I go over what unschooling is and how you can start that path today!
Pick up Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom
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to help you understand unschooling practices even better and also get
Healing The Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families
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Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships
https://amzn.to/3BAJuxR
Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting
https://amzn.to/3t5HL17
to help you become an effective communicator with your children.
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What is Unschooling?
Unschooling is an educational practice of helping children foster their natural interests and skills through self-direction with adults acting as facilitators instead of judges.
Unschooling is rooted in the ethos that young people are already curious about the world and wish to learn through exploration and play.
Unlike compulsory schooling, that is, school where young people are forced to a one-size-fits-all progression like with public school, unschooling does not have a forced regimen of topics.
Rather, children brought up in an unschooling environment are free to choose their learning within other healthy boundaries set by parents.
Adults act as facilitators for unschooling by being a resource for questions and opportunities.
This can take place in a variety of contexts, from homeschooling, to decentralized learning cooperatives, to formal self-directed learning centers.
With homeschooling, parents can offer children learning tools and experiences, from offering books, to playing games, to suggesting field trips to places such as at aquariums, zoos, museums, and sporting events.
In this way, a parent actively seeks to show children what is possible and helps them learn through engagement in the real world.
When children can choose what they wish to engage with, they are much more likely to practice fundamental skills because the skills are tied to something they are interested in.
For example, if a child wishes to play a game that involves counting, a parent can help a child understand arithmetic fundamentals through play.
Parents can also help their children learn to read and write by reading with children and practicing penmanship with them while playing games or reading.
Whatever it is, when parents act as enthusiastic helpers, children respond with their natural curiosity and learn deeply because the learning is tied to their interests.
And, because the learning is not being graded on a running record, children do not feel so ashamed when they make mistakes.
In compulsory schooling, grades are put onto children to label and stigmatize them for sorting, from sorting by grade level to sorting by honors admissions.
This practice leads to young people feeling ashamed of themselves, especially so, because grades are forced onto them regardless of what’s going on in their lives and their developmental ability to conform to the dictates of state bureaucrats.
Unschooling upends that incessant fear-based labelling and, instead, substitutes in learning without labels so that children can feel comfortable about making mistakes without the stigmatization.
If this topic is new to you, you might have some reflexive questions popping up in your mind already, like,
“But how will kids stay motivated?”
“But how will they get into college?”
“But how can they show knowledge if learning has no concrete curriculum?”
These questions often come up because the compulsory schooling paradigm has gotten so many to believe that learning only takes place in a classroom even though people are aware that they continue to learn new things even after they leave high school and college.
If you want to get a sense of how unschooling takes place in practice, take a look at the example of a real, longstanding self-directed learning center: the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Since 1968, students there ranging in ages from 4 to 19 have enjoyed educational freedom on a beautiful campus that includes a kitchen, music room, arts and crafts room, and outdoor space.
Just like anyone going to a regular public school, the students graduate to a variety of endeavors, from working a job right after graduation to attending top-tier colleges and universities.
These kids can do so because they take on apprenticeships, create portfolios, and study for entrance exams at the point they are interested in developing their knowledge for a certain end, whether it’s for a job or for college.
As you can see, self-directed learning does not mean that there are never any textbooks, formal classes, or boundaries.
Rather, it means that a child has the choice to use a textbook as desired, a choice to enroll in a formal class if desired, and the responsibility of respecting other’s property rights boundaries in their learning.
Exiting the compulsory schooling paradigm is one of the most difficult psychological practices because of how long the programming lasts for.
It’s hard to imagine what life could be like otherwise when someone has just spent 13 years in compulsory schooling, possibly followed with another 4 or 5 in a college that in many ways mirrored public school.
If you want to learn more about unschooling and effective practices, I highly recommend you get the book Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom by Kerry McDonald.
A link to this book is in the video description.
Reading Unschooled will help you understand the practices in-depth and show you how children can be successful outside of the compulsory schooling paradigm.
You can also check out The Honest Teacher page for more questions and answers on self-directed learning practices.
Let’s create a future where young people feel supported in their learning and valued in their autonomy.
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