Last night the Discovery Health Channel aired a special on “Radical Parenting,” as part of Baby Week. The schedule says,
This one hour special explores several different families extreme forms of parenting. From attachment parenting to raising a child gender neutral to raising child without consequences. In the diverse world we live in there are some pretty extreme ways. (Who writes these things? -ed)
The program featured three “radical” families that don’t operate in a traditional manner: Unschoolers, parents who practice attachment parenting, and parents raising their sons without gender stereotypes. The families themselves occupied the vast majority of screen time, but they were interrupted by short clips of psychiatrists commenting on the families’ philosophies and strategies.
The first family was the Parent family; they have a boy and a girl. As unschoolers, the children do not go to school. Instead, their educations are “experiential-based.” The kids learn through the experiences they have in everyday life. They are allowed to make all their own decisions, such as where to sleep at night and what they eat for breakfast every day. I’m not keen on America’s education system, so the Parents’ set-up appeals to me for that reason. But their days are completely unstructured; I think I’d try to incorporate some lessons into the routine if it were my family. The Parents all seem to be happy and respectful of one another.
The Parise family practices attachment parenting methods, including extended breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby-wearing and training the kids to use the toilet from a very young age. There are five children in the family. They planted one child’s placenta under a tree in the yard. I’m down with a lot of hippie dippy stuff so some things about this lifestyle appealed to me as well. However, I could not handle strict attachment parenting. What struck me is that the parents are constantly attending to the children. A woman who breastfeeds each of her five children for four years each must be breastfeeding all the time.
The show didn’t explain how the parents earn a living. I was sort of distracted by that question during the first two stories because these lifestyles are extremely demanding on the parents’ time. All the families appeared to be comfortably middle class.
The Crosley-Corcorans are raising their two sons without gender stereotypes. Their segment was the last out of the three. The show kept cutting to commercial by previewing allegedly extreme quips from the parents, including one wherein mom Crosley-Corcoran said “Jonas asked for a dollhouse for his birthday and we were fully supportive.” I’m sad – but I guess I should not be surprised – that doing such a thing is shocking.
The mom and dad explained their philosophy, and how they practice it, very clearly. The dad was raised in a strict, traditional household wherein his mother waited on his father. He didn’t want his own home to be that way. The mom was raised with feminist ideals (She has a blog named The Feminist Breeder, which is awesome). They make an effort to socialize their kids with girls and boys equally, so they are comfortable hanging out with both sexes. The boys like to walk around in their mom’s high heels, and why wouldn’t they? Little girls do. They place a lot of importance on making their kids well-rounded, which I think is extremely important. The dad said he thinks their parenting will make the boys better partners in the future. I love this family.
Since I’d been watching the experts describe the pros and cons of unschooling and attachment parenting I grew nervous wondering what they’d say about the feminist minded family (the mother’s words). What cons could there be, besides social ostracism?! One of the therapists reassured the audience that letting a boy play with pink toys will not change his sexual orientation (!). Unfortunately a lot of people actually a.) believe that’s true, and b.) want to avoid making the baby gay.
The only con the psychiatrist mentioned is the fact that the world is not gender-neutral; boys raised to appreciate and participate in “girl stuff” will face ridicule out there. So really, it’s not even a criticism of the family, but the wider world (in my opinion). I’m happy with the way the Crosley-Corcorans were depicted. It was refreshing to hear the word “feminist” spoken on television in a neutral/positive context. I especially enjoyed seeing a man espousing feminist beliefs without being portrayed as “emasculated.” It was radical (in the 90′s slang sort of way).
Yeah, SarahMC, but still. How patronizing, and how typical to tell women–even “some” women that there might be something defective in them or their upbringing if they don’t opt for total commitment to being a SAHM.
I agree but your comment came across like you were dismissing all aspects of AP because of that passage.
Not at all…see my response to Blondgrlz.
I feel like I’ve totally monopolized your comment section today, so I apologize, but I just finished watching “Radical Parenting” and wanted to comment.
