You don't legally have to go to school.

hi I'm Dave from boyinaband and you don't legally have to go to school I'll set the scene of my discovery I was faffing around on the internet to distract from the emotional trauma of losing my fifth game of overwatch in a row when I found myself looking at my human rights I was scrolling through to see which one the UN might consider replacing with the right to have at least one teammate who doesn't run off alone and died until I looked at number 26 the right to an education particularly the third part of it parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children and I was like kind of education what are the kinds of education are there so I googled it and finally everything clicked how many kinds are there lots there are lots of other kinds of education that are not the sit down shut up learn what we tell you school that we were stuck with statistically I couldn't believe I didn't think about it sooner it was like that moment at aged 8 when you pause min bossfight and were like actually yeah if he traveled to billions of houses all over the planet within one nights and his flesh would melt off his face from the air resistance the flesh melt or is it more of a burning I was a weird child but that realization hit like a ton of bricks heavy bricks and this is specified in several countries laws to do mean England section 7 of the 96 Education Act says I should get efficient full-time education either by regular attendance at school or otherwise under the or otherwise phrase in the law you can legally go for alternatives and not get thrown in jail under compulsory attendance laws before my home slices across the pond in the USA most states have their own law for what defines alternative education for instance this one in Maryland mayor Davis pronounced Maryland thanks generic American Eagle no problem a it's like you have to go to school unless you're receiving regular thorough instruction during the school year in the studies usually taught to public schools to children of the same age and that regular thorough instruction doesn't have to be conventional school and here's one from the state of Minnesota that looks really convincing because I made it from stringing together random words from this word cloud I found of the Declaration of Independence people State Fairs absolute laws rag government colonies among independent powers where it is justice hold on what are those alternatives well there are a few which fall into different spots on a continuum with varying degrees of freedom there's some a second Eric American Eagle but I don't need your help cause you do have some capitalism one that's capitalism firstly there's probably the most popular one homeschooling my parents choose what to teach sometimes around a pre-approved curriculum and from what I saw it doesn't often cause you to have social problems or as a lot of people searching phrased it make you weird but even further along the continuum of freedom is unscrewing no curriculum no assignments and no testing instead unschooling just lets you follow your own interests and learn as you do so if you love gaming you'll learn to read from playing role-playing games if you love sports you'll learn maths through looking at statistics of the teams you support if you love metal music then when I found out about this my brain was like yeah this sounds freaking awesome but I was like I don't know man would you actually be able to make a living doing that well since homeschoolers on average outperformed their counterparts in the public schools by over thirty percent I'll points in all subjects yes a considerably better one but the problem is not every parent can homeschool some parents have full-time work so they'd find it hard and some parents are dead so they'd find it really hard so it was like if those aren't scalable is there a school version of unschooling then I found something that maybe proper o underscore own after asking on Facebook for some help with researching alternatives someone messaged me saying they went to a Sudbury school it turns out there's quite a few of these Sudbury schools and they are very very different to what I remember there's no testing no homework no set times for lessons no syllabus and the part which properly made my jaw drop all the students and staff are part of a democracy where everyone has an equal vote in decisions in other words a five year old student has the same power in the school as a staff member I was like whoa I got to know more about this so I asked this girl if we could Skype the first thing I wanted to know is what's it like like coming from a conventional school how is that transition usually if you've been in public schools for a while it takes you two years to figure out that your time is really your own and that you can learn whatever you want you spend a couple days weeks doing nothing but reading books and watching TV until there's there's this moment we call it bored is good whenever you're bored that's when it really hits you what you want to do it's all self directed appalled idea just fascinated me so it was literally nothing mandatory there are things that are mandatory you are required to sign-in and sign-out every day because there are state requirements that you have to be at school for a certain amount of time and you're required to do a chore each day and you can choose to opt out of a chore by paying a certain amount of money wait what like real money a really nice thing in my mind is that there's a free market so students can bring in popsicles and sell them to the other students which is I use popsicles in the sample because that was a very successful business that circles well the student would buy those bulk kind of popsicle stick things that you freeze and he would sell them for 25 cents and here's a lot of money at 7 years old and so before he did that he had to put the motion into school meeting so they had to go that week and then he had to go the next week because all motions received two readings so that is also learning management skills planning skills paperwork skills so in a Sudbury school this seven year old gets experience in applying for permission to do business and being an entrepreneur