The glorious world of unschooling

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

Deschooling doesn't work until you let go of structure. Early days unschooling is about learning how to see learning in all things and if you are still looking to the structure of curricula it will be very, very difficult to grasp the fundamentals of unschooling. Having go-to ideas of things to do or engagements to offer is a good thing, but having those things be about education or a passing on of pieces of specific knowledge it won't help you to see the glorious world of unschooling. Those things are best if they are just kind of a fun thing to do in a moment of nothing much going on. Learning will happen.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/fabric
photo by Cally Brown

The danger of having a teacher

Robyn Coburn, on Jayn learning very young how to swim:

I think homeschooling as a plan crystallized for me when Jayn was about two and a half years old and she had some swimming lessons. We had this very nice lady that came to our house. Jayn loved the water, we had a swimming pool that was part of the apartment complex. She was playing with the lady, it did not seem like she was learning to swim. It was all about putting her face in the water which she did all the time anyway. I thought, well, I do not actually know if she is getting anything from this. You can tell this was before I started unschooling or I would not have even started with it.

After about roughly five or six lessons it did not look like we were doing anything. It seemed like we were spending money unnecessarily and I said, "You know (winter was coming too), I think we will just stop with the lessons." Then the following summer, I just played with Jayn in the pool and she learned to swim by herself with just playing over the course of the whole summer.

Then somebody said to her, “Oh you are such a good swimmer,” and she said, “Yes my swimming teacher taught me.” My jaw hit the floor. I was like, “WHAT?” I said to her, “No she did not. Where did you get that from? You did this yourself.”

So that just crystallized to me the danger of having a teacher. That not only will the teacher take credit for your learning, you might give the teacher credit for your learning. It struck me that maybe this is something Jayn was susceptible to and so at that point I really became determined to unschool in a way that I had not been quite as determined before.

—Robyn Coburn

From an interview by Pam Laricchia—
you can read the beautiful intro, and listen to the whole thing here: SandraDodd.com/robyn/interview
photo by Bea Mantovani, of her daughter
(used here in 2015)
Both girls are grown now, but these are about their childhoods.

Evidence

So what do we need besides seeing things in a new light, trying to be more understanding about noise and mess, and being our children's partners? I mean tools for moving toward being with children in new ways?

Maybe LOVE the mess.

See it as evidence of health and joy and learning, and then it's not "mess," it's proof.

SandraDodd.com/chats/being
photo by Julie Markovitz

Deschooling and Games

Lyle Perry was one of my favorite unschooling-volunteer-helper writers, and the following were his responses to someone who shall remain nameless, who was complaining about Yu-Gi-Oh. The indented sections are Lyle's pull-punches-gently responses. —Sandra

---

I wonder when he will ever learn anything!

Maybe he's wondering when you will ever SEE what he's learning. Maybe he's wondering when you will join him in what he's learning, or at least express some joy and satisfaction that he IS learning. (He IS learning, you know.)

That's all he talks about. Yu-Gi-Yo Cards

What do you talk about? Anything BUT Yu-Gi-Oh cards? It sounds like you're waiting for him to get through a "phase" or something so he can really get down to some serious learning. The problem is, he's already there, he's just waiting for you to catch up! You're the one that's behind. He's doing the learning, he's moved on, and you're still stuck on the same chapter. It's time to turn the page. Or better yet, put that book down, wrap it in some gasoline soaked newspapers, and offer it up as your last sacrifice to the School Gods. Their powers are obsolete now. Break free from the academic death grip they have on your mind and set yourself free!

And he doesn't know how to play the game, and I am so not interested in trying to teach the game.

Well, that's a pretty depressing attitude. Would you be interested in teaching him geography? Biology? Seismology? Are those the important things? Your things are important and his things are crap? If that's true, I don't blame him for not being interested in your stuff. Why should he get excited about your stuff when you look at his stuff with disdain and revulsion? Don't forget that he's learning something about the signals you're sending him too. He's learning ALL the time. Don't let him learn that his mom thinks what he does is stupid.

—Lyle Perry, the responses
(more here)

SandraDodd.com/focus
photo by Colleen Prieto

Your own certain knowledge

Vague interest can turn to trust in others' accounts of learning and of parenting successes. Trust in those stories can give us courage to experiment, and from that we can discover our own proofs and truths to share with newer unschoolers, who might find courage from that to try these things themselves. Faith in others can only take us a little way, though, and then our own children's learning will carry us onward.

Some ideas become theories. A few theories might turn to convictions. Some early thoughts will be abandoned; others will gain substance. After much thought and use, what is left will be what you believe because you have lived it.

SandraDodd.com/knowledge
photo by Cátia Maciel

How will they learn everything they need to know?

"How will they learn everything they need to know?"

Do the best of the high school graduates know everything they need to know? No, and at some point, ideally, they start learning on their own. Some fail to get to that point, though. Unschooled kids have a head start. They know how to find what they need to know, and they have not been trained to ignore things that won't be on the test.


SandraDodd.com/seeingit
photo by Sandra Dodd

Ideas, pulled in

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Teaching is pouring knowledge over a child. Whether a child takes it in is not in the teacher's power. Which is why teachers punish and reward to make not taking in an idea less pleasant.