There’s nothing to say about unschooling that wasn’t said by the experts on the show or here in the comments. I think it’s totally possible to subscribe to all the good parts of unschooling and still want your kid to have a formal education. It’s not like you have to choose between taking them to the aquarium so see the fish or reading about fish in biology class. I think ALL kinds of education benefit from parental involvement.
Those AP parents were pretty hardcore, with the placenta planting and the elimination communication, but other than that they would fit right in with my group of friends. I did want to clarify that even though the mom said she breastfed her daughter until she was 4, nursing a 4 year old is totally different than breastfeeding. Most 4 year olds have better things to do than nurse, so it’s just a couple minutes (or seconds) right before bed or after a booboo. I would also bet a lot of money the baby being worn in the backpack was just for the show and not something they do all the time. Those are really heavy and unwieldy and no one I know uses them for anything other than loooong walks. But that sling the mom had is just like mine, and really handy when a baby wants to be held while you need to brush your teeth/do laundry/paint a hallway/tend to your other kids.
And I’m really pleased to say my kid is being raised gender neutral, something I’m apparently doing without too much thought. If he wants a doll, he plays with a doll. If he wants a truck, he plays with a truck. I don’t buy him clothes with obviously masculine themes and if he wanted to wear my shoes my husband would think it was cute too. Radical it is not.
Note that the Sears passage addresses women only. Way to exclude dads, Dr Sears. Writing like that just encourages the idea that women have some sort of natural primacy at parenting.
@SarahMC: maybe a diverse group of non-school friends is better than a bunch of white kids in a school, but friends are not the same as school. For one thing, mommy isn’t going to be around your whole life to supervise, kiss your boo-boos and interfere when fights break out. For another, school forces you to manage yourself. I grant you that there a lot of lousy schools out there, but I still worry about kids who never have to deal with a community until they’re teenagers or older.
Going back to a couple of earlier comments, it may be the case that many other cultures wear the baby. But I’m not sure that that’s out of choice. Babies deserve their own space as well as moms. I’m not talking about infants here, but once they get past a few months, let them be on their own sometimes.
@Av0gadro – thank you for all the information on AP; I don’t know if I’m going to have kids, ever, but it’s something I’ve thought about a lot. Some of my friends are parenting this way, and while the first year seemed exhausting (but isn’t it always?) their kids seem to be turning out securely attached and resilient.
@thatbrowngirl, that is a really excellent point, regarding most of the world parenting in a style similar to that of the “radical” AP.
@MM – But aren’t all babies really the same before we impose societal norms on them? Why would babies in other cultures not need space while American babies do? For thousands of years a baby on the ground cried for their own safety, while a baby on its mother’s back was happy and secure. Most babywearing IS done in the first few months (sometimes called the “fourth trimester”) when infants need tons and tons of in-arms care. After a baby becomes mobile, you wear them when others use a stroller. Now that my son walks, I only wear him when I need to keep him out of trouble, like in a small store, or when I know he’s going to want to be carried, since he’s waaay to heavy to hold for very long.
I’m sorry if I’m being pushy about the babywearing, I’ve just never heard any objections before and I want to make sure people don’t think we’ve all got three year olds who can’t walk tied to our backs all day. If you don’t like the constant contact that’s one thing but implying it might hurt a baby’s development is scientifically unsound.
Blondegrlz, please don’t apologize! Thanks for sticking around and being patient in explaining how you incorporate AP into your life.
@blondegrlz: My mother wore me in a sling/snugli thingy when I was an infant and got a constant barrage of criticism: “You’re going to ruin that child’s back!” and “How can she breathe in that?” Or even “she’ll never learn to walk” (never mind that I wasn’t going to walk in that first year anyways).
I wonder if playpens/child safety gates of the industrialized world means those kids spend less time being held/worn than kids in the developing world. Seems like it must. If you can put your crawler/toddler down in a space and be reasonably sure of their safety, you’re less likely to hold them.
@Blondegrlz: I’d turn your question around: why would babies in other cultures need to be held when Anerican (read:Western) babies don’t? Is there any evidence of your claim that “for thousands of years a baby on the ground cried for their own safety, while a baby on its mother’s back was happy and secure”? I’m not saying that’s wrong, I’m just asking for evidence.
