Geraldo on unschooling

My wife and I turned to Fox TV tonight to watch Pat Farenga. As we mentioned earlier today we had heard that Pat would be on Geraldo At Large. Geraldo opened by reporting on the recent tragedy in the Amish community. There was some back ground about the Amish. The focus was on how the Amish would react to the killings.

We haven't watched Geraldo before. He seems to do quick coverage of popular news. The next section was on two men fighting over who was the father of Anna Nichole Smith's baby. Then there was a brief report about how some students prompted the reexamination of the death of Janet Chandler.

Finally Geraldo got to the good stuff: unschooling! The show had a brief title of "unschooling = unbelievable" which worried us a bit. But I think they did an OK job of talking about the basic premise of unschooling. Pat Farenga came on a couple times to talk about how unschooling works. Most of the focus was on a mother who was unschooling her six year old daughter. Pat was the expert. When asked how parents teach subjects that the parents don't know, Pat explained that the parents become a general contractor, and hire experts to teach particular subjects.

Geraldo did give some bad advice at the end. The question was what should parents do who are interested in homeschooling, and the answer was to check with the parent's State Department of Education. Any Department of Education is the last place I’d go for advice and information. One of Geraldo’s reporters said that you always have to register. This is not true. Different states have different laws.

All in all I thought it was decent. Other than the title the show was pretty neutral, maybe a bit positive about unschooling. It was about six to seven minutes long. Pat Farenga was on maybe a total of a minute. The show did make the point that time is better spent learning in unschooling, versus public schools, because the children are more engaged.

I’ve left a message thanking Geraldo.


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