Learning is a child pulling in ideas. Those ideas are most full of life when those ideas connect to other ideas the child is fascinated by. It makes no difference if those ideas connect along a particular path. Which is why natural learning looks so chaotic and meandering compared to school.

It makes it hard to create an environment for a child to explore freely and pull in what fascinates them when someone is unschooling through a fog of TEACH.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/teaching/problem
photo by Amber Ivey

Learning and loving it

Can they go to college/university?

I've never heard of anyone being turned away from higher education because they were homeschooled in any manner. If tests are required, the kids can take the test cold and then prepare if they didn't do as well as they had wanted to, or they could study in advance of taking the test. Some universities will let people in on a trial basis, and if they do well they're in. Some will accept a portfolio in place of a school transcript.

There are dozens of stories from professors saying they love having unschoolers in their classes, and tales of unschoolers who enjoyed classes, and excelled.

SandraDodd.com/faq
(Answers to the Most Repeated Unschooling Questions of All Time)
photo by Nina Haley,
inside The Globe Theatre

Even more relaxed

Ren wrote:

The part that is missing with the relaxed/eclectic approach is still trust. It's just being more creative with how you get information into children, that's all. Better....but not quite the complete trust that unschoolers have in the human ability to learn.

We may still raise butterflies or garden or go to museums, so to an outsider we're doing some of the same activities. The difference is my kids can show zero interest and that is just fine. The difference is that I'm not trying to check of some subject box or define their learning experiences for them. The difference is that we do these things to have fun and trust that learning happens when we're alive and breathing. 🙂

—Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/unschool/vsRelaxedHomeschooling
photo by Nicole Kenyon

Trusting and seeing

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Unschooling is trusting in a child's natural curiosity to teach them what they need to know. The parent is there to answer questions, talk, infect the kids by their own curiosity about life! (though curious about what you're interested rather in what you think would be good for the kids to be interested in!), bring in cool resources (that the kids can feel free to ignore if it just isn't the right moment for their interest to ignite).

The hard parts are:

trusting natural curiosity to draw your child to what they need to learn when. (Math is fascinating. Kids only get turned off to it by the boring way school approaches it.)

trusting a child's natural schedule rather than the school imposed one (eg, that the child will read eventually even if they aren't doing so at 7 because reading is always a pleasurable activity not an imposed tedious one, they will multiply even if they aren't doing it at 9)

trusting that it's okay for kids to learn things out of order! It doesn't bother kids at all to pick up interesting tidbits about Thomas Jefferson, knightly armor, Egyptian mummies, WW2 combat planes. They make their own connections as they get more and more things in place. (Later, an orderly approach will be fascinating to them as they can make even more connections.)

seeing real learning that is right there all around you, for example, the things that need sorted, the cookies to divide, the planning for a party that are all real live math. And it's especially tough to trust that those few minutes of real engaged figuring are worth 20 pages of worksheet practice.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/unschool/moredefinitions
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Liverpool

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Joyce and I got to visit Liverpool in 2013, thanks to Julie and Adam Daniel.

The turning point of unschooling

Recovering from school is only part of a parent's deschooling process. Trust is involved, but it's an evolving trust. First one might read about or even meet some older unschooled kids and see that they're doing well. But it seems they can distance their own families a bit by thinking "Well that's fine for her kids—but mine might not be as [insert one:
    special
      bright
         gifted
            open
               calm
                  creative
                     sociable] as hers are."

The turning point comes when one sees the natural learning start to shine from her own child. Then she goes beyond trusting other unschoolers, and starts trusting natural learning.

"Of your own certain knowledge…"
or
Seeing the light with your own eyes

photo by Erika Ellis

Facilitator and companion

I’ve been credited with the description below, but it was written by Joyce Fetteroll and tweaked by Pam Sorooshian and me before it was published at the UnschoolingDiscussion site, on googlegroups:

Although unschooling is often described as a homeschooling style, it is, in fact, much more than just another homeschool teaching method. Unschooling is both a philosophy of natural learning and the lifestyle that results from living according to the principles of that philosophy.

The most basic principle of unschooling is that children are born with an intrinsic urge to explore — for a moment or a lifetime – what intrigues them, as they seek to join the adult world in a personally satisfying way. Because of that urge, an unschooling child is free to choose the what, when, where and how of his/her own learning from mud puddles to video games and SpongeBob Squarepants to Shakespeare! And an unschooling parent sees his/her role, not as a teacher, but as a facilitator and companion in a child’s exploration of the world.

Unschooling is a mindful lifestyle which encompasses, at its core, an atmosphere of trust, freedom, joy and deep respect for who the child is. This cannot be lived on a part-time basis. Unschooling sometimes seems so intuitive that people feel they’ve been doing it all along, not realizing it has a name. Unschooling sometimes seems so counterintuitive that people struggle to understand it, and it can take years to fully accept its worth.

—Joyce Fetteroll, aided by
Pam Sorooshian
and Sandra Dodd

SandraDodd.com/unschooling
photo by Clare Kirkpatrick

Not just for kids!

