It is a misconception that typical unschooled children run about all day unclothed, never learn table manners, and open books only to rip out pages. It s also a misconception that unschooling parents never provide guidelines, make schedules or assign distasteful work.
Unschooling may be even harder to define than homeschooling. It seems to be more a philosophy than a specific method. As I understand it (and many unschoolers may understand it differently, that s the beauty of unschooling!), the main thing unschoolers have in common is that they encourage their kids to direct their own education based on their own interests, rather than starting out with a preset notion of what they should learn when, and then implementing it with a particular curriculum or sequence of textbooks. One parent recently told me her daughter read all of Dostoevsky at age 15. Not all unschoolers do that! But the chances are that no teacher or parent would ever dare assign such a thing, and kids who haven t learned to think outside the curriculum might never consider it, either.
In a talk last fall in Manchester, unschooling advocate Patrick Farenga defined unschooling as giving children as much freedom to follow their own interests as their parents can comfortably bear. I added the italics, because I think the word comfortably is key. Patrick s definition doesn t rule out parental guidance or lesson plans or even mathevery- day-kicking-and-screaming. I think the key to unschooling is simply allowing kids generous amounts of unstructured time and encouragement to define and pursue their own interests. The role unschooling parents often play is to work with our kids to help define interests, find resources, do long-term planning, and provide any other assistance they need. According to Patrick s definition, that may include intervention if we feel their self-directed education is missing something important, such as reading or writing or math. Different parents have different panic schedules about academic skills. Some parents don t worry if their kids aren t reading at age 12, many intervene much earlier. I ve yet to meet an unschooled teen nonreader. I don t think there s such a thing as a representative unschooling family, but to give you an idea of one set of possibilities, here is a hint of what Zoe s educational trajectory has been.
Zoe went to school from kindergarten through mid-sixth grade. I didn t want her to go to school, but she was adamant. Perhaps in retrospect that was our first unschooling decision. During her school years, we allowed Zoe a lot of free time to pursue her interests. Her main passion was writing, and, oddly enough, one of the reasons she finally left school was to have time to write (if this sounds ironic, well, we thought so too).
Even before she started school, Zoe taught herself to read by enlisting our help, in a process typical of unschooling. I did not initiate her interest in reading; I thought she would be better off at that age doing more active things. But she insisted, and brought us an endless stream of books to read aloud. She also involved us in all kinds of wordplay, and proudly read us her first book at age 4. Other young children might internalize math concepts using construction toys, develop athletic skills on a trampoline, or play the piano. For Zoe, her personal goal was to read.
Zoe's middle school years were an unschoolers paradise. We had been informed that junior high was mainly for review, and her half-year of sixth grade confirmed that absolutely nothing new was introduced in any subject. We figured that even with no requirements, she could do better than that. Zoe did not aim for a well-rounded course of study. In fact, her stated philosophy was, Spend as much time as possible on things you love, and as little time as necessary on everything else. Most of her academic work consisted of reading and writing, mostly fiction. She did virtually no math, as a series of extremely incompetent teachers had left her with a horror of math in any form, and we thought a break might help her recover. We did let her pick out a few fun-looking math workbooks, which she used at her own discretion mostly during the summer, maybe to reinforce that it was her own decision.
Now that Zoe is in high school, she has a more traditional balance of subjects and studies some, such as algebra and Spanish, just because they will help her get into college. (She still hates math.) Science is also not a favorite, but this year, because we felt more science was needed, we helped her set up a field project in natural history with the goal of a written essay describing her work (in college, they call this writing across the curriculum ). We rarely plan an approach to a subject and then follow the plan. More often, we take a look at something Zoe has been doing and figure out a name for it. For example, for the past couple of years, she has been very interested in journaling, so I ve asked her to make a list of the books she s read and some journaling activities she s done, which I will use to make up a course syllabus for her college application records.
Zoe still gets to spend most of her time doing activities she chooses herself, including reading, writing and studying psychology. Looking back, I think her accomplishments equal those of any of her peers, schooled or not. She may be missing a few things she would have learned in school or a more structured homeschooling environment. But she has also explored many subjects she would not have met there, and she has the great advantage of feeling she knows who she is and where she wants to go from here.
That, to me, is the heart of unschooling encouragement to figure out who you are and what you want to contribute to the world no matter what your grade level. Even if we have to make you do some math.
