Homeschooling and Unschooling

I don't think I've posted much about my thoughts on education.  When your thoughts are so different from the mainstream, voicing your opinion makes others think you're constantly judging them.  Or you're crazy.  I'm always afraid of sounding like I think I know everything - because of course I don't.  No one does.  My thoughts on education might change in a few years with more experience parenting school-aged children.  I'm sure I'll never have it all figured out.

I'm not judging other parents.  Okay, I can't say that.  Sometimes I hear judgmental thoughts creeping into my head.  I'm sure everyone does; it's part of being human, right?  Once I realize the thoughts are present, I quickly scold myself and banish those thoughts.  I remind myself that I never really know a family's situation and that different things work for different families.  So that's my attempt at a disclaimer.


I think I was first introduced to the idea of unschooling when reading My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.  Quinn doesn't use the word 'unschooling,' but what he describes sounds a lot like it:

"Ultimately, all the things grown-ups do are fascinating to a child, and it eventually and inevitably wants to do them itself - not necessarily on the same day as every other child, nor in the same week or the same year. ... It's hardwired into children to imitate their parents."  (pp. 150-51)

[Talking about a model of education that would work better] :  "Children simply go wherever they want and spend time with whomever they want in order to learn the things they want to learn when they actually want to learn them.  Not every child's education is identical."  (p. 152)

"... millions of years of natural selection have produced human creatures who are born with a ravenous desire to learn anything and everything their parents know and who are capable of feats of learning whose boundaries are literally beyond imagination."  (p. 157) 

I take that back!  He does use the word 'unschooling'!  Page 159 starts a chapter entitled "Unschooling the World."  I haven't read My Ishmael in quite a few years!  As I write this, I'm rereading a good bit of it, and remembering just how much it has affected my beliefs on education.  It is what got me started on this whole homeschooling thing.

Another thought from Quinn that I especially like:

"...very few people yearn to be Renaissance men and women.  Why should they yearn for such a thing?  If you're content to know nothing beyond chemistry or woodworking or computer science or forensic anthropology, whose business is it but your own?  Every specialty that there is somehow manages to find candidates in every generation who want to pursue it.  I've never heard of a single specialty disappearing for lack of candidates avid to pursue it.  One way or another, every generation produces a few people who burn to study dead languages, who are fascinated by the effects of disease on bodies, who yearn to understand the secrets of rat behavior..." (pp. 164-65)

Quinn (or Ishmael) says that he is not in favor of homeschooling, meaning traditional schooling-at-home, because that is just more of the same.

"Children don't need schooling.  They need access to what they want to learn - and that means they need access to the world outside the home." (p. 166)

I agree.  When I talk about homeschooling my kids, I'm not talking about staying home all day while sitting at the table with the kids listening to me talk and doing worksheets.  I have a feeling that we won't be as radical as what Quinn is suggesting, but I do plan on being out of the house (or at least outside) for a good chunk of each day in the real world.  And I plan on following my kids' interests.  If they all of a sudden become interested in camels, that's what we're going to be learning about until they're ready to move on to the next thing.  If one of them is really interested in photography I want to take that as seriously as I would an interest in algebra or biology.

This is the problem I have with traditional schooling.  I don't want my kids to sit in a classroom all day listening to a teacher telling them what they have to learn.  I want my kids to have the time to pursue what interests them.  I feel like if they spend all day in school and then come home to an hour (or more) of homework, where is the time for hobbies?  Study of subjects not taught at their age?  Family time?  Physical activity?  The weekend is not enough.  When kids are homeschooled (from what I've read and observed), they learn what the kids in school learn in a fraction of the time it takes to teach it in school.  Because of class sizes of 30 or more.  Because of lots of things.  A homeschooled child can (for the most part) learn a subject when he or she is ready to learn it.  And that's what I want for my kids.

I know traditional schooling works for some families*, but I just don't want it for my family.  I don't think I could be okay with it.  I think I would feel as if something were not quite right.  I'll be finding out soon whether or not my kind-of-homeschooling/kind-of-unschooling method works for us or not.  M officially starts 'kindergarten' in August.  I'll definitely be writing about our experience.

Here is what got me started on this post this morning.  It's basically an article discussing what is unschooling and what is not.


*My husband is a middle school teacher and a darn good one at that.  He does what he can to make the subject interesting and relevant to his students' lives while still working within the system.  If I knew that all of my kids' teachers were going to be exactly like him and class sizes were no larger than 15, I think I'd be okay with sending my kids to school.