I had a sling myself and they are definitely handy items. But moderation is good in all things and some bodily separation makes sense to me. I’m not sure what the problem with a stroller is, to tell the truth.
@Blondegrlz: Oh, also, we’re not talking about putting babies on the ground while we go harvest the fields. We’re talking about being in hearing range if not sight range and putting the kids in a clean, enclosed space.
@mm: “I’m not sure what the problem with a stroller is, to tell the truth.”
There’s some evidence that strollers that face a child forward (away from the parent) lead to delays in speech development, b/c the baby’s not watching you talk and seeing your mouth and whatnot. I doubt that’s a fundamental tenet of AP (everything I know about AP I’ve learned right here this morning), but it came to mind when you said that.
http://www.wellsphere.com/general-medicine-article/could-your-facing-out-buggy-be-delaying-your-child-s-development/508261?query=Causes+Of+Development+Delay
I am really happy the way Gina & family were depicted. I feel as though they made her family look the most “sane” and “normal” out of all 3 of the families.
There is nothing wrong with teaching our children to stay away from gender stereotypes, heck I do the same thing as a feminist raising two boys.
@yvan: Carrying your kid on your back would also keep it from seeing your mouth as you talk, wouldn’t it?
@yvane: Wouldn’t it depend on how much time the kid was in the stroller and how much the adult talked to the kid overall?
I always think it’s sad when I see adults out with kids in strollers and the adult is yacking away on a cell phone instead of talking to the kid. Taking walks is a perfect opportunity to talk to the kid about all the sights you see.
As you’ve all no doubt discerned by now, I was the perfect parent in every way. Not.
@Becky – I assume so. Is that a preferred carrying technique? I was picturing that little snuggly sling thing that drapes across your chest.
@mm – I’m sure. Just came to mind, thought I’d share. This is the thread where I remember articles from months ago and bring them up if they’re tangentially-related, apparently.
@yvan: For infants, on the chest is definitely the way to go. But a bigger kid–like toddler-age–you’d probably carry on your back simply because they’re larger and it’s easier that way. At least, that’s how I’ve done it with my godsons–once they were a year old, their parents invested in the backpack-like carrier and I started strapping them to my back. It’s a hell of a workout. Also, it put them in prime position to yank my ponytail or pull my barettes out.
Here is Blondegrlz’s post on babywearing (pictures included).
I hope you don’t mind me linking to your blog, Blondegrlz, but I hope it will clear up some confusion about what it entails.
1. I was imagining the Maya Ring Sling-style carrier or a Baby Bjorn.
2. Holy moley, that’s a lot of cute!
Not at all, SarahMC! But now everyone’s going to think I’m a shill for the babywearing industry, with my eight zillion carriers.
@MM – I guess I don’t have any scientific evidence that a baby on the ground cried for their own safety, but it just made evolutionary sense to me. I guess what I mean is babies cry BECAUSE for thousands of years being left alone was really bad for their safety – huts and tents didn’t do a great job of keeping out predators. So holding an infant is a good way to help stop the crying and a sling or wrap is a much easier way to do that than just keeping them in-arms.
And don’t think I have anything against strollers (which makes me think of “Away We Go”). I own three. I use one 6 days a week at my Stroller Strides workout class. But for reasons the study yvane linked to, AP encourages keeping your kid as close to your level as possible so they can interact with adults more often. For example, when I took Baby Evan to the aquarium in his sling he could see in the tanks the way grown-ups could and pointing out stuff didn’t involve crouching down constantly. Not to mention my wrap was a lifesaver on the Yuengling Beer Factory tour, since there were waaaaay to many stairs for a stroller.
@Becky – On your back the baby can’t see your mouth but they can see everyone else’s.
Omg, blondegrlz, my ovaries are dancing looking at that cute bebeh of yours!
I’d think kids could see people talking from the front-facing stroller too. Although with really young kids, I’d think being faced out to all those strangers might be unnerving, esp if your child was naturally shy.
