When it comes right down to it, we can all assign whatever new meanings to standard words that we like, after we use that standard word in an incorrect way. No need. Nearly the entirety of the world's greatest minds have not been formed by unschooling. The statement is perfectly accurate and stands. Anecdotal evidence is just fine for direct reports of failure-- some of them made on this very forum-- unless you are prepared to call the reporters liars, without any motive to lie but a motive against (no one wants to admit they made a bad choice and wasted educational time for their child, sometimes for years). Anecdotal evidence is not acceptable for success for two reasons: 1) re-reports are not direct reports-- this is the "everyone has a rich/famous/expert uncle" problem; and 2) a few bona fide reports of success don't mean the technique is successful in general. A means of education should give a reasonable likelihood of success before it's chosen. I'm glad you're not advocating unschooling, just trying to explain it a bit. That's not how you're coming off, though.

You mean "her lawyer's comments". They're referred to as alleged facts because they're unproven facts. That there are alleged facts taken from court documents doesn't mean anything-- her complaint is likely chock-full of unproven facts, and I'm sure that the lawyers, er, editors of that Murtha Law news website didn't ignore the fertile ground of their own pleadings in putting together that page about their own case.

Of course. Even if MSNBC or some other source reports it, it's still suspect to a certain degree, just not such a huge degree. And if Fox reports a fact, and it's uncorroborated and/or contradicted by a more neutral and well-respected journalistic source, I tend to be skeptical as well.

Did you read any of those articles on a well-respected source of news? If so, can you provide a link?

This is an example of skewed, false reporting, even though it's attempting to set the record straight. A motion for a default judgment (or a summary judgment) is not a judgment; it's a motion, a request for something. You can see the effect of such misreporting in this thread; you get a lot of conspiracy-theorist type of websites re-repeating things to each other, and it's a glorified game of telephone. In this case, it seems that a certain segment of the public has simply decided to accept the version of events popularized by the woman's lawyers. This is why we have courts, to hopefully sift the truth from the garbage.

You're now apparently not discussing play, but "play". Thank you for admitting that higher learning does not generally occur by playing in an unstructured way. As an adult, when I undertake a study of a subject, I don't delude myself by thinking I am playing, or "playing" for that matter. No 16 year old studying quadratic equations really fools himself into thinking he is "playing" either. Reports of unschooling failures show that it's a mistake to simply believe that children will tend to know how to obtain strong foundations on their own, or view the end result of mathematical prowess based on a strong foundation as a highly motivating goal. There are many problems with unschooling, but here are some big ones: * Children do not naturally tend to become well-rounded; they have different interests and will focus on areas of interest to the exclusion of areas of less interest * It's a happy fantasy that a child can build a strong foundation in a trice later in life; anecdotes of the faithful are not data. There is no way to become a strong writer in short order in college, after neglecting writing skills up to that point; ditto for math. * Children enjoy doing things of little to no academic value, such as playing video games and eating junk food-- there's no way to cultivate a good work ethic while frittering away one's time * If it ain't broke, don't fix it; almost the entirety of the world's greatest minds have been educated just fine without unschooling. There's no need for unschooling. * ... but unschooling itself is broke, as shown by the many reports of failure, despite the lack of statistics

It's secular.

I think it's a bit silly to suppose that a strong math foundation, for example, will be gained through play alone. Throughout history most of the world's great minds have been cultivated through quite directed teaching; there's no indication that that doesn't work, while there are indications that trusting in children to lay the correct academic foundations through trial and error, through natural inclination, doesn't work well. When's the last time a child learned to work quadratic equations through play? :bigear: Stating vaguely or generally that children learn through play doesn't mean that they learn all things, or all things well, through self-directed play.

That seems to be a copyright violation.

That's interesting. Here's some relevant info on the SB5: http://www.assess.nelson.com/pdf/sb5-asb3.pdf On pp. 7-8 are some rough equivalencies reported by Dr. Ruf for the SB5 and SB L-M.

Someone at the lower end will be at the lower end, whatever that is for the particular program. I've seen some people worry that their children will feel a bit put out about being at the low end of the spectrum in a gifted program, but I have never seen that as much of a worry myself. I think it's more likely that a gifted child will come alive around other gifted children, and it's not like they will be walking around with scores printed on their foreheads. As long as you think she can probably handle the work, let her go with a glad heart. In your daughter's case in that pool of gifted children, she will probably be comfortably in the upper range of IQ scores, at least, if not the highest (of course giftedness <> IQ score), so there's nothing to worry about there. An IQ score of 180 would be expected to occur in less than one in 20 million people, and 200 in less than one in 76 billion, so your daughter will probably not meet such people in her classroom. If she does, their unique qualities will probably inspire her, not demotivate her in the slightest.

We tested our older son, and it cost $1000. It seemed useful in getting access to school services, acceleration, etc. but in the end those measures haven't helped as much as we'd hoped anyway, and we are pretty much forced to homeschool next year. The testing got us access to a private services organization too, but that also hasn't been very helpful to us so far. I wish we had that $1000 back to spend on education, museum trips, etc.

Hi, ycoetzee. There is indeed a big difference. Here is a chart showing the relative rarities of scores on modern IQ tests, for standard deviations of 15 and 16: http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQtable.aspx The distribution of IQ scores in the general population tends to follow a bell curve. That means that when you slice off the rightmost part ("tail"), for instance by a cutoff score for entry to a gifted program, most of the scores will tend to be toward the lower end-- regardless of the cutoff. Hence in your case, assuming that the local population of school-age children has roughly normally distributed IQ scores, and that all children eligible for the gifted program enter the program, there should be more children near 130 than 150. Thus your child will probably not be the least intelligent, generally speaking, and unfortunately stands a much greater chance of being ill-served by the program and sticking out like a sore thumb, since the program will probably be organized to serve the more normal gifted children well. In the old days, on a ratio IQ test such as the SB-LM, a score of 150 would translate to a lower numerical score on a more modern test. Is that the source of your confusion?

