Students: Palo Alto is getting more accepting of alternative post-high-school plans

Speaking as a parent of someone who took a gap year and also hearing anecdotally from friends overseas whose teens have also taken a gap year, this gap year experience can be one of the most rewarding and educational times for a young person.

If they are spending some of the time in travel they are learning the skills to be truly independent and at the same time learning how to cope with life in a country that is different from their own. If they are doing some type of volunteering for a non-profit they learn that there are ways to live successfully without comparing salaries and perks. They can see that people live in different value systems and still be happy. They learn just how privileged they have been by living in a society where material items are the norm and that in places where say owning a car, or the latest fashion fad, or even a Starbucks down the street, is not very important to living a rewarding life. Seeing how people live outside the Palo Alto bubble is definitely an eye opener.

Additionally, to spend a year outside the relentless need to be told to study, get good grades, think like this, do this, do that, which is necessary to graduate high school and to get into a “good” college, actually allows them to think for themselves for the first time. We are a society that seems to value turning out young adults from a cookie cutter mold, telling them what to think rather than how to think. We need to make the next generation a great deal more rounded than the average American education is doing.

Gap years may not be for everyone, but they definitely make a difference in the future lives of those who experience them.

I am going to join the Marines and hope to become a sniper as we are still at war in Iraq & the Middle East. The conflict will not end soon & fresh troops are needed to replenish those who have served multiple tours of duty.

After my service time is completed, I would like to attend college and maybe enter theological school. ‘Onward Christian Soldier’ is one of my favorite songs and a personal mantra.

Those who are striving to destroy the American way of life must be taken out.

As for taking five years to graduate high school, I suppose it’s OK in the event you happen to fall behind your classmates & need to take the extra time to make-up classes.

On the other hand, staying in high school just for the sake of wanting to remain there is kind of lame. Grow up!

Wow, these responses REALLY make me feel sorry for our local youth.

“On the other hand, staying in high school just for the sake of wanting to remain there is kind of lame. Grow up!”

“Most kids can’t wait to get out”…

…because brick and mortar high school pretty much sucks and almost hasn’t changed in 150 years.

You are describing such a completely different world, I forget what we escaped. Nobody said anything about “for the sake of wanting to remain there” — I said “broad education”. I forget that people in school have no exposure to what that means.

When you aren’t limited to being in a box all day long with people exactly your same age, being told what to do all the time, education can actually be exciting, consuming, creative, interesting, self-directed — and expansive beyond anything offered in school. The gap year everyone espouses is actually limited by comparison, because students are more restricted in what they can do in a gap year.

My kid is actually “indie schooling” not in a traditional high school. That means the student is in charge of designing their own education, and is already much more mature and independent than kids in school because of getting away from being constantly told what to do.

That can mean traveling around the world when everyone else is in school, doing projects of their own that last four years instead of a semester, making things they want to make that are cross-disciplinary and take intense focus and time, exploring all kinds of fields that students in brick and mortar schools could never even imagine studying, including fields that won’t be available in college, having years of actually doing more advanced work while having time to read lots of books, have authentic hands-on cultural, music, performing, writing, professional, personal, and technological experiences that wouldn’t have been possible in school, having more time with friends (except the ones in school who are always taking tests and doing often meaningless busywork), and more time with family, too.

It turns out that a lot of people who unschool/indieschool etc, end up taking nontraditional paths. They might do “high school” for five years, or two years, or something that blends so seamlessly with college, or they really are effectively college students in high school, but with more control over their lives. (My student has been taking college courses since 9th grade, for credit and also just out of interest.)

This is the gap year without the constraints, except way more than that, and for all years of high school. It’s amazing how kids can grow into their own when they’re given the autonomy and support. Unlike the kids who are escaping the brick and mortar boxes, for ours, the college experience means a much more constrained educational experience than high school, and far less chance of getting a broad education. It makes way more sense to get this broad experience now and be ready to specialize in college. Too bad it’s not possible to just skip to grad school learning/freedom-wise…

It’s really amazing what can happen when people get the freedom to learn. Getting the chance to do so on their own terms for an extra year (and not be any older than the peers on the usual treadmill whose parents held them back in kindergarten to give them a leg up on everyone else) is priceless. What you are describing, that makes students so closed they need a gap year to mature and de-stress, it’s just completely unnecessary, in fact, it’s counterproductive to getting a broad and deep education.

> …because brick and mortar high school pretty much sucks and almost hasn’t changed in 150 years.

True. As Pink Floyd conveyed in The Wall….’All in all you’re just another brick in the wall’.

To hell with that. However for those forced to endure the system & without the option of this ‘indie’ approach to education, it’s often best to get in & get out of high school ASAP. Conventional high school is just another ‘process’.

In reality, a 10th grade education provides an individual with most of the basic tools required for adult life. I’ve known some who even did it with an 8th. Depends on the individual & their natural IQ + personal initiative.

Some of these college-educated individuals masquerading as teachers & counselors couldn’t get a real job if their lives depended on it. It’s all about putting in time & establishing tenure, ind of like working in the post office.

That is why I question someone actually wanting to remain in a ‘conventional’ high school for 5 years. An ‘indie’ approach is a far cry from dealing with 4+ years of public high school.

So we’ll agree to disagree in some respects. Indie schooling may have its potential for self-growth but trying to schieve the goal by going to Gunn, Paly or M-A for an additional year is LAME…because the teachers there are not indie-style educators, just ‘brick & mortar’ masons putting in their time.

I didn’t intentionally raise the spectre of spending 5 years in brick and mortar high school, as a family that didn’t spend one year there, I wasn’t remotely suggesting it. I especially agree with your last post, @Resident.

The reason we have all those “boxes” as you say, is that when this system of education was invented, those boxes encompassed everything one needed to be a learned person. But think of all the fields of human endeavor and knowledge, and knowledge about the natural world that are completely new since then -we could sit here for a very long time listing them- especially because of technology. Forcing kids to continue to spend all of their time on those old boxes now has a huge opportunity cost to them personally.

The opportunity cost is especially acute to anyone who is not in the top rungs in our local schools. Everyone is competing for their tokens (the grades and courses), rather than best developing their own talents and experiences. Those at the top do get rewarded, but those even just below the very top are actually worse off for it. Those in the middle will have wasted four years of their lives being ground down, jumping through meaningless hoops, creating a record that will actually limit their choices, after wasting four years of their lives in which they could have been developing their talents and getting a broad education to help them decide what to do in life — and even DO those things as a high school student.

Yes, I am saying it: school locally, the way it is set up, is actually hurting and disadvantaging a lot of kids who could otherwise be getting a lot out of those years. By keeping them from real-world endeavors of consequence, school also infantalizes young adults, who not surprisingly are anxious to escape by the end of it.

And their “success” in that system is not even about their intelligence, creativity or ability to work. Our schools pretty much punish creativity from early on. As one student wrote in an op ed, there is no support for GATE here (the district publicly and ignorantly proclaims AP courses as the same thing as gifted education). They ignore and even punish 2e students.

The thing I strongly disagree with you about @Run, is that most of these students don’t have the option to indie school. In fact, the vast majority of them do have that option, they just don’t know they do.

Furthermore, our schools could create a way for students and support that option for everyone as part of a public education. We asked (and were told that if they let a few people do it, then everyone will want to, and some other stuff about how dinosaurs can’t change that fast). There are other districts in the Bay Area that have such programs, and have for decades. The only thing standing in the way of more students having far more personalized and positive educational experiences in high school is, ironically, education about what is possible.

Sorry, of course I meant:

Indie Schoolers actually value school and teachers, too, but only if they support rather than compromise learning and independence.

We had an experience at a local educational tech resource (I won’t name it, this is not a criticism of them), in which the students were invited to work on a real-world problem, with people actually involved in working on those problems (supposedly, it didn’t pan out). This was exciting to DS, because it was an opportunity to do real-world work and learn at the same time. But we discovered instead that it was a contrived exercise — and the traditional school kids mostly had to be nudged or even pushed to participate (who can blame them).