@Becky – Thanks, I like to think Baby Evan can make almost anyone want a baby, at least for an hour or two. I think most kids in strollers see a lot more knees than mouths. But no, it’s not going to hurt anyone and even the research is pretty mild.
@blondegrlz babywearing guide: Too cute. I want to wear a baby right now. This babywearing thing solves two of my big concerns about parenting: eating brunch and drinking beer while also having a baby.
Not to derail too much, but wouldn’t a quiet child be safer from predators than a noisy one? Most mammalian babies are quiet and still when separated from mom so as not to attract attention, particularly if they are unable to run yet or don’t see well. Or if they do cry, they are faint little mews or whines, not the full-throated wails of a human child.
I suggest an alternative hypothesis: making noise and crying is the only way a child has to communicate: “I’m hungry!” “I’m tired and cranky!” “My mouth hurts!” “My bottom is cold and wet!” “I’m cold and I’m not feeling well and the world kinda sucks right now!” Etc.
I have a question about gender-neutral parenting. Does it mean that you let your kid do whatever s/he wants, regardless of the gender-norms associated with [thing baby wants to do], or does it mean raising a child in a house as un-gendered as possible?
For example, if I ever have a kid I would consider not telling anyone the sex of the baby, and not really–well, not really telling the kid that it is a boy or a girl. Letting the kid decide if and which and when it might be a gender. Naming the baby “Alex” (or something gender neutral) and dressing it without unicorns or cars (or both unicorns and cars), using a gender-neutral pronoun, stuff like that.
As for unschooling, I’ve always thought it sounded really cool. I like the idea of no arbitrary rules. And for not-arbitrary rules, it seems to me that explaining, like, why it’s a bad idea to play with the knobs on the stove, would work just as well as yelling at the kid not to do it when it does (which is basically what my family did) (though I did turn out pretty f’in’ awesome so maybe there’s some merit to totally dysfunctional families?)
My partner and I, who aren’t planning to have kids but we are keeping our options open, have talked about this some. He’s in favor of homeschooling to a certain point, because he was so miserable in elementary school. But then he sometimes says that getting picked on so badly made him the stellar person he is today, so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to send the kids to school–I think it was his parents who made him the sensitive and empathetic person, rather than the bullying, though. I’ve heard him say several times that if he has a girl-child, he would ban magazines and television from the house, because they are only bad and he doesn’t want a kid who will feel badly about her body or vagina, and all that the vagina represents to the world-at-large-that-sucks. Luckily, he’s really patient and sensitive and parenty, while I’m impatient and get sick at the sight of bodily fluids and bored with kids and need adult time. So if we ever do have kids, he’s going to stay home and take care of them while I bring home the bacon. Also we’re still planning to win the lotto, in which case we’ll totally start having kids or fostering them or something, and raising an army to fight that quiverfull bullshit. Our kids will be schooled in Darwin and Dworkin from a young age, I assure you. When we win the lottery.
Cim, I have a friend who always says, it’s not your job not to fuck up your child, because that is impossible. Rather, you should try to fuck them up in a loving and interesting way. I feel like kids basically turn out ok, barring a few wild exceptions, as long as they know they are absolutely and securely loved. If that is communicated, other sins can result only in relatively harmless quirks. This is what I tell myself anyway.
That reminds me, Cim – the unschooling parents said they do explain to their children why they are to do x, y, z (such as brushing teeth). After a while they begin to do the things they’re supposed to do on their own because they understand the benefits and not just because authority says so.
As far as gender neutral parenting goes, I think the behavior you model for your kids is just as important as the behavior you encourage/discourage in them.
@wondering – I definitely agree with the second half of your statement, in fact the belief a crying child is trying to communicate with you is a big part of AP. But one of the things it’s important for a baby to communicate is “hold me! protect me!” If a newborn was silent, a busy parents might leave it alone while they hunted/gathered/made dinner/took a nice long shower/slept and something could attack. If you’ve even cared for a very young baby you’ll know sometimes they cry even once their physical needs are met, which I assume is an evolutionary hold over from those caveman days.
