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School's Out Forever

"Unschoolers" like Holly Furgason don't believe in public education. They don't even believe in teachers. They believe in the ability of their children to teach themselves. Will the law catch up with them?

A A A Comments (1) By Lauren Kern Thursday, Apr 20 2000

...continued from page 4

At a Heights park with some 35 HUG kids and their mothers, Furgason has transformed herself from political activist back to casual, craftsy mom. She has brought the newspaper and other materials to make a kite with no sticks, and she's working hard to make it flight-ready. The other mothers, talking around her at the picnic table, aren't much help. And the kids, who don't have to do anything they don't want to do, are playing a raucous game of tag/king-of-the-mountain around the jungle gym, with Justin as the ringleader. A few girls are hanging out in the shade just on the fringes of the action.

Deron Neblett

The Furgason kids don't have to do anything they don't want to do, but the girls like learning to make paper.

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Courtney is barefoot, her outstretched legs and those of another, taller girl's forming a diamond shape in the playground's pebbles. They push the pebbles into a little hill between them and talk quietly until a boy runs by, extolling the virtues of a World Wrestling Federation character. Courtney begs to differ; she thinks the WWF stinks. She and the boy have e-mail arguments about it all the time.

Once the boy has disappeared back into the game of tag and the girls are alone again, there is another interruption, this time from a reporter, Courtney informs her friend.

Do you ever think about going to school?

"Yeah," Courtney says, still pushing the rocks around. The other girl offers that, based on what she has heard about school, she doesn't think she would like it.

Do you want to go to school?

"Yeah," says Courtney again.

Would your mom let you go to school?

"Nope," she says with a laugh.

Why not?

"I don't know."

Why do you want to go to school?

"'Cause I've never been there."

She's curious to learn about something new, just like her mom said she would be. But for all of Furgason's protection of her family's freedoms, in this instance Courtney will not be allowed to pursue her interest.

E-mail Lauren Kern at lauren.kern@houstonpress.com.

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Andrea Martin 09/30/2010 3:00:00 AM