It was just an exercise. The indie schooling kids enjoyed it, but felt a little cheated. Why spend so much time and effort on an isolated contrived exercise like that? In the end, there was no connection to real-world efforts. For the indie schooling kids, it disrupted more self-directed, independent and real-world learning. It wasn’t intentionally done, but for those kids it felt almost like an educational bait and switch.

Teachers and schools everywhere do their best, I’m not even suggesting any individual could change the system from where they are. But creating supports for self-directed, independent education within the system is what will allow teachers and schools to transition to a new way, because they will have contact with those who are able/willing to be the pioneers.

@Hair,

That’s a pretty inaccurate charicature; it may be the roots of homeschooling from the ’70s — the hippies (and then the religious people) — but today’s indie schooling is better described as the Silicon Valley version of schooling. It’s very entrepreneurial about education, creative, smart, independent. That’s a perfect fit for Palo Alto.

The resources that ordinary people — and schools — have to customize and support individual education have never been better, and certainly didn’t exist 50 or 100 years ago. Including just access to books, I’m not even talking technology (at least not directly).

I understand how hard it is to imagine something different than what we have, because I’ve been there myself. But we’re doing a disservice to the lives of too many kids by failing to consider the opportunities. I remember one long-time independent educator (who worked for a school district program) who said, “I don’t know why every school district doesn’t do this.”

That was in another town at the epicenter of Silicon Valley, whose program was begun 30 years ago not by hippies but by tech people who wanted their kids to get a more broad, up-to-date, and self-directed education.

Research on test scores of homeschoolers shows the level of education of the parents isn’t hugely important. That’s probably because indie schoolers are not sitting at home with the parent as teacher, especially in high school, as is often assumed when people don’t know better.

This way of educating we do today has been developed in a way that worked best in another time. It is not doing a great job serving everyone, and in many ways, it’s even cheating those at the top (who can become unable to work without a lot of direction when they get out of college, it’s something employers have been complaining about for years). Again, I see DS’s contemporaries, and how many of them actually HURT their opportunities, hurt their learning, and intellectual and emotional development by sticking with a system that isn’t geared to best support them.

Their time was taken up on tasks that didn’t best educate them, while taking their time from more substantial things they could have been doing, and saddling them with a record that actual hurts their opportunities moving forward after high school. School for the majority of them was a sorting mechanism for someone else’s benefit, and not an educational resource/opportunity that best supported their learning and future.

DS’s journey would have been far better if it had been in partnership with our local schools (assuming they had a functioning independent study ability that served more than just the few privileged ones who administrators like or who have lawyers). Like most indie-schoolers, I am not anti school. I am for customizing education and ensuring that all students have the support to be self-directed learners from an early age.

Schools can do this too, it’s just that they won’t without either being forced to, or being convinced by willing association with people who blazed the trails. People for whom things are not working are the ones who innovate, not those who are most comfortable. We didn’t do this because we are “hippies” — far from it — we did it because the system of schooling was hurting our child and our family, and wasn’t supporting independent development, learning or creativity.

The saddest thing of all to me is the children who think they aren’t smart, who endure a system that tells them year after year that they aren’t as good or competent as those who literally make the grade. Again, that essay by the student who found she was in fact gifted only after she left high school, ought to be required reading. Students like this are, I would argue, the majority of kids in our local schools.

Indie schooling is the educational version of a startup company – it is what you make of it.

@Hair,
What does that have to do with this conversation, or, more to the point, with independent education that allows far more students, not just those at the very top, to thrive, become more mature, and better succeed?

Are you saying that creating a system of education that allows students to have autonomy, self-direction, control of, and some customization in their learning is going to mean that, instead of becoming the more mature, well-developed people the evidence shows they do (better prepared for life and college), they will all become fringie hippie dippie cultists? Among other things, reality and the data say otherwise. Your invoking of this unrelated and extreme case is troubling, though.

I think anyone with a memory here knows of a couple of kids who were sexually violated by teachers in our own school district. The perpetrators used their position to groom and then abuse the children over an extended period of time. Sexual violence and abuse against children in schools (both by adults and classmates) is a problem across the nation.

Does this mean there should never be teachers? Does it mean we should look askance at all school educators as no better than the predator above or at education as no better than a chance for predators to find children? Does it mean all those children should put told to homeschool because they would be better off someplace away from the predator teachers?

Or instead that we should put in place safeguards and practices (like not just shuffling bad actors into other districts and not just ignoring students complaints until the evidence is overwhelming) that protect kids and allow them to thrive?

And if we were talking about improving the curriculum of the social studies program at school, what place would there be to derail the work by invoking the problem of sexual abuser teachers in school if it’s not relevant to the matter at hand? Your example is rhetorically no better than I-know-another-black-person-who-steals by an employer making a case against a black hire (and I’ve seen that in my life, too).

Your post wouldn’t be the first time in recent memory that people with an agenda have tried using a few of the most extreme cases to attack an educational model that isn’t the issue — and in some of the key cases — the families weren’t actually engaged in educating the children, or the traditional schools had persistently already failed to protect those same children. You may be right that those children in your extreme example may be better off in school, or you maybe missing the point that many more people with weird beliefs just like your example (or just plain abusive tendencies) manage to control and abuse their children who go to school.

You are still stuck in a wrong mindset, and you clearly have no familiarity with independent education. I hope you will get beyond that in discussions like this, for the sake of our kids. I’m not even talking about an either/or school or home, it’s not relevant to the educational model.

I just posted above about how independent education is probably best done in partnership with public schools and teachers. What DS accomplished had to be done through homeschool only because it’s not available in our district. But frankly we started by working with another PUBLIC school district. I would say the majority of independent educators in the region work through some kind of public school entity, and of those who don’t have professional educators and schools to work with, I would say the majority wish they did.

That said, the schools aren’t just going to create that opportunity without help. And unfortunately, this means that the majority of our kids who are not at the top of their class in the local schools (and even in many ways, the top kids), don’t get information about how they could benefit their own educations and development through independent learning. The majority of our kids instead spend the four years of high school churning through meaningless work that will advantage a handful of them and actually make a record for themselves that hurts their future opportunities and fails to develop their talents. They will develop intellectually doing largely meaningless tasks with no real-world implications, at someone else’s direction.

It’s just not necessary to waste kids’ time with the box busywork model. The fact is that by high school, students are young adults. A few hundred years ago, many or most of them at that age would have been married with families or working. They deserve a whole lot more autonomy, intellectual freedom and support. The dirty little secret is that it’s really not that hard to create that for yourself if the school won’t. At some point, this is going to sink the old paradigm like the music and publishing industries if educators do not start focusing on how they can do help.

Indie schooling…

Is a Pentacostal-themed indie school OK in your book as an option to a conventional public school education? And does religion have a place in a child’s academic (as well as humanistic) education?

Have you ever read ‘An American Tragedy’ by Theodore Dreiser?

I can think of numerous students with special needs, with anxiety, on the autism spectrum, 2e students, who were being treated like idiots in school locally, not accommodated, and who were not learning or developing, who went on to succeed as independently educated self-learners. I can think of dozens of gifted students in the region who were languishing and treated like discipline problems in school but were saved by being supported to be in charge of their own learning. (Some going on to top colleges at an early age or accomplishing astonishing things in the real world.)

The tragedy is that for every one of those, there are countless others who are hurt by our system of schooling and don’t know they have options. It’s a shame that the adults responsible for the educational system don’t know about them or how the students could benefit, either.

Is it okay with you that hundreds of students in our schools every year who are really bright and could succeed at good colleges, are made to spend four years of their lives being made to feel like they are failures, and creating really bad school records that ensure they cannot go on to opportunities that would allow them to succeed at what they want to do in life?

