Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Anyone Unschooling?

I'm becoming interested in this and I'm wondering how it works for those who do it.

I'm completely intrigued by this school- http://www.sudval.org/

I love the idea of just letting my daughter follow her interests, where ever they may lead. I'd rather spend whatever money we set aside for school on her interests, instead of curriculum or other materials.

But is it just lazy homeschooling? ;D

If my DS6 was permitted to follow his interests, he would spend all day in the local doughnut shop and never, ever learn to read.

In some states homeschooling parents must write a letter to the school district each year outlining what will be taught. I don't see how complete unschooling would be feasible in those states.

Children don't know what they need to know, so I am dubious of complete unschooling. However, a benefit of homeschooling is that may take only 2 or 3 hours a day in the early grades, so the child does have a lot of time to pursue her own interests.

My idea of education is to use the child's interests as a way to get them excited about the things they need to learn.

So if your student loves music and hates math, you use music to teach them math.

If your student loves playing soccer and hates history, you could teach them the history of professional soccer, and tie in other historical events of the times you focus on.

IMO, they should still be learning much of the same things as everyone else, but in a different way, and with heightened motivation.

We aren't unschooling but I have always been fascinated by the concept. I just don't know how it would work in real life. There are some things I am not sure a kid could lean without someone at least introducing the subject and I think with unschooling even that is not done? Anyway, I am all for exploring interest. DD just watched Dolphin Tale last night and has spent the whole day on their website, looking up dolphins, and reading books about them. She is watching the movie again right now. So I pulled out a science workbook we have that has a section on dolphin adaptations (we have been studying adaptations recently) and we skipped ahead and looked at that. Anyway, just my 2 cents. I could see unschooling in some subjects (reading...we definitely do). I could see unschooling science for a kid like mine who is enthralled in all things science and will sit down and study spooky particles in quantum physics for hours, but math is one place I have a hard time envisioning it.

I definitely think you can introduce new ideas with unschooling.

I only have a 14 month old, so you all are probably better qualified to answer this...

What happens to the motivation to learn? I personally think school is what kills it. I don't think it just magically ends around 1st or 2nd grade.

I've seen my daughter teach herself how to do so many things already and every day she works on mastering more. My only job has been to provide the materials she needs to practice and to model or briefly show her / tell her how to do or understand new things. (So, I do believe unschooling means acting as a guide, when needed. Parents are valid sources of knowledge, just like books and other sources are.)

DD takes it from there every time and works on things when she's ready. (She just came over and we had a little "lesson" in brushing mama's hair gently, in fact lol.)

Why would reading or math be any different? I've been a pretty trusting mother so far. My own mom is constantly horrified that I've allowed DD to feed herself and make messes and we baby-proofed to some extent and then let her roam and explore. I just follow DD's lead and let her practice the things I can tell she is itching to practice.

DD bumped her head a few times and fell down, pinched her fingers once or twice in a drawer, etc., but then quickly figured things out. I've never seen a 9 month old close a drawer so carefully.

I think learning the things she needs to learn to be successful in life will happen in much the same way. Reading, writing and math definitely aren't magical subjects that need to be taught in a class. They are skills that we use every single day in our culture.

Yes, we sometimes unschool.

I think there is a lot of confusion about it because there are so many different interpretations of what 'unschooling' is. Then there is even more confusion about it when you add in radical unschooling and relaxed homeschooling and whatever else you can think of.

I personally do have routine and rhythm to our days. We have limits on screen time and that sort of thing. My style of homeschooling is to present lots of different options and allow my children to choose what they want to do. I'm also open to them coming up with something themselves.

I do find some unschoolers would see that as imposing my will, and other parents would see me as way too permissive. So it is constantly walking a line.

The problem I fins with some of the pure unschooling ideal (not the reality as I see it practiced among people I know) is that sometimes children don't know that they don't know. They also don't always know how to interpret their own feelings etc. So for example, my oldest will resist doing any learning if we haven't done it in a while, and he will crave the TV for the stimulation, but its like eating potato chips when you want a full meal - he doesn't realise that he isn't hungry for more potato chips (TV) he really wants a meal (learning something new).

I see it as my responsibility to fill that real need, not just to 'let him do his own thing', but also to teach him how to read himself better. But I don't have any doubt that there are some unschoolers who would see that as me not trusting the process and needed to be deschooled

I LOVE the unschooling concept. I don't think it's lazy at all - in fact it probably requires MORE parental input than any other type of home schooling. You have to be on the ball, always aware of what possible avenues there are for exploring these interests.

I also believe that unschooling would work best for HG+ kids. We all know that they are more focused, more happy and fulfilled when they direct their learning. We know this leads to a desire for a more in-depth learning model. That is what unschooling is.

