Unschooling?

[jessicaR4bbit]

I wasn't trying to suggest that they don't do any work but from what I gathered unschooling isn't recognized as 'proper' school by the school system (whereas I realize home schooling with structure is).

I've never heard of a university accepting someone without credentials but perhaps that comes down to location.

Well education and more specifically how parents choose to educate their children is completely up to them, and unschooling falls into this category. It's a crap word IMO, but I can see why it is used. I've read a lot of interesting and thought provoking material by John Holt, John Gatto and Grace Llewellyn about how children learn in an unstructured environment. As long as parents previde plenty of opportunities to learn and explore, you don't need to force education upon them - in their curious natures they will seek out learning on their own.

People forget that schools are a voluntary service. But the school of thought (punny) is that going to school is a rite of passage for all children. It has become so ingrained into our culture that we forget children can learn without a rulebook.

 

[bookreader]

Freckleonear and jessicaR4bbit, it's been great to hear your perspectives on this. I honestly don't know many unschoolers or homeschoolers so my experience was admittedly very limited so I can see how I was biased. I can see what you're saying about the problems with standardized education and how a system like that wouldn't work for everyone. I had a horrible time going through public schooling (elementary, middle, and high school -- my one saving grace about the whole thing was that I met my husband in middle school) but I really flourished in university and grad school. (Although I have my own issues with the way these are run, too.)

It's good to know that many unschoolers go on to higher education and are able to get the careers they want without going through standard curriculum.

I agree with this. Although home schooling is something I have thought about, hearing these perspectives encourages me.

 

[SaraEmily]

About the university thing, one disadvantage to homeschooling or unschooling is the inability to get scholarships. Have you seen the cost of tuition for US colleges lately? It's outrageous.

Maybe my daughter would have access to some smaller scholarships, I'm not sure, but the main, big paying scholarships require being in an accredited school. Like in my state we have TOPS. Easy to attain and helps a LOT with the cost of school.

I've considered homeschooling because I feel like public school stomped out my creativity from a young age, but I'm not in the best financial situation at the moment and unless things change significantly and I can save up, she'll need all the scholarships she can get.

 

[summer rain]

In the UK home educated children can get further education college funding and can often go to college from 13-14 years, university as well some home educated children start early including children who were 'unschooled'. There are also some degrees where the first year is a vocational course that you don't really need any prior qualifications to get onto. One of my sister's did a degree like that at a community college but in conjunction with a major university. She did go to school and despite being badly bullied and refusing to attend much of the time still did get some GCSEs but dropped out of her a levels. She got a first in her degree and has a very successful job now.

We are unschoolers though this may change in the future. We are not what they call radical unschoolers though in that we do have a loose routine for mealtimes and bedtimes and the children don't have a free reign over every aspect of their lives. We also do some formal work though at present they choose what that is. We chose this path after a very bad experience being forced into adopting a very highly structured, high work volume method of home educating by the local authority. While legally parents aren't obliged to follow any type of curriculum or formally teach, many local authorities try to give parents the impression that their own guidelines are legally binding. We ended up really backed into a corner and it really put my boys off learning because they felt pressured to produce a certain volume and 'quality' of work that would tick the boxes of the woman at the council. Since she has been off our backs, the kids have been doing more learning than ever though not all of it would be recognisable as learning according to their criteria. They have done a lot more reading than usual this year, and they all finished an entire year on their online maths curriculum two months early.

No curriculum on earth teaches absolutely everything, so it could be argued that for those children who have to stick rigidly to a curriculum, that their learning opportunities could be construed as more limited than those of an unschooled child who literally has the opportunity to learn whatever they want to, whenever they want to. Xx

 

[starshinebby]

I think unschooling is a great idea. Even though my son is still very young, I am preparing myself to start unschooling as soon as we are able to so any discussion on the topic is always a learning experience.

Honestly, unschooling seems so natural to me and was how I was taught by my grandfather before I went into Kindergarten, and I hadn't even realized this until I learned of unschooling! He watches the educational channels (Discovery, Discovery Health, History, Animal Planet, Science, etc.) and I used to sit and watch with him and ask all kinds of questions about what we were watching. When he saw I was really interested in a certian subject, we'd go to the library, do experiments, and go to museums to learn more about it. It was all very hands on and I loved it. He taught me about art, how to draw, paint, and photography. We even developed the pictures I took in a home-made dark room and he taught me how the process worked. He encouraged my creativity and that allowed me to explore all sorts of different things that school wouldn't have even covered. He also taught me to read with hooked on phonics (anyone remember that? lol) and by the time I was in second grade I was reading Harry Potter sized books like it was nothing.