Is it okay with you that the educational environment is so narrow and parochial that students interested in engineering make those interested in art or business feel inferior? Is it okay that we funnel young adults into tracks like that when they have had no chance to be exposed to a broad education?

Parents would never let that happen if they understood the options. I was like them, like most people, I had no idea what is possible. This time of life never comes again, we should be giving our students wings not putting them in boxes. There is so much overhead associated with attending school here nowadays, there is a huge opportunity cost to students just in terms of what they could be learning and doing with their time. The overhead exists for the benefit of those running the system, usually so they don’t have to change.

I love this youtube video about Billie Elish’s homestudio — she and her brother were homeschooled their whole lives and credit this with the opportunities that led to success.
https://youtu.be/ZBJ914ha6LQ

The point is not brick and mortar versus home, the point is do we support students to lead independent intellectual lives or do we keep them on this treadmill despite the evidence that many are hurt by it?

@Indie Schooling

You didn’t address Flower or Sun’s question.

While child abuse is abhorent & most likely to occur in a parochial or public shool environment, what about the ‘whack jobs’ who elect for home schooling?

Some have an agenda all their own and it is frightenly as well.

To make & decide one’s own path is where it’s at.

Conforming to conventional schooling is BS.

Decades ago I asked a high school classmate what his post graduation plans were.

His reply, “To join the Hells Angels.”

Today is is a head of a CA chapter.

HS auto shop, ditching PE classes & going to the Fillmore Auditorium on the weekends were his indie aspirations at the time & they served him well.

Not everyone needs to be focusing on GPAs, SATs & getting into the college of their dreams.

Just fire-up that old ‘knucklehead’ Harley & ride!

So many comments ring true here regarding the pathetic state of our local public schools. I work with many of them in my profession. And, very unfortunately, I see little change coming within the near future. The best hope is with some of the private schools and non-traditional education paths. But for those who have been restricted to our public schools, I would highly recommend considering various possible paths forward; a four-year college is not the best choice for everyone. And to parents, I would suggest making up for lost time by supporting your kids NOW & INTO THE FUTURE in whatever positive path they want to pursue…

One thing I’ve often wondered about…why is it that children can be prodigies in areas like math and music but not in art…judging by some of the crap turned out by adults?

I want to be more specific here.

We have many students who are gifted, even profoundly gifted, who are ending up in the middle in our schools, and who don’t even realize what they are capable of, because our schools do not support gifted students. Those students then get records that actually hurt their potential and ability to move on to opportunities that let them meet their potential.

Our schools really, really do nothing at all to catch, much less support, smart/gifted kids that fall through the cracks because of problems in the curriculum or a lack of gifted education or poor attention to working for the best outcome when students have life problems like illness or the way subjects are handled as kids advance.

There will always be enough students who will do well in this district because of the skewed demographic, that the leadership can get what it wants: the data that make its great rankings. But this empty (slap-in-the-face) PAUSD “Promise” is only the most useful if it helped people who wouldn’t be okay otherwise, such as special needs, or students the district failed by not reporting and redeeming past wrongs or students in traditionally underrepresented minorities.

The students who are extremely bright but stuck in the hell of useless massive academic overhead without deep learning or real-world achievement opportunities, for their whole development, are robbed of the spark that would make them happy and successful in life.

I just want to make it clear that it’s just not necessary to subject one’s child to that, and indie schooling (with a path to good college opportunities) is an option even for people who work full-time. Middle school is actually the perfect time to experiment with it because it won’t go on the high school record. The kids (and parents) have to “deschool” in order to start becoming independent again — it’s like they have to get used to being let out of the cage before they can feel comfortable with the independence.

Parents who are tired of watching their smart children basically being psychologically tormented/abused and told repeatedly to just accept that they aren’t all that (when the system has failed them repeatedly) and to just accept that they are “inferior” so go find an alternative — they need to know that there are alternatives that allow the kids to recover and soar.

It’s possible to do that in partnership with public districts, even in the Bay Area, just not this one, because the leadership gets what it needs and has no incentive to make up for current or past failures in its stated goals to all students.

@Bad,

You seriously misunderstand what I am talking about.

“Indie schooling” simply means students have more say in their education, that they become independent learners, and have the opportunity to spend their time pursuing more and better learning opportunities without academic overhead that may even completely crush their curiosity or ability to pursue their interests.

It’s an approach that says students are better off having the opportunity and support to become independent and self-directed learners rather than becoming used to constantly being told what to do and getting out into the workforce to become what employers have been complaining about for decades, which is the kind of person who got great grades in school but can’t work independently.

In the Bay Area, many PUBLIC school districts support indie schooling, through public school independent study programs, county charter programs, public schools like D-Tech, etc. In fact I would say the majority of homeschoolers/indieschoolers I know, educate through a PUBLIC program.

Isn’t that what we aspire to help our students achieve, becoming self-directed learners, independent people, autonomous, rather than hoop-jumping, box-checking, treadmill-runners?

“Indie schooling” is just a commitment to student independent learning, something our state and county educations departments support.

It no more about cults than schools are about sexually abusing children just because sexual abuse by adults in school is such a problem. The point is that as a society, we deal with the problems that arise by those who abuse something good in order to keep what’s valuable, whether it’s brick and mortar school or indieschool. The other point is that you can have indieschool IN public school, many districts already do this.

Our district could, too, and I think probably should, because the people who most benefit from the current paradigm are never going to fix things for the students who are being hurt by it. And they don’t want to take the risks — so they should partner with those who are already taking those risks for the mutual benefit to the schools, and to the kids our district is NOT serving well.

And there is a very large contingent of students who are very smart, many even gifted or 2e, who end up actually being hurt by the record/transcript/school experience this system of education generates, when instead, they could be joyfully learning and building on their talents and interests.

@Some,
Sorry, I’m not even engaged in the conversation you’re having, it’s not related to what I’m discussing.

To continue the analogy, I can have opinions on how terrible adults are who commit sexual abuse of students in brick and mortar schools without having it constantly derail a discussion it has nothing to do with, such as about whether kids learn well if they are treated like performing monkeys who have to constantly display what they learned for someone else’s benefit and then be labeled by it rather than helped (the treadmill of homework and testing), or if they are better off being treated with more respect and independence.

You clearly have an important, but completely unrelated axe to grind. Maybe you should start a new thread. I am on this one to talk about student independence in learning, and how that relates to valuing a bounty iof educational paths that the article is about. I’d like to see us get to where we support all students and not just the ones who do the hoop jumping best (or assume the hoop jumping is the only or best way to measure learning, intelligence and potential).

Posted by Pravit Singh, a resident of Old Palo Alto

>> We have a basic rule of thumb in our family…good grades/GPA + good test scores/SAT = getting into a good college (sans having to cheat or bribe one’s way in).

So, the 2/3 of Americans who -don’t- have four-year college degrees are what? Failures? Would it be OK with you if your child becomes a -good- gardener or a -good- auto mechanic? Not every person, even in Palo Alto, would benefit from college.

@Pravit Singh,
Thanks for posting. I understand your perspective, that if your children did the schooling that they do now but spread over 5 years (which is not what I’m suggesting, but let’s go with what you’re talking about), you would be disappointed. Or that if your children chose to pursue art instead of medicine, you would be disappointed. (Although people in some areas of art/design are now as sought after as engineers, according to what the head of personnel told the audience at Gunn High School during that film screening a few years ago, I still understand your perspective.)

However, you, too, misunderstand what indieschooling is. The education offered here works for many kids. It doesn’t work for many others. For some, they may even have more potential to be great surgeons or engineers, but they don’t learn well in an environment in which they are constantly told what to do and constantly tested and measured. Those things create a kind of overhead that can kill productivity and learning simply because of the time they take away from more productive learning.

If your child could do everything they take 4 years to do in school but in 1 or 2 years, so that they can learn a whole bunch of more advanced stuff they will never have a chance to learn in school (including science), and if this led them to want to do this for an extra year and also allowed them to be more successful, why wouldn’t you choose that?