Unschooling is allowing your child to direct their own learning. So if they want to go to school for a year, then they go. If they want to do maths workbooks they do that. If they want to know what a plumber does, you arrange for them to help out a plumber for a 2 week period.

You allow them to accompany you in your everyday life, and then when they ask questions, you fill those with answers that will encourage the internal desire for more learning.

And once they express interest in a topic its really not difficult to incorporate other things into that.

How does a business work? (acocunting, maths, marketing, public relations, management, sales, cost acocunting, stock management....)

Tell me about dinosaurs (history, philosphy, science, religion, geography, maths....)

I wonder what its like to be a fireman? (physical fitness, risk taking, safety, precautions, team work, healthy eating...)

What makes waves on the beach be bigger or smaller? (the moon, astronomy, physics, maths, the ocean, lunar cycles, gravity, science, geography....)

see? the concept is that once their desire for specific information is filled they will automatically move on. It's really the same for our kids isn't it?

This is what I really want to do. Aiden's choice would fluctuate between mastering this swimming thing, loads of maths, reading, spelling, making his own books, gardening, playing the violin, helping DH and I out with our businesses, playing with the baby and more. Doesn't sound like a bad way to spend the day. In fact I think this could be more work for the schooling parent but also so much more fun too!

I think too that unschooling is defined differently by different people.

I think it'd be extraordinarily rare for a child to have equal interests in all areas, such that they tend to turn out well-rounded by nature; I also think that project-based learning (which is essentially what unschooling often tends to turn into, except with less structure) doesn't necessarily lay a strong foundation for something like math, where concepts tend to be based on prior ones in multiple threads. For this reason I would never consider radically unschooling anyone (i.e. taking a completely hands-off approach).

ETA: I think that aside from the fact that students' interests tend not to be well-balanced, and I think that one job of education is to make a person reasonably well-rounded, another big weakness of radical unschooling lies in lack of theoretical focus.

For example, a child may decide that it would be fun to build a certain type of project (say, a robot) and to do so, may need to learn about a certain type of math function. From reading, he may figure out how to plug numbers into the function, but without understanding it and without building the conceptual foundation to construct a similar function. Or, a student may use a calculator or program to do all the math that he doesn't know how to do himself, getting the result he wants so he can turn to other interests without having to do the hard work of learning the math himself.

Many people discuss IQ and achievement testing and scores here. How many of us know how to do more than calculate a GAI? We talk about scatter because we want to add to the conversation, and some of this seems to be based on remembering prior conversations of others, but many of us don't have an actual background in psychology to give a truly informed opinion. We've learned enough to do what we need to do-- discuss these things and help rank newbies a tiny bit-- but without developing any deep understanding, or the understanding of what a GAI really is, besides a substitute on a DYS application. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about-- imagine that knowledge of these testing constructs was one facet of math knowledge, and we were learning just the surface info in order to get through our self-selected project, never to return to the topic again. We'd be unlikely to return to the topic and deepen our understanding because it doesn't work that way-- you don't work backwards from an end result of a complicated learning process to the beginning, and lay a strong foundation in retrospect; and you don't even want to try, because it seems so frigging complicated.

Once in a while a highly interested person may decide to start at the beginning, by seeking out the knowledge at the beginning and following it through, such as a radically unschooled person winding up in college and finding that it behooves her to take remedial classes. However, that sort of thing may be highly unlikely unless forced by circumstances-- the radically unschooled person would be trained by that time to think of learning as a back-to-front and/or just-in-time, bare-minimum-necessary sort of activity. And if we accept that something like math should be known well by any student heading off to college, we really do a child a disservice by leaving it to them to self-teach math.

I do think that child-led learning is incredibly powerful, for reasons including helping to hone inner drive in the right sort of student. And drive or "spark" is in my opinion the single most important attribute of any student to nurture.

I just wouldn't be the type of "unschooler" that never provided any sort of direction. (And it goes without saying that unschoolers who let their kids play video games and drink soda all day are neglectful. Well, I've said it.)

We are in the thick of choosing a kindergarten for DS5 next year... If we decide to homeschool we will be towards the unschooling end of the spectrum.

One thing that I think people overlook is how little essential material is covered in K-3 or even K-6. If you want to teach some, you can do 20minutes of reading in the morning and 20 minutes of math in the afternoon and cover those subjects. That leaves the rest of the day to follow other interests. Regular schools are so variable in what gets covered at younger ages that unschooling isn't that different. By the time your kids are older it will be clear whether unschooling works for you.

I agree deschooling late middle to high school kids takes a leap of faith.

-chris