I think you misunderstand unschooling as limiting. The most one can say impartially is that unschooling will tend to produce students learning what most interests them and that formal schooling will tend to produce students learning what most interests their instructor. You assume that the latter is greater than the former, and I do not agree. The foundation of unschooling philosophy (if I may be so bold) is that children have a natural insatiable desire for knowledge, and an amazing capacity for acquiring it. In general, any one teacher couldn’t hope to keep ahead of it enough to teach them everything they will want- the best we can do is help them acquire the skills to teach themselves (and assist where we can and our help is desired).

For the record, I do agree that it can be wise (occasionally) to encourage a child to finish what they start. As a kid I was *strongly encouraged* to finish any sort of class that I had signed up for… I think if I had been downright miserable with an activity my parents wouldn’t have hesitated to let me choose to leave, but I also knew my parents wouldn’t be too likely to pay for another class of that type (at least not anytime soon).

You say you would not have chosen to learn certain things you came to like… but I think that you may also be like most people I know, and that there are things you would have learned better and enjoyed more if you had come to them on your own terms. Frankly, I can’t see how learning, and a JOY for learning, can possibly be optimally encouraged in a setting that ignores what a child is interested in.

I think that feeling thrilled by delightful bits of knowledge or ways of thinking and wanting to share that with a child underlies the very best teaching. That can certainly occur in a structured setting, but it is not exactly the dominant MO for teachers in most schools.
To me, a large part of the difference between formal education and unschooling is how the parent/teacher/learning facilitator views their role and status relative to the child. If you view the child as a fellow learner, who you may be able to assist, you naturally tend toward the unschooling philosophy.

Incidentally, it does seem to me that what you suggest implies you *don’t* trust or value children’s thoughts on what is most important to them… I suspect this is not truly the case, however you are advocating a system whereby You The Educator are supposed to be determining What is Learned, How it is Learned, When it is Learned and (to a large degree) Why it is Learned. To an unschooler, this sounds completely, UTTERLY incompatible with trusting and valuing a child (we aren’t talking about trusting them not to eat too many cookies or valuing them as precious little dolls… we are talking about trusting them as individual persons, who have valid ideas about what they want to learn, and that we should respect their opinions, at least in as much as we do so for other adults).

For the record, if you do not intend to be hostile, I for one think

“I hurt for 9 1/2 -yer old Miyuna who “loves books” and yet doesn’t have someone who will show her how to read them.”

sounds… confused at best. If her house is like virtually every homeschooling house I’ve seen, OF COURSE Miyuna has someone who will show her how to read them- the very second she asks. Just because she will not have someone drill her endlessly in phonics does not mean someone would not show her how to read.
Miyuna may want to delay learning because she loves to be read aloud to, or she may simply want to read and still find she’s too easily distracted for it right now. The point, from an unschooling perspective, is that she undoubtedly *is* (or *will be*) capable of learning when she so desires, and she has her reasons and we should respect them.

I do tend to suffer from the delusion that everyone would be better off given more freedom. This probably isn’t as true as my intuition says, but I will maintain that unschooling is intrinsically more broadly adaptable than modern classroom education. My thinking is that you can always ask for more structure. Just try asking for more freedom in most of today’s classrooms. Unschooling isn’t about throwing out formal, structured education. Unschooling is about providing additional options to formal, structured education. The fact that young children don’t often choose those routes should maybe tell you something important.

I forgot to leave a link to my blog: http://www.tortesianschoolmarm.blogspot.com

And to clarify why we are homeschooling, it is not necessarily a moving away from public schools as much as it is a moving TOWARDS a more healthy lifestyle. Learning, living and life go hand in hand for us.

Thanks for listening and sharing your thoughts. I’ve enjoyed reading the variety of perspectives.

There are important thinkers in many fields that are all saying similar things–Alfie Kohn is railing against the reward/punishment system of raising children, Richard Louv speaks about nature defecit disorder, Ivan Illich, many years ago, spoke out about the institutionalization of our whole culture, psychologists are prescribing record levels of anti-depressants to children, and families are breaking up, overscheduling themselves and eating foods our great grandparents wouldn’t recognize. Children need to be in an environment that doesn’t dispense food, information and entertainment from machines. I believe that we will see all of these things come home to roost eventually.