What if your child took 5 years in order to take a much more advanced math trajectory than was possible in school — say, differential equations, linear algebra, abstract algebra, real analysis, complex analysis, differentiable manifolds (a real list from math-oriented indieschoolers) — and especially if it enabled a child who was being funneled into a lower lane in school and who would never even be able to study advanced calculus in school to do advanced college mathematics and college at a place that met their potential?

Following a passion can be and often is for the things you also seem to value, especially for gifted kids. (Oh boy, I have all kinds of trouble with the assumption that only sports and art can be passions or enjoyable.)

It is actually a well-known problem with gifted kids that teachers will say, oh, why don’t the gifted kids just do those advanced things they want to pursue after school and on their own time, forgetting that school takes up the bulk of students’ time and energy and those are not infinite. The opportunity cost in the use of their time isn’t the only problem, many of the kids do not perform well in an environment in which they are on a homework and test treadmill and constantly jumping through others’ hoops. This does not mean they aren’t going to study the things you say you value.

It’s also a well-known problem that very gifted kids will end up as trouble students and never meet or understand their potential because of how poorly the fit is to the Prussian model of education. The Prussian model was brought to this country in large part to make compliant workers and soldiers for the industrial revolution. The world and needs of employers have changed, but the educational system has not.

Again, the kids study chemistry, biology, physics, etc., as separate subjects because those things encompassed pretty much everything you needed to learn 150 years ago to be a learned person. But there are so many more fields of human endeavors (including science and technology) and science about the natural world now and they expand every day. When a kid can learn everything they could learn in basic chemistry, biology, and physics from high school in a few months so that they can learn a whole lot of other interesting things, without constantly being tested and measured and made to wait to learn things in a certain non-applied constrained way, then if they want to spend 5 years to cover a whole lot of other advanced subjects — or apply what they learn in research, including other fields of science — why would you be disappointed in that?

Your children may be doing fine with this system, but for many students, even students who may be smarter than and do more advanced work than your kids if given more independence and support, the system actually prevents them from achieving their potential while at the same time basically saddling them with a record that makes it impossible for them to reach better resources at the college level. I see that happening to many of kids we know who are just graduating now.

@Anon & @Pravit Singh,
With all due respect, I agree with you that not everyone should pursue a college degree, and that people who don’t should be the best at what they ARE interested in doing. That trouble is that our local public school doesn’t support that. It’s only a college track. It basically supports a limited number of students for whom it is a good match, and then everyone else is a wash out. This is a waste of their time, for one thing.

Rather than changing the system that works for some, why aren’t we instead just supporting those for whom more independence and autonomy allow them to be the best at what they wish to pursue, whether it is competition figure skating (one reason people indieschool is high-level sports and music), a math PhD from Oxford at age 15 or a professional animator? And what is the point of subjecting someone who wants to be a professional hairstylist at Vidal Sassoon to the same gauntlet as the kid who wants the transcript to go to Princeton?

I personally have seen how indieschooling has allowed far more advanced academic work far more successfully for a kid who was NOT able to do those things in school. (And I’m not really understanding the pushback since in our case, with a fifth year my kid will still be younger than half the classmates who started at the same time because so many parents held their kids back for an advantage. Why should it be held against my kid to use that year to get in a whole bunch of other fields of math, computer science, engineering, politics, humanities, writing, and professional work and performance opportunities, instead of being older in kindergarten to lord it over other kids?)

What people are not getting is that independence for many students through the teen years can be essential and beneficial, and allow them to meet their potential in ways they never will in a system so based on compliance and external direction. The hierarchy that comes from our current gauntlet of a system is not immutable and yet even these discussions about educational alternatives starts with the assumption that it is. Not so, if many students have more independence.

Ha ha. Very funny. But the jokes get independence in learning so wrong, I’m left wondering whether you are just determined not to understand the opportunities for kids for whom it is lifechanging, or whether you feel threatened by students and families having more power in their lives so you feel you have to keep misdirecting?

We all claim we want our kids to be independent, yet stick them in a traditional educational system that was designed 150 years ago to make them compliant. Some kids still do okay, but many do not, and there is a huge opportunity cost.

The current system basically infantilizes kids and fails to give them control of their own time and learning. Too many do the same in college and then get out, unable to work independently.

On the chemistry independent study:
There are a variety of options for learning chemistry these days. If you want to DIY, you can get good lab equipment following a curriculum mailed to your home.

There are many independent educational options that offer high quality chemistry instruction with lab and experiences teachers. Kind of ala carte instruction.

The independent study charter in Fremont has its own physical location where students can take lab courses with qualified teachers. Some private schools offer challenging one-of classes to homeschoolers. There are independent study schools in the area that offer chemistry classes. Public school independent study programs allow students to take a few classes at their local high school — lab courses are popular. Students often take community college courses. There are advanced courses to take online, and yes, people do put together really nice labs in their garages using surplused equipment, or they explore, such as with Biocurious, etc.

Even if an option is through a tradition school, students are in control of their educations. Many offer other kinds of grading rubriks, more projects, or fewer tests so students can focus on learning and not a constant treadmill of tests.

We designed our own course at Tech Shop (when it was still around) and had middle schoolers learning on all the equipment. The instructors commented on the difference in the attitude toward learning and safety, and how with typical high school classes there was always someone who thought it was funny to scare or do something unsafe when others were using equipment, but that was not a problem with the independent learners. There is often a clear maturity difference when students are in charge of their own learning versus those in school doing their paces, even if they are covering the same kind of material.

Wow, Indie Schooling, start your own blog. You posted so much that you lost your audience. Not everyone is a lawyer who enjoys reading dissertations. Homeschooled kids miss out on life skills. There is no reason to homeschool in Palo Alto.

@lost,
Here’san article from Business Insider last year:
Reasons Homeschooling is the Smartest Way to Teach KidsToday
https://www.businessinsider.com/reasons-homeschooling-is-the-smartest-way-to-teach-kids-today-2018-1#students-can-learn-more-about-what-they-really-care-about-2
“Research suggests homeschooled children tend to do better on standardized tests, stick around longer in college, and do better once they’re enrolled.”

And
“The most common misconception about homeschoolers is that they lack social skills.”

It’s not home versus school site, it’sabout customized independent learning versus factory model that de facto unnecessarily chooses winners and losers.

Getting your parents to pay your way for everything and into success might seem like the safest path, but there’s a big world out there. If the graduating class thinks they are really all that, I would recommend some consider military service over gap years. You meet the heart of America in the military. It will challenge you to your core. If you are really above average and a naturally successful leader, the military will make you put yourself second to a greater good, a skill you can take forward into other fields. I served as an airborne infantryman in the 1980s and attended college on the GI Bill, eventually getting into UC Berkeley graduate school. I have had a very successful business career and am retired at 46 and now devote my time to helping others.

And BTW, there is nothing wrong with homeschooling or other alternative HS education paths. I’ve met plenty of folks with all the right background and degrees from all the top schools who can’t perform the simplest tasks.

One went to an ‘alternative school’ in Marin County after being ‘homeschooled’ by his hippie parents during the elementary grade school years.

The other went through the conventional public school system & matriculated to a small private liberal arts college in the mid-west.

The former was self-perceived as an artist & focused on playing piano & guitar (albeit not very well) for much of the day. The latter combined both conventional schooling & pursued his musical interests on the side.

The indie school student had no actual GPA & failed miserably on the SAT. The conventional school student maintained a B+ average (3.40) & scored well on both college entrance examinations (SAT & ACT).

Today the former indie school student is a recovering drug/alcohol abuser working at Rite-Aide. The conventional student went on to earn a Ph.D & is now teaching English at a major university.

Both had ‘artistic’ interests as youths but one was delusional while the other was more practical.

Moral of the story…if born with exceptional artistic talent, indie school may be an appropriate educational choice.

If not born with natural talent, it’s OK to enjoy certain activities as a hobby or recreational outlet but be REAL about life & its everyday challenges.

