Just Enough and Nothing More

Where Education and Parenting Collide

Wife Swap and Unschooling

8 February 2009 8 Comments

One of our local unschoolers had her 15 (or more) minutes of fame this last week when her family was featured on Wife Swap. (Anyone got a link to the episode?)

I haven’t seen the show, but I have read a lot of the conversation about it. I am not going to try analyze whether Heather did a good job portraying unschooling, but I do have a few observations about the responses I’ve seen on the internet, and the experiences I have had with my family on TV.

1) When you know the person being shown on TV, it gives you a completely different attitude towards them. I find it fascinating that the discussion by people who know Heather is very supportive and reassuring. These people saw in between the edits, and understood that it was only a small slice of Heather’s family life. While the discussions by people who do not know her revealed how much they felt she was a “bad example” of an unschooler, or that the dads had problems. In essence, they were highly critical of everything. That makes me wonder…is watching TV, especially reality TV, a way for us to entertain ourselves by judging people we don’t know?

2) Heather wrote an in-depth post about her experience on the show. One of the things she said was how hard it was to capture on film the random conversations and impromptu learning that happens every day. This reminded me of the time my family was on CNN. In the two hours that the camera man and interviewer were here, the children and I had many, many impromptu moments of learning, but CNN only showed the “posed” activities. Academics is a “posed” activity, and easy to capture. That’s why it’s so integral in schools, because it’s easy to see and measure.

When we were on CNN, I realized that there was no way we could be “natural” and get our point across. Unschooling can be portrayed on TV, but it’ll be tricky. It’ll take a family who is willing to play the game, and “pose” unschooling situations for the benefit of the camera.

This might seem counter-intuitive to the unschooling philosophy. But I’m going to say that “posing” in this case is very appropriate, and useful, and therefore is definitely an unschooling activity.

It boils down to this - to portray unschooling favorably on TV, especially on a heavily controversial and edited show - we need an unschooling family who will go outside the box of unschooling in order to paint unschooling in a way that makes sense on screen.

3) It may actually be impossible, however, to show unschooling on Wife Swap, simply because it takes time to get into a rhythm in unschooling. It doesn’t happen overnight. Also, unschooling is very difficult for those who are not deschooled yet, and it will be met with resistance and “boredom”. One of the kids on the show was quoted as being bored because nothing was on the schedule. This kid was not ready, or willing, to change. She was a teen with a very school-oriented life. It would take a long, long time for her to adjust. That can’t be explained or exemplified on Wife Swap.

4) Heather is very brave. I was shocked, and impressed, to see her email announcing she was on the show. That will be an experience they will never forget, and an experience very few people will understand.

5) There are LOTS of homeschoolers on Wife Swap! Did you notice that?

8 Comments »

Ms. M said:

Thank you so much for trackbacking this post to my own blog. As you state here I did mention in my post feeling a little disappointed with the way unschooling was portrayed on the show and did base my opinions on what was actually shown. As a teacher I value learning over schooling, and in truth I am a supporter of unschooling and because of this spoke more critically than may have been warranted. Having read Heather’s blog post about her children and the show, that you posted, I now more clearly recognize the difficulties of presenting unschooling on television, especially when final editing is done by individuals unfamiliar with the process. Reality shows such as wife swap do try to dramatize situations and therefore I should have been more critical in my post of the show itself rather than the parents involved.

Ms. M’s last blog post: School/Unschool

# 9 February 2009 at 6:22 am

Jill Lee said:

I think the point of Wife Swap is really about how problematic both families are in every episode. We really DO get the fun from judging the families. I just read the post by Heather and, sounds like a completely different family! It would be extremely difficult to portray natural learning on TV, as that would inevitably negate some of the nature of it, but say the show was about informing people about what unschooling was. There would be consideration of the time it takes to get into the rhythm of the things, and how not everything comes out picture-perfect in unschooling as opposed to schooling. But since the mission was to put the two families at war for the sake of entertainment of the viewer, we get this…
I caught myself cringing and thinking why Heather or Lee was doing what they were doing, why the children seemed so uninterested about learning, … But I also noticed that Nicholas was almost never shown on the show except in the beginning of the show with the striking dance.
I also get the feeling that being in front of the camera might have influenced Kerry on how harsh or frustrated she acted in front of Lee or the children–to show that SHE knew what the right thing was and these people didn’t.
Watching TV gets too tricky sometimes…

Jill Lee’s last blog post: 16

# 9 February 2009 at 8:48 am

Rachel said:

I was confused when they asked about teaching calculus, etc and she said that her son doesn’t need calculus because he’s not interested?

So if he’s not interesting in spelling, reading, or potty training does that mean a child doesn’t need it?

I’m not trying to be rude.

What if he wanted to be a doctor? His chances are pretty much shot, you know?

I’m just curious! THANKS!

# 9 February 2009 at 9:43 am

Unschooling family on Wife Swap « ingen liv said:

[...] Wife Swap and Unschooling [...]

# 9 February 2009 at 11:12 am

Heather Martinson said:

Thanks Tammy!

I think you got a lot right here.

Lee mentioned to me that if we had done the editing, we would look terrific, but it would be a three-hour show! Nobody would watch that.

But imagine WHAT IF they did portray unschooling in a good light? Wouldn’t -that- be controversial? Shake the foundations of people’s beliefs. What would that be like? Hmmm…

-Heather

# 9 February 2009 at 2:04 pm

Tom said:

In answer to Rachel’s question about calculus…

I did not have any calculus in high school. In fact I didn’t have trigonometry either and I still went to college and became an engineer. Many of the students in my trig. and calculus classes had taken these in high school but still had to take it in college because it is not the same for anyone who is studying the sciences. I was not home schooled and did not have the opportunity to take calculus in high school even if I wanted to and it did not stop me from doing what I wanted.

-Tom

# 11 February 2009 at 6:31 am

Bonnie said:

I don’t know too much about unschooling. I do however homeschool,and am really annoyed with the way it is portrayed on the show. My first grade is at grade level in reading and ahead in math. My K is doing 1st grade math. They never seem to show kids that are ahead of their public school peers.

# 15 October 2009 at 1:40 pm

soultravelers3 said:

Wife swap is about ratings and purposely looks to create controversy and entertainment ( like most media and certainly “reality” shows). I haven’t seen the show ( we almost never watch any TV) but I’m not surprised there was controversy. I think they pick unschoolers and homeschoolers because it is still the minority view and is guaranteed to bring out the snark.

We’re eclectic unschoolers traveling the world and I don’t think anyone can truly understand our life unless they live the same identical one. I think that holds true of anyone. Media ( even blogs) can not truly capture reality, one has to live it and even people living almost identical lives in the same family have very different perspectives of reality.

Opinions are like noses I think, and everyone has one. If one puts oneself out there from TV to blogs, people are going to form their own opinions right or wrong.

Thanks for a great discussion with links to the differing views and showing how far apart those who know here and those who don’t are.

# 2 August 2010 at 6:39 am