I've seen a lot of discussion in the LW community about alternatives to traditional school for kids. Given how few kids actually get to experience the alternatives (<4% of kids in the US are homeschooled, <10% of those are unschooled), I think the success and failure modes are less well understood than for traditional schools. I want to offer myself as a datapoint to anyone interested in my subjective experience. Eventually, I want this to be a standalone blog post, but my thoughts still feel pretty disparate, so I'm hoping this will help me find a more cohesive narrative.
About me: I'm now in my mid 20s, went to a "good college" and now have a "good job" in tech (despite a brief gap derping around as an artist...what can I say I was unschooled). I'm not a teacher. I don't have kids. I do feel that unschooling had a big impact on my life, and I'm hoping this will help me understand it better, and how it can empirically affect others.
If you have time how do you feel about the proposal. It seems like it engages with problems with the Prussian inspired education system used in America by collecting the effective parts of charters, and un/home schooling, although it opposes charters but allows for un/home school to exist.
I grew up in California, and many of my friends chose to go to community college part-time instead of high school, and basically got this "modular" design the commenter discusses for later education. I think it worked really well for them. When I was 13 I really wanted an academically "normal" environment, probably irrationally so, maybe a little rebelliously so, which is why I didn't choose to do this. I think expanding California's already very high caliber and affordable community college network to provide a more independent alternative to high school ... (read more)
I've seen a lot of discussion in the LW community about alternatives to traditional school for kids. Given how few kids actually get to experience the alternatives (<4% of kids in the US are homeschooled, <10% of those are unschooled), I think the success and failure modes are less well understood than for traditional schools. I want to offer myself as a datapoint to anyone interested in my subjective experience. Eventually, I want this to be a standalone blog post, but my thoughts still feel pretty disparate, so I'm hoping this will help me find a more cohesive narrative.
About me: I'm now in my mid 20s, went to a "good college" and now have a "good job" in tech (despite a brief gap derping around as an artist...what can I say I was unschooled). I'm not a teacher. I don't have kids. I do feel that unschooling had a big impact on my life, and I'm hoping this will help me understand it better, and how it can empirically affect others.