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The highlighted part is what I 'got' from her... that if she didn't want to, she didn't have to.
I self taught myself a lot of things - standing behind my older sister. I was potty trained fully before 1 year, I was a full on reader by the time I was 4, I could ride a bike without training wheels (that was waaay too big for me) by the time I was 3... but I TRIED to learn. I always WANTED to learn.
This girl didn't just NOT KNOW how to measure - she had no interest in learning HOW. That's not a learning disability.
I don't know anything, as I said, about 'unschooling'... but I felt this child, in particular, needs to be 'schooled'.
IME, there are children for whom unschooling works well, and others for whom it is an unmitigated disaster-- much like any other form of schooling.
...and if I'm 10 and reading hasn't "clicked" yet how am I supposed to teach myself about wooden spoons?
Just hazarding a guess, but I'd suppose...by actually USING them. Carving a piece of wood into a spoon. Measuring spoons with a ruler (or even making up your own unit of measurement-- how many toothpicks long is the salad spoon?). Going to the store and doing a price comparison. Immersing them in water and figuring out which ones float best, or whether an oiled spoon is more buoyant than a non-oiled one. Comparing and contrasting wooden spoons with plastic and metal.
Reading about someone else's experience is fine...as far as it goes. It isn't the only way, or even necessarily the best way.
The age at which a child starts reading is largely determined by development. The fact that yours read at 4.5 is less of a Good Mommy Badge and more a case of being ready at that age. Many children, especially boys, don't "click" with the written word until seven or eight, and yes-- some later than that.
I don't think of it as a Good Mommy Badge, they were not stand outs at all, more like the norm. I stand by my original thought..7 or 8 is way too old. That is second and thrid grade and the kids were not only required to read but were doing basic reports. How can you write if you cannot read?
If you are 10 and not reading yet, you have a disability or some severely lacking parenting.
You are not going to teach yourself about a wooden spoon. Your mother/teacher is going to teach you about the wooden spoon because that is all you are curious about. No need for you to learn anything more than you asked for.
The only time I've seen "no need for you to learn anything more than you asked for" as a philosophy is among kids who know exactly how much work they have to do to get an A. When the goal is actually "knowing about", rather than "passing" or even "getting an A", there tends to be far more ambition and self-direction, IME.
This is all well and good - but when you're 35, and in casual conversation with a group of people who -did- attend school, and one of them snickers and comes out with the silly poem "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and you ask "Columbus who?"
I can honestly say that I have reached my mid-fifties without that nursery rhyme ever coming up in conversation, casual or scholastic. I have, however, been in conversations in which people bring up any number of things I'm unfamiliar with or disinterested in, like who's playing in the Super Bowl, or what JLo wore to the Grammy Awards, or the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow. Either I make a vague but polite reply, keep my mouth shut and let others talk, or respond with a qualifying dissemblance: "African, or European?"
I daresay the same would serve some unlikely person who somehow managed to make it to adulthood without ever hearing of Christopher Columbus.
Yep, it's just one step from there to rocket science, no doubt. Professional athletes, some of whom don't seem bright enough to write their own names, can gauge a fly ball's trajectory well enough to catch it. That's not physics.
Sure it is. Not the sum total of physics, certainly, but more than the local elementary school teaches.
If that's all he's learning in high school, he's lost out-- and that's true of a homeschooled kid or a schooled one (physics is not required for graduation in the State of Florida).
I honestly don't care whether people homeschool, or unschool, but do it because that's what you want to do, and quit bashing public education, especially when you (not you specifically) don't have a clue what is going on in public school classroooms today.
It would be ideal if people on all sides of the equation would stop making baseless assumptions and "bashing". I don't expect it to happen though. There are public schoolers who feel threatened by alternatives, private school parents who feel obliged to justify why they're spending 15K a year per kid, homeschoolers who just know nothing good can come from an institutional setting, ever, and unschoolers who overdosed on Summerhill. The truth is that there are good and bad sides to all of them. And where you live, what your family circumstances are, and how your child learns determines which is the best option.
What I've seen a lot of in the last several years is families who use a combination of two or three of those approaches, depending on what's being learned and what options are available. If the parent(s) can manage the choreography that requires, it seems to work well.
I don't think of it as a Good Mommy Badge, they were not stand outs at all, more like the norm. I stand by my original thought..7 or 8 is way too old. That is second and thrid grade and the kids were not only required to read but were doing basic reports. How can you write if you cannot read?
Beats me. I would assume, based on my limited experience with my friend's child, and with my own children when they were pre-readers (5, 6, 5, and 4, respectively and ftr), that writing is pretty minimal until reading begins.
However, as I pointed out before, learning needn't rely solely on writing and reading. If you look at a census from 1900, there are numerous adults who don't read or write-- yet they managed to learn to survive in their world, so they must have learned something-- cooking, cleaning, and coal mining, at the very minimum. (And before you go there, no, I am not suggesting this as a preferred way of life in the 21st century; simply to illustrate a point.)
Any good teacher will motivate the students before teaching a lesson. So the kids ARE interested. When they are interested, they will learn.
Most kids read by age 6 and by the end of the school year they are reading for comprehension--and they can write. That's with a minimum of phonics and an emphasis on the integration of reading with writing.
Most kids like to memorize a few things--it's good training for the brain anyway. They have fun knowing a rhyme or having some facts right at the tip of their tongues. I wish I'd had more memorization when I was in school but that was back in the 50s where it wasn't in style. You were supposed to learn to look things up, not to memorize. Fads come and go in education.
None of this stuff is new--yawn. Unschooling--yawn. Kids reading at age 3 or 4--big yawn, fine if they want to but it doesn't make them a better reader later. It has to do with being ready to learn. The function of Kindergarten was to get ready to learn--by getting the body used to fine motor skills, listening to and enjoying stories, remembering rules for games, and a lot more--there is a good reason for kindergarten and it should be left alone, it should NOT be the new first grade.
I had to smile, seeing where that article about K being the first grade came from--Cambridge MA--all the towns around that area are filled with anxiety ridden type A neurotic parents nervously searching for the "best" school system. Then their kids can be turned into nervous, anxious, highly pressured type A people too. Just look on the MA forum--they'd be better off just letting their kids be kids, go to an average school where, if they are smart, they'll get into the more advanced classes and lay off the pressure and competition.
Great education is somewhere in between what people around Cambridge want and this unschooling-- actually more toward the Cambridge concept and farther from totally no school at all-- feel good, let them do whatever they want ideas, no self discipline, don't do anything you don't want to do.
I don't think of it as a Good Mommy Badge, they were not stand outs at all, more like the norm. I stand by my original thought..7 or 8 is way too old. That is second and thrid grade and the kids were not only required to read but were doing basic reports. How can you write if you cannot read?
I wrote things for both of my kids until they learned how. Actually, even when my oldest had learned to read & write, I would still type things for him, because it was quicker - he would dictate, I would type.
I understand it's hard to imagine a setting where children are learning, but aren't required to read or write by any particular age! But learning happens through all types of channels. I read to & wrote for my kids until they did it for themselves; I never required they do either, yet they still wanted to! They have both written extensively since then - my oldest can write well-thought-out, well-laid-out, organized journal entries, and I have never asked him to do an essay or assignment.
7 or 8 is only "too old" in school, where a teacher needs to impart information to the greatest number of kids in the most efficient way possible. That's not an issue with unschooling! Teaching kids to read earlier isn't for the benefit of the child, though that's what most people think; it's for the benefit of classroom management.
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