Life with Nin

What is Unschooling?

From time to time people ask me what unschooling is all about.  How I answer depends on lot of things – who is asking, why they are asking and my mood that day.  Recently I tried to answer this question on an unschooling e-mailing list.  What follows is roughly what I said that day.

While unschooling is about life and therefore everything is on topic, I’ve been a bit uncomfortable with the recent trend toward adult directed learning on this list, for reasons similar to what M. expressed – that newcomers would misunderstand what unschooling is really like.

Many of us didn’t start out as unschoolers and we welcome  everyone who is exploring this path.  My best advise is to listen to your children, what they say in words and what they tell you in other ways.   For most of us it has been *our* insecurities that have lead us to doing things in more adult-directed, structured ways; our need to be able to explain to others what we are doing, our fears about what the authorities – or family or the neighbors or even other homeschoolers – might think.  For me, it was important to be able to understand that and to separate it from what my children’s needs were/are.

Children are born curious and wanting to grow and develop.  Unschooling is about supporting that process.

I sometimes think that unschooling is more about what we parents have to do and less about what the kids do.  *We* have to learn to let go of the other-imposed expectations, the shoulds, the what-will-so-and-so thinks?  *We* have to get out of the way and let our kids do what they need to.  *They* already know what they need to do.

But this doesn’t mean that we do nothing.  Not at all.  Our jobs are to be the facilitators, the drivers, the librarians, the buyer of craft supplies, the askers of interesting and sometimes difficult questions, not so often the answerers, but that sometimes, too.  I think one of the most important things we have to show our children is how to find out what they want to know, to leave them feeling that there is nothing they can’t learn about when and if they want/need to.  We do that by helping them find resources for their interests and by pursuing our own at the same time.

The “pure” unschooler would not *require* that any particular area be studied but would be open to the opportunities that everyday life presents to make those areas (typically, math and reading) of intrinsic interest.  In an ideal world, these things will come naturally and at the child’s time table. Unfortunately, some of us live in states that require some form of evaluation and we are not always free to let certain areas go totally.  So, each family does what they can within the constraints society places around them.  For most families, though, it is the process of unschooling that “convinces” them of its appropriateness for them, as over the course of time you see what has happened.

Listen to your children and they will lead you to the path that they need.

copyright 1998  Carol E. Burris.  Originally publishing in my local homeschooling group, HELPS,  newsletter, 12/1998