if the same seven year old tried that at my school that have been given detention and learned that being an entrepreneur gets them punished now at this point my brain was like hang on this sounds a bit utopian I remember one of my bullies at school he'd have been even more of a douchebag look that had no system in place to control him so I showed my brain this article about Ian's mikado high school a school in the East End of London for boys who've been deemed unteachable the most difficult boys in Britain invites a teacher these are kids who have serious behavioural problems some of which are among the most troubled in the country and all of which have been expelled from previous mainstream schools and how do they control these kids well they don't we don't have rules we don't physically restrain we want the boys to learn self-control before they adopted the no punishment policy all of the students from this school ended up in prison guess what percent ended up in prison afterwards 0% none of the students have gone into custody in seven years in fact 97% of the students have gone on to further education employment or training so how the hell do they do that there's an insane percent of people to take out of prison and into the workforce well instead of trying to force them to come to lessons and work like a normal school they're given responsibility over their own actions giving the kids that responsibility and freedom helped literally some of the most difficult kids in the country open up and take steps to being financially independent so there are alternative schools that can benefit even the most aggressive people by being less controlling but then I had the thought about these Sudbury schools are expensive private schools it probably costs their parents to send their kids there and it was right the annual fees for day pupils are around four to nine thousand pounds but then I had the thought well how much does the government spend on each pupils education in normal schools so I lost three more games and I looked it up around four to nine thousand pounds the average across England is around four and a half thousand and it's around that for other countries too I found this study saying these countries on average spend just over nine thousand dollars per student so unless I've missed something which is entirely possible a non-expert I am just a wrapper desire if these government's wanted to they could choose to implement an alternative system and they wouldn't be paying any more than they currently are so are there any schools like that which the government does fund without just having to organise a massive campaign to change the system come on man that sounds like a kinder there are charter schools schools that receive government funding but don't have the same system as conventional schools I was having a really hard time trying to pin down what exactly they do differently until I found this video when I heard some parents talking about charter schools I was all ears one woman says I've heard charter schools are fantastic but they're impossible to get into and then another one says no way don't you read the paper they're all fronts for stealing government money and then this dad chimes in oh come on supposedly they have really high test scores but they're insanely stripped ugh I needed to find out for myself I'm gonna say ugh ugh I needed to find out for myself hey voice actress lady I I think you mean ugh you're a caveman and all the other hunters in the tribe was saying they were bison nearby but okay I needed to find out for myself what are you talking about Oh charter schools it can be everything from your child working at the computer at home to a big brick-and-mortar school where the kids wear uniforms and somewhere they even go to school on Saturdays and everything in between everything in between what does they even mean there's like the least specific piece of crap I made this video wasn't gonna tell me what they were ugh I needed to find out for myself there are lots of other totally different types of charter schools with varying degrees of freedom like AG lady mentioned there was an online version of Normal School which turned out to be significantly worse than a regular school for students maths and reading scores there are specialist schools like ones that focus mainly on teaching music or something and there are Montessori schools dammit heard of that where did I hear that oh yeah Kanye Kanye West but let me clarify one thing I'm the king of Education for rap Kanye step off monisha will apart from celebrity endorsements Montessori schools have a few distinctive aspects to them there's mixed Aged classrooms instead of being told what lesson to do students can choose what to do from a list of options you're allowed to move around the classroom as much as you want to me it comes across as kind of a halfway point between the complete freedom of Sudbury schools and the strictly structured Sanders schools strictly structured standard schools strictly structured standard schools strictly structured standard schools yes so some of these systems some freaking awesome but the skeptical part of my brain started to wonder if they actually had evidence saying how they were compared to normal schools because parents don't only send their kids to school because they think it's the law unless they suck so why do parents send their kids to school that conversation might go something like daddy why do I have to go to school to get in a good University right to get a good degree why it gets a good job Christ Billy could you just let me read the paper and go play call of duty like a normal seven-year-old not another word do I hear some head shots yeah that's it no son of mine will be a bloody failure good degree good job parents want to insure their kids are financially secure so are people more financially secure in conventional schools or alternative schools well that's difficult to measure for Sudbury schools since all the ones I could find our private schools which messes up the data a bit people with parents who are rich enough and thoughtful enough to send them there will probably make more money anyway however I did find some really interesting stuff for charter