What Do You Think of Unschooling?
No classrooms, no curriculum, no textbooks, no tests. Instead, the unschooled child chooses what he or she wants to learn. And for the radical unschooled, this philosophy extends to family life in general. The child decides what he or she wants to do with little to no restrictions – like in “I can eat as many cookies as I want or go to bed when I want.”
Unschooling is not the same as homeschooling. One way to differentiate is the following:
School: Learn by doing what you’re told by your teacher
Homeschool: Learn by doing what you’re told by your mom
Unschool: Learn by doing what you decide you want to learn
Radical unschool: Learn by doing whatever you want
For a view of unschooling in action, here is a link to a short video on unschooling.
There are an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 unschooled children in the U.S. and the number is growing. According to advocates, unschooling encourages exploration of activities led by the children themselves, facilitated by the adults.
“Just picture life without school – so, maybe a weekend. We wake up, and we have breakfast,and we just start pursuing what we’re interested in doing,” said Dayna Martin, mother of four in Madison, N.H. and featured in the above ABC Nightline video. Martin allows her children to decide what they want to learn, and when they want to learn it. “Whatever they’re interested in, I try to bring as much of that into their life as possible with as many resources as possible. Algebra is not something that everybody needs to know. This life is about honoring the fact that we are not all put on the earth to do the same thing in life.”
Legal in every state
Although philosophically different than home schooling because home schooling uses a curriculum, unschooling legally falls under the umbrella of home education so it’s legal in every state, although some regulate it more than others.
In states with the most permissive regulations — many of them in the Midwest, including Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan and Nebraska — the idea of unschooling has flourished in recent years, according to the NYT . Click here to see the home schooling rules in your state.
A fundamental premise of unschooling is that curiosity is innate and children want to learn. Many unschoolers also believe that opportunities for valuable hands-on, community-based, spontaneous, and real-world experiences are missed in schools.
“One criticism I hear over and over is that children won’t be ready for the real world,” said Pat Farenga, author and advocate of unschooling. “That’s ridiculous. We’re saying get them out of the classroom and into the real world. It’s not about isolating them and drilling them.”
No documentation how unschooled fare in college or as adults
There is virtually no data on whether the thousands of unschooled children fare better or worse than regularly schooled students.
Peter Kowalke, 27, was unschooled as a child and went on to earn a degree in journalism with a concentration in math from the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. “You don’t know everything, and there are definite gaps in most unschoolers’ backgrounds, but you cover most of what you need,” he said. “And if you find out that you need something that you haven’t studied, you’ll have much more drive to actually learn it. But it can be tough,” he said.“It’s always harder to forge your own path without someone telling you what to do.”
Observes Mary Kalamaras in a letter to the NYT, “Many unschooled children may very well become deeply disappointed when, as adults, they find that the doors leading to exciting endeavors in disciplines like science, medicine and technology, among others, are forever closed to them. Somehow, tossing precious potential to the winds seems a costly and irresponsible way to provide a freedom-filled childhood.”
Professor Huerta of Columbia warns that “As school choice expands and home-schooling in general grows, this is one of those models that I think the larger public sphere needs to be aware of because the folks who are engaging in these radical forms of school are doing so legally. If the public and policy makers don’t feel that this is a form of schooling that is producing productive citizens, then people should vote to make changes accordingly.”
What do you think?
(Photos: Robbi Baba Flickr, Knitting Iris Flickr)
Posted on 30. Aug, 2010 by Pat in Parenting
6 Responses to “What Do You Think of Unschooling?”
Leave a Reply
I think that Unschooling can sound very radical, scary, even irresponsible – at first glance. But the more you study it (and begin to practice it) the more you realize how effectively it actually WORKS. It’s not what we were taught about “education” or “learning”, but the proof is in the pudding, as they say.
