What Is, And Isn’t Unschooling
Unschooling isn’t so much a method, as it is a way of looking at learning. It’s seeing the learning in everything. To me, it’s much more than just dropping the curriculum, although that’s an excellent place to start.
It’s changing the way you view learning and education.
It isn’t leaving your children to find their own way. It isn’t brushing them off and doing your own thing while they’re off on their own trying to make sense of the world.
Unschooling is being a present and mindful parent. It’s spending time with your children, being involved in their world and inviting them into yours.
Unschooling my children is enabling me to see that learning is everywhere. The more they are out of school, the more I see the curiosity and spark in their eyes.
Unschooling my children shows me that learning is fun and enjoyable. Learning is not filling in a bubble on a test. Learning is not being told to memorize a bunch of facts that they could very easily find, in a matter of minutes, online or in a book if they needed it.
Unschooling my children lets me see that their interests and passions are valid and important.
Unschooling my children is enabling me to see them…for all they are and all they can become.
Unschooling my children his enabling me to see that life really is for living and exploring and singing and creating and discovering and trying and doing and being.
More On Unschooling:
“It’s like “just say no.” Just say no to school years and school schedules and school expectations, school habits and fears and terminology. Just say no to separating the world into important and unimportant things, into separating knowledge into math, science, history and language arts, with music, art and PE set in their less important little places.
Most of unschooling has to happen inside the parents. They need to spend some time sorting out what is real from what is construct, and what occurs in nature from what only occurs in school (and then in the minds of those who were told school was real life, school was a kid’s full time job, school was more important than anything, school would keep them from being ignorant, school would make them happy and rich and right). It’s what happens after all that school stuff is banished from your life.”
Anne Ohman:
“Unschooling is active, not passive. It’s only passive in that you don’t do school. But it requires an active effort on your part to shift your own perspective and your old definition of learning. You need to work on seeing learning happening in what your children love to do. It requires active effort in connecting with your children as they are right now. It requires active effort in finding things in the world that you think would be of interest to them. It requires active effort in giving them as much of the world as you can and letting them choose from it what they love. It requires active effort in basing your life in Joy and Love.”
***originally written in 2006: updated in 2009***
hi! liked this post. neat! learned a lot from it.
got here through blogging chicks blogroll. happy blogging!
Thanks for stopping by. What’s the link to your blog so we can visit?
Hello, I just wanted to say thanks for writing this quick explanation! We have an 18 month old boy, and we are going to homeschool him, but I kept coming across this word ‘unschooling’ and thinking “what is that? Sounds good!”
So now I know, thanks! Debs x
You have great reasoning for doing what you do and I think it is wonderful!
Great article; I’d love to unschool my son but it’s quite difficult for the moment. We’re working to get it legalized in Spain.
Congratulations!
Hi..came across your blog and found it to be very interesting..I have added it to my list of favourtites..Kindly add three of my blogs to your list and give a link back..
http://ecstasypoint.blogspot.com/
http://www.theecstasypoint.com/
http://www.theenlightenedfool.blogspot.com/
Yay! Keep spreading the good news! Unschooling ROCKS.
Seeing things through my children’s eyes has made a huge difference in my life, starting with walks in the woods with my son when he was 2 and seeing all the different things he was curious about. It piqued my own curiosity quite a bit.
I’ve been reading Rue Kream’s book recently and the light bulb really went off in my head a couple of weeks ago. Your last line really sums it up – I have such a difficult time trying to articulate what unschooling is. I think I just know it when I see it
Hi Arp, nice to see you here.
Rue’s book is on my list on books-to-buy. 
well said. very inspiring! I love reading your entries. I’ll add you to my list of favorite links. thanks
Hi Chame. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for stopping by!
Joanne,
I am so happy to have found your blog! I resonate with your philosophy. As a recovering teacher, I feel strongly that our education system is in final crisis stage and is about to crumble, hopefully to be re-conceptualized in a completely new way. As more people like you step up and change the paradigm for their children, we pave the way to broader definitions of what it takes to raise conscious, competent, creative, and compassionate citizens. I look forward to poking around here some more. Feel free to visit my blog, “Taking the Lid off the Sun” at http://shinebrightly.wordpress.com.
Namaste’,
Alexis
Speaking of unschooling, I’m studying at St. Bonaventure University, and I have total contempt for every school system I’ve been a part of. I literally walked out of a new art class today after the teacher set up the class suggesting he wanted to “perfect” our artistic skills and make us be able to compete for better grad schools and jobs. Is that what ART is all about?!?! It was the most loathsome thing I had heard in a while, and I felt like it totally put “creativity in a vise”. There is no creativity in schools, they’re lagging way behind radical technological developments we have where I can be lectured by all kinds of intelligent professionals in a non-coercive way (such as TED.com for some interesting ideas). The schools are vitally failing to teach anyone to be themself, to be an independent person who makes their own choices and makes learning a way of life. We need students to take control of their OWN education; if any teacher forces material on the students, he/she destroys the purpose of schooling.
I got wind of unschooling just over a year ago, and it’s horrible. You see, I am stuck in a school with horrible little teachers (I am exaggerating, the teachers are very nice, average sized people) shoveling facts into me to be regurgitated at exam time. And I’m stuck in it! My parents are of the mind ‘taught to learn, schooled to learn’, and wouldn’t allow me to begin unschooling citing that I would ’sit around on my bum all day, on the internet’ and ‘won’t learn anything’. I turn 16 in about 2 weeks, and when that is done I will hopefully be moving into an apprenticeship thankfully, out of the fact-regurgitating school system. Maybe one day someone, perhaps even myself, will go into politics and restart the education system from scratch. It’s a bit far off at the moment, (obviously) but thanks to people like yourself who have forged the way, I hope to unschool my own kids.
Hi Joanne,
Your ideas hit the right spot. Young children are curious and inquisitive by nature. But the school makes them lose all interest in asking questions or exploring life beyond books.
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Thanks for this post, we have a 3 year old and have been considering this for some time. Your descriptions help us to understand more about what unschooling actually is…
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Thank you for putting this, and other pages, together. I’ve explored the idea of unschooling for 3 years now, and I know its the right choice for our family although I’ve never really implemented it yet. In fact, our oldest child is in public K at this point, but will be coming back home as soon as this year is done. This site has given me the inspiration to finally proceed with unschooling for our children, and to make this lifestyle a reality. I can’t wait for this summer to start! Thank you so much again!
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