schools ugh now this study was done on hundreds of schools so it looked pretty solid and it said charter school attendance increased annual earnings by over two thousand dollars twelve point seven percent higher than for comparable students who attended a traditional high school but yeah and over two thousand dollar increase that's like how much in English money a bank but are these people becoming useful things like doctors and engineers or is this just where all the arty people come from like the former Sudbury school students who designed some of the coolest album covers ever called Storm Thorgerson wait is that his real name holy crap it is his parents took a look at their adorable baby boy and thought oh he looks like a storm Thorgerson Jesus Christ are you serious he gets Storm Thorgerson sounded like a North superhero and I'm stuck here with David Brown sounding like a tractor well it turns out a high percentage of graduates do go into arts so hopefully we'll get more of this but also a higher percentage to go into computing maths education social services and healthcare so from the looks of things conventional schools mean you'll make less money and society will have fewer doctors and scientists so now the conversation might go so you can learn things but I don't need to know much do those things for most jobs bloody hell it's not about the specific topics it's about teaching you how to learn boy did some saw just kill you what do you call people who kill you son I have to it seems pretty homophobic yes you bloody well have to grab the headset fantastic point but do normal schools teach you to learn better than alternative schools well do you remember that thing that teachers used to say that some people are visual learners some people are auditory and some are kinesthetic so some people learn concepts better when showing through pictures others do it better hearing it explained and the rest have to make something to get it a bunch of crap not true at all ninety-three percent of teachers think it's true multiple studies have proved it isn't also lecturing used in schools all over the place is a lot less effective than active learning like taking part in something which teaches you rather than just listening to it in one study it increased the exam results by six percent just by changing that even the students who got a hundred percent went up to a hundred and six percent that's unbelievable I'm lying so at this point I think it's reasonable to ask the question if schools don't know how people learn then how the hell can you trust them to teach you how to learn so let's take a look at alternative schools remember when Bill Gates made stupid amounts of money some of that money was put into a study to find out how flexible learning environments compared to traditionally structured classrooms they made gains in maths and reading over the last two years that are significantly greater than a comparison group from regular schools alternative schools often give kids responsibility over their own learning normal school teaches you that you will be told what to learn that's not how adults learn things at work at all in real life you have to take initiative to find out how to do things better instead of waiting for the answer well you don't have to but you also don't have to wash your hands after using the toilet but don't be gross do it you it's kind of like that quote we asked 18 year olds to make huge decisions about their career and financial future when a month ago they had to ask to go to the bathroom and some of them don't even watch the hands you Adam Cosco so now the conversation might go have to go to school you can learn things but yeah Jim Cotts go see let's go sounds like a bloody Russian to me don't listen to him daddy Isis yes why aren't you no aah of expected as much from a bloody Welsh half-breed hate your mother who breath to the point why did you do to be an upstanding citizen boy learn to be a decent member of society this is another really important one learning stuff like democracy laws and how to take informed in responsible action to improve society well as I said quite emphatically before I was never taught what laws there are I was never right calm down emo a lot of people are not being taught these things and for those lucky few who are it's being taught to them in a conventional classroom with no practical application so to be fair how could you teach the justice system in a practical way set up a judicial system run by children yes our judicial system is run by students the head of the judicial system is a student and it's a position that I held for a while we do have fights we do have bullying and the consequence will totally depend on how the students come to the JC and how they handle the aftermath of the fights that's incredible but what about when things get serious we do have suspensions and expulsions and the way that works at the schools that I have seen and attended that goes to school meeting and everyone in the school has a chance to vote yea or nay to suspend or expel the students the kids decide who is expelled so explosions are not all that common but we had a student who was continuously coming to school on drugs he was breaking rules well he was on drugs I mean all the expulsion meetings are gut-wrenching and long I mean these are people that we have confident we care a lot about you know he was a nice guy he was friendly he had friends at the school after about a four five hour long meeting in which you had students ages eight or nine through 18 who sat there for that entire time at the end of that meeting we did vote to expel him and everyone was crying you know teachers students crying I can remember when a kid got expelled from my school and we were just like lull one less idiot drugged each have more respect for me we're in difficult economic circumstances it couldn't be more different in the Sudbury school this kid had the whole school caring about him and it hurt them to have to make the choice they did who's gonna more prepared to take part in society the kid who's felt firsthand how their vote contributes to the future of other people or the kid who can recite for key words that will pass in the exam you'll forget about the