Cimorene said, “…it seems to me that explaining, like, why it’s a bad idea to play with the knobs on the stove, would work just as well as yelling at the kid not to do it when it does”.
But, Cim, there’s a lot of latitude between those two extremes. Discipline doesn’t have to mean yelling. And you have to tailor your interactions with your kid to an age appropriate level. See below…
SarahMC said “the unschooling parents said they do explain to their children why they are to do x, y, z (such as brushing teeth). After a while they begin to do the things they’re supposed to do on their own because they understand the benefits and not just because authority says so”. These people are showing a basic misunderstanding of kids’ brains. They are simply unable to understand logical explanations at an early age. This is no slam on kids but rather a physical fact about their brain physiology. Explain away if you must, but all they’re understanding is that mommy and daddy are not happy if you play with the knobs on the stove. As they grow older, the synapses begin to snap together and they begin to comprehend a logical train of thought. But these unschooler parents are dreaming if they think their 18 month old understands what they’re trying to explain.
I can’t find an actual copy of that stroller study, but from the descriptions I did find, including a description by the author, it doesn’t at all demonstrate that forward facing strollers lead to speech delay. The author observed that parents talk less to their kids when the kids are in strollers that face away from the parent. She did not then study how much those parents talk to their kids at other times. She did not provide any cause-and-effect evidence showing that the outward facing strollers lead to speech delay. Which is not to say that I’m advocating one stroller over another or strollers over carrying. Just saying there’s no evidence.
Also, about co-sleeping — I have started to wonder about how race and class affects the whole co-sleeping movement in Western countries. There’s starting to be more evidence that co-sleeping can contribute to infant death. Of course there are risk factors — for example, the more people that sleep in the bed with the baby, the more risk. It seems that people with low or no incomes might be more likely to all sleep in the same bed. Also, in my anecdotal experience, it seems like more of the co-sleeping fatalities I see involve African American babies. So what does it mean that it’s my upper middle class white friends that are so insistent on co-sleeping? I don’t know.
@mm – I suppose you’re right for toddlers (don’t know much about baby brain science), but for the kids I nanny, who I’ve been with for a few years and whose ages have ranged from 7 to 11, explaining works better than telling. I mean, it’s not like you stop parenting your kid when their synapses start to connect and understand consequences, it’s sort of an ongoing thing, this whole parenting business. And it seems to me that some kids understand consequences at a younger age than others, so why not start with the explanations early, so that as soon as they are able to understand, they’re given the tools to do so (like understanding that stove knobs = fire)?
I suppose that, for me, explaining something to an 18 month old, or a 5 year old, or a 12 year old, isn’t that much more difficult than just telling them what to or not to do. And sure, the 18 month old isn’t going to understand complex things the way a 12 year old will, but it’s not like people just let their toddlers hang out playing with matches and knives and stoves without supervision anyway. So if you’re going to keep a kid away from [dangerous thing], why not just say, “Hey Kid, I’m keeping you away from [dangerous thing] because [reason],” and then continue on the “normal” path of…keeping them away from it?
I mean perhaps I’m missing something here. But when my partner was like, 8, and drawing pictures of “naked ladies” (copied from comic books) and “what [he] thought a vagina was” (his words), his parents sat him down and explained to him that pornography is bad because it objectifies women and objectifying women is bad. Did he understand this at the time? No. He was a kid and the concept of objectification was incomprehensible, because, as he told me today, it wasn’t until he was about 11 that he stopped occasionally becoming gripped with the possibility that he was the only real person on the planet and everyone else might be a robot. So clearly complex ideas like objectification of women and misogyny were a bit beyond his brain. But that conversation had a serious impact on what happened later, when he began to encounter actual pornography, and how he conceived of sex, and women, and misogyny, and the world, and on and on. So even though it didn’t work at the time, and he was just scared he was gonna get in trouble, the effect of this incomprehensible conversation was greater than the immediate response. So it seems like explaining consequences and reasons isn’t–or, shouldn’t be–that radical, because that type of parenting is totally compatible with most “average’ or “normal” parenting styles. Am I missing something really important here?