If you pay attention to the most current research and thinking in areas of medicine, psychology, environmental awareness, nutrition and child development, you will be hard pressed to make the case that our public school system reflects any modern scientific thinking. I am simply not convinced that our school system is creating a healthy population of prepared and well-adjusted adults, and I’m not willing to take the risk that my children will miss reaching their potential.

Children need to have unstructured time to play outside. Their play is critical to their development of creative thought and healthy bodies. They need to be involved in their food choices and the preparation of food. They need to be nurtured by their family and by a secure social community that involves people of ALL AGES. They need to be able to sit and read a book uninterrupted, for an entire afternoon if they choose. They need to be able to delve deeply into their learning, rather than working according to arbitrary bells and schedules. They need to view learning as something that happens all the time, all year round, rather than something that is limited to a building or specific time. Children learn better when they actually do things, when they are actively discovering and experiencing the world first-hand. They need to be able to build upon their prior knowledge and work at a natural pace. When they are on fire in their pursuit of figuring out multiplication, they need to be allowed to go as far as they can. Children do not grow evenly in all directions–they ebb and flow in all areas of development. Any given group of children of the same age includes a wide range of abilities and talents. Howard Gardner delineates 7 different types of intelligences, yet most classrooms can only accomodate 2 to 3 of them.

As someone who ACTUALLY unschools, someone who knows other unschoolers, someone with a degree in Education and experience in the public schools, I feel completely content and blessed to be able to offer my children this experience. I understand how unlikely it might seem to schooled teachers that a child would be willing and even excited about learning, but my children have never been offered any other incentive to learn other than the complete joy of knowing something. Visit my blog to see some of the hands-on projects and activities that my kids are involved in.

Also, it is incorrect to state that unschoolers don’t provide any structure for their children. Granted, not all children need adults to structure their time, but all of the unschool parents that I know are aware of their children’s needs and are pretty good about providing structure for them. Our community is full of cooperative learning groups, our local science museum offers classes, I myself teach creative writing classes, opportunities abound for unschooled children to pursue stuctured learning, which they do.

As with any other new trend, I understand that it will take some time before folks actually understand unschooling. Enlightenment is slow in spreading. At one time people thought that the world was flat and that the sun circled the earth. Right now the mainstream culture believes that children need to spend their childhood at a desk. I think that with any other type of learning, learning about unschooling will take more research about ACTUAL unschool families. You’ve got to get some first-hand experience before you can draw any conclusions. And, even then, you are just drawing a conclusion about that particular family. No one is in any position right now to draw generalized conclusions about the unschool population in America, yet so many people are reading articles in the mainstream media and doing just that.

I actually tend to write a bit about the issues that you bring up on the Life Without School blog as they are things that I am always questioning and reassessing and trying to figure out the answer to…

Who’s In Charge?
http://lifewithoutschool.typepad.com/lifewithoutschool/2006/12/whos_in_charge.html

Knowing When to Push
http://lifewithoutschool.typepad.com/lifewithoutschool/2006/09/knowing_when_to.html

I actually did really enjoy school too, which is one reason why I think that I enjoy unschooling…I love learning and it is so much fun to learn with my kids and see where it takes me. That for me is the main reason that I homeschool. It is fun.

Thanks for your take on unschooling…I agree that it can seem strange at first without seeing how it is done (of course also realizing that no two unschoolers are alike!)

TMS: I loved school. I would have hated not being able to go to school and learn with my friends. For some children, apparently, unschooling works.

TMS: I would wholeheartedly agree with you on that point. Teaching in a public school, I see every single day the results of parents who are not involved enough in their children’s lives. I would be interested in learning more about unschooling from the children’s point of view ten, fifteen, twenty years down the road.

My guess is because going after certain segments of society makes one look mean or insensitive or worse. And the worst parents, and I suspect more than 2 percent of parents in public schools are letting their children down, are unlikely to be moved by logical argument. Some people also want to strike out at those people who do not respect the public school system and have the resources to remove their children from them.

