Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion To the homeschoolers about unschooling

I know this is an old thread but I thought I'd respond anyway
The point of unschooling as I see it (and I actually tend to not call it unschooling, and prefer to call it natural learning) is that children have an endless internal desire to learn if the process is not interfered with, and that learning can occur any time. Just as they can learn to walk, talk and eat in their own time. They will learn what they need to, so they won't miss out on anything important to them. I know of unschooled children who didn't learn to read until age 11 and who are just as skilled as other children who learned at 4. What is important is that they were able to come to it in their own time through intrinsic motivation and now they have a love for it.
I don't believe that bookwork is out of place in an unschooling family, as long as it is child led. We have plenty of work books but my son is the only one who chooses when he does them. He tends to get enthusiastic about them every now and then and then he leaves them for months and practices the skills he's learned in his daily life instead. TBH most of his maths skills have been learned by asking me questions about time and money and playing with a calculator. If he asked for ore structure I'd give it to him, and I'd still call it unschooling because it would simply be me facilitating his learning for him in the way he needs me to

We don't homeschool because I know absolutely nothing more than she does and my husband (the other genius :P) is at work all day. Anyway, DD14 seems to be doing fine in school. I saw an article about "unschooling" on yahoo a few months ago, and I was very wary of the method. I guess my thoughts are that it would work for some kids, but the kids in the video were the subjects of *radical* unschooling. (Interviewer- "so your 15 year old daughter stays up all night, and you are fine with that?", and later, the girl herself said she didn't think she knew nearly enough as she would need to know for college, and presumably wasn't going). I guess my thoughts are that taking your child to a farm isn't going to teach them what they need to know
Having said all of this, I think the system is *perfect* for gifted or unusually curious kids who really want to learn, so please know that I'm not bashing any of you. I just don't think the system is good for a child who wants to watch TV all day, which, I believe is a good amount of children.

I don't know what the article was that you're referring to, but I would recommend being VERY wary about accepting at face value anything anyone says about unschooling--even me!--particularly if they aren't unschooling themselves. There are a lot of highly biased and/or uninformed people with a dog in that fight. One source is not going to give you a fair take.

I'm highly suspicious of any family who would recognize the problems with what they were doing, would not change what they were doing, and would publicize those problems on Yahoo. That makes me wonder if there's some axe to grind there. It doesn't sound like something a reasonable family would do.

There are neglectful/abusive homeschoolers, of course, just as there are neglectful/abusive public and private schoolers. The problem is not with the method of education; the problem is with the individual execution.

It is possible to do very advanced, hands-on physics and calculus and genetics (etc.) at a farm. It all comes down to execution. I'm not saying it's the best way--and it's not the way we've selected--but it *can* be done.

As we noted back in January, it is possible to unschool and not have a kid watching TV all day. One solution: don't have a TV. I know a number of families who fit this profile!

BTW, at a certain point, it's not necessary to "know more" than your child. They express an interest in a subject, and you find a class or a tutor to guide them. Even unschoolers do this.

I think perhaps you should also be wary of biased, exploitative "journalism."

1. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/video/extreme-parenting-radical-unschooling-10413158 An article accompanied it at the time, but I could only find the video.
2. I thought the video started out well. They had a garden, they were probably learning about science, etc.
3. The bottom line of the video seemed to be "kids don't need rules or chores." "eat whatever you want, don't brush your teeth if you don't want to, don't learn anything if you don't want to."
4. I would like to again emphasize that I don't think the whole premise of "unschooling" is bad, but simply that I don't think it is a good idea for most kids. Once again, I think it is a great idea for the kids that *are* going to seize the opportunities of learning that they get.
5. About the farm, I'm just saying, if the kids *do* want to learn at the farm, great, that would be cool. But in the video, it just looks like they buy some eggs.
And as was said by no5no5, I think this news story seems to be biased in the "unschooling is an crazy idea" direction.
I think unschooling would actually be wonderful for my daughter if she wanted to do it, but she has friends and believe it or not, more opportunities for learning at school (at least she's said that). If she were homeschooling though, I think she would plow through all sorts of subjects and use the system to her academic advantage. In the video, the kids didn't seem like they liked math, so they didn't do that.
I guess what I'm asking is, do any of you guys exclude subjects solely because your child doesn't want to do them? And if you don't, is it really considered unschooling?

FWIW, the families in the video seem to practice consensual living in addition to unschooling. They are often practiced together, but they are not the same.


