I recently joined a few homeschooler and alternative education forums, and there’s a term getting thrown around that I was not too familiar with known as “unschooling.” So, naturally, I decided to investigate.
Luckily, homeschool/unschool consultant and advocate Jenni Mahnaz explained it to me. “Unschooling is a trust-based educational model that relies on trust in the child/learner to be naturally curious and to guide their own learning,” she says. “It’s the way humans learn naturally, and always have.”
Essentially, kids are taken out of the traditional classroom environment and instead learn from being out in the world. It sounds like a dream come true for any child — and I’m sure the majority of working adults would love it too! (That’s probably why I left corporate America to become a freelancer, but this is not about me. Back to our kids!)
Mom Lindsey explains, “It’s homeschooling for the crunchy crowd. It’s child-led and no curriculum. Less structure than homeschooling.”
I’m not stereotypically crunchy, but some things about unschooling are appealing. I would like my 4-year-old to learn from his own interests and — call me crazy — lead his own life, instead of always being told what to do and learn. I think this is how he will figure out who he is and the person he wants to be over time. Why should he wait until the age of 35 like I did?
At the same time, we let our child play hooky from his preschool today because he didn’t feel like going this morning. He then had a tantrum when I tried to get him to put on his clothes and get into a car to go food shopping. I’m not sure I could handle all this self-directed living every day.
When I complained to Mahnaz about our morning, she said, “Sometimes I let my kids dictate when and how they leave the house. Why not? I do it for myself all the time. When I can/need to, I offer the same to them. When I can’t, I empathize and do my best to offer an alternative focus.”
Mom Christina allows for self-directed learning in her house and at a self-directed learning center. “I don’t like the term unschooling, but I suppose that’s what we’re doing,” she says. “I don’t see any reason to rush into a curriculum. Evidence suggests that starting math or reading earlier doesn’t yield lasting advantages. And teaching concepts before developmentally appropriate for an individual may lead to lifelong loathing/avoidance of a subject, like those that say ‘I’m not a reader’ or ‘I’m bad at math.’ They may not have been allowed to approach reading and math on their own terms in a way that worked for them.”
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She continues, “The things I want my young people to learn most are creative problem solving, collaboration and compassion. The latter two, I believe, are nurtured by time spent with a variety of people for prolonged periods facilitated by experts in respectful communication. That’s why we chose a self-directed learning center two days a week.”
When talking about this idea with one mom friend she was concerned her child would choose to just watch TV and play video games all day if he could. I’m sure mine would too, especially after our TV detox!
Unsurprisingly, this is a big concern when it comes to unschooling. Mahnaz says, “Every family handles this differently. Radical unschoolers would say, ‘So what? If learning happens all the time then learning happens while video games are played. If we restrict it, it will just become more of an obsession.’ Less radical unschoolers might say, ‘Let’s compromise in a way that feels good to all of us.'”
Mahnaz explains that unschooling is about a partnership with the child(ren) so there is no one size fits all answer on this. “The key, however, is the mindset in which the challenge is approached. Unschoolers would not generally say, ‘Turn it off because I said so,’ because that’s not partnership, that’s control.”
Agile Learning Centers, if you can find one near you, allow kids to direct their own education, but might offer more of a compromise for parents who don’t want their children to learn entirely at home.
Development Psychologist Peter Gray is a leader in the unschooling field, and I’ve been enjoying his book, “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life.”
He writes,”Children are biologically predisposed to take charge of their own education. When they are provided with the freedom and means to pursue their own interests, in safe settings, they bloom and develop along diverse and unpredictable paths, and they acquire the skills and confidence required to meet life’s challenges.”
He goes on, “There is no need for forced lessons, lectures, assignments, tests, grades, segregation by age into classrooms or any of the other trappings of our standard, compulsory system of schooling. All of these, in fact, interfere with children’s natural way of learning.”
Unschooling might be the hippie version of homeschooling, where we allow our kids to lead their own learning. It might seem outrageous to some parents, but it’s something that seems natural to me and something I will explore.