So you are arguing to people like yourselves, about a tiny fraction of parents different from yourselves, while avoiding the real problem of parents who don’t bother to give any thought to their children’s education.

TMS: You reinforced what I mentioned in the post. There appears to be a lot of hostility from unschoolers towards regular schooling, and I don’t understand that - unless you personally had an enormously negative experience with schooling. However, I did NOT show any hostility in my two posts about unschooling. What I wrote mostly dealt with trying to understand why someone would decide to unschool. Until a couple weeks ago I had never heard of “unschooling.” Once I learned about it, I was curious and so I read more about it. I write about what interests me. That, of course, is only a tiny fraction of the time that I spend working within public education on the issues that are there. As I wrote before, it’s the parents’ decision about how to raise their children. However, I think it mostly is an over-reaction to problems, and I think unschoolers do a disservice to their children. My opinion. I won’t lose sleep over it one way or the other.

You mentioned a “fixation” with unschoolers and homeschoolers. I sure wouldn’t describe it as a fixation. However, as a person who has invested my entire career in the field of education, I am certainly interested in all aspects of it.

You bring up some really good points. As an unofficial unschooler myself, I felt that this article didn’t explain unschooling very well at all. The very things you question are the things that make it seem like unschooled kids just “do whatever” and the parents stay out of their way.

Sometimes it’s like that, but most of the time not. And unschooling looks different in every family, so it’s impossible to generalize what goes on.

I posted about this article on my blog, and I addressed many of the things that you pointed out.

http://justenough.wordpress.com/2007/02/02/unschooling-in-the-news-sort-of/

You said a couple of other things that I hadn’t thought of that I think are really insightful, and the Tennessee article did a very poor job of explaining.

You brought up strewing. The concept behind this is to just “leave things around the house” and cross your fingers that a kid will pick it up and learn about it. I, as an unschooler, think that’s a lame idea. And it defeats the whole concept of unschooling. Sure, keep things *in* the house that may not interest your kid now, and might later, but don’t stick them somewhere and hope and pray they pick it up. If I think on of the people in my family will like something, I show it to them. If they are interested, awesome. If they aren’t, awesome. They now know it’s there if they change their mind later. Basically, I’m not attached to the idea that my kids have to do something NOW, or ELSE. But on the other hand, I have a list of things I think are interesting and important in this world to learn, so I tell them. And show them. And bring things up. They take what they can when they are ready. I bring a LOT of things to their attention, I just don’t force them to learn it. Well, unless it’s something that is hurting someone else or themselves. Or an emergency. Or something like that. I mean, I’m an unschooler, so if life demands that the kiddos learn something, I’m not gonna sit back and just let them touch an outlet with a fork. Jeesh.

Back to strewing, there are some kids who really don’t like their parents trying to tell them what to learn and when - especially if they are really sick of school and are just starting out homeschooling. Strewing, or in other words filling the house with a bunch of interesting things without making a big deal about it, is one possible way to get a reluctant learner to pick something up when nobody’s looking. Then, as the kids get more comfortable with the idea that mom isn’t trying to FORCE them to learn, but rather wants to show them cool things and help them, then it becomes less of a strewing thing and more of a cooperative thing. And to some degree a habit - kid knows mom likes to fill the house with goodies. What could possibly be next?

As for unschoolers selling their children short - well, from how this article portrays unschoolers, I can see hwhy you’d think this. But, in the real world where unschoolers actually live, kids are pretty darn happy. So, I don’t know, seems to work from what I’ve seen. And the unschoolers I know, and who I know of, have gone to do amazing things, even if that amazing thing is simply doing what they love and enjoying life to its fullest.

Lastly, a question, how is unschooling any more self-centered than regular schooling? I’m not quite sure I understand that. Isn’t all learning self-centered and personal?

In any case, even if unschooling kids are totally screwed, there really aren’t that many of them. Far less than there are kids who are involved in gangs, and are otherwise destroying their lives. So, in my opinion, even if unschooled kids aren’t going to end up doing the 9-5 grind and don’t end up millionaires, as long as they grow up happy, and like who they are, really, how horrible can it be?

Anyway, hope this helps. Keep blogging!