Unschooling – Is It Right for You?
First, I would like to thank Tammy for inviting me to do this guest post. I love telling people about unschooling, and why it works so well for us, but I make it a point to start every conversation with one simple fact-unschooling is not for everyone. Just like traditional homeschool or public school, what will work for some families will not work for others and no system is inherently better than the others. To each their own…it just so happens that unschooling is for us.
Though I talk about unschooling often with family and friends, it can be hard to define. Because of its highly individualized nature there are as many definitions as there are unschooling families, but the basic philosophy is that unschooling is learning lead by the child and facilitated by their parents. We as unschoolers rely on each child’s innate curiosity to guide their learning. We feel that children are unique, natural learners and that they will learn best when they do so according to their own internal time line in the manner that fits their individual needs and learning style.
From a practical standpoint this means that we do not adhere to any particular curriculum, we do not assign our children schoolwork, and we do not test our children. This is where the contention usually comes in from public school advocates, and even from some other homeschoolers.
They ask, “If you don’t have curriculum, what do you teach your children?” The simplest answer is, whatever they want to know. Right now our five year old is learning Mandarin, cartography, environmental science, and biology. Still, regardless of what subjects he is studying, from an unschooler’s point of view the most valuable lesson we teach our children is not any one subject, but rather teaching our children how to learn and instilling in them a life long love for it. As John Holt (the ‘father’ of unschooling) once said, “Since we can’t know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned.”
Next people often ask, “If you don’t assign schoolwork for your children how do they learn?” They learn through natural processes, and facilitated opportunities. Natural processes are just every day occurrences, and each every day occurrence provides an educational opportunity for an unschooler. Learning to measure while cooking dinner, learning about cotton while folding laundry-you can learn a lot from day to day life. Still, unschooling parents are also responsible for facilitating their children’s interests-for instance, for the subjects our son is currently learning mentioned above we bought a giant world map and hung it over our dining room table. We go on nature walks and then use online resources to find the scientific names of the plants we collected and animals we saw. We guide him to medical encyclopedias and other resources that will help him recognize and label the body systems. We found an English to Mandarin audio dictionary so that he can translate any word he wants, and are looking into a Mandarin immersion play group. To put it simply, he leads us to the knowledge he wants, and we show him how to learn it.
Which brings us to “How do you know your kids are learning if you don’t test them?” This is my very favorite question that people ask me, and my response is always the same-How do you know your child has learned how to walk? One day they stand up and they walk over to you. How do you know your child is learning to talk? The day that they say their first word you know they are learning, and you can watch them progress-knowing they are learning, without measuring it or defining it. In this same way our son taught himself how to write. He watched me write, and he looked at all of the alphabet books (resources) that we provided him, and he just picked up a pencil one day and wrote all the letters down. I didn’t have to test him to know that he had learned-I just had to be patient and wait to see the natural results.
Unschooling is not something you can just sit down and do. It is not a drill and test, question and answer, step by step system. It is not a measurable system at all, it is a way of life. Learning and growing as a family, whatever you want to learn, in whatever style suits you, can be very fulfilling. It’s not for everyone, but for those whose families are inclined to learn this way unschooling is a very rewarding lifestyle of learning.
MrsM is the unschooling mom of three children, ages 5, 20 months, and 5 months. She and MrM made the decision to grow their family in the unschooling lifestyle a little more than three years ago and have loved and enjoyed that decision. To read more of her writing about life and motherhood, you can visit her blog I’ve Changed My Name To Mommy.
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Great post. We are also homeschoolers and some days we do worksheets, other days we just learn as we go through the day. My daughter is always asking questions!