I did alright in elementary school, until I got to fourth grade (it was a mixed fourth/fifth grade class) where the teacher saw I could easily do fifth grade work and taught me and one other kid from the fifth grade curriculum. When I got to fifth grade I had literally already done all the work and saw no point in doing it again. It was then that my school work suffered but my high test scores allowed me to move on to the next grade. It wasn't until I was in high school that I found out that my fourth grade teacher had suggested to my mother that I skip the fifth grade and she decided against it saying I needed to be with my friends. I was beyond pissed that she hadn't even told me that it was recommended that I skip the fifth grade.

My schooling never took off again after that. I passed with average grades and above average test scores, but did most of my learning on my own time and still with the help of my grandfather. I graduate high school, took two years off, and am now studying to be a medical assistant.

Based on both mine and my fiance's shooling experience (he had a similar experience though nothing ever caught his attention and was just one of the average statistics in the public education system) we plan to homeschool/unschool. I loved the way my grandfather encouraged my creativity and my natural curiosity and I want that for my son. I want to teach him how he wants to be taught and expose him to all sorts of subjects and broaden his view on the world.

I feel that some times the public schooling system does more harm than good. I can remember a specific incident in my first week at Kindergarten when a group of girls made fun of me for the way I tied my shoes. That was my first experience of being made fun of for something that was superficial, and it left a lasting impression on me. School also introduced me to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and the like. And since I was so bored of school by that time (highschool) I took to it with the rest of my peers. Again, something I do not want for my son.

I feel I can provide a better more hands on education that is tailored to him than the public education system. And I am not at all worried about having him "properly socialized." There are plenty of aunts, uncles, and cousins that are around his age and even more on the way. And as long as you interact with your child and expose them to social situations there is no reason that they'd be un-socialized.

 

[steph.]

Starshine I think regardless of whether you homeschool or not its important for a child to have his own friends outside the family. I think if a child has good friends it helps his self-esteem and also exposes him to social situations which he wouldnt encounter otherwise. All kids will be made fun of at some point but if they have a good support network of friends/family and a good self-esteem it doesnt impact them as much.

Also he will get exposed to drugs/alcohol/cigarettes eventually. If not at school, then when he goes to uni. Its just a part of growing up. My high-school boyfriend delt pot to his school friends and smoked cigarettes and yet I have never tried any drugs or smoked a cigarette in my life thanks to the upbringing my parents gave me.

 

[Natsku]

Definitely friends outside of the family is important, children need to choose their own friends (which you can't with family!)

 

[Dragonfly]

You can get qualifications at the local tech here. many of my friends who failed in school went and done them there and passed. I could do them now if I wanted to and I left school a long time ago. My friend left school and failed everything, went to the tech, got lots of qualifications and has a been offered a place in uni. Home school can do the same if they want exams.

 

[Midnight_Fairy]

Right now I can understand this. School has damaged my son. Hopefully he will be going to a sn provison centre for secondary which is hobbies rather tha curriculum .

 

[starshinebby]

I'm not saying that family would be his only friends. There are other ways besides school where he can make friends. I'm sure when the time comes I can find a group of homeschool/unschooled families and set up activities for our kids. I'm sure he'll want to get involved with sports and other activities as well so there's always that.

And I realize that my son will be exposed to those things regardless, but I do think the public education system played a huge role in exposing kids to those things at younger and younger ages.

And bullying has become huge these past few years. It's something I don't want to expose my son to at such a young age. I want to make sure he has good self-esteem and know how to handle those types of situations before throwing him into them.

I know my home life played a big part in how I was at school, so I know my son will have a different experience. I'm hoping to unschool him for his preschool/kindergarten school years and then maybe try to find a Waldorf school to enroll him in. We will probably move before he's old enough to be enrolled, so I haven't looked into any of them in my area, but I do know there are quite a few here.

 

[bubbles123]

It depends on the child I think. Some do well at home, some at school. My brother was home schooled from 12 due to bullying and it changed him so much for the better. My parents followed a syllabus and he went to the local college at 14 part time to do his exams and went onto uni. I have another friend though who unschooled and it didn't work at all - he asked to go to school and loves it. I have sent my son to pre school and he loves it so I will send him to school but I always have an open mind and would take him out if he was truely misserable. Our education secretary here in the UK is trying to push through a new curriculum based on exams and rote learning that fills me with horror. If that goes through I think whilst I have reservations about unschooling it is preferable to being forced to memorise classic literature for no reason.

