what is unschooling?

Question

someone please tell me what unschooling is?

Answer 1

There is a big group of people who believe that the compulsory schooling is not healthy for the education of the child. Today's schools are more mechanical and hardly teach anything. Due to the social problems and public schools unable to address it and infact adding more to the problems, people are looking for alternatives. Thus Home Schooling and Unschooling are becoming more popular.

You don't send the children to any school, keep them home and teach as you wish and that is unschooling. I believe the Government allows it. Look at the below links.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/27/gutierrez.unschooing/index.html

Answer 2

Check out the book "The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World as Your Child's Classroom" by Mary Griffith. It's quite good. I'm not an unschooler, but I know different people who do. Those who seem to have the most success with it make very good use of the library. The parents will pick things to match up with things going on or just things they think the kids will like and will leave the books lying around for the kids to 'find'. (This is called "strewing".) Some parents will also make sure to have their own things to study or work on and often the kids will want to be involved. Unschooling done well can be difficult because it requires a lot of resourcefulness and creativity on the parent's part. While some are more laissez-faire in their approach, the successful homeschoolers I've known have had to work hard at making it work.

Answer 3

What is unschooling?
Have you ever described 'red' to a person who is color blind? Sometimes, trying to define unschooling is like trying to define red. Ask 30 unschoolers to define the word and you'll get thirty shades of red. They'll all be red, but they'll all be different. Generally, unschoolers are concerned with learning or becoming educated, not with 'doing school.' The focus is upon the choices made by each individual learner, and those choices can vary according to learning style and personality type. There is no one way to unschool. Click here for more definitions.

Answer 4

It's a way of approaching life. It's a belief that we all are born with the desire to learn. It's helping your kids to follow their interests. For instance, when we went to Sea World, for a few months after, we had to find out every single thing we could on the animals we saw there. We learned more about sea mammals than I EVER would have tried to TEACH them if I were doing a traditional cirriculum. We learned songs, read stories, watched stuff on TLC, animal planet, did internet searches, did lapbooks on sea mammals all because the KIDS wanted it. They couldn't get enough. it's strewing interesting things around your house so that the kids will explore them. It's trusting that your kids will learn things when they want to or need to instead of sticking to a schedule of when you think they should learn them. It's relaxing about things and trusting your kids. It requires more trust in your kids than most other forms of education.
It is NOT just ignoring your kids all day. That is called neglect. Neglect is not a form of homeschooling.
Life learning is another term used to descrbe unschooling. I like it better. It's more accurate. You learn from your life and your interests. You learn math from legos and making cookies and putting together models and playing with tangrams and games.
Here are a few links...
http://www.lifelearningmagazine.com/
http://www.unschooling.com/
http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/earl_stevens.html
http://www.unschooling.org/
http://sandradodd.com/unschooling

Answer 5

We do what they call "unschooling"I hate that name by the way because what we do is not even schooling it is learning. learning is something that everyone does on a dialy basis.We believve in letting our child learn at her own pace. Not forcing worksheets and curriculumn on her. We learn thru everyday life experiences. We give her what she needs for learning and she learns. I use every opportunity to teach her things whether we are at the store or in the car on a ride. Our learning starts when we wake up until we go to bed at night. I don't believe in making her sit for learning. We have structure in our lives, but not "School". Yes it is true that everyone has their own definition of unschooling and call it different things like child led learning, eclectic learning, etc. I think this style of learning is great for those children that are very bright and learn on their own. It is working out very well for us. Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Unschooling is a form of education in which learning is based on the student's interest and needs. It is sometimes referred to as: natural learning; child-led learning; discovery learning; or child-directed learning.
The unschooled student is in control of his/her education. The student chooses how, when, why, and what he/she learns. Parents who unschool their children act as facilitators and provide a wide range of resources, instruction and support. Unschooling begins with a child's natural curiosity and expands from there, as an extension of his/her personal interest and needs.

Answer 7

Unschooling, in it's truest form, is understanding first and foremost that all people are born with an innate ability and desire to learn. Unschooling is allowing the child to learn what they want, when they want, and how they want.. What it isn't, is "unlearning". That is where people go wrong with unschooling and they get all up in arms, those in the homeschooling community make the same mistake with unschoolers that those militant about public school do to homeschoolers as a whole. They judge what they do not know, nor understand, nor have researched; they think that unschooling is lazy parenting and it couldn't be further from the truth. The unschooling parents that I know are very involved with doing everything, within their means to provide everything their child needs in order to learn what THEY the child wants to learn.

