http://news.yahoo.com/schools-forever-unschoolers-181940011.htmlSchool's out forever for 'unschoolers'
By LEANNE ITALIE
Associated Press
August 29, 2011
School's never out for 14-year-old Zoe Bentley. Nor is it ever in.
The perky teen from Tucson, Ariz., explores what she likes, when she likes as deeply as she chooses every day of the year. As an "unschooler," Zoe is untethered from the demands of traditional, compulsory education.
That means, at the moment, she's checking out the redwoods of California with her family, tinkering with her website and looking forward to making her next video on her favorite subject, exogeology, the study of geology on other planets.
"I love seeing the history of an area," Zoe said. "Maybe a volcano erupted and grew taller over time, or wind eroded rock into sand dunes, or a meteor hit the ground and made a crater. Finding out how these and other formations formed is something I just really like."
Zoe's cheer: "Exogeology rocks!"
Unschooling has been around for several decades, but advocates say there has been an uptick as more families turn to home-schooling overall.
Reliable data is hard to come by, but estimates of children and teens home-schooled in the U.S. range from 1.5 million to 2 million. Of those, as many as one-third could be considered unschoolers like Zoe, meaning their parents are "facilitators," available with materials and other resources, rather than topdown "teachers."
There's no fixed curriculum, course schedule or attempt to mimic traditional classrooms. Unless, of course, their children ask for those things.
Zoe, for instance, wanted to know more about geology once she turned 12, so she signed up for a class at Pima Community College. "I had to take a placement test, which was the first test I'd ever taken," she said. "It was surprisingly easy."
She has since taken several other college classes, including astrobiology, algebra and chemistry. Maybe, Zoe said, "I'll earn a degree, but the important thing to me is to learn what I need to and want to know. Everything else is a bonus."
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Zoe is probably gifted and is certainly inquisitive, so unschooling may serve her well.
I would be reluctant to fully "unschool" my children, because they might not explore certain subjects on their own, creating gaps in their education. But if one homeschooled for 2-3 hours a day, that would leave plenty of time for exploration.