Indie school is fine but we never hear about the LOSERS..only the artists who have succeeded in their careers. This is false advertising as not everyone can be a artist.

The only way for a ‘no-talent’ individual to suceeed in a chosen field (regardless of the school format) is for him or her to make a deal with the devil…but that is an entirely different topic.

@Tale,
I know a local homeschooled middle-school student who is doing research with a world-renowned professor in that student’s technical field, and only has the time to do that (and tutor kids in a less-well-heeled area out of interest, there’s no high school transcript in the picture) because of homeschooling. Same kid has been taking college courses at two top universities. This is a kid who was NOT well-supported in traditional school, and like many boys (in our district), dealt with like a discipline problem.

I know another homeschooled student who is living at home as a Berkeley STEM undergrad because of that student’s young age. I know another homeschooler whose father is proud of their, hippie undisciplined schooling, who has gotten a PhD in math from Cambridge (or Oxford, I forget which), and is very successful.

I’m sure we could pull up examples of failures and successes from any model of schooling. But the fact is that on average, homeschooled students perform better on standardized tests, are better prepared to be college students, and graduate from college at higher rates.

And I have seen gifted students in our local schools just absolutely beaten up for unrecognized learning disabilities or disciplined for just being who they are. (Let’s forget for a moment the shameful ways adults in the district have historically reacted when nurturing parents try to prevent those children from falling through the cracks.) Researchers are finding that executive function in the most gifted students develops later; we have a head of secondary instruction who equates good executive function even in middle school students with intelligence and can’t understand how our schools are failing profoundly gifted students anymore than you.

I can’t believe how violent people react to others taking a different path than them. I do homeschool my son and it is certainly not because I am a hippie. In fact, I have a Ph.D. from Columbia University in STEM. I am about as far away from a hippie then you can get. My son was in school until a teacher completely traumatized him because she refused to listen or believe me about what he needed. I even had test results to prove it and a very well documented (data driven) case for why he needed the things he did. I am not trying to make my son live in a bubble or take him out of situations where he must deal with difficult issues. I am trying to make sure my son actually gets an education. For him, for many different reasons, this means that he cannot currently learn in a classroom environment. I wish people could be more accepting of differences like his instead of making assumptions about what he is or is not getting.

Homeschooling is OK if the parents/teachers are qualified to teach. If not, the student will be at a distinct disadvantage in the REAL world where no one cares how you were taught…just what you know & where you stand in the percentiles.

Score well on the SAT/ACT & homeschooling if fine. Blow it & a homeschooling background might be viewed or construed as an educational detriment & hinderment.

The vagabond Deadhead/hippie homeschool teachers are the worst.

@OK,
The largest study of standardized testing and homeschoolers found that homeschoolers scored higher on average than kids in school, that there was no gender or race achievement gap (which makes sense since education is customized), and that students whose parents had less education did nearly as well as those whose parents were very well educated.

The latter also makes sense for a few reasons. One — and one wonders how many times this needs to be said — modern homeschoolers mostly don’t just learn at home. Even the ones that do have access to a variety of real-world and online curricula from outside sources. Two, homeschoolers learn to learn for themselves. That’s fundamentally what independent education is about. So, if the student has a good curriculum, the parent’s level of education is immaterial.

My kid’s best math courses were the ones involving a good well-vetted book, chosen with the independent study teacher, and just doing lots of problems independently to learn the material. Tests were done when my kid felt ready, and if the score wasn’t perfect, the teacher suggested more honors problems, and redo a test for that level. It was way faster. My kid was in the driver’s seat, and the “class” was setup — by my kid — to best allow learning and life.

@Some Homeschool Environments Are Questionable

Your assumptions couldn’t be further from the truth in terms of how homeschooling actually works. Again, it seems like those who do not understand what it is insist upon making up these crazy assumptions. I guess it is a sign of the times that we simply cannot accept “other”.

@ Some Homeschool Environments…

Do you only socialize with people of the same exact age you are?

I believe that most people who are against homeschooling have only seen the negative portrayals. I have met many homeschool families. Very few can be found at home reliably because they are busy “socializing” their students with a variety of classes and outside activities.

Homeschoolers are often *more* self reliant and *better* socialized than typical school kids because they learn how to find what they need, how to self advocate, how to talk to grown ups, and how to interact with people of various ages. They mentor younger kids and are mentored by older kids.

It isn’t a fit for all families, and it can’t really be compared to the public school experience because both are different and have different benefits and drawbacks.

@Strange,
What is this obsession with trying to make weird connections to homeschooling?

First of all, regarding breastfeeding (which is so unrelated to this conversation, but what you have said is just negative to women).

The Mayo Clinic says
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/infant-and-toddler-health/in-depth/extended-breastfeeding/art-20046962
“Worldwide, babies are weaned on average between ages 2 and 4. In some cultures, breast-feeding continues until children are age 6 or 7. In other parts of the world, however, this is less common and can sometimes provoke UNINFORMED, negative reactions.” [emphasis added]

I don’t know anyone who breastfed that late except when I lived in another part of the world, it was common. Don’t think anyone knew about homeschooling. The issues are unrelated.

The cool thing about homeschooling is that students usually are more motivated to become informed, educated citizens than the average school student who is on the grades treadmill. In our household, essay writing looks a lot more like college research and writing. It’s really very easy to learn about all kinds of issues, including child development, using free advanced resources that weren’t available even 25 years go.

When we talk about this issue of alternative paths, we shouldn’t be focusing on it like some kind of leftover last chance. If we provided opportunities for all children to thrive and meet their potential, then high school itself would be full of “alternative” paths, without the current stigma.

I think the point is that both types of education have their place, both are valid.
Those who homeschool are constantly having to defend their choice, even if they are going a lesser known path simply because the “traditional” one is definitely not working for their child.
It would be nice to feel that the decision to go against the grain was at least validated by society.

Even with IEPs and 504 plans, schools can’t always meet a child’s needs.
And some kids can adjust to a school, but don’t thrive there.
Some would be miserable with the open ended learning opportunities of a homeschool environment.
Some are able to adjust to either.

Our society needs all kinds of learners and thinkers and movers and doers.

Homeschooling is hard.
Schooling is hard.
Parenting in general is Really Hard.
We all want what’s best for our kids. Even if what’s best for our kid isn’t best for ALL kids. I don’t agree with everyone’s parenting decisions, but I respect their rights to make them and acknowledge that I’m not living their life…I have no idea how many factors went into any specific parenting decision. I hope that others feel the same towards me.

I was raised by a single mother who felt indie schooling was the best alternative educational environment for her offspring.

Yes, it provided a unique learning platform & allowed for both academic, artistic & recreational explorations.

Today I am homeless with no prospects for the future. As a child, we followed the Dead tour & led an alternative lifestyle as well.

It was fun & enlightening to a certain extent but eventually one must contend with the real world & its inherent brutalities. Some refer to it as growing up.

My mother never learned to ‘stay high but keep one’s priorities straight’. As a result, she is directly to blame for having instilled & promoted a jabberwocky sort of perspective on life itself.

In retrospect, I wish I had gone to a conventional high school school & lettered in sports. Academic discipline is necessary for some & perhaps I was one of those individuals as too much freedom can equate to a lack of responsibility & direction.

Being just another cog in the wheel of life has its advantages & these blissful tales of homeschooling are misleading in many respects.

^^^^
@Indie schooling

VERY UNCOOL to mock someone else’s misfortune for the sake of your advocacy.

Why is that anyone who begs to differ with your views on education is branded UNINFORMED by your seemingly judgmental perspectives?

It is one thing to be a zealous advocate and another to be constantly belittling others who may question or beg to differ with your views.

This in itself I find as narrow-minded as those you are branding as such.

Just saying.

Please note that I am not commenting on this particular educational issue but rather the manner of your follow-up retorts & put-downs.