answers to in a month's time so at this point we wrap yes okay I get it well it did you see social skills what person ever became successful without knowing how to be considerate of his fellow man apart from the Fuhrer no no one precisely well at current loneliness levels are rising worldwide which might indicate social skills are not being taught very effectively but let's think about it a current school teaches you to be afraid of people higher in the hierarchy than you they have more power than you so you can't challenge them in a Sudbury school kids grow up equal to adults so they're much more comfortable sharing ideas with them I found a paper where someone analyzed the Sudbury School specifically looking to see whether it affected social intelligence and found it was noticeably higher a big part of the confidence comes from what Sudbury schools call their secret weapon age mixing sorry Kim it's not a deadly secret weapon Putin really it's not deadly it's just a metaphor it's pronounced Putin soccer blue so blue schools believe there are huge advantages to allowing different ages to mix and the paper also mentioned that these social skills combined with the aforementioned responsibility to be part of a justice system means students are mature enough to stop bullying of their own accord super important considering when it comes to normal schooling bullying is more common in schools than out of schools intentionally or not the current school system is literally improving students antisocial skills and perhaps one of the most understated but important things we expect of school is we want students to be happy so does normal school do this better than alternative school well after googling school makes me want to probably not from the looks of things you're less likely to hear a conversation like Billy how was school today I'm a caring father now yeah it's great dad yeah I had so much fun you learned all kinds of useful face that sounds bloody marvelous then you want to hear yeah Billy how was school today I told Google I want to die compared to that this one questionnaire of Sudbury school students blew my mind when a group of graduates were asked are you glad you attended a Sudbury school rather than a more traditional school 56 responded yes very 11 said yes moderately two emitted the question and none responded no so there's a lot of reasons why the current system isn't good for getting jobs being a citizen being socially skilled or even being happy but even with that data it's got to be difficult for parents to make that kind of choice with so much social pressure to stick to the normal system I couldn't help but wonder how do those parents actually make that decision to send their kids to an alternative school so I asked the girl from earlier and she put me in touch with her parents I wasn't certain it was a great place to be I wasn't sure how it was gonna work for her we ended up was called proctoring one of the college entrance exams and she agreed that she would take the exam every year so she took the exam when she was an 8th grader and did well enough that she could have gone to the local community college so for me that was part of that relaxing and knowing that it didn't really matter after we'd been she'd been at circle school for a year with absolutely no formal classes she took that same test and did scored three points higher I was like 20 points or something so it was a significant difference with absolutely no formal classes the other circle school staff were pretty clear with me that that was a coercive thing to be doing to my child you know that's not trusting her to manage her own education and she didn't take the test again until she was ready to start going to college so what about the other parents at the school a fairly common one is adjusting to not getting report cards so as a parent what you know about what's happening at school is what your child shares with you and that's pretty different it's like what I know about my neighbor is filtered through what they tell me about themselves you know I don't I don't go to their boss and say how does my neighbor doing it it's just part of being a respectful member of society I've tried to keep this video fun so it's easier to get through but when it comes to what to do about all this I'm just not sure it's incredibly difficult and frustrating there are some people who will just be stuck because they can't afford it or because there aren't any alternative schools nearby and that sucks but for those other students if their parents are willing to listen and treat them with respect even when their school does not they might be able to join a system where they're happier and better prepared for real life it's ridiculous that there aren't more studies done on this it was so hard to find the little data I could for this video but my strongest feelings were explained really well but that girl's dad do happen to be a teacher who ended up changing jobs to work at the Sudbury school I was teaching physics so I had kids the or 17 or 18 years old but because it's a mass-produced system they had to get my written permission to go to the bathroom where else in adult society does that happen the only place I can think of is prison there's a profound underlying disrespect parent in that system and it's not the fault of the teachers it's not the fault of the administrators it's not the fault of any particular person or group in the system it's the system itself the way the institution was set up is profoundly disrespectful to children and they don't learn very well in that system I felt that disrespect and I saw it in my my students behavior at least the ones who were most awakened aware more scary was the incredibly intelligent well-adjusted students who didn't even notice that they were being disrespected I just can't believe how many people are forced into a system that's possibly damaging their employability health and happiness look how many people commenting on this video had no idea there were alternatives legally available so if you want to help all I can suggest right now is to talk to people about it if school won't teach them there are other choices you can instead choose for watching and have a nice day

