Jul. 5, 2009 - Re-thinking Unschooling
First of all, lest concerned relatives and friends freak out, this is not a post explaining how we are going to chuck out formal education and "unschool". Josiah wouldn't stand for that, for one thing. And I still have my reservations.
This is a post, however, observing that it can indeed work to "unschool" and exploring how that happens.
Let's start with what unschooling is. Actually, it's kind of hard to define because everybody has a different way of putting it, and unschooling looks different in different families. Unschooling.com has a variety of definitions. What it boils down to usually is a rejection of the "trappings" of formal schooling, a refusal to rely on curriculum, grades, and a formal school schedule, and an emphasis on life-learning and learning that's led by the child's interests. Unschooling is not not-learning. Unschooling requires a great deal of trust: trust in your parenting skills, trust in your child having an innate love of learning, and trust in the "method" (or unmethod, maybe) of unschooling.
I myself have waffled on this kind of homeschooling a lot. When I was first thinking of homeschooling, I was a teenager and unschooling fit right in with my romanticized dreams of homesteading, denim jumpers, and lots of farm animals. There's plenty of life-learning happening on a farm. In my fantasies me and my dozen children would work the farm with my farmer-husband, we'd bake whole grain bread (fractions! math! chemistry!), sew our own clothing, care for the animals (biology! anatomy! vet skills!), and spend our evenings with hours of reading good books by soft lamplight. Yes, go ahead and laugh, that's the life I dreamed of as a teenager. I'd still like the 12 kids and maybe a farmette, but the "learning while living" fantasy has gone mostly by the wayside. Sure, we learn all kinds of stuff during our daily grind, but I lost my confidence that that was enough.
I also married a man who was horrified at the thought of rejecting what he saw as the opportunity to learn, having grown up in a country where free education is non-existant. If you're poor, you don't even have a chance. As bad as some of our schools are, they're at least an opportunity, an open door. He thought homeschooling was just for missionaries in remote areas, but then he encountered American culture and realized we really didn't want our kids immersed in it 8 hours a day. By the time homeschooling became an issue, I had aged a few years and had absolutely no confidence that I could make sure my children were well-educated and well-rounded by just letting them do what they felt like doing and learn when they felt like learning. So we went with a cyber school and the Calvert "boxed curriculum", and Asrat thrived on it.
At the same time though, it became very clear very early on that sitting down for hours and hours during the day was not a viable option either. Asrat like his books and papers and I liked the little checkboxes, but the schedule recommended in the book was way too many hours of sitting. And Asrat could go through an entire lesson in 1 hour. We did double up on lessons and that allowed him to finish Kindergarten and 1st grade in the same year, but I had to come to terms with the idea that 2 hours was about the maximum he could handle and still enjoy learning. So we started shifting away from formal, regimented schooling yet again.
And then along came Gebre. I was anticipating that he would start being interested in school stuff around 4, just like Asrat. But he's 4, and he's not interested at all. He literally runs away from me if I so much as hint that there is an "educational activity" in the works. He has been doing this for a year or so. He hates workbooks (Asrat loved them), does not want to write letters (Asrat begged to learn), and has no interest in a phonics program. If I can get Gebre to sit with me for 5 minutes and look at our phonic/spelling book, I consider that a full day of school. Yet, Gebre has been schooling himself. He's a classic example of a child who learns well on his own, in his own unique way, in his own timing. The kid is teaching himself to read. He knew the "plus ones" (2+1, 4+1, etc) at age 3.5, having figured the concept out himself. He grasped basic phonics naturally and the last month or two has been spelling out words. For a while I thought I needed to make him learn to sit still and listen so he could be educated, but I gave up pretty quickly. The fact is, he's the type of kid who is perfeclty capable of educating himself, at least for kindergarten stuff. He only needs me when he runs into something he can't figure out on his own. I'm not his teacher, I'm his reference book.
Gebre will start formal school in the fall for Kindergarten, but we may spend even less time on bookwork than I did with Asrat. I do believe that learning discipline and the ability to calm down and pay attention are valuable and important life-skills, but I don't think they're essential at age 4. If I can get him to sit down just long enough to fill our cyberschool requirements, I am happy to let this one continue to self-educate for as long as he's driven to do so.
I think as much as anyone, it's me who needs the schedule and the list of things to do, and the workbooks. It validates me as a parent and as a teacher to be able to check off the things we did every day, and to see my children's learning displayed in pencil and paper. I need to know that I'm on the right track. I don't think I will ever give that up. But I also see know that this idea of unschooling very well could work for some familes. With parents who don't need validation and children who have an inward drive to learn on their own, perhaps the homesteading, life-learning stuff of my dreams would work perfectly and turn out marvelously educated children.
I think our family will always float somewhere in the middle though, drawing on both the value of discipline and bookwork and the value of self-directed learning. Hopefully with a little of both we can muddle through and give our children what they need for a complete education.
Comments
Jul. 6, 2009 - Untitled Comment
Posted by carrotqueen
I really am seeing more and more how different things work for different people, and a family's education has to reflect everybody's personality and styles to be most effective. I'm a big fan of Charlotte Mason but realize more and more I don't have the personality to carry off the stricter version of it. So far my kids seem to be learning tons with a very light touch and I am happy to keep it that way for the foreseeable future.
Jul. 9, 2009 - Untitled Comment
Posted by dawilli
I've been working on a very similar post... I haven't even quite wrapped my brain around my thoughts on the issue, but I do know that I like the idea of how unschooling can really work for some real life learning- I've seen it in action with my kids, though I'm still not ready to chuck all the curriculum...