My child is only 4 1/2, but of course there are things she is interested in and things she is not interested in (and naturally these things fluctuate). She does the things she is interested in. She is certainly not going to choose to do something she doesn't want to do and I'm certainly not going to force her. Are there things I'd like her to know by the time she is an adult? Of course. Am I concerned that she won't learn them? Not in the least. It's easy for me to let go of that worry because she's constantly surprising me with what she knows, and I can only imagine that externally directed learning would slow her down. I believe that unschooling ND kids is probably a lot harder to justify to the outside world, but I see no reason it wouldn't be every bit as good for the kids.

Personally, I think that the idea that kids are going to grow up totally uneducated in one subject or another is pretty misguided. Sure, they may learn things earlier or later than is typical in school, but, baring disability or neglect, no child is going to turn eighteen unable to do basic math or read or understand the general principles of science or the most important facts of history. And IMO if there is something an unschooled child is unable or unwilling to learn from his or her environment, it is very likely something he or she has no need or desire to know.

Unschooling is where learning is self directed and self regulated by the child. Radical unschooling is where this is extended to all areas of a child's life including but not limited to sleep, food, and in some cases, screen. I think that this works in some families/with some children, and with other it doesn't. There is a huge difference, imo, between this and completely permissive parenting, which is what I believe that some so-called radical unschoolers do.
When I was parenting my son on my own we dabbled in radical unschooling. He was allowed to self regulate sleep and food. This didn't mean he ate junk all day and he wasn't up all night every night. He chose his food from a nutritious selection that I made available. I spent a lot of time with him discussing how he could read his own body's cues for needing sleep. It worked wonderfully for him and then only reason we had to stop was when we moved interstate when I met my partner. Self regulation doesn't work for her child at all in most areas, so we've had to find a balance to meet everyone's needs. My son still does self regulate his food at home and makes exceptional choices there, but screen time and sleep are directed by me to meet the needs of the whole family.


"Personally, I think that the idea that kids are going to grow up totally uneducated in one subject or another is pretty misguided. Sure, they may learn things earlier or later than is typical in school, but, baring disability or neglect, no child is going to turn eighteen unable to do basic math or read or understand the general principles of science or the most important facts of history. And IMO if there is something an unschooled child is unable or unwilling to learn from his or her environment, it is very likely something he or she has no need or desire to know."
Absolutely!

We don't homeschool for a variety of reasons, chief among them that DD7 is hugely social, and I'm hugely antisocial, and it's much easier for me to meet her social needs at school than it would be for me to coordinate unpleasant-to-me social activities.

That said, if we were to homeschool, we would unschool (although I personally prefer "child lead learning" as a label). For a variety of reasons, chief among them that, in my experience, I do a very poor job attempting to teach DD anything, and a very good job of facilitating her efforts to learn anything.

And yes, we would exclude subjects solely because she didn't want to do them. If it's important to her, she'll come around to it in her own time.

For example:
- Swim lessons from 12 months to 2 1/2 years, because I wanted her to be able to swim: total failure. The school actually asked us to take her out of lessons, because she was becoming more and more distressed around the water. Swim lessons at 7, because she was determined to swim: total success. She went from total nonswimmer to jumping off the diving board and swimming the width of the pool with rollover breathing in about 3 weeks.

- This past summer, if she was ready for bed on time, she got an extra 30 minutes to watch TV, read, or do EPGY math. Three nights out of 4, she picked math. Other than the library's summer reading program (for which she read the 20 shortest books she owned in about 30 minutes total, because she wanted the inflatable whale prize), I'm not sure she touched a book all summer. Yesterday was the first library day, and she went to bed last night 2 chapters in to Christmas in Camelot. I have no clue when she read the remaining ~80 pages, but it was in time to take an AR test over it in class this morning. So she seems to have gone back to reading, all on her own.

- DD has always been anti-vegetable. The school offers her vegetables every day at lunch, and she always tosses them untasted. I gave up on offering at home. I'm not sure she's eaten a cup of vegetables cumulatively in her entire life, if you don't count pizza / pasta sauce. In the car today, she asked me to please serve her 4 raw carrot sticks with Caesar dressing as dip with dinner on Monday, and to require her to eat them.

- She just started 3rd grade, still adding and subtracting on her fingers. One day, she'll either need to memorize her math facts for some reason important to her, and she'll memorize them. Or maybe she won't - I've been known to mentally count on my own fingers as an adult.

Kids will surprise you.

Thanks for all of the answers, and I'm sorry if I offended anyone, I didn't want it to sound bad. I just guess I had a completely wrong idea of how unschooling worked after seeing that video.