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In a message dated 04/12/2000 6:31:19 PM !!!First Boot!!!,
yschild@... writes:

<< Do you mean to tell me they were not contacted by ANY
unschoolers? This is one of those things that started to make me doubt
myself, then it just made me angry!
Thanks for letting me vent! Any way I'd like to hear if anyone else had
any thoughts on the show. >>


Well, they were contacted by me. But they didn't call! Told hubby he was
going to have to watch the kids and everything!

I'm sorry I missed the show now.

Nance

Hafidha

Hi,
I saw the Oprah show yesterday and taped the homeschooling segment.
The first family I felt were all right, and probably representative of
a lot of homeschooling families, but I didn't think they made a great
impression. Then the girl who was a former homeschooler ... she had a
point, and I could understand that she was speaking about her
experience, but I did NOT agree with her statement that it's taken her
FOUR years to be a teacher therefore parents can't do it. I think
after she actually starts teaching, she will realize it's not four
years of college that will make her a good teacher.

Also it frightens me that parents feel so inadequate to teach their
children how to live and be adults. If you can't be a good teacher
without college, how can you POSSIBLY be a good parent without some
sort of parenting college? After all, parents have more influence than
teachers. The second family - the ones with four kids who went to
college - were much better. They didn't have much time to talk,
though.

When Oprah did the show with that Dr. who suggested eliminating high
school, I sent her an email, explaining that I agreed with him and
that I had home/unschooled and was now a functional, well-adjusted
adult. I don't think I'll be sending her another email, however,
because I believe we'd all be better off if we left homeschooling off
of television and educated people about it through other mediums.

As I watched the show I kept thinking back to Jerry Manders', "Four
Arguments of the Elimination of Television" in which he writes about
how television is inherently terrible at conveying the ESSENCE of
things. If you have the book, you can refer to pages 278-279, when he
talks about the news story about a marsh that was in danger of being
made into a development. "A whole world of sensory information [about
the marsh] has been abandoned, and yet it is in this world that real
understanding of marshes exist. And without the understanding who can
care about the marsh? .... Images of mud and reeds do not inspire the
mind...." His point is that in order for people to care about the
marsh, they need to EXPERIENCE it, not watch it on television. What's
worse, people see something on television and think they know all they
need to know about it; they are under the mistaken impression that
they DO understand, when in fact they don't. That inhibits many
people from seeking further information outside of television. And
this is bad, bad news for alternative movements.

Later, on page 324 he writes, "When dealing with primitive peoples,
objective events such as hunting, building, fighting or dancing are
easier to convey through television than subjective details of
qualities of experience, ways of mind, alternative perceptions. The
latter qualities, which form the heart of life for primitive people,
are dropped out in favor of the former."

This applies to us, too. Whenever I see a story about homeschooling on
television, there are images of mom sitting around the table with the
kids, the kids getting their schoolbooks, mom asking the kids
questions. This would not encourage ME to homeschool my kids. But this
is what television people are looking for because this is ALL THEY CAN
SHOW. They don't know that unschooling isn't about what you can
necessarily see on paper. It's about development, growth, independence
and love of learning - none of which can be conveyed on television in
a 2 minute video segment.

Just my opinion,
Hafidha

Portland, Oregon