learning."
rrossi@...
________________________________________________________________________
Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and
security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from
across the web, free AOL Mail and more.
Sharon Schwartz
Hi All!
Do any of you know the Stewarts personally? I'd like to welcome her
to NJ! I know she's going to be busier than a 1-armed paper hanger
once she gets here, but I'd like to welcome her all the same. Our
family lives on the coast, but I'm sure that there are quite a few
people in the Princeton area who would like to to welcome her as well.
Happy New Year!
Sharon
Do any of you know the Stewarts personally? I'd like to welcome her
to NJ! I know she's going to be busier than a 1-armed paper hanger
once she gets here, but I'd like to welcome her all the same. Our
family lives on the coast, but I'm sure that there are quite a few
people in the Princeton area who would like to to welcome her as well.
Happy New Year!
Sharon