Here is my essay on the issue of student decision-making. Just to set the record straight: I did not side with John Holt on this one. In my Educational Philosophies class we are required to read two sides of an issue and pick one side to argue for. We were not allowed to straddle the fence or I certainly would have been in pain! I have however always been of two minds about John Holt. I think his work was revolutionary in founding and legalizing the homeschooling movement. I respect him tremendously. However, anytime I have tried to implement his unschoolish strategies, we have floundered miserably. Unschooling in the purest sense does not work for our family. But I do believe in allowing kids much more say than they currently allow in public schools. Unfortunately, the system is set up to disregard learners’ personalities. So I just wanted to make the disclaimer that my arguements were more polarized than I would have personally liked. I encourage you to discuss or respectfully disagree with me. Next up for this page will be my Educational Belief Statement. I’m sure they totally love me and my loud mouth in my education department. 
I can’t get my link to work so do it old school and click the link on the sidebar. Thanks!
Excellent essay! Like you, I am somewhere in the middle. I admire Holt’s philosophy and have gleaned a great deal from it. However, it doesn’t completely fit with the “real world” as I understand it. Compulsory education is needed as a safety net for children. There are a surprising number of parents who really don’t appear to care about their kids’ education and development. I saw this is my profession. I know that sounds harsh, but I’m speaking from my own experience. Also, as parents, we have a responsibility (as you wrote) to help our children attain certain basic skills, and help keep their career options open. On the other hand, the “What Kids Need to Know” model (like the one you discussed by … Adler?) overlooks individual goals, passions, and styles of learning.
And why should a child learn about the elements, then do experiments, then learn about great scientists? (Borrowing your example
) Might a child not be more inspired to experiment and learn about chemistry after reading a few good living books about chemists? That might help offer a *reason* for wanting to learn it. And might he not be more interested in learning about elements *after* doing the experiments? That could make it something more than scraps of information in a textbook. I neither embrace pure, radical unschooling nor the traditional “scope and sequence” approach. It sounds like your thinking is somewhat the same. I look forward to reading more of your posts on educational philosophy.
http://steph-roomofmyown.blogspot.com/
I haven’t had a chance to read your essay yet (though I plan on it), but I wanted to comment on the term ‘unschooling’.
Last year I went to talk by Pat Farenga about John Holt. I was very surprized that his (Holt’s) definition of unschooling was very different than our modern one. What I came away with was the impression that to Holt, unschooling was anything that wasn’t doing brick and motar school. At that time, it was nearly impossible to ‘do school at home’ so everyone had to wing it. Unschooling just meant getting away from a brick and motar existence.
It was later that the term took on it’s modern meaning. (Can’t pull the name of the book, Farenga credited with changing the meaning, out of the depths right now.)