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And the flip side of that -- the state considering children to be its property, so that it can dictate what they can and cannot do with their own lives -- is no better. I consider my role as a parent to protect my child's right to a self-determined authentic life. *Mandatory* schooling, by definition, is in conflict with that, regardless of whether the parents or the state enforces it. And please. It's not as if abuse doesn't occur in schools. Not all school authorities are loving, caring, or act in the best interest of the children in their care, either. And if state-enforced observation was really the answer to abuse by parents, why start at the age of 6? Children are abused at earlier ages as well, even as infants. Should we then have all children in state-run care from birth?

Re: declining to register, for most parents it has simply to do with the fact that they don't accept the state's standards as objectively correct. Children develop and learn at different rates, so standardized testing is irrelevant (and potentially harmful,) which is one of the reasons they don't have their kids in school in the first place. If a child is best served, developmentally and emotionally, by learning how to read at age 9, how is the state insisting that s/he read at age 7 going to help matters? According to our educational system's experts themselves, there is an epidemic of illiteracy in our country. And yet the state continues to push children to read before they are developmentally ready.

Last, ultimately society must also accept the burden if the schools are wrong. It's a grand experiment, and a relatively new one in human history. Reason tells me that education occurs in spite of mandatory standardized schooling, not because of it. I unschool because I want better for my children.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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One difference between the school mentality and the unschool mentality is about philosophy of life, what life is for. For instance, one of the criticisms from the K12 link posted above is, "If they are not made to do arbitrary and tedious schoolwork, children might not learn how to do difficult, uninteresting, and unpleasant work." To the unschooler, intentionally making life unpleasant with the express goal of supposedly learning to tolerate unpleasantness is an absurdity and *anti*-life. It also just simply doesn't work for anyone who is not content to be nothing more than a lemming or cog in a wheel. I endured 12 years of forced "education", and I never got used to being made to do pointless, arbitrary busywork. That's a long time to keep doing something that has no value. When I was finally free to pursue my life as I saw fit, I found myself feeling resentful about the lost years, which fueled rebellion. I also found that I'd lost the abilities to self-regulate and self-determine from having my every move dictated by "authorities", and they took a long time to recover. Why not support these natural abilities from the very beginning? That's what unschooling is about.

Another difference between school and unschool is the philosophy of education itself. How do people best learn? Is it by being subjected to an enforced standardized what, when, and how, regardless of a person's individual circumstances? Or is learning most useful and effective when it's relevant to the individual, when it takes into account their developmental readiness and interest, and when it's done by choice? Unschoolers believe in education. They just consider it rational to avoid the control and coercion that interferes with optimal mental and emotional development.

Linda Hessel
fourlittlebirds.blogsome.com

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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