That pretty much describes my senior year of high school Going to school is no defense against pop tarts.

The reason for learning, practicing, or studying anything in an unschooling approach is always that the learner has determined that doing so is important and meaningful to him. I can think of no other valid reason to learn anything, and I don’t see why this approach would lead to moral (or any sort of) relativism. In fact, as Lance suggested through his discussion of spelling, I think this sort of learning discourages one from simply following the expectations of others and instead encourages him to ground his learning in the very real, objective values served by that learning. Unschoolers will never learn to spell just to do well on a test, only because they have some real-life goal served by accurate spelling.

Spunky fears that unschooled children may conclude: “If I think it’s important than it must be important. If you think it’s important and I don’t then it isn’t important.” I fear that schooled kids too often default to determining something is important *only* because somebody else (a teacher, parent, coach) tells them it is and (of course) because it will be on the test. But things aren’t important because *anyone* thinks they are… or because they’re on a test. They’re important because they’re of value to one’s life, and knowing this requires a very abstract and objective view of reality and one’s own nature. It’s this foundation that I want my kids to have.

And Gem, so what if your kids never *do* want to learn geography or calculus? Seriously, think about it. What if? How bad would it be? You joke about sentence diagrams (something I never learned in my public or private schooling, BTW), but are you saying that you could pass an AP Calculus exam if given one right now? How important is higher math to your success and happiness? I suspect that unless you’re an engineer, physicist, math teacher, etc., it’s largely purposeless. If you’re not sure, your current ability to recall the higher math you were once taught should reveal just how meaningful it is in your life.

All this talk about “missing something” honestly baffles me. There are countless subjects never even considered in public school curricula or included on any list of “what your X-grader needs to know”, but nobody seems concerned about “missing” those. I suspect the reason is rooted in our own culture of schooling. Having been schooled ourselves, I think many of us have already forgotten the real reason why learning is a virtue. Infants and toddlers seem to understand this intuitively. After all, it’s obvious — you learn things so that you can DO stuff… take action in the world; create, produce, and thrive; find purpose and success; and experience joy. But somewhere during childhood, many of us seem to lose sight of this obvious truth. And so we look to others’ (largely arbitrary) curricula and lists to determine what we need to know, rather than looking to our own lives, goals, and needs to determine that for ourselves.

One need not develop a personal theory on the importance of spelling to come to an answer. The “untested” speller will only encounter spelling in the context of other disciplines, and will judge the importance of spelling to the degree it serves those purposes. The “tested” speller’s evaluation will also include the significance of proper spelling to the grades they receive on spelling tests. Whatever purpose spelling serves, it is _not_ to do well on spelling tests. If it were, one could justify the study of _anything_ simply by compelling the testing of it (”Why are you testing me on the state capitals?” “Because knowing them is important.” “Why is it important to know them?” “Because they’re on this test I’m giving you.”). Factoring in spelling’s effect on isolated tests skews one’s evaluation toward the arbitrary.

However, there’s one additional consideration. I thought about this some time ago when someone, a very bright, admirable, and engaging person I should add, confessed some confusion as to what orbited what with respect to the earth, moon, and sun. Now my first reaction was to laugh, wondering how on earth someone so smart could be confused on such a basic issue in cosmology. But I quickly reconsidered. This person was not an astronomer, nor was she particularly interested in Kepler’s laws of motion or Newton’s mechanics, or the science of tides or meteorology, so why would I expect her to know about the relative orbits of these celestial bodies? I had only one answer. Familiarity with basic astronomy is a _marker_ of an education.

Of all markers of education, spelling is perhaps the biggest. My two previous managers at work were atrocious spellers (with even worse grammar). Only spellchecking technology allowed them to avoid appearing as total fools in written communication. So here we have another candidate for the true importance of spelling: to not seem dumb. And in fact, many people _will_ judge others by their spelling. And they are wrong to do so, as wrong as I was to judge my friend by her lack of basic astronomical knowledge.

These two previous bosses of mine were no fools. Their oral communication skills were excellent, and their limited spelling skills still allowed them to communicate adequately in written media, thanks to readily available technologies to correct most of their mistakes. And most importantly, spelling was not a key component to the primary pursuit of their lives’ work. (My new boss is a fine speller. And I have formed a company with those other two previous bosses and am working my way out of my current employment situation. )

One thing I will eventually like to teach my children is that they are likely to be evaluated unfairly based on their knowledge or lack of knowledge on a few arbitrary topics that have happened to been chosen for inclusion in most schools’ standard curricula. I will also teach them that learning arbitrary skills for no other purpose than to impress others is a waste of time in the long run. And of course, I’ll teach them that people of character will not let their opinion of them be wholly constituted by first impressions, and that people of lesser character, those to whom impression is more important than substance, are best avoided anyway.

Spunky – I’ve been pondering your comment. Moral relativism deals with right and wrong. If a person is passionate about something, then it *is* important to them and if they don’t care about it, it’s *not* important to them. We learn very naturally that some people enjoy some things and others don’t. I don’t think a child would grow up “dismissing” everything in life that is not “important” to them and labeling those things as “wrong.” Drawing a parallel to moral relativism seems like a bit of a stretch.

The problem with learning just for “delight” and that being the only end, is that you end up with moral relativism. If I think it’s important than it must be important. If you think it’s important and I don’t then it isn’t important. Neither is completely true. As parents we are facilitators part of our job isn’t just to teach spelling, but to help the child understand its importance in the life.