Has anyone here ever heard of "unschooling"?

Answer 1

Yes, as others have explained, unschooling is child-directed learning. I think in theory it's an interesting way to do teaching and homeschooling. One problem for example is the way children don't have much of a say in what they learn in school. I was teaching in a new school to which the 2nd grade teachers were told they were to cover the theme of "weather" for 2 weeks. Unfortunately, most of the children had already extensively studied weather in 1st grade and visited a weather station, met the weatherperson, etc. and were totally bored by the topic. I was being supervised and observed, too, so I don't know who it was worse for: me or the children!!! Anyway, my point being that I think children really appreciate learning about things they really want to learn about and haven't already learned about before and with 30 kids, and with the planning constraints of schools, it is difficult.

With unschooling, you let your children help you plan your curriculum by using their interests. For example, currently my son loves Greek mythology which is a fantastic topic. We are reading both fiction and nonfiction, current mythology and fiction and the original Greek mythology of course. He also loves Greek mythology computer games (sims) of which there are some great ones. That is also educational, they recreate Greek times, and one of them for example had a 200 page instructional manual which he read which was written at about an 8th grade level which he read, very challenging, although he was only 6th grade.

My dd is currently interested in dragons, the human body, and animals so we have been reading a lot about those topics. This week she developed a sudden interest in learning about water, so we have been reading about water and doing experiments using water.

For me, the most difficult topic to unschool with is math, and I do not consider myself an unschooler in the area of math. I do use a math curriculum. I think you could unschool with math quite easily if you are creative and go down the list of topics that you would need to cover, you could make available a lot of math games and cooking lessons and probably cover most of the topics you would need to cover, but I do use math curriculum because I feel I am not overly creative, am a worrier that I might miss important topics, and feel that it is OK to allow myself to use math curriculum, although that is not unschooling of course.

I also use the computer quite extensively, sites like www.headsprout.com and www.starfall.com, but since my dd asks for these sites each day, I suppose that would still count as unschooling.

Answer 2

We unschool, and it's not illegal, nor is it neglectful. We live a very full life, and our children learn things as they need or want.

In fact, in September we attended a lovely conference called the Live and Learn conference (www.liveandlearnconference.com). We were surrounded by hundreds of happy, intelligent unschoolers...many of whom hold prestigious jobs and are in fact well ahead of schooled children in terms of real world living. I can't believe that anyone would take a Dr Phil show seriously, I mean, have you read how they screen their applicants? Read here for one guest's view after she was actually in the audience for the show
http://localhs.com/scuttle/2006/10/great-school-debate.asp

I wanted to add as well how laughable the argument is that we should force our children to follow a regimen set by 'professionals' who have never met them. In fact, there are hundreds of thousands of happy, prosperous people who have rejected the status quo and don't work a desk job from 9 to 5! Many people make much more by being flexible and working at night, many people work split shifts. My mother makes three times as much as the other nurses because she volunteers for the night shift.

The basic premise of unschooling is not to leave the kids neglected, or uneducated. It's opening up the world so that they may learn from everyone and everything around them. It is supporting them in their search for knowledge when and where they are ready for it. If some people screw it up in the process, it's no worse than the masses who do that to their kids every day by sending them to public school.

In the words of another unschooling mom "I just would never, ever, want to limit my children's education to filling in someone else's blanks"

Answer 3

yes another term used is child directive schooling. unlike what some has said there are many types of "unschooling" some they do very little to real school the kids and others let the child pick what they want to learn or focus all the basic studies around their child's interest. such as if the child is into cars you can have buy books on cars for reading , count cars for math ...ect. the public school system is failing our children and the violence in the schools wants me to keep my children home...

Answer 4

I have heard it many circumstances....i'm particular I have used it on social gathering, to boot. There have absolutely been circumstances after I have felt that something had to "provide".....even with the actuality that, as commonly occurs, i'm suffering to imagine of examples immediately. the proper social gathering that springs to concepts replaced into fairly below a 12 months in the past....i wanted to form my concepts out fairly....and the "something" that "gave" replaced into my participation in Yahoo! solutions and retaining with my associates the following for extra or less six weeks. I hasten to operate that I did experience so a lot extra valuable after taking some weeks out.

Answer 5

Yes, I do it, the problem is it's completely misunderstood and warped so you get a lot of bullshit.

The idea is that forcing a kid to do something they hate and don't care about is only going to hurt them, and it all evens out around 16 anyway, so there's no point in forcing them to march to your drummer.

Answer 6

Unschooling is nothing more than another liberal lie designed to trick you into not providing an education to your child.

If you want to homeschool your child, you MUST provide specific knowledge and skills that the child will need to get by in the world and to work his way into the formal educational system, at least by college and much more commonly by high school. Failure to provide this is neglect and abuse (and is illegal I might add). At best, unschooling skates dangerously close to this situation. But it commonly crosses over it. The people involved are freakin nuts is the real issue. They have their heads jammed too far up their asses to realize what they are doing is wrong and has consequences.

Note that the principle of unschooling sounds reasonable. It's the implementation that is messed up.

Answer 7

Unschooling is more usually referred to as deprogramming. It is used to change behavior or beliefs, most particularly with people who are involved in sensitive areas, including espionage.

Answer 8

It is a form of education that lets the student learn what he/she wants to learn instead of a planned out curriculum. It lets the student be in control of their own education and whathave you...

Answer 9

What I have heard of it is when you have to get the just out of school employee to learn how not to beleive everything they learned in school is always right.

Answer 10

I HAVE!!! My sister told me about it. That's when you don't really do school work. You just do stuff like go to the grocery store and stuff. Boy, I wish I was "UnSchooled.


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