Unschooling is about trusting children, it is about letting go of ideals and antiquated ideas of what "education" should look like, it is allowing the child to be free to go with their natural bend towards life, rather then being forced into being what everyone else expects them to be. If a child wants to be a doctor, or lawyer, or zoologist or anything else that requires college, they will not have to be coerced to do what it takes to get there. In the same token, an unschooling parent will not "force" their child to do higher maths just for the sake of doing them, "just in case". They aren't worried about whether or not their child knows their multiplication tables by age "x" or at all, they recognize it as one of many ways to do math, not a "must know".

Unschooling works, it isn't for everybody but there are many grown unschoolers who are self-employed, college educated, holding down jobs, pursuing their dreams and they have not only a joyful outlook on life but a passion for learning. Not everyone who is home (despite method), public, or privately educated goes to college, or is self-employed. That is something that everyone needs to keep in mind before criticizing unschoolers, they have their "success" stories too. People need to do what they feel is best for their family...period.

I wish that my husband would allow me to unschool all the way, however, because he hasn't studied how children learn, nor looked into the lives of unschoolers, he holds a negative stereotype about the whole thing...just as many other people wrongly do.

Here are some links about unschooling:

http://learninginfreedom.com
http://sandradodd.com/unschooling
http://www.naturalchild.org/articles/learning.html
http://experts.about.com/q/Home-Schooling-1554/reading-1.htm

Some links For Grown Unschoolers (including adjusting to College):
http://www.grownwithoutschooling.com/gwscommunity.php?viewCat=15
http://www.grownwithoutschooling.com/gwscommunity.php?viewCat=14

Answer 8

Unschooling is where the child directs his/her own path toward what interests him/her -- with the parent's guidance. For instance, if a child is interested in working with horses, they are allowed the freedom to pursue that interest to the fullest and their education is centered around that pursuit (with the basic academics being taught, too). But the child is free to devote undistracted time and effort into that "thing" that sparks passion and creativity in their lives -- or to develop those passions in whatever direction it will take them.

It is very similar to homeschooling but with an emphasis on allowing the child to develop his/her natural abilities and interests more fully.

Answer 9

The answers already provided are good. The term "unschooling" was coined by the late John Holt, who dedicated many years to trying to reform public school systems. Eventually he gave up, having concluded that the idea of "school" ITSELF was the main problem. All of his books are excellent, if a bit sad nowadays, to read, but the one called "Instead of School" probably best presents the concept. Holt observed that in more "natural" societies, children learn by "hovering" about the periphery of adult activities, gravitating to some and being repelled or bored by others. Eventually, they acquire a broad knowledge of the culture, as well as choosing a life path that will be most fulfilling for them and most in keeping with their innate proclivities. See also Jean Leidlow (I may be misspelling that) "The Continuum Concept" for the anthropological perspective.

Answer 10

unschooling is living and learning. the parents create a comfortable home life where learning and curiosity are modeled by the parents, and then the kids are allowed to learn what they want when they want and how they want.

here's a little of what it looked like in our oldest:
when 3 years old, he asked for a book of greek myths after being captivated by a 20 foot statue of Athena. We read it over and over, and kept going in directions he wanted to go in. we read the odyssey aloud to him for 18 months. he said at 5, "Oh mom, this is how odysseus felt when he finally made it home to ithaca." we said - no kindergarten for him.

we read to him whenever he wanted, we did crafts, went to museums, shows, played a lot. he learned to read by being read to – over years, you point out letter sounds here and there and it falls into place... he learned math through cooking and measuring for area for real projects.

then, he and i saw Jesus Christ Superstar and he was blown away. he wanted to talk and learn about religions, power, history, military matters. by 8, he was walking around with "A History of Warfare" under his arm.

He got really into drawing and painting and would spend hours doing that until he went from being untalented in this area, as far as i could tell, to producing amazingly lifelike animal sketches.

at 12, he asked me for books on vikings. I said, eeeew, vikings bad. get money from plunder. he said, 'mom, tell me a european power that didn't, and i'll study them." so, for a year he read viking sagas which are amazing, and russian, ottoman, and roman history. all the books he read were for adults, not kids.

then, he branched in wwii and read many memoirs by soldiers. he and i wept reading the memoir of a 19 year old SS soldier, which was a weird experience indeed.

he wants to be in drama, so he is. he's pretty acclaimed in his little company and has auditioned for and made a pbs pilot. he wanted german classes and he took those for awhile (the teacher died, alas.) now, he's asking to take two classes at the local community college. he's on a theatre critics team.

he's 13 years, 9 months. he's smarter than most grownups, more knowlegeable than most grownups, and set to go anywhere he wants in life