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http://news.yahoo.com/schools-forever-unschoolers-181940011.html
School'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.

We use a lot of unschooling techniques, a lot of 'strewing' goes on here! Strewing is when you leave out books/websites/whatever on topics you think will interest them.

I have found it works quite well for us most of the time, but the problem I have is that my son is so young that he often wants to learn more, but he doesn't have the experience to know how exactly what he wants to learn about, to even know it exists. So we use curriculum, but in quite an unschooly way.

It actually seems like harder work for me than sticking a workbook in front of him would be!

Geomamma, just curious...

why would it be bad to give him a workbook if he wants to do work? the material is presented in an organized and sequential way. if he likes what he does, he can easily turn the page and do what comes next in a pretty intuitive way.

I suppose we "strew" since pretty much everything in the house is something that would be interesting, appropriate, educational and available to the kids but it's not in a sneaky way like a marriage-driven girl leaving diamond ring catalogs on her boyfriend's desk

i am not in favor or against unschooling, I've met some pretty happy unschooling families, so please don't think I am coming from a certain angle - just curious.

I don't personally think it would be bad! Occationally he will use them, but generally he's just not interested in them. I just mean its harder work to try to find stuff he will do willingly than to simply say "its school time. Do this page." I don't actually think that works for anyone, btw, thats just my fantasy

I agree it shouldn't be all sneaky.

I think unschooling can be used for a wide range of things, some of which are mutually exclusive.

I agree, unschooling seems like more work to me! You ahve to always be "on," looking for that learning opportunity. With a curriculum, it's all drawn out, you can turn school off when it's over.

We are homeschooling, with a curriculum, in an "unschooly" way.


Does that even make sense?

We have been unschooling going on our 4th year this year and it is the most amazing thing for our family. As an ex-teacher, it was the hardest thing for me to get used to...I was so used to by the book, completely planned out lessons, following the standards....but that was just not the best way my little guy learned.

He needs real world, hands-on lessons that have meaning - learning with a purpose. Workbooks were never a huge hit here, he said they were boring and didn't "mean" anything. But give him a problem about a bridge being able to only support so much weight and a truck having to make a delivery of steel beams that weighed x-amount each and asking him to calculate if the bridge could hold the truck's weight and he would do math problems like that all day long. Something that you would actually use in the world.

It does take some thinking instead of using a set curriculum and isn't for everyone....for example, DS8 out of the blue, formed a deep affection for Peregrine Falcons over the summer...so I did some searching and found several super cool activities(like researching and then building your own Peregrine scrape and eggs...or he did his own Excel spreadsheet graph with comparing a large variety of animal speeds he researched to a Peregrine's stoop dive), we found several Raptor Avian Centers in the state we have visited and then when he realized that the Peregrine actually go over part of our state on their yearly migration, we did some researching online and found that the Florida Keys are the best spot on the planet to watch huge numbers migrate....he then found that there was a scientific group that did a Migration HawkWatch study in the Keys in October and we wrote to ask the scientists if we could come camp for a week and help them spot/track/identify/record the raptors that migrate over the area ...they were so pleased a child was so interested that they are excited to have him come down to help. Our days are constantly filled with something revolving around a subject of interest...yesterday DS made his own map system on the computer where he mapped out the entire story line from the first 2 Geronimo Stilton Kingdom of Fantasy books then in the afternoon he researched weather data/graphs and using his weather/cloud books he identified cloud formations and wrote weather predictions in his weather journal he made.....so from one day to the next, I never really know what we are going to dive into but we are having a blast doing it :-)

I would never fully unschool for the reasons Bostonian gave. However, I can quite easily see that 2 hours a day would be plenty to keep my DD learning on and ahead of grade, which would leave time for a lot of very child-led pursuits. However, I'd have to freeze DS in amber to actually get homeschooling done in two hours. I have no idea how people do this with multiple children when some are babies and toddlers.

I do wonder...someone led that child to exogeology, don't you think? And where's the line between unschooling and homeschooling, anyway, if you are helping the child along and providing materials?

I'm sure quite a few of us have kids who have interests we never considered and that's true whether kids go to school or not. I can't say I even remotely understand most of my teenager's interests so I sure didn't lead him to them. I don't think someone has to lead a kid to exogeology. Bright kids read, follow weblinks, meet other people with similar interests... and on it goes.

Personally I don't find the distinction between unschooling and homeschooling to be a particularly important one. But, as a general answer I'd say the different is in who is leading the education. Unschoolers aren't against parents helping their kids, it is more about avoidance of compelling the child to learn a particular topic in a particular way.

Or even normal parenting, in my book?

I personally think its just a question of degree.

But, hey, I'll take good ideas wherever I can find them

I think I was thinking about from my own POV of having a younger child who is not yet allowed to wander Google on her own, which was silly of me. Yes, you're right--she could have found it on her own.