 

[freckleonear]

Came across this article today which is interesting and relevant: https://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jun/15/schools-teaching-curriculum-education-google.

 

[Natsku]

Thanks for the link, thats interesting and makes a lot of sense

 

[babyhopes2010]

I wouldnt!

i understand a parents logic behind it.

BUT here its about qualifications ect......... unschooling may make them feel different to others and make it impossible to compete for a job in the workplace.
i want my child not to be sheltered i want her to socially interact. learn different boundaries in society.

 

[Jaylynne]

Well, sometimes it depends more on the parents than it does the kids. In the case of wife swap, unschooling-the first I heard of it- made my jaw drop! I couldn't believe the laziness of the parents thinking they're doing this radical organic approach to teaching their children but in reality were just using unschooling as a way to not have to do the work of homeschooling. Letting kids run wild isn't the point of it. I could never homeschool. I wouldn't want to. And I have to work anyway. I went to a very private school from kindergarten even through my college years so I want something different for my kids. I want them to be able to have more options than I had.

Sure traditional schooling has flaws. So does homeschooling. One of my friends (and siblings) growing up was homeschooled from 4th-7th grade. Bad move. Her mom was definitely not the smartest person. When my friend went back to public school, she tested almost two grades behind. Her brother tested a year and a half behind. What a waste.

As long as you engage with your kid and they're making great improvements, I don't see the problem with unschooling. Just make sure they know how to do things they may not enjoy.


Oh and P.S. teach your kids how to balance a freakin checkbook..

 

[Lara310809]

I personally think parents that home-school are a bit crazy. My reasons for this are because I don't believe anyone has a thorough enough knowledge to be able to teach everything their children need to know. At school we had one teacher for each subject. An art teacher isn't qualified to teach maths, and a maths teacher isn't qualified to teach English. To be qualified to the standard you would need in order to match a school, you'd need to study for years and pass all those degrees and get all the qualifications the teachers have, and then stay on top of the curriculum. I just don't think it's possible. I also think its important for a child to be able to socialise with others their age, and to spend time with other adults in a different surrounding.

So the notion of teaching your kids what they want to learn, I'm obviously against. Kids don't have any idea how important their schooling is until they've finished it and get into the workplace. So why would a child volunteer themselves to spend hours on maths when they would prefer to paint a picture or watch a DVD? I just don't think it's practical, and I don't think it's fair to make that decision for your child before they know what's good for them. You can set them up for failure in life.

 

[freckleonear]

Lara, you are making several incorrect assumptions about home education. Firstly, you are assuming that what is taught in schools is "everything a child needs to know". There has been a lot written by some very well known and respected educational experts over the past few years about how the school curriculum is completely outdated. The idea that there is a fixed selection of facts which all children must leave school knowing is ridiculous. I also believe that parents are better placed than the government to know what life skills their individual child will need.

Secondly, you are assuming that children must be taught in order to learn, but humanist and cognitivist learning theory actually shows that children and adults alike learn best when they are self-motivated. Teachers are necessary in a school environment where there is a class of thirty children to manage (although there are some excellent examples of student-led schools), but children are naturally programmed to learn. In a stimulating environment, our children learn so much in the first five years of their life without being actively taught. They learn to crawl, walk, talk, identify colours and shapes, count, take care of their own bodies, recognise letters and numbers, draw pictures, prepare their own snacks, use computers and mobile phones, etc. In many ways, unschooling is simply an extension of that. Children don't magically stop learning simply because they reach school age. I was home educated and sat my A levels without any teaching input from others whatsoever. However, many unschooled children seek out more knowledgeable others if there is something they are unable to learn on their own, which brings me to me third point.

You are also assuming that home education relies on the knowledge of the parents alone. Most home educators have a strong support network of family, friends and members of their local home-ed groups, which allows them to pool their skills and organise many diverse learning experiences. For example, this week my children attended a workshop on invertebrates run by a zoologist. They learn French and music with my mum, who has a degree in languages and is a music teacher. When I was home educated, I took chemistry lessons (because I wanted to) with a chemist from my local church. There are many opportunities to learn from experts outside of school.