@Cimorene – I think it’s just that the “they make all their own choices / pick where they’ll sleep” angle makes it seem like explaining stove knobs to those kids isn’t just “Here’s why you can’t touch them”, but rather, “18 month old, I don’t think you should touch them, because that is a gas stove and a flame will spout forth and flames cause fire and fire can hurt you badly and destroy our house … but make your own decision.”
Which probably is not how it goes down. Your version is much less brow-creasing.
Just to throw a few things out there…
Dr. Sears isn’t the end-all, be-all, but his books also tend to include a LOT of information on ways dads can practice attachment parenting as well, and how, even though moms may be nursing, dads can “night-parent” their children. I don’t agree with everything he says by a long-shot, but he’s got some good information.
We co-slept for several months (like Avogadro, when I got a 4-5 hour block of uninterrupted sleep w/ baby in the bed I was sold– never intended to do it). Co-sleeping (and the extra sleep I got) were critical when I went back to work.
We wore the baby in a sling ALL the time– both of us. My daughter, of course, would scream at being put down in a bouncy seat, crib, stroller, and even in the car seat. (Torture. She once screamed through an entire 3 hour car ride. What kid doesn’t sleep in the car?) The screaming stopped when she hit about 4 months of age, but for those first few months baby-wearing was how we survived.
I nursed my daughter well past her first year. Pumped when I went back to work. Wore her for a long time (though less and less often as she got bigger, tolerated the stroller, etc.) Now she’s a super-independent toddler, well attached to both mom & dad.
I’ll ditto that I think MOST folks pick and choose elements of various ways of child-rearing that work for their family, and I doubt any well meaning use of most techniques is going to seriously damage a kid or stunt them somehow.
I was sort of ‘unschooled’ for four years (3rd to 7th grade), though we didn’t call it that (I believe I was registered as ‘independent study’ with the state, since my mother worked at the time as well), and it was great for me. My mother wasn’t as extreme as this family seems to be- I did have to do some school, but I was allowed to choose what I wanted to study, and I didn’t really have school “materials”. Instead I would make up the lesson myself from books from the library and field trips to museums and other places.
Not having a set structure really benefitted me in the long run, I was able to study and learn on my own when I did go back to school, and I was more prepared for working outside the class. It’s not for everyone, but if you can, I would really recommend at least one year of it for a kid.
I don’t understand why that is soooo very ‘extreme!’ My parents brought me and my brother up in a way that was pretty gender-neutral (we both played with cars, we both played with dolls, my brother liked wearing my dresses and that wasn’t an issue).
Some family friends were just appalled though. We knew one dude who was all about enforcing gender roles and being macho. His younger son loved playing with dolls, so one year my mum bought him a little doll, and she even hand-sewed a bunch of different outfits for it. The kid was absolutely delighted. The dad was horrified.
[...] of my internet worlds collided this week when one of my favorite people on the internet SarahMC wrote about the Radical Parenting special on Discovery Health that featured The Feminist Breeder, one of my other favorite people on the [...]
[...] 9, 2010 by blue milk I have seriously been a mother for too long because not one of these ‘radical parenting’ families on the Discovery Health Channel program (USA) sounds remotely radical to me. Sigh, cos I like a [...]
Heh. My mother did… ALL OF THESE THINGS.
I was un/homeschooled with strength-based education approaches. I was attachment parented and nursed until I nearly four. My male siblings played with dolls and I got toolkits for Christmas. She also had homebirths and recycled in the nineties. She is just radical, man.
And I grew up to be a snarky, academia-obsessed feminist, just like everyone else. Well, we were all pretty much RAISED feminist, but. “Weird” is just not that weird.
We were raised feminist, but I take credit for the academia myself. Unschooling definitely does not mean you cannot grow up to go to grad school — it really depends upon the child’s preference. Although I will say we practiced a lot of the experiential, unforced learning, we were likely more truly homeschooled than unschooled. (With everyone I’ve ever met, though, the labels are sort of murky, save for the very rigid homeschool disciplinarians and the very adamant anti-structured unschoolers.)
