This site is probably most pertinent to you if you are in school, know someone who is in school, or are ever planning to have children who may one day be in school.
This site is not about becoming the stereotypical school dropout.
This site is about dropping out of school to further your education. How is this possible you ask? A better question might be: how the hell were we convinced that this is
not possible?
Are living freely and learning incompatible with one another? Is it necessary to be forced to sit in class for six hours a day and then spend even more time at home doing extra schoolwork? Is it not possible to learn without these things?
Clearly it is possible. Consider all of the things you learn outside of school and compare them to the things you learn in school. Take a couple of pieces of paper and write what you consider to be the most important things you learned within the past year. If you're like most people the list will be mostly comprised of things not taught in class. In fact, odds are most of the items on your list will have nothing to do with school.
Ok, so most learning takes place outside of school, but isn't school still important for some things? After all you need to have good grades to go to college, right? And what about standardized testing? Will I be any good at them?
Neither of the above are cause for concern. You do not need grades to go to college. Some of the most prestigious colleges and universities including Yale, Harvard, Brown, and many others have accepted home/unschoolers. Some universities now actively recruit homes/unschoolers. As for standardized testing,
studies have shown that home/unschoolers normally score 20%-30% higher than those enrolled in traditional schools.
It should also be stated here that college is not necessarily the best path for some people. While it can be a great tool for many, there are also many people who are perfectly happy without having attended college. Unschooling should offer you plenty of time to research exactly what you’re interested or not interested in as far as higher education instead of being pressured into doing what someone else thinks is best.
But whats the problem with traditional education? (Other than the fact that you learn less and aren't free to use your life the way you want to)
In her book
The Teenage Liberation Handbook , Grace Llewellyn writes about experiential education (the concept that you learn best by doing): "What the educators apparently haven't realized yet is that experiential education is a double edged sword. If you do something to learn it, then
what you do, you learn. All the time you are in school, you learn through experience how to live in a dictatorship. In school you shut your notebook when the bell rings. You do not speak unless granted permission. You are guilty until proven innocent, and who will prove you innocent? You are told what to do, think, and say for six hours each day. If your teacher says sit up and pay attention, you had better stiffen your spine and try to get Bobby or Sally or the idea of spring or the play you're writing off of your mind.
The most constant and thorough thing students in school experience-and learn-is the antithesis of democracy".
In his 1991 New York Teacher of the Year acceptance speech John Taylor Gatto said, "Schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevent to the great enterprises of the planet. No one really believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders".
Also "Now here is a curious idea to ponder. (Massachussets) Senator Ted Kennedy's office released a paper not too long ago that
prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was ninety-eight percent, and after it the figure never exceeded ninety-one percent, where it stands in 1990. I hope that interests you".
But what about my social life?
Get your friends to quit too! Quit together and you can be resources for eachother
and have plenty of time to hang out. Even if your friends aren't willing to quit with you, you will still probably be able to see them more because you will have more free time.
There are also a number of alternative 'schools', many of which do not force education on their students. 'Schools' like Upattinas (PA) and Clonlara (MI) not only offer a day program but also serve as resource centers for home and unschoolers. Through these and other similar programs
you can earn a high school diploma without going to school! There is a directory of alternative 'schools' on the education revolution website on the left. These schools are definitely worth checking out. Unfortunately they are mostly private schools.
Interested? Need advice? Send an email (
[email protected]), or check out some of the recommended reading in the column on the left.
If you want more information, subscribe to the blog. It will be updated with information on unschooling and alternative education.