@What,
Maybe we can find some common ground. What seems to be the upshot of the posts above, taking them in good faith, and the research on unschooling (the least structured kind of homeschooling, which about 10% of homeschoolers adopt), is that those who unschool deliberately are universally glad, feel they were better off than in traditional school, and were on average more successful in comparison. If they had gaps in their educations, they felt they had learned how to learn what they needed.

Those who unschooled/indieschooled as a hindsight/de facto occurrence, rather than as an educational choice, who were maybe even trying to shirk school, were a tiny minority of those studied, but seem to be the only ones unhappy with “unschooling”. So it would seem based on the above posts and the research, that those who look back and label their lack of education as “unschooling” are typically unhappy, and those whose unschooling was a deliberate act of seeking educational independence, were largely very happy and even, as the research shows, successful by traditional standards.

I think my counterparts in brick and mortar schools above have also expressed similar concerns about students who are not actually educating, but are defining what may even constitute parental neglect as indie schooling.

All the evidence seems to favor independence and academic freedom for those who choose it deliberately. We can foster than IN schools, it doesn’t have to mean home, we just don’t here.

I hope that provides some common ground.

@paloverdeman,
And that’s what I have been addressing, the focus of the article on alternative paths after school.

My point is that I have heard from graduating seniors, and the ones I know do not feel alternatives are being accepted. The reason I believe is because the educational path DURING school is so constrained and students who are not at the top lack opportunities to maximize their own potential. If the district is trying to promote “alternatives” such as community college, why not let these kids use independent study rules to do more community college while IN K-12, as homeschoolers/indieschoolers do, to good effect and without any of the stigma kids pick up in school

My point is further that a lot of students who feel they aren’t good enough, who end up with relatively bad records in K-12 (because of the constrained system), are hurt in their opportunities after K-12, which further makes it less likely they’ll feel empowered to take “alternative” paths, even though such paths could allow them to excel.

My focus was on the point of the article. There were a number of posts by people that juxtaposed an extreme example or unrelated issue with homeschooling. I don’t know if you are familiar with juxtaposition, but it’s taking two unrelated things and putting them together in writing or film, in order to make them seem connected. Considering that kids are already unfamiliar with the option that could change their whole trajectory and attitude when it comes to alternatives, I felt it was important to respond to the misinformation with facts.

You’ll have to take your feelings about late breastfeeding up with the Mayo Clinic and the other poster, I actually have nothing at all to opine on the issue,I was just trying to add the respected medical information and refocus back on the educational issues at hand. I am trying to discuss independent education and how THAT would not only eliminate the stigma of alternate paths, it could allow many kids who are currently not able to be successful in our current system to shine. A

s I said above, why let the kids fail and only then push them to accept alternative paths as a kind of consolation prize, instead of helping all students meet their potential (especially gifted and 2e students who aren’t well-served in our district)?

@Keeping,
It’s hard to have this conversation, because it’s like talking to people who live in a box who have never seen the grass or birds or the trees, and keep wanting to know why anyone would want to spend more time in the box. We decided not to educate in the box. Thus, there’s lots to do out here and high school and college merge, from 9th grade on.

The article said:
“a positive shift has happened in recent years towards more acceptance of nontraditional post-high-school plans.”

From what I hear from graduating seniors, that’s not really true. It may seem superficially so, but not among the students. They’re just being told to consider those plans a lot more. “Nontraditional post-high-school plans” is mostly euphemism for community college, trade school, and other paths that K-12 kids here don’t respect.

The respect for nontraditional paths cannot be generated from thin air after pushing all the kids on a treadmill that only works for some of them, and even creates a record for many that unnecessarily HURTS their post-graduation life. The education here is not really learn to mastery, it’s basically an academic beauty contest with no chance for redemption. If you want nontraditional paths to be accepted, nontraditional educational paths (and respect for them) have to start earlier, and work better for everyone, not just those at the top of the contrived traditional ladder. Our schools do not do this, but students in nontraditional paths K-12 do.

One poster described high school as “the relentless need to be told to study, get good grades, think like this, do this, do that, which is necessary to graduate high school and to get into a “good” college”.

No room there for community college, one of the main “nontraditional” choices being pushed in the schools, for good reason. But the fact that most of the kids don’t really have a lot of benefit from community college BEFORE they graduate is a major part of the problem. We went to one of the community college nights at Gunn, and there were quite literally only two or three students there, the rest were all parents. Thus, none of them met the wonderful students, like the one who was homeschooled and would be heading off to UC Davis in the fall at age 16 (after taking a lot of CC courses). I’ll say this again, indie schooled kids are more likely to use community college (the main post-graduation “alternative”) at earlier ages, and thus there is no stigma of becoming a transfer student, etc. Changing minds has to happen earlier.

Kids who take an independent path to education, they realize that’s not really true that you have to endure the grind described by the above poster to get a great education, in fact you can get a better one away from the grind. They realize just how much of their time and energy and focus get sucked away in school without benefitting their education. They realize they can incorporate authentic experiences in a FAR more academically challenging program that allows them the control of their lives to give them that time back. (And this is not school versus home, as I keep pointing out, many students in the Bay Area do this through public programs.)

@Keeping, you wrote:
“There is a big difference between post high school graduation exploration & taking 5+ years just to get out of high school.”

Yes, that’s right. If you are doing a gap year, you’re not allowed to do anything academic. If you’re doing 5 years of high school, you can do both academic and exploration, but then the whole high school experience is a far richer, more rewarding, usually much more advanced experience, in which it’s not necessary to have to take a stress break before college.

One of the many reasons for not wanting to graduate high school (5 years of high school being not that uncommon among advanced independent schoolers) is that homeschool students usually have so many college credits, but they don’t want to have to go to college as juniors, they want to apply to 4-year-schools as freshmen. Another is that when they are in control of their education, they can learn far more advanced material in less time than often even in college.

As the KQED education article I posted above says (on the subject of how unschoolers turn out),
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/37091/how-do-unschoolers-turn-out
Scroll down to the section on college.
“The most frequent complaints [of former unschoolers in college] were about the lack of motivation and intellectual curiosity among their college classmates, the constricted social life of college, and, in a few cases, constraints imposed by the curriculum or grading system.”

“…by far the most common route [for unschoolers] to a four-year college was to start at a community college (typically begun at age 16, but sometimes even younger).

Taking nontraditional post-K-12 paths that the schools are trying to push on students AFTER they graduate are readily accepted by those who have access to, and support to avail themselves of those paths before they graduate, in order to meet their goals. When you take a nontraditional path earlier, it’s actually possible for education to be about learning and meeting individual goals (and living life).

It’s not my place to discuss the exact educational plan of my child. But one major reason to take an extra year is to get a broad education in a way that just isn’t possible in college, covering many fields that aren’t possible to study in such depth when one has gone back on the grade treadmill. Another major reason is to finish an associates degree in another field (as a high school student) that won’t be available in the colleges that best support the main major. Or just finish a degree at all, in order to not be automatically designated a transfer student for having so much college credit from high school (or to be sure to have all the transfer student requirements fulfilled so that if the college balks at the many college credits for a freshmen and thus makes the student a junior, the student won’t be booted out for not fulfilling the transfer requirements, which I has happened to some.)

Yes, five years of high school in the box so many kids these days are escaping when they graduate would be grim, no doubt.

> Thus, none of them met the wonderful students, like the one who was homeschooled and would be heading off to UC Davis in the fall at age 16…

It is apparent you have never attended UCD…a very competitive academic environment due to the various ‘pre-this’ undergraduate aspirations.

So basically one is going from a less structured academic environment to a very intense, structured one…this doesn’t make sense as per your advocacies. This adolescent & child indie schooling approach seems better suited to one heading off to a small liberal arts college.

And why would someone want to start college at 16? Is this some sort of ‘Doogie Howser’ mentality? A sixteen year-old at UC will be forced into a more ‘semi-adult’ environment…drinking, sex, recreational drugs etc. It’s bad enough in high school.