Not to babble on in comments, but I find this sort of discourse interesting as it relates to MY culture. There are plenty of blogs and plenty of discussion within the various lifestyle groups, but I haven’t encountered a great deal of, for lack of a better term, mainstream feminist discourse about it.
(Anyone who thinks attachment parenting negates the feminist ideal of having career-and-kids is being shallow. My mother finished her degree while nursing and APing me; her best friend raised three children of different ability levels while getting advanced degrees and furthering her career. All parenting is investing time to a greater or lesser degree; AP simply is a greater degree.)
Personally, I generally dislike these documentaries for the same reason I hate shows capitalizing on large families or unusual disabilities — they only serve to reinforce the idea of (group) as “freaks.”
I feel incredibly Othered every time I’ve watched these specials. I haven’t seen this one in particular, but from the description, I can’t imagine it comes off better. I imagine their purported goal is to teach tolerance, but these things almost inevitably come off as: “LOOK AT THESE KIDS THEY AREN’T IN SCHOOL AND THE BOYS ARE PLAYING WITH DOLLS AND CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER!”
Mind you, these things are usually worlds better than fictional homeschooled/genderqueer/disabled/whatever television characters, which are generally outright awful. But it’s always somewhat unsettling to see your own group held up on the banner of freakiness.
And now I kind of want to call my mother to let her know she’s extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeme, in the 1990s-sports-drink voice.
To MM, and others expressing concern over unschooling:
Two points:
1. As others have pointed out, nothing about unschooling entails isolation or homogeneity; it’s fundamentally a commitment to separating learning/education from *authority*. I suspect most who take this view would share the concerns expressed here about the dangerous of insufficient exposure to difference, but would also note the shortcomings of traditional schools in this dept., too.
2. … which leads to the structural issue. Yes, unschooling is labor-intensive–though the relation of this to privilege is complicated, since everyone has 24 hours, but not everyone has the opportunity to turn those hours into a high income through the formal economy. But both the cost of unschooling and the difficulty of doing so within a supportive ecosystem of other parents, children, & educators are made *much* worse by structural policies that are neither inevitable nor accidental.
Remember that, historically, mandatory public schools were driven more by the desire to create good–which is to say: properly nationalistic, respectful of authority, and accustomed to rule-following–citizens and workers. There’s a limit to how much one can change these institutions while holding to the basic paradigm whereby children are passive objects comprehensively molded by authority figures.
It’s an interesting irony that much of the legal and political space for radical unschoolers has been opened up by the struggles of ultra-conservative homeschoolers. But we ought not to let that blind us to the potential for education-outside-the-school to be not merely radical but simultaneously integrative, breaking down the hermetic barrier between School and The Real World. This would require pushing school ministries towards a more facilitative role, one less obsessed with control. Unfortunately, in the (understandable) quest to hold *schools* accountable, the US is pushing hard in the other direction, regimenting young people’s lives ever more thoroughly.
As just one tentative example of the sort of facilitative stuff I’m talking about: what if state-funded teachers, sports, and the like were made more broadly available *outside* of classroom walls? Unschoolers and homeschoolers will sometimes hire someone to teach specialized subjects, which is indeed a burden for poorer parents; but states certainly *could* pay for this.
Yes, that means public $ will go to teach kids creation ‘science, theology, &c. But unless we’re willing to give up some control over what and how teachers teach, we’ll find ourselves quite limited–especially those with less privilege–in how successfully we can inculcate autonomy.
(Clarissa Hayward has an interesting book, some of which is available on her website at http://artsci.wustl.edu/~chayward/publications.html , exploring two schools: an affluent suburban one that trains its students to be the next generation of rule-creators, -manipulators, and -interpreters, and the inner city school nearby that trains instead the next-generation of (ideally) obedient rule-followers.)
[...] market. This scares me to death. It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes me want to unschool my hypothetical [...]