I used to have parent angst over such stuff, but I am feeling much better now that it's all passed away. I realized that it's a trap for everyone that only results in poor feelings for parents, and an inappropriate focus on developing children (or at least a suboptimal reason for helping them to develop, to put it more kindly). I know why it happens: more smarts are better, more achievement is better, more opportunities are always better. I just wish everyone could realize that a goal of being better than everyone else inevitably leads to bad feelings-- one will realize that one's child has "failed", or as a side effect of the focus, leading to comparisons etc., will wind up making another parent feel bad. None of this happened, or at least not to such a degree, before the days of IQ and achievement tests. People back then had their own particular failings, but not this one so much.

We've used their materials and have a high opinion of them. With such a wide variety available, if you want opinions on specific books you should ask about them. Off the top of my head, books of theirs that I like include the "Building Thinking Skills" and "Mind Benders" series, but there are many others.

Hi, again, OP. This old thread may help provide additional perspectives: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=263016 I'd hesitate before using applying a hit-or-miss ideology to my own children. A good education is too important to leave to chance, based on the idea that people naturally, coincidentally seek out and develop in themselves the skills to be successful in college, or will magically develop a strong academic foundation in a very short time when they feel like it later. Anecdotes exist about such things happening to other unschoolers' children, repeated by the faithful, but then again there are all the reports of failure, plus common sense to deal with. (And yes, I will not feel like I did right by my children if they don't at least have the ability to go to competitive schools at age 18; I would love them as garbagepeople, but still feel like I'd failed them.) The strangest thing to me about unschooling is that it attempts to solve a non-existent problem. There is no problem with schooling per se; there are only problems with poor schooling. It's the worst case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater that I've ever seen. Almost the entirety of the world's greatest minds have been the products of teaching that would not fit the definition of unschooling. All that's needed to fix unschooling is a bit of common sense. Allow the child to have a huge hand in her own learning, sure, but don't intentionally give up the responsibility for guiding your child when she needs guidance.

I believe it is indeed based on fantasy. One can't just extrapolate from some ideas from neurology and psychology, form a teaching ideology, and call it well-supported without any actual proof that it works well. What's missing there is the actual teaching that works-- anyone can read scientific studies and form ideas. Where are the statistics to show that unschooling actually works? I see scads of failure stories, with the occasional success anecdote repeated as well, but no solid support. I don't think that all the people reporting failures here and elsewhere are lying. The persistent reports of failures make perfect sense. True unschooling may work for a very occasional child, but not the vast majority.

In my experience, self-proclaimed unschoolers are all over the map. The more practical ones practice what I'd call relaxed homeschooling, or interest-led homeschooling. Radical unschooling is based on a happy fantasy that children will tend to turn themselves into well-rounded adults, instead of focusing on their major interests and neglecting areas of less interest (and/or neglecting areas where they experience more difficulty due to learning disabilities). I think radical unschooling is a fine idea on paper, which many people try only to abandon it years later after it turns out not to work. Interest-led learning, with guidance from the teacher/parent, is a fine and practical idea.

It sounds like he may be disliking math a bit because of the experiences he's had up to now. If so, that causes a problem because you need him to learn math, but he doesn't want to in the short term. This is separate from any sort of general testing non-compliance. If it is just testing non-compliance, you should be able to resolve it pretty simply by impressing on him that while you know he doesn't like these sorts of placement tests much, you need him to do his best because that's the only way to find the right level for him. If he throws the test, the consequence will be work that's way too easy and boring for him.

There's no set age.

I wouldn't choose this particular program for a beginning in computer programming. Also, and I hope this doesn't sound snobbish, but I don't consider Visual Basic to be the greatest first programming language either. Its usefulness in the real world tends to be as a tool for business-oriented software developers that aren't very technically minded-- I consider it to be a dead language language except as an ongoing crutch for such people. As such the courses which teach Visual Basic to newbies are often going to contain things which appeal to students because of the apparent ease of getting things done ("Wow! I can push a button and make a window? I didn't realize programming was so simple!") without actually laying a strong computer science or programming foundation. And sometimes it's apparent that these sorts of courses use Visual Basic because it's the main language the insructor/developer knows.

We joined a Mensa mailing list some time ago, but found it worthless. It seemed to be empty of useful content, and IIRC there seemed to be some low-key bragging/one-upsmanship going on, even by parents of children fairly low on the scale of giftedness. It wasn't for us.

Barring some sort of website with auto-compare features, I don't know of a better way than just browsing and shopping around. I noticed that the Dell V525w and V725w seem to support it, though I don't have any recent experience with Dell printers. HP's PhotoSmart and Officejet Pro lines support it, but apparently not the Envy and Officejet (non-Pro). It seems to be a well-supported option now, unlike in the past when one would sometimes have to buy a clunky add-on and it was prone to error. I also love autoduplexing. I love lasers too, and I think the Brothers I've used have been excellent, with a couple of minor quirks (envelope printing can be finicky and require special setup, and scanning large numbers of pages to the same document is not the best due to the scanner software that's packaged with the machines, but of course I don't have experience with their entire product line). If I were the OP I would look into a new printer sooner or later, and probably give extra weight to lasers unless she specifically needs color or photo-quality printing. ETA: There are laser all-in-ones that have autoduplexing, like the MFC-8480DN (I've actually used that one and it is fairly nice, though not the cheapest).

Great post. I will read replies with interest.

Yep, I think you were very helpful. I just don't want the OP to only consider laser printers, if she buys a new one, based on the idea that only lasers can do automatic duplex printing.