I agree that the video above provides a very narrow representation of what unschooling can look like. My twins are five and we are interest-led learners. My daughter can already read very well. She asked questions and I provided answers. She never had a formal reading lesson, though. My son loves to be read to for a long time, but he has no interest in reading himself, yet. He might not until he’s nine, and that’s ok, too. When he does want to read, it will be a joyful exciting experience because he’ll be ready for it.
The reporter in the above video asked how unschoolers will be interested in Shakespeare, or Twain. For me, as part of an interest-led family, my job is to introduce my kids to the world. Great litereature is part of the world and I will bring those resources into the home. The diference is I will not assign my kids to read a particular work of fiction. Children can also come to appreciate great literature through listening to books read out loud or by watching plays.
The unschooling families I know whose children go on to provide well for themseleves financially and are happy in what they do are those who have sought to open the entire world to their children, to be an active participant in introducing their children as much as they could to what’s out there. As the children grew, parents helped them to prepare to pursue their interests and talents at a professional and expert level.
And for some children that might mean they won’t need as much math as another child. Besides basic arithmetic, percentages, measurements and basic accounting, I don’t use other forms of math.
If children need higher forms of math or have an interest in it and pursue it when they are developmentally ready for it, they will do it with ease and joy. I will provide as many opportunities for my children to play with and enjoy numbers. It will be up to them to decide how far they want to go with it. If they decide they want to go to college, they will do what’s necessary to learn the math they need to get into college. For a dedicated and diligent student, all of K-12 math can be learned within six months.
To learn more about interest-led learning you can read more about it at my website http://www.christinapilkington.com
Does anyone involved with unschooling and home schooling know if there are any studies that exist that compare college entrance and graduation rates among the three groups?
Also, do you know if parents in other countries homeschool or unschool?
I think it’s worth taking into account when discussing school vs no school that the world has changed so radically in the past decade that many people have been left behind with some very old fashioned ideas. Schools are no longer genuine places of learning as they were when I was at school in the 1950s and 60s. In fact, since they turned into teach to the test factories and the real world moved on with the digital revolution, they’ve become the laggards of the education world. I took my son out of school in 2002 because it was taking an hour to teach him what he could learn for himself in five minutes from the internet. And even now kids in school are being expected to rote memorise facts they could look up on Google if they needed to. Crazy waste of a child’s valuable time. And don’t get me started on those multiple choice trivia quizzes.
Meanwhile, I’m getting the best education I’ve ever had in my life. Khan Academy on the iPhone anyone?
Incidentally, my daughter could eat as many cookies as she liked and go to bed when she wanted to even through 13 years of school and she turned out alright. She’s a lawyer.
I must write to address the comments from Mary Kalamaras quoted in your post. Unschooling does not close the doors to any fields! I did not think Dayna Martin’s ABC video presents an accurate description of unschooling, and I wrote about that at http://sgaissert.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/unschooling-and-the-mainstream-media/.
I think unschooling requires very involved, dedicated parents, who observe their children closely and open as many doors as possible for them by facilitating their interests. This leads to a person who chooses a field such as medicine already knowing he has a passion for it and already having had exposure to what it’s about (reading more then school-required amount of related materials, spending much time exploring facets of the field in real-life and on film, through research, through volunteer work, etc.).
Unschoolers do not toss their children’s potential to the wind. They help their children ride a good strong wind, as a kite does, and are there to make sure the kite string doesn’t get tangled around the broken educational system.
I hope anyone reading this will check out the monthly Carnival of Unschooled Life to get an idea about how real unschoolers think about their children and their life choices.
Thank you,
Susan Gaissert
http://sgaissert.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/carnival-of-unschooled-life-october-2010-edition/
If the one example of an unschooler were indicative of the group, it would suggest that the country is wasting billions on unneeded education.
The comment at the end from the columbia professor was spoken like a good socialist. “…If the public and policy makers don’t feel that this is a form of schooling that is producing productive citizens, then people should vote to make changes accordingly.”
If only columbia professors had any understanding of liberty, but that doesn’t fit in their socialist views. I think the public needs to be aware of what goes on in columbia. The public needs to be aware of the radical views that go on their.