I unschooled my son through age 12.5, when I placed him a public school gifted program so I could undergo medical treatment and hold down a full time job with insurance. Soon after entering school, he earned a 31 out of 36 on his ACT Composite score. That's better than 98% of college bound seniors--at the age of 12. Less than a year later, he earned a 2150 out of 2400 on his SAT, at age 13. Soon after turning 17, he took both the ACT and SAT while recovering from an illness. He earned perfect scores on his SAT and his ACT, as well as a 237 out of 240 on his PSAT at age 16, a perfect 800 out of 800 on his SAT II Math 2 and several perfect AP scores. Now, as a senior, my son is taking all university and AP courses and is legally a homeschooler. Sadly, we are experiencing retaliation from the public school for withdrawing him to homeschool him. He was ill at the time and needed rest to recover and complete his semester as a homeschooler. He had earned a place in the Top 3% of his class last year. Still, the school is averaging in zeros from incomplete assignments due to missed days due to illness and calling those his grades. He didn't even have enough days to get credit under Texas guidelines. The head counselor refused to allow my son to have his National Hispanic Scholar application sent specifically for him, even when the National Hispanic Recognition Program indicated that they should had it over. And, I still haven't gotten any records from the school. Their excuse is illogical. Though he was in the Top 3% officially and featured in the paper as such, the superintendent has claimed that "His grades dropped...we can't let students withdraw to homeschool if they aren't doing well and just make up a grade." She claimed that giving credit with grades based in part on work not completed while absent or withdrawn would prevent students from deceiving colleges by "making up" grades while enrolled in homeschool. This superintendent made this statement after she consulted with the district's attorney and looking at my son's records. She should know that my son was a top performer, even when ill and missing classes. She should know that he is considered one of the most eager students in the school and is well known among his teachers as "energizing" a classroom and bringing a lot of outside knowledge to discussions--knowledge gained as he continued to unschool himself while enrolled in public high school. Further, those arguments are irrelevant. The student transferred to homeschool during the semester without enough attendance days to get credit. He should receive I's for Incomplete, as she initially said. She is now saying that perhaps my eager learner who is being recruited by top national universities as I write this, even with free college visitings, may have just been "bored" instead of sick when he missed days of school. This inventive theory would be irrelevant even if it were true. But, it's the furthest thing from the truth. The truth is that the school resents me withdrawing my son to allow him to recover from an illness and continuing to homeschool him after he completed that semester and began taking several sophomore and junior in college level courses not available at the public high school. Though some of my son's former public school teachers were true gems, wonderful partners in his education, the administration is proving to be political, treating my son as an award-winning commodity. I would point out that my son was instrumental in taking the school's Quiz Bowl team to first and second place standings in the state and then competing in Nationals. It was primarily his knowledge gained by unschooling that allowed him to do this. He was unschooled since birth and continued to unschool himself during his entire time in public school and does so today. When I read shrill criticism of unschooling by those in the educational establishment, it saddens me. In reality, unschooling is simply not clumping kids like fish and making them all do the same thing at the same time like as fish in a school of fish do. It doesn't mean "not educating." While my son had almost no formal education before he was placed in public school, he was very actively educated. No, I didn't spoon feed him anything. I taught him how to educate himself and provided an extremely rich educational environment. I was there for him, with him and for him. He had wonderful, rich exposure to an extremely broad range of people and developed very healthy social skills, far better than many kids in public school have. No one who knows my son or knew him at any time in his life could argue that he was less educated than the average publicly educated child. Just the opposite. He stunned a Nobel laureate in physics when discussing black holes at age eight. At seven, he was reading eight hundred pages a day of things like Tolkien's Trilogy. At five, he was reading at the tenth grade level. As for math, he learned to multiply fractions at age 5 by converting a biscuit recipe in his head to two thirds the original volume. He did not learn these things on his own, but in the right environment and with the right stimuli for him, he thought for himself and developed a confidence in math computations beyond his years--without doing formal math problems and without a detailed, written advance plan. This past summer, my son was one of seventy two in the world who were selected to participate in a rigorous summer science program. He excelled, even in physics, which had been an exceedingly weak course at his former public high school. He excelled at physics because he had studied college physics on his own FOR FUN before taking the high school course which failed at that high school. He is now taking the higher level AP Physics course online. Public school educators, please do your research before you sound off about homeschooling of any sort. You are not experts in homeschooling, you have not been to many homeschooler's homes, if any. You typically have read no independent studies about homeschooling. Homeschoolers, don't take unschooling lightly. Unschooling effectively, in my opinion, can take more effort by far and skill than run of the mill homeschooling with canned materials. The average American home is not well suited to unschooling well because it's centered around television and video games. The average American family does not constantly provide educational opportunities for its children. Remember, unschooling does not mean not educating. It's not a passive, wait and see experiment. It's focused on the individual needs and interests of the children, and, no, the children will not always verbally tell you what their needs are. You have to observe and provide, at the right time, in the right way. The writer of this article implies up front that an unschooled child will end up with few skills. In my personal experience, that is the opposite of the case. Lest anyone think that my child was floundering before he entered public school late in his childhood, remember that his scores were through the roof right away, and he was the only one at the school with those scores. He regularly contributed knowledge to the classroom beyond what the teacher had planned, and the vast majority of teachers loved this. I am delighted to give due credit to the public school where they did contribute, but I will also unashamedly give myself credit for producing not merely an honor student who knows what he is taught in school, but a truly well educated and self-educating young man. I hope that as we attempt to get the school district to follow the guidelines of the state of Texas and the standards the superintendent quoted to me when I met her, my son's senior year will be relieved of the burden of struggling with a school district comprised of educated adults whose motto includes the phrase "We are responsible" and will be free to request an accurate, ethically compiled transcript as he applies to top national universities. Retaliation for homeschooling has no place in public education or education of any kind. As you read this article, please understand that the families who call themselves unschoolers vary widely in their practices and in their results. If I were to have listed the textbooks I used to unschool my son in one year, they would number in the hundreds most years. And, if I were to list the field trips my son went on each year, they would number close to two hundred in some years, and I'm not referring to going to the grocery store, though that can be a valid field trip if education is taking place during the trip. If I were to have listed the educational encounters he had with other people per year, they would number several dozen in meaningful, unique encounters with new people. Community service-check. Real life math problems-check. Great literature-check. Writing-check. Economics-check. Vocabulary-check. Each activity was not designated to cover only one topic. We really made every day count when unschooling. Let's all do that in whatever setting we use. And, let's stop trying to tear down people who do it another way without really walking in their shoes, getting real data on the results, and opening up our closed minds to consider the purpose of education, well beyond the ADA and how many awards we can publicize in the paper. Hopefully, my son's former public school will remember that their taxpayer supported jobs are to promote and support education for the sake of the children and society--not to rack up career trophies by boasting of their wins and tripping up "the competition."

School's Out Forever

"Unschoolers" like Holly Furgason don't believe in public education. They don't even believe in teachers. They believe in the ability of their children to teach themselves. Will the law catch up with them?

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