I just watched the Radical Unschooling portion of Radical Parenting on Discovery Health. As expected, I’m slightly disappointed. I didn’t have high hopes for the program because going on television and trying to explain Radical Unschooling in 20 minutes is similar to learning Chinese in an hour. I hate the word impossible, but it’s likely that it can’t be done.

First of all, it is hard to bring a valid view of Radical Unschooling using such a young family. While Sarah and Chris Parent did a wonderful job, we really needed more examples and a few of those spectacular teens and grown unschoolers I know! Discovery Health obviously chopped it all up and left in the points that could easily be argued, but understandably so! If the show wasn’t shocking or somewhat entertaining then no one would watch it!

One expert kept calling it “experiential learning”. I really took to that right away. What a great way to describe how unschooled children learn! Right after that, another expert told us that these children were left “on their own” for things like reading, sleeping, and playing! This couldn’t be further from the truth! Unschooled children have their parents all the time. I don’t know any unschooled children who are left “to their own devices” as another put it. What they failed to grasp was that the parents are there all the time acting as facilitators and guides; meeting the children’s needs and supporting their passions and interests.

The big issue seemed to be college. A huge, huge point that I think Discovery Health failed to bring to light, is that children can and will learn what they need to know, when they need to know it. There is no magical age that one needs to learn anything at all. That fact has been proven again and again by grown and successful unschoolers all over the US. The one thing that unschooler’s will recognize however, is that college is a choice, not a requirement.

It’s really hard to present unschooling to the general public. I applaud the Parent family for their decision to unschool and the way they presented themselves, but I think Discovery Health is highly misinformed on the subject and crazy to try and present it in a 20 minute segment.

My ten cents.

For more information on Unschooling there are helpful links on the side of my blog or you can read more of my writing by following the links below.

Defining Unschooling

Articles and Essays

The program will air again. Here’s the link for the schedule. Radical Parenting

The War on Kids is a documentary directed by Cevin Soling and presented by Spectacle Films.  It is a film that focuses on the injustices to children that are happening everyday in school.  It dives deep into the problems that exists concerning zero tolerance policies, security systems, the war on drugs, administrators and teachers, pharmaceuticals, public education, homework, and socialization.

Early on in the documentary we are told that children are assumed to do bad things unless they are absolutely controlled.  Or are we reminded?  Not so much when I was a child, but present day schools have adopted zero tolerance policies on weapons, drugs and alcohol. The War on Kids gives a multitude of examples of children being arrested, handcuffed, fingerprinted, and dragged out of school for seemingly minor infractions.  Children are being suspended for spit wads, pointing their fingers like guns, for having magic markers and Midol because administrators think they should “err on the side of caution.”

In the lesson on Zero-tolerance we see appalling, yet real comparisons drawn between a school and a low security prison.  Both are a policed institution, complete with metal detectors and security cameras.  For those who may not see it, it brings to light the destructive effects that controlling a child’s waking moments, thoughts, actions, appetite and body functions can have on a young person.

Especially important and insightful is the segment on pharmaceuticals.  It brings to light a lot of interesting and abhorrent facts concerning the drugging of our children.  The parents, the doctors and the teachers who drug children in order to force them to be someone other than who they are should be ashamed of themselves.  Drugs like Ritalin, and Adderall (and anti-depressants) destroy a child’s brain and immune system.  It causes depression, anxiety, stunted growth, obsessive compulsive disorder, psychosis, permanent ticks and in the worst cases suicide and death.  All in the name of  behaving, sitting still, and paying attention?  Really?

While I feel that knowing about atrocities like the ones shown in the film is important, I do not believe that school can be reformed.  The way the institutions run require these failures.  It’s fuel for more funding, more studies, more testing, and more control.  It keeps the school reformers focused on school reform and not the actual problem, the institution itself.  Children, human beings, should not be controlled any more than you or I.  While the film shows many extreme examples, like the shooting in Columbine or the SWAT team raid in Goose Creek, SC, it’s not wrong in making these assumptions about all public schools.  It’s worth noting that at my small high school in Vermont (which incidentally has a VERY LOW crime rate) my father was allowed to smoke cigarettes on the steps in his youth.   The next decade saw the school system stopping kids from leaving during the day, in the following decade stopped them from hanging out in certain areas, and a few years later built a fence to keep students on the grounds.  After I graduated, the students saw new security cameras  installed that even point at the bathrooms.  They already have a “resource officer” (policeman) so what’s next?

It also includes interview footage with John Taylor Gatto, and some other familiar names in the anti-school crowd.  I definitely recommend it. However, please know that it’s a strong film with extreme views and heart-wrenching footage.  It’s a warning for the future.  If schools continue on this path they will be freeing prisoners rather than graduating students.   Many already are.

Starring:

• Skylar
• Mia
• Layla
• Otto

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

– Oriah Mountain Dreamer