You are still not clear as your points are ambiguous at best…one is to take more time in high school ‘exploring’ options while the other encourages attending JC early & getting a ‘head-start’ on traditional HS graduates entering college.

Sounds either incredibly lax or very neurotic at best.

BTW, two-year transfer JC courses are oftentimes very structured to ensure proper accreditation.

This is coming from someone who skipped a grade in elementary school, graduated high school in 4 years, attended Foothill College for 2 years & then transferred to UCD.

In between, I had plenty of time (including optional summer school) to pursue various indie-learning options (i.e. Outward Bound, jamming with professional musicians, growing/smoking weed, reading a variety of books, riding dirt bikes and perhaps most importantly…leading a relatively stress-free adolescent life).

Indie schooling may be OK for some but let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill.

There was an article about a Gunn HS science teacher who teaches an AP class where he doesn’t give homework. I think it took him 20 years to get the ability to do that. He says the students are more engaged and actually do better, and still do well on the AP test. That’s the kind of course indieschoolers would look for, something that allowed them to reach a learning goal more independently, focus on the learning, with teachers also focused on the learning more than the constant measuring. Note that the class is at a public high school. (Unfortunately there is still way too little of that at the local schools.)

@Just say NO,
While I agree with your sentiment, I’m not sure what the “duh” is for, please explain. I have just spent this entire thread trying to get another poster to understand that freedom/autonomy and learning are not mutually exclusive.

Saying no to homework in school where homework is baked into the DNA is going to lead to failure not just in grades, but in access to learning and other opportunities. Saying no to homework by creating a system in which students don’t need it to learn as much or more is what I’m suggesting, what that teacher did.

In fact, I just had an epiphany. Most of the posters above with no homeschool experience are equating “independence” with slacking off and rebellion, because that’s what it looks like from within the box, not because they are trying so hard not to appreciate that it’s possible to get a better education with less stress (and mandatory homework), as it seemed they were doing.

Homeschoolers talk about a period of deschooling when transitioning to independent learning, in which one breaks out of that way of thinking — it’s a deliberate process — people who first get out of the box but are still psychologically constrained by it. First of all, if we don’t put our kids in those boxes in the first place, they won’t feel the need to rebel to break out of them. My experience in college is that the wildest students were the most under the thumb of adults — teachers, school programs, studying, parents — in high school.

Something similar to homeschool deschooling has to happen for educationally innovative programs in public institutions (including college), too, in order for the productivity doing things differently to begin. I knew this, but this conversation has really helped me to see why.

The teacher at Gunn according to the article, found the students has as good or better outcomes, better engagement in the class, without all the academic overhead. Studies on homeschoolers and unschoolers show they do as good or better on average in standardized testing and college. Student independence can look like that, and in general, once students really appreciate that they can learn as much or more, and that they can be as or more successful at the things they need to go to college, without all that unnecessary overhead, it gives them permission to focus on learning. Students having different trajectories, customized for them, in which they are better able to succeed and are in charge of their learning, tends to also make for more collegial rather than hyper-competitive relationships.

@Draw,

1) completely agree. D-Tech in San Mateo (public charter school) designs a customized learning plan with students, and if the students want to study something not offered there, such as Japanese, they leave early and go take it somewhere else. Very similar to ala carte schooling, which is how many if not most people indieschool high school. Just to blow your mind a little, some private schools offer individual classes and partial weeks to homeschoolers (as do public independent study programs).

2) completely disagree. That perspective comes from being immersed in the traditional school paradigm which encourages a “fixed mindset” about independence and executive function, and not having what’s called a “growth mindset” about independence.

Research shows that very gifted kids tend to have a delayed maturation of the frontal cortex, meaning, their executive function may be delayed. Couple that with a lack of support for giftedness and especially of learning disabilities that are common (asynchronous development being common in the gifted), our schools can be a train wreck for kids like that.

Having the ability to do self-directed math allowed DS to learn faster, with more depth, in a manner that best met DS’s learning style, and resulted in not only a much faster and more advanced math trajectory (with less input from me than in school), but it significantly raised standardized test scores, too. (Homeschooled kids tend not to use standardized testing much but I just mean the usual, no prep.) DS did not and still does not have good time management skills, yet was a far better student when it was possible to be in control of his own time. Having more control of one’s own life, allows the students who struggle with those things to develop their own strategies to be successful in more real-world environments and challenges.

Independence and self-direction are learned, not a fixed trait like blue eyes. The students become more mature from the independence, not the other way around. You’d be surprised by how many “slackers” are completely different if given agency in their own lives and learning.

This is one reason homeschoolers recommend a “deschooling” gap as students transition from traditional school to independence — because everyone (student and parents) has to get used to what independence looks like and be okay with being flexible. It’s impossible to leave the box if one is still psychologically in it after one gets to freedom, but it is possible to learn to be productively independent.

My student’s epiphany was realizing just how much school had inculcated a dependence on external direction. Reversing that was not because of a personality trait, it was because of having an independent education and having the opportunity. School never afforded that opportunity.

FYI, here’s an interesting article on the history of child labor in the US
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-1.htm
It points out that the child labor movement was much about preventing children from becoming idle slackers, basically, before it was even about exploiting them for money.

3) MEGO (my eyes glaze over) – I have not even been engaged in this conversation, I just passed along the information from the scientists and researchers from Mayo Clinic. You can continue to post if you’re talking to someone else, I just don’t and haven’t had the slightest inclination to engage on this. Not my issue.

@Pravit Singh
While I understand your thoughts on education priorities, I feel very sorry for your children.

@Cultural,
I just got the list of colleges the homeschool students in one of my national lists will be going to this year, and it’s full of Ivies, top colleges, lots of major scholarships, all manner of state schools (and indicates where students are transfers), small liberal arts schools, lots of UC’s across the spectrum, etc.

I can’t believe after all this discussion that you still think the difference between homeschool and traditional school is between finding yourself and success. As one poster above said, “Have you read the lists of California State STEM Fair Winners, National Scholastic Art and Writing Medalists and even Caroline D Bradley Scholars? They are filled with the names of homeschoolers.”

It’s about supporting independence — which also happens to allow gifted students to meet their potential as well, because they have more time to pursue their interests — including college-level ones.

There are many, many people from India and China in our local groups — when we were still with the public homestudies group, one of the inside jokes was that the parents from India and China didn’t have to explain that they were homeschooling to family in India/China since they just said they were in public school. And it was the best kept secret that all the children (regardless of where the parents were from) were happier AND able to better excel at their science and math interests because of the intellectual and personal freedom. (Never met a one in that program who went on the road trip on a chopper or even *needed* to find themselves – usually kids are lost BECAUSE OF what traditional school does to them.)

Indieschooling is not “geared” toward anything, because it isn’t a program or something made up by someone and imposed on someone else. It’s not a private school choice on a spectrum.

It is about recognizing that young people benefit from independence and giving them the respect and support to become independent people. (In part, it also recognizes that families are important even after kids grow up and doesn’t confuse estranging kids from their families with independence, as the local schools seem to push.) The kind of extreme external control of and infantilizing that the traditional school model does to kids these days has no evolutionary or historical basis. It is relatively new (150 years), and people today are finding out that especially teens really benefit from having the intellectual independence to be in control of their own educations.

There are many homeschoolers who pursue a more advanced, challenging, college-level education than they could get in even a good public school, in fact, I would say it is most everyone I know locally who deliberately pursues homeschooling, especially gifted kids.

Just so you know, I am a child of immigrants (incl non-white) who literally were starving in the old country and succeeded here because of education. All of my siblings are highly educated and successful because of it. We are one of those families with a 2e child who was being thrashed and ruined (personally and academically) instead of supported in PAUSD schools. For us, indieschooling wasn’t an “enlightened” choice, it was never even really a choice. Our district was busy deliberately stressing and pushing out families like ours. Homeschooling saved us as a family and it allowed our child to excel and get an *advanced* and broad education he wasn’t getting and could never have gotten in the local school, not even close.