Channel: Boyinaband

Views: 4,084,733

Rating: 4.8406515 out of 5

Keywords: don't stay in school, boyinaband, alternative school, homeschool, home school, unschooling, ken robinson, hackschooling, law, legal, truancy, democratic school, education, creativity, ted, Sudbury school

Id: FR0_sZtCfJ0

Length: 20min 59sec (1259 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 23 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/RhynoD]

I had written about the other limitations (normativization and socialization, etc.) as I was watching the video, but then he responded pretty well to all of those concerns. To be honest, I'm a little taken aback by how wonderfully researched Dave has been. Awesome! I'm actually very intrigued, as this research seems to be showing these alternative schools a lot more effective than I was previously aware of. I think there's still a lot of room for caution and criticism. As Dave pointed out, the data is so hard to analyze because there are a lot of variables that you simply cannot control for. In this video, for example, it's worth pointing out that this girl was already qualified to attend a community college! Is her success due to the alternative school, or due to the fact that she's clearly an intelligent, highly motivated person?

So I don't have a lot to offer there. What I do have to offer is my experience in education training. Dave mentions in this video that teachers still believe that there are different learning methods. To make it abundantly clear, not only was I taught the different learning methods, I was required to write lesson plans specifically addressing multiple learning methods in a single day to accommodate as many as possible throughout the curriculum. If you think that's ridiculous, it's even worse because my professors openly admitted that learning styles were a myth. We were told, directly, that learning styles did not exist and then we were expected to teach as if they did. Along with that is the typical "left brain right brain" model, that people who use their right brains are "more creative" and left brains were "more rational." Also a load of crap, also taught to us, and also something our professors knew was false. When I questioned this, my professor responded: "It's a convenient model". No, that's not how that works! It's not a convenient model if the model is wrong.

The foundational text for all of the literary education theory we learned was published in 1938. This was considered "updated" and "revolutionary". The instruction we were given to build our lessons and teach our students relied on psychology that was decades out of date. So when you criticize teachers for using bad teaching methods, keep in mind that they were taught bad teaching methods. And while I'm definitely crotchety, I'm not yet old: I graduated in 2010. This all happened pretty recently.

I also want to say that charter schools are absolutely not the answer. It's possible for them to be a part of the answer, but like homeschooling they are not a silver bullet. Education, at least in the United States, is more broken than you think it is. It's incredibly disheartening, because every time you think you've come to a complete understanding of the problems, it turns out that, nope, there's even more wrong with it, more problems. Many of those problems are vicious cycles: students in low-income houses are statistically less likely to receive support from their parents, because their parents don't have time or weren't educated enough themselves to help. Those kids do poorly in school, and are statistically more likely to drop out. They typically get lower-paying jobs, which means they have to work several jobs, which means they can't support their children in school. Those areas also have less tax money to give to schools, so they perform poorly, so the areas around them make less money, so there's less tax money to give to the schools... How do you solve these problems? There's no beginning to them, no cause that you can fix that isn't already caused by something else you have to fix.

It's a bit depressing. Sorry to be a wet blanket, guys!

If you like what I have to say and would like to subscribe to my newsletter, consider reading through the posts I did a year ago about education here in the boyinaband sub.

[u/TrebbleBiscuit]

I'm always amazed by Dave's ability to communicate information effectively while still managing to be absolutely hilarious.

[u/SolarPolarMan]

I go to school online (in the UK). It's a private, charity based but most of the students, including me, are funded to go by the government.