The way adults tend to learn things is the way people best learn—by asking questions, looking things up, trying things out, and getting help when it's needed. That's the way pre-school kids learn too (maybe minus the looking things up), and it is the way "school-age" kids can/should learn as well. Learning is internal. Teachers are lovely assistants at best, and detrimental at worst. "Teaching" is just presentation of material. It doesn't create learning. Artificial divisions of what is "educational" from what is considered NOT educational, and things which are "for kids" from things which are NOT for kids don't benefit kids or adults. Finding learning in play is like the sun coming out on a dank, dark day.

SandraDodd.com/unschooling
photo (and words) by Sandra Dodd

Choosing food

The idea that one can learn to feel and know one's own body and choose foods accordingly is shocking to most people. I wouldn't have thought it sensible or possible, when I was younger, but having given my three children the option to turn down any food, and to try any food, to choose their own quantities of food has shown me a whole different aspect of human learning and instinct.

It should make sense. Early people wouldn't have continued to eat what wasn't good for them if they weren't starving. If they had options, they would have chosen the things that seemed (for whatever range of reasons they might be choosing) good. There are food taboos and preferences all over the world. Some are credited to religion or superstition. Some are medicinal. All were, originally, local.

In a situation in which there is an abundance of food shipped and traded all over the world, then how does one choose? This is what is coming to be called "a first-world problem." In terms of learning, though, in the context of the life of a family choosing unschooling and mindful parenting, the question is answered every time food is bought, presented, consumed or considered.

SandraDodd.com/eating/choices
photo by Sandra Dodd

That was all!?

AJ wrote:

I'm amazed at how easily some things are learned. My five year old is learning to read. He was playing a computer game that had him putting together words to make compound words (sand + box gives you sandbox, etc.). He wasn't sure of a word, so I told him what it was and explained about how words ending in "e" work. Pointed out one or two more examples as they came out and presto! He understands Silent E.

Then I stood there not sure what to do. That's it? That was all it took to learn about Silent E?? But, but...it was a huge deal when I learned to read in school! There were many lessons. Drills. That song on the Electric Company. How could all of that fuss have been needed for something that took Mikey about 30 seconds to grasp? Ah, the wonders of learning something when you are ready and not before!

—aj (mamaaj2000)

SandraDodd.com/learning

"that song on the Electric Company"
photo by Karen James

Let go!

Joyce wrote:

Formal learning is being certain you can't let go of the side of the pool. Unschooling is paddling around in the deep end.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/nutshells
photo by Cátia Maciel

Seeing what learning is

When a newcomer was very confused, Meredith Novak wrote:

The basis of unschooling comes from seeing learning as a substantial human drive and seeing that learning depends absolutely on the perceptions of the learner. The second part is what makes everything tricky - you can't control what someone else learns. At best you can work on seeing the world from another person's perspective and try to create an environment which helps that person learn.

It can help a lot to think about how people learn via their hobbies. In a way, that's what real life unschooling looks like: people learning through hobbies. It usually involves a lot of playing around - and the playing around parts are just as important to learning as the parts where you need to go look something up, or network with another hobbyist, or take a class or workshop to improve a skill.

One of the common parenting/educational myths is that it's possible to imbue children with "good habits" by making them do certain things over and over. It Seems like it Should work... but when you look at adults there's no evidence it does. The results are pretty random. It's not a strategy that helps people learn about the world.

—Meredith Meredith
July 2012

SandraDodd.com/meredithnovak
photo by Carolyn Vandenbusch Neves

Brain food

Pam Sorooshian wrote:

Human brains are voracious and will feed on whatever is available. Unschoolers should be offering interesting experiences, ideas, stimulation, music, logic, conversation, images, movement, discovery, beauty, etc. Brain food in abundance. It requires effort. It requires attention to qualitative and quantitative aspects of learning. Depth and breadth—creating a lifestyle in which kids are offered the opportunity to learn a lot about some things and a little about a lot of things.

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/learning
Thanks to Marta Venturini Machado for finding and sharing that quote.
photo by Meghan Pawlowski

Like nothing else

If a parent can learn how to "facilitate learning"—to help a child get what he needs or wants—rather than to direct or try to own it, all of unschooling goes better. And if a child learns to read without "reading instruction," that can open the world up like nothing else can.

SandraDodd.com/r/deeper
photo by Alicia Gonzalez-Lopez

Living lightly

John Quincy Adams is credited with having said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

The sentence above came from a post by an unschooling dad, Sean Heritage. In the post he's talking about his unusual approach to his job as a Commander in the U.S. Navy. Some of his ideas might have been inspired by his unschooling experiences, but Sean's ability to see in the way he does must surely be making unschooling easier at his house.

In your family, in your unschooling, in each dyad/partnership within your family, if you inspire dreaming, learning, doing and becoming, you'll be leading in an exceptional way.

Sean Heritage is retired now; the post originally appeared in 2015.
His writing from which I pulled the quote: Unicorns and Fairies

Being your Child's Partner is probably the best match on my site.
photo by Megan Valnes