Open Thread

“Home schooling is one thing. Unschooling? That’s child abuse in my book. Nothing like making sure your kid can’t compete in the world, make a living or hold an intelligent conversation. why not just let them out into the woods to be raised by wolves? They’d have a better chance with them.”

I was unschooled. I read Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich when I was 14 and that presented me with a solution to my problems. I was getting in a lot of fights, constantly truant, parents regularly getting called to talk to school authorities. I was smarter than everyone around me and I knew it. I had no friends because I didn’t need them or want them. I made it my business to smash every social norm just to watch their faces, just because I thought they were all slaves to a bunch of ridiculous self-imposed and pointless limits. When I was very young, before I started getting in trouble, they tried skipping me ahead in the grades. But I was still bored and insisted on pushing every limit I saw around me. And it’s not like my parents didn’t do their damndest to set and enforce limits. I don’t know how many times I had to go out in the woods and cut a sapling from a tree so I could be punished with it. There was absolutely nothing that school, or parents, or anyone else for that matter, was capable of doing to contain me. So they just cut me loose. I joined a traveling circus. I read college textbooks on physics and chemistry and did some writing. I traveled around with the circus. And for me it was the perfect solution. I didn’t end up in jail or juvie, I ended up at the top of my class at a very good law school and I think I’ve done quite well for myself since then.

“You and biff bring up a question I was considering recently”

Legion:

A. Never lump me in with Biff.

2. I would NOT scoop up an opossum or raccoon for fear of rabies. I would call animal control.

For ET

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v457/BlackFridayRuler/walmart.jpg

“It took me 20 minutes to read *rob*’s post.”

Yeah, but that’s only because of your lack of English comprehension, ET.

Home schooling is one thing. Unschooling? That’s child abuse in my book. Nothing like making sure your kid can’t compete in the world, make a living or hold an intelligent conversation. why not just let them out into the woods to be raised by wolves? They’d have a better chance with them.