Unschooling

Description

From the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling

"Unschooling is a form of education in which learning is based on the student's interests, needs, and goals. It may be alternatively referred to as natural learning, child-led learning, discovery learning, delight-led learning, or child-directed learning.

Unschooling is generally considered to be a form of home education, which is simply the education of children at home rather than in a school. Home education is often considered to be synonymous with homeschooling, but some have argued that the latter term implies the recreation of school in the context of the home, which they believe is philosophically at odds with unschooling.

Unschooling contrasts with other forms of home education in that the student's education is not directed by a teacher and curriculum. Although unschooling students may choose to make use of teachers or curricula, they are ultimately in control of their own education. Students choose how, when, why, and what they pursue. Parents who unschool their children act as "facilitators," providing a wide range of resources, helping their children access, navigate, and make sense of the world, and aiding them in making and implementing goals and plans for both the distant and immediate future. Unschooling expands from children's natural curiosity as an extension of their interests, concerns, needs, goals, and plans.

The term unschooling was coined by John Holt." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling)

Discussion

Pat Farenga:

"This is also known as interest driven, child-led, natural, organic, eclectic, or self-directed learning. Lately, the term "unschooling" has come to be associated with the type of homeschooling that doesn't use a fixed curriculum. When pressed, I define unschooling as allowing children as much freedom to learn in the world, as their parents can comfortably bear. The advantage of this method is that it doesn't require you, the parent, to become someone else, i.e. a professional teacher pouring knowledge into child-vessels on a planned basis. Instead you live and learn together, pursuing questions and interests as they arise and using conventional schooling on an "on demand" basis, if at all. This is the way we learn before going to school and the way we learn when we leave school and enter the world of work. So, for instance, a young child's interest in hot rods can lead him to a study of how the engine works (science), how and when the car was built (history and business), who built and designed the car (biography), etc. Certainly these interests can lead to reading texts, taking courses, or doing projects, but the important difference is that these activities were chosen and engaged in freely by the learner. They were not dictated to the learner through curricular mandate to be done at a specific time and place, though parents with a more hands-on approach to unschooling certainly can influence and guide their children's choices.

Unschooling, for lack of a better term (until people start to accept living as part and parcel of learning), is the natural way to learn. However, this does not mean unschoolers do not take traditional classes or use curricular materials when the student, or parents and children together, decide that this is how they want to do it. Learning to read or do quadratic equations are not "natural" processes, but unschoolers nonetheless learn them when it makes sense to them to do so, not because they have reached a certain age or are compelled to do so by arbitrary authority. Therefore it isn't unusual to find unschoolers who are barely eight-years-old studying astronomy or who are ten-years-old and just learning to read." (http://www.holtgws.com/teachyourown.html)

Is Unschooling anti-progressive?

A debate in 3 moments [1]:

• Taylor, Astra. Unschooling. n+1. 2012 Winter; 13:57–78.

Taylor describes an approach to education known as unschooling, which attempts to provide a relatively unstructured educational experience, informed by progressive values, outside the framework of mainstream education, and in particular outside the conventional system of compulsory K-12 education in the USA. Unschooling can take the form either of homeschooling, as experienced by Taylor and her three siblings, or of “free schools” that implement the approach in a group setting, illustrated by Taylor’s visit to the Albany Free School in Albany, New York. Unschooling emphasizes trust in the learner’s innate curiosity and ability to learn. Taylor stresses the coercive and competitive elements of mainstream K-12 education, and the resulting evils, which unschooling aims to avoid: persistent boredom, indoctrination into the values of the capitalist workplace (including toleration and acceptance of persistent boredom), alienation from the learning process, and fear of failure. Unschooling poses a challenge to less radical progressive critiques of conventional education, which attempt to curb the worst excesses of neoliberal meritocracy in schools, but do not offer a fundamentally different alternative.

• Goldstein, Dana. Liberals, don’t homeschool your kids: why teaching children at home violates progressive values. Slate. 2012 Feb 16.

Available from: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/02/homeschooling_and_unschooling_among_liberals_and_progressives_.single.html. Accessed 2012 Apr 26. Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/67D8QHt9S.

Goldstein responds to Astra Taylor’s “Unschooling” with a defense of compulsory public education in the USA. Homeschooling is criticized as dependent on elite privilege, and in particular on the ability of parents to devote large amounts of time to teaching rather than to remunerated work. Goldstein denounces Taylor’s highly critical portrayal of public schools as a “caricature”, and characterizes homeschooling parents as suspicious of the outside world, partial to highly questionable “attachment parenting” practices, and given to a “creepy” blanket mistrust of “civic life and public institutions”. When privileged children are present in public school classes, less privileged children in the same classes tend to do better in school, a “peer effect” benefit they are denied when privileged children are homeschooled. Also, children who attend socioeconomically integrated public schools are found to have more progressive values. Goldstein argues that only government can reform education in the USA; thus, progressives are harming the cause by withdrawing support from compulsory public education.

• Taylor, Astra. Learning in freedom [Internet]. n+1. 2012 Feb 21. Available from: http://nplusonemag.com/learning-in-freedom. Accessed 2012 Apr 26. Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/67DA7UJrz.

Taylor rebuts Dana Goldstein’s critique of her earlier article on “Unschooling”, partly on the ground that Goldstein gives a misleading account of Taylor’s argument. Taylor denies that she ever issued a call to “empty the schools” (an editorial tagline from n+1’s table of contents, never used in her article). Goldstein treats unschooling almost entirely as a matter of homeschooling, while much of Taylor’s article had dealt with the Albany Free School. Taylor affirms the critical importance of public education, and clarifies that she does not aim at universal adoption of existing models of unschooling (such as her own homeschooling or the Albany Free School), but at cost-free universal education that frees the learner rather than relying on coercion. Taylor reminds Goldstein that there are large local differences in public education in the USA, with serious problems in some districts (as Taylor herself had experienced during the three years she went to public high school). Compulsory public schooling would strengthen the grip of repressive school districts; the Albany Free School had served in part as a safety net for “problem” children who did not fit into the mainstream. Meanwhile, schools have become more coercive and demanding since the 1960s. Goldstein minimizes the gravity of the genuine failures of public schools and blames the victims for withdrawing. De facto progressive defense of the public school status quo creates a public-relations opening for the Right to exploit. Goldstein’s “peer effect” argument, taken to its logical conclusion, would imply that progressive parents should enroll their children in the worst possible school districts, which is seldom if ever done. Instead, parental economic competition for the best school districts perpetuates and exacerbates inequality far more than unschooling ever could."

Key Book to Read

101 Reasons Why I'm an Unschooler. P.S. Pirro. Lulu, 2009

More Information

1. Faq at unschooling.com: http://www.unschooling.com/library/faq/index.shtml
2. Main Unschooling Resources: collated by Chris Corrigan