I just want to go back to your example of a child volunteering to do maths, because I think it touches on something important. As adults, how many of us left school hating maths or thinking we were useless at it? But how many of our young children dislike counting or using maths skills in real life application, such as working out how many knives and forks are needed to set the dinner table? My 5 year old loves practical problems that involve addition, subtraction, multiplication or division! Somewhere between starting and leaving school, a huge percentage of people end up disliking maths. Maybe it is perceived as a very academic subject, maybe teaching styles lead to bad associations, maybe people just don't see how quadratic equations are useful in everyday life. But my point is that home educated children don't have many of these negative associations, so maths doesn't become something they try to avoid. My son talks about maths problems every day without even realising it and will voluntarily choose maths activities from his shelf. To him it isn't any different to painting a picture because I've never taught him that one is valued and the other isn't, or that one is fun and the other isn't.

 

[Lara310809]

You're right; I did make assumptions, and looking back, I'm the first to admit that. What I meant by "everything a child needs to know" I meant in order to sit and pass their exams. I realise that the lessons you learn at school are only a tiny fraction of what you need to know for life, and I realise that those other lessons are learned at home, and through exposure to society and other situations.

I also agree that several parts of the curriculum is outdated, or unnecessary. I for one will probably never need to know about trigonometry, or loci, which my maths teacher insisted on teaching me, but someone in the world WILL need to know it, and therefore it's worth teaching, in my opinion. I agree that a parent knows their child better than any school, but I do t believe a parent should take the child away from a well-rounded education p, to home school them and teach them things that only THEY deem important. We can all raise our kids to be as we wish them to be. I'd be over the moon if my kids turned out to be doctors, so lets throw them into double biology, but what if they want to be carpenters? They will then be over-educated in one field, and under-educated in the one that matters TO THEM. How can I teach them to build a chair if I don't know the skill myself? I just think its very irresponsible to assume you know enough to teach your child adequately, when a school is set up with that specific function in mind, and they have sought experts in those subjects to teach those skills properly.

And of course self-motivation is important, and I encourage that, but it's a teachers job to engage their students and to make them interested in that subject. I am an atheist to the core, yet my religion teacher in school was one of the best teachers I've ever had, and she made the course so interesting with her teaching methods, that even someone as cynical as me enjoyed being a part of it. Of you're a good enough teacher you can make even the most disinterested student flourish. Also I don't believe for one second that a seven year old, for example, will choose to learn about something they're not interested in, when given the choice between that and something they find to be better; when given the choice, it's human nature to go for the thing that interests us more, but other subjects need to be taught too. Your son may pick out maths stuff from the shelf, and that's fantastic that he does, but he may dislike something different; simply because it doesn't interest him. If you were to put them side by side and offer him the choice, he's much more likely to pick the thing he likes than spend time on something he doesn't

I have to admit that I wasn't aware people had a support network like that; every case I've seen, a support network has not been mentioned, and it has never been implied that such a thing exists. I'm glad there is such a thing, because like you say it allows you to pool your information and skills to provide a more well-rounded foundation for the children.

Having said all of this, I wouldn't feel comfortable removing my child from an education that I know to be successful. I believe the teachers are picked because of their qualifications, their thorough knowledge and because they know how to teach children, and that's more than I know. I'm not a stupid person by any means, but I'm well aware my children wouldn't receive as good an education from home-schooling; in terms of what I could offer them. Perhaps I could, but I'm not willing to risk it and risk jeopardising my kids' futures. Good on those that are willing to risk it, I'm just not one of those

 

[Lara310809]

Oh and P.S. teach your kids how to balance a freakin checkbook..

i don't know how to balance a cheque book; should I know? I don't even know what it means to be honest (and I'm not stupid). No bank I have ever banked with has given me a cheque book, and cheques are no longer accepted in stores where I live, so for me there was never a need to know. Just wondering, that's all.

 

[CMarie]

Unschooling and homeschooling in general is something my DH and I are considering for our LO, but at his age (he's 2 today!), it's really hard to tell what type of schooling he'd do better in. I would never be opposed to teaching him myself through a curriculum, practicing unschooling, or sending him to public school if that's what we felt like was best for him. Every child is so different and their needs in terms of how they learn are different so I never understood the parents who say homeschooling (or unschooling) is bad . . you don't know the way every single child learns.

Btw, thanks freckleonear for all the awesome info!