In my search for blog ideas, I turned to the forums to ask readers for topic suggestions. Mary Ann Romans asked about unschooling. She says she’s a little worried about unschoolers and how they get educated without an educational plan in place. I have a few answers to that, but first I must confess that we are not unschoolers. One reason is that our state’s laws are prohibitive towards true unschooling. However, I’ve watched a few successful unschooling families and one very unsuccessful unschooling family so I’ll share some of my insights from those experiences.
The Unschooling Philosophy Explored
The Unschooling philosophy says that children learn best when they are allowed to explore freely on their own. They study what interests them and the learning is completely child led. The term was originally coined by John Holt who points out that this self directed learning is the way we learned before going to school and this is the way we learn once we come out.
Unfortunately, thanks to shows like Dr. Phil, unschoolers are often painted as the extremely radical type to let their children run amuck and discover boundaries and rules all on their own. “He will learn not to eat so many lollipops when he gets cavities and they hurt,” is an example of extreme radical unschooling. But not all unschoolers are completely devoid of parenting boundaries as we will see.
Is Unschooling Really that Radical?
I think the idea of letting kids have free reign over their education really bothers people. It goes against the grain of our society. It is interesting to me because really, unschooling is not all that new, and not all that radical as far as philosophies go. It is public education that is the ‘new kid on the block.’
It is also interesting to me how many people forget that their young children were unschooled. I know countless families where kids learned their ABC’s and 123’s all because they inquired to be read to, to be played with and essentially to learn. In fact, didn’t your babies learn how to talk all by the ‘unschooling’ method? Surely no one sat them down and gave them a formal lesson on how to talk–but rather they picked up things through every day interactions and life. Children really are little sponges. It doesn’t make sense that this sponge like quality would magically disappear by age 5 or 6 and then they go to kindergarten for ‘real’ education.
Also, public and private schools frequently use the ‘unschooling’ philosophy under a different name. It often masquerades in the public classroom as a ‘progressive’ education where the kids are allowed free exploration of various subjects. Even a Montesorri program is highly based on the idea of free exploration and hands on interaction with one’s environment.
So most unschooling is really not that different or radical at all. Look for more unschooling answers in my next few blogs!
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