Sandra Dodd

Some criticism of unschooling I found. It's good to know what the
critics say. It's not always a moment of joyful happy-dance, but it
is useful.

This builds up quite a while before getting to the dire and misguided
point, but they quoted Pam Sorooshian in there, and other people

http://www.triviumpursuit.com/articles/
early_academics_and_unschooling.php

Quotes from it in case you don't want to go there (I would not blame
you a bit):

*************

we would like to make a statement, for the record, regarding the
false but persistent notion that we advocate some form of unschooling
before age ten. From the way some people talk, you could get the
impression that we believe children should be left to wander about
aimlessly, foraging in the forests for food, suffering from a dearth
of discipline, until their tenth birthday.

************

But in neither the training nor the teaching do we advocate leaving
the child alone to explore his own interests. Children are not little
adults.

Train on Time

On the basis of Scripture, we thoroughly reject the notion of
unschooling – in principle and in practice – especially before age
ten. The Scripture doctrines of original sin and total depravity
should forever end the discussion.

************NOT A QUOTE, a Sandra note:

Two new sins I learned from that site:

the Sin of Hasty Conclusions, and "intellectual misbehavior"

Another quote:

***************************

The first half of this verse tells us that a child must be
disciplined with the rod and reproved for his misbehavior.
Misbehavior may be manifested in a multitude of ways, including
intellectual misbehavior.



END OF QUOTES

So whether or not they do it themselves (unschool), they're assuring
all readers that it involves leaving children alone, one way or
another. I don't see anything in their quotes and examples that says
"leave them alone" at all, but they seem to saying to be with them,
explore with them, let them do real things.

I want to collect more links to criticism of unschooling, for those
people who come by and say they want the other side, too. I'll start
with this link and put it here:

http://sandradodd.com/unschool/criticism

Sandra

Vicki Dennis

The link on your webpage did not work for me :-)

vicki

On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:

> Some criticism of unschooling I found. It's good to know what the
> critics say. It's not always a moment of joyful happy-dance, but it
> is useful.
>
>


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Sandra Dodd

-=-The link on your webpage did not work for me :-)-=-

Thanks. It had a space in it and shouldn't have had.

http://sandradodd.com/unschool/criticism

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]