The local schools work for some, but they just don’t have the incentives to do right by everyone, in fact, they did some pretty bad stuff to a lot of kids and no one ever seems held to account. They did a disservice to many of the kids we know who stayed, who now have worse records than they would have if they had been supported as well in their own educations as the kids at the top of the contrived ladder.

I really feel sorry for the kids, like my mine, who end up lower on the school ladder because they have other interests (including STEM), or their brains are maturing later or who had bad teachers early on (so the differences accumulate), or who had undiagnosed (or diagnosed but ignored) learning disabilities, because with the right supports, they would instead be excelling. Our school culture is so broken, there’s even an impetus by adults to try to put students the system has failed “in their place”, because it seems they feel it’s better not to be “embarrassed” than to apologize, change, and ensure all students can meet their potential. Sometimes it seems like they just feel the winners and losers the system shakes out are immutable, and they need to enforce the “natural” order, so they hurt kids without even being honest with themselves that they are.

I would say even the majority of people who homeschool would be happy to send their kids to school, work with the schools in some kind of hybrid, or otherwise partner with public programs, if the independence were supported.

Indie is short for “independence”, as in independent learning. It can mean the child is supported (not told to or pushed) to study astrophysics at a college level in 3rd grade (I know more than one) if that’s what the child is interested in. If they have agency and independence in their lives, they don’t usually need to rebel without a cause…

> I’d be willing to wager that no indie high school school student has ever been accepted to West Point or Annapolis during the 20th century or later.

Uh, they don’t let these types into the military academies. Why ask for trouble?

> …attending UC or the Ivy League remains their highest aspiration where they can also retain the option of majoring in the liberal arts.

Nothing wrong with the liberal arts BUT most Middys & Cadets major in engineering.

If their brains are underdeveloped, how can indie school students be more advanced than those with fully developed brains?

This doesn’t make sense. The evolution of humanoids from man-apes (i.e. Australopithecus) to homo sapiens was based on fuller developed brains. The early man-apes had very underdeveloped frontal lobes compared to humans.

Are you implying that Australolpithecus had the potential to equal or possisbly exceed the skill and intelligence level of humans based on alternative variations in the learning curve?

Both species have opposable thumbs & are capable of tool-making.

“There is this idea that it’s necessary to get a good education and go to a good college, but it’s just not.”

Okay, that wasn’t clear! There is this idea that it’s necessary to suffer to get a good education and go to a good college, but it’s just not.

@Excuse,
You have it backwards. I never “implied that those who cannot keep up are inherently gifted”, I was pointing out that the Prussian model of schooling is inherently mismatched to those who are creative and gifted, and since we have no real program to assess or support giftedness, and since gifted students’ executive function develops later, our current school program can be not just unsupportive of the gifted and creative, it can be downright damaging .

Many children could have problems with the “requirements of regular school”, not just gifted students. When you seek and independent education, and prioritize learning, you discover just how little of those “requirements” are necessary or even helpful, and how many of them basically amount to overhead with a huge opportunity cost.

This is especially the case for gifted students who many not even have been identified as such, and who many go on in life believing they are subpar because of how our system picks winners and losers based instead of supporting each child to meet their creative potential (to quote from our district’s once-vision). Unfortunately, from what I have seen, many kids in the middle rungs could actually be much more traditionally successful, if they were just supported to be more independent learners throughout.

Unfortunately, I see this conversation as somewhat emblematic of the problem in PAUSD. Rather than understanding what the district has done wrong and how it could fix it for the kids who need it, adults in the district tend to blame everyone else (including the kids) and double down on denigrating the students even when it’s already done such damage to otherwise promising children’s lives. There is still a scorched earth culture rather than one of reflection and improvement.

@Excuse,

Indieschooling is just independence. What Esther Wojcicki does in her journalism program, to give students more autonomy and agency, what the environmental sciences AP instructor at Gunn does not assigning homework and realizing the students are more engaged when their learning is their choice, THAT’s along the same lines. It doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive with school, as I have said many time, many public school programs have independent study programs. Our district has an independent study program too, actually, but like so many things here, it tends to be meted out under the table to a favored few or done so badly it’s not really independent.

Locally, gifted students who want a much more advanced, rich education and more healthy social life are disproportionately represented among homeschoolers. I think Wired Magazine even did an article to ask techies to stop abandoning the schools for independent education. Among gifted homeschoolers, boys seem represented almost 2 to 1, which kind of makes sense. I’m told that many of the common learning disabilities such as dysgraphia, tend to be caught much later with boys, and that’s not accounting for the problems we have in our district which I won’t rehash. In an independent education, students can often work around such problems without needing special accommodations by choosing mastery-based programs, or programs that treat students more like grad students rather than recalcitrant adolescents.

You are right that both a gifted program (along with an understanding of giftedness based on science) and proper special ed would definitely help kids who otherwise get punished for having late-developing executive function. Our district is the worst for that. I’ve read that Los Altos has a gifted program, understands asynchronous development, etc, and I’ve heard from numerous parents that they do a much better job with special ed, the way PAUSD USED TO eons ago. I only wish special ed were dealt with better. A group of parents has even started talking about creating a separate 2e school. They’re not doing it because their MENSA-qualifying students are happy or getting their educational or social-emotional needs met.

Just an observation, there do seem to be more homeschoolers from Palo Alto than Los Altos, but there are no surveys so I couldn’t tell you for sure. There are homeschoolers from Los Altos, too. The ones we know needed more intellectual freedom to pursue a broader and more challenging education, mostly in STEM fields and computer science. (Los Altos has that wonderful freestyle academy so perhaps that’s why fewer students in arts fields homeschooling? Just guessing.)

“holding back children a grade amounts to the same thing as taking another year to complete school while compensating for certain deficencies such as the lack of brain maturity”

When you indieschool, you don’t “hold children back a grade”. The young adults make the choices about their educations and lives.

Taking five years of high school (especially if a child was younger to begin with) is not the same thing as holding children back a grade, either. I did a survey once on this issue, and found that about 20% of the homeschoolers surveyed wanted a 5th high school year, but the reasons were all over the map (as were the year of high school they would choose). Grade levels are a little arbitrary for homeschoolers who are often doing above-grade-level and college-level work from the getgo. There is even an official designation as “ungraded” (which private schools can do, too).

When you indieschool, you’re not sequestering kids into exact age-matched cohorts, and kids are free to draw their educations from a much larger palette, including local colleges and national online college courses (both for credit and not). They’re free to design a curriculum that meets their own needs from local independent course vendors, private schools that serve homeschool students (per above), public school courses, community college courses, etc etc. So the grade level has less meaning.

That said — and please don’t ask me to defend this, it’s just an FYI (homeschoolers don’t need stuff like this) — there has long been a 13th grade phenomenon. For traditional school kids, it’s basically a way to indieschool after k-12 before going to college, since gap years don’t allow academics.
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/03/education/the-13th-year-a-breather-before-college.html
For a long time, this was how wealthy students got serious and created a record to get into a top college (before it was fashionable to go the outright bribery route). It was usually a good transition to college emotionally, too. It really ought to be an “alternative” considered here.

> Are you implying that Australolpithecus had the potential to equal or possibly exceed the skill and intelligence level of humans based on alternative variations in the learning curve?

They never had the opportunity as most were too busy hunting & gathering.

Had just one visionary Australopithecus indie advocate stood up & offered to teach the younger teen-aged Australopithecus that there was more to life than spearing wild animals, eating grubs & foraging for roots, things could have turned out differently regardless of their underdeveloped frontal lobes.

Instead the Australopithecus clung to conventional survival-based educational techniques & ironically, became extinct.

The elders in Planet of the Apes realized this & swore that humans would never get the better of their brethren again. As a result, they made good use of whatever frontal lobe development they had & turned to alternative learning techniques.