Live Free Learn Free Blog » Balanced? <title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/wp-content/themes/thirteen/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="RSS .92" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/rss/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/atom/" /> <link rel="pingback" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/xmlrpc.php" /> <style type="text/css"> </style> <link rel='archives' title='August 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/08/' /> <link rel='archives' title='July 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/07/' /> <link rel='archives' title='June 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/06/' /> <link rel='archives' title='April 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/04/' /> <link rel='archives' title='March 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/03/' /> <link rel='archives' title='January 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/01/' /> <link rel='archives' title='December 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/12/' /> <link rel='archives' title='November 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/11/' /> <link rel='archives' title='October 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/10/' /> <link rel='archives' title='September 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/09/' /> <link rel='archives' title='August 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/08/' /> <link rel='archives' title='July 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/07/' /> <link rel='archives' title='June 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/06/' /> <link rel='archives' title='May 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/05/' /> <link rel='archives' title='April 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/04/' /> <link rel='archives' title='March 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/03/' /> <link rel='archives' title='February 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/02/' /> <link rel='archives' title='January 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/01/' /> <link rel='archives' title='December 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/12/' /> <link rel='archives' title='November 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/11/' /> <link rel='archives' title='October 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/10/' /> <link rel='archives' title='September 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/09/' /> <link rel='archives' title='August 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/08/' /> <link rel='archives' title='July 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/07/' /> <link rel='archives' title='June 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/06/' /> <link rel='archives' title='May 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/05/' /> <link rel='archives' title='April 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/04/' /> <link rel='archives' title='March 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/03/' /> <link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/xmlrpc.php?rsd" /> </head> <body> <div id="headwrapper"> <div id="header"> <h1 id="title"><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog">Live Free Learn Free Blog</a></h1> </div> </div> <div id="wrapper"> <div id="content"> <div class="post" id="post-237"> <h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/01/27/balanced/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to Balanced?">Balanced?</a></h2> <p class="postdate"> January 27th, 2007 at 2:59 pm (<a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/category/unschooling-life/" title="View all posts in Unschooling Life" rel="category tag">Unschooling Life</a>) </p> <div class="postentry"> <p>Suddenly, it seems, there are a lot of articles on unschooling floating around. More often than not, they’re not purely positive, not purely negative, but what we’ve come to call “balanced.” But, are they really? The word “balanced” implies that both sides are equally credible, but this is almost never the case.</p> <p>Here’s a recent example: In the December 9, 2006 edition of The Patriot Ledger, Sydney Schwartz has a rather mediocre piece about unschooling called “<a target="_blank" href="http://ledger.southofboston.com/articles/2006/12/09/news/news01.txt">When DROPOUT isn’t a bad word</a>.” The article has one stand-out feature, however, that drew me right in: it focuses on older unschoolers. <em>Great!</em> I thought to myself. <em>We need more articles like this!</em> And then, of course, I came upon The Expert.</p> <p>The Expert generally has a title (often PhD), and is almost always a professor of education at a college somewhere. This Expert happened to be Lorne Ranstrom, chair of the division of teacher education at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy. His take on unschooling?</p> <blockquote><p>‘Schools provide sort of a liberal arts education. You get well-rounded. Does that happen in an unschooled situation? Who’s in charge of that kind of teaching? Is it her parents? Is she pretty much on her own?’</p></blockquote> <p>It seems that this “Expert” isn’t the least bit familiar with what unschooling entails. After a thorough Google search, his name doesn’t appear connected to “homeschooling,” “home schooling,” “home education,” “unschooling” or any other term that might imply he knows what he’s talking about. That’s not surprising.</p> <p>So, is that the norm for Experts who appear in unschooling articles? You bet. After searching through dozens of online articles and scouring the Internet for a connection between any Expert and homeschooling, I came up empty handed.</p> <p>So, how are these Experts chosen? Are their names drawn from a hat? Are they picked randomly from a well-thumbed telephone book? My best guess is that, in most cases, the journalist calls up the department of education at the local university and leaves a message. After a while, someone calls her back, and that’s The Expert. She tries her best to explain this novel, strange trend called “un-schooling” to her newfound Expert - “It’s where kids do whatever they want all day and the parents don’t teach them anything. Have you heard of it?” - and then asks for his opinion.</p> <p>Fairly easy solution, and since there are so few researchers who tackle homeschooling issues, what choice does she have? She has to write a “balanced” article, doesn’t she? She has to have Experts. She has to show the “other side.” And she can’t spend months researching.</p> <p>That’s why I try my best (really, I do) to look the other way when the requisite skeptical Expert appears. But it’s difficult to hold my tongue (or my typing fingers) when The Expert has obviously never heard of unschooling before.</p> <p>Perhaps we should write our own articles. Any unschooling journalists out there?</p> <p>UPDATE 1/30/07: A <a target="_blank" href="http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070128/FEATURES01/701280371">recent Tennessean article</a> just made me smile. The author, Bonna de la Cruz, writes, “‘It’s risky to put all the eggs in the child’s basket,’ said Mary Jane Moran, an assistant professor of child and family studies at the University of Tennessee, where she instructs future teachers of pre-kindergarten to third-graders. <em><strong>She has not studied unschooling.</strong></em>”</p> <p>Thanks, Ms. De la Cruz. </p> </div> </div>   <h3 id="postcomment">Post a Comment</h3> <form action="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform"> <p> <input type="text" name="author" id="author" value="" size="28" tabindex="1" /> <label for="author">Name (required)</label> </p> <p> <input type="text" name="email" id="email" value="" size="28" tabindex="2" /> <label for="email">E-mail (required)</label> </p> <p> <input type="text" name="url" id="url" value="" size="28" tabindex="3" /> <label for="url"><abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr></label> </p> <p> <textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="60" rows="8" tabindex="4"></textarea> </p> <p> <input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" class="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit Comment" /> <input type="hidden" name="comment_post_ID" value="237" /> </p> </form> </div> <div id="sidebar"> <ul> <li id="meta"> <h2>Meta</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/wp-login.php">Login</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/" title="Syndicate this site using RSS">Entries <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/comments/feed/" title="The latest comments to all posts in RSS">Comments <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr></a></li> </ul> </li> <li id="search"> <form method="get" id="searchform" action="/blog/index.php"> <p> <input type="text" value="" name="s" id="s" /> <input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" class="submit" value="Search" /> </p> </form> </li> </ul> </div> <div id="footer"> <p> <a href="http://wordpress.org" title="Powered by Wordpress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.">Powered by Wordpress</a> · Design by <a href="http://beccary.com" title="Theme designed by Beccary">Beccary</a> and <a href="http://weblogs.us" title="Theme sponsored by Weblogs.us">Weblogs.us</a> · <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer" title="This page validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional"><abbr title="eXtensible HyperText Markup Language">XHTML</abbr></a> · <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer" title="This page validates as CSS"><abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr></a> </p> </div> </div>  <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> var sc_project=605365; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_partition=4; var sc_security="d224bf47"; </script> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js"></script><noscript><a href="http://www.statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://c5.statcounter.com/counter.php?sc_project=605365&java=0&security=d224bf47&invisible=1" alt="free stats" border="0"></a> </noscript>  </body> </html>