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"What we want to see is
the child in pursuit of knowledge,
not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
- George Bernard Shaw
It is very satisfying for parents to see
their children in pursuit of knowledge. It is natural and healthy
for the children, and in the first few years of life, the pursuit
goes on during every waking hour. But after a few short years,
most kids go to school. The schools also want to see children in
pursuit of knowledge, but the schools want them to pursue mainly
the school's knowledge and devote twelve years of life to
doing so.
In his acceptance speech for the New York
City Teacher of the Year award (1990), John Gatto said,
"Schools were designed by Horace Mann ... and others to be
instruments of the scientific management of a mass
population." In the interests of managing each generation of
children, the public school curriculum has become a hopelessly
flawed attempt to define education and to find a way of delivering
that definition to vast numbers of children.
The traditional curriculum is based on the
assumption that children must be pursued by knowledge because they
will never pursue it themselves. It was no doubt noticed that,
when given a choice, most children prefer not to do school work.
Since, in a school, knowledge is defined as schoolwork, it
is easy for educators to conclude that children don't like to
acquire knowledge. Thus schooling came to be a method of
controlling children and forcing them to do whatever educators
decided was beneficial for them. Most children don't like
textbooks, workbooks, quizzes, rote memorization, subject
schedules, and lengthy periods of physical inactivity. One can
discover this - even with polite and cooperative children - by
asking them if they would like to add more time to their daily
schedule. I feel certain that most will decline the offer. |
| But despite the
differences between the school environment and the home, many
parents begin homeschooling under the impression that it can be
pursued only by following some variation of the traditional public
school curriculum in the home. Preoccupied with the idea of
"equivalent education", state and local education
officials assume that we must share their educational goals and
that we homeschool simply because we don't want our children to be
inside their buildings. Textbook and curriculum publishing
companies go to great lengths to assure us that we must buy their
products if we expect our children to be properly educated. As if
this were not enough, there are national, state, and local support
organizations that have practically adopted the use of the
traditional curriculum and the school-in-the-home image of
homeschooling as a de facto membership requirement. In the midst
of all this, it can be difficult for a new homeschooling family to
think that an alternative approach is possible.
One alternative approach is
"unschooling", also known as "natural
learning", "experience-based learning", or
"independent learning". Several weeks ago, when our
homeschooling support group announced a gathering to discuss
unschooling, we thought a dozen or so people might attend, but
more than 100 adults and children showed up. For three hours,
parents and some of the children took turns talking about their
homeschooling experiences and about unschooling. Many people said
afterward that they left the meeting feeling reinforced and
exhilarated - not because anybody told them what to do or gave
them a magic formula - but because they grew more secure in making
these decisions for themselves. Sharing ideas about this topic
left them feeling empowered.
Before I talk about what I think unschooling
is, I must talk about what it isn't. Unschooling isn't a recipe,
and therefore it can't be explained in recipe terms. It is
impossible to give unschooling directions for people to follow so
that it can be tried for a week or so to see if it works.
Unschooling isn't a method, it is a way of looking at children and
at life. It is based on trust that parents and children will find
the paths that work best for them - without depending on
educational institutions, publishing companies, or experts to tell
them what to do.
Unschooling does not mean that parents can
never teach anything to their children, or that children should
learn about life entirely on their own without the help and
guidance of their parents. Unschooling does not mean that parents
give up active participation in the education and development of
their children and simply hope that something good will happen.
Finally, since many unschooling families have definite plans for
college, unschooling does not even mean that children will never
take a course in any kind of a school.
Then what is unschooling? I can't speak for
every person who uses the term, but I can talk about my own
experiences. Our son has never had an academic lesson, has never
been told to read or to learn mathematics, science, or history.
Nobody has told him about phonics. He has never taken a test or
been asked to study or memorize anything. When people ask,
"What do you do?" My answer is that we follow our
interests - and our interests inevitably lead to science,
literature, history, mathematics, music - all the things that have
interested people before anybody thought of them as
"subjects".
A large component of unschooling is grounded
in doing real things, not because we hope they will be good for
us, but because they are intrinsically fascinating. There is an
energy that comes from this that you can't buy with a curriculum.
Children do real things all day long, and in a trusting and
supportive home environment, "doing real things"
invariably brings about healthy mental development and valuable
knowledge. It is natural for children to read, write, play with
numbers, learn about society, find out about the past, think,
wonder and do all those things that society so unsuccessfully
attempts to force upon them in the context of schooling.
While few of us get out of bed in the
morning in the mood for a "learning experience", I hope
that all of us get up feeling in the mood for life. Children
always do so - unless they are ill or life has been made overly
stressful or confusing for them. Sometimes the problem for the
parent is that it can be difficult to determine if anything
important is actually going on. It is a little like watching a
garden grow. No matter how closely we examine the garden, it is
difficult to verify that anything is happening at that particular
moment. But as the season progresses, we can see that much has
happened, quietly and naturally. Children pursue life, and in
doing so, pursue knowledge. They need adults to trust in the
inevitability of this very natural process, and to offer what
assistance they can.
Parents come to our unschooling discussions
with many questions about fulfilling state requirements. They ask:
"How do unschoolers explain themselves to the state when they
fill out the paperwork every year?", "If you don't use a
curriculum, what do you say?" and "What about required
record-keeping?" To my knowledge, unschoolers have had no
problems with our state department of education over matters of
this kind. This is a time when even many public school educators
are moving away from the traditional curriculum, and are seeking
alternatives to fragmented learning and drudgery.
When I fill out the paperwork required for
homeschooling in our state, I briefly describe, in the space
provided, what we are currently doing, and the general intent of
what we plan to do for the coming year. I don't include long lists
of books or describe any of the step-by-step skills associated
with a curriculum. For example, under English/Language Arts, I
mentioned that our son's favorite "subject" is the
English language. I said a few words about our family library. I
mentioned that our son reads a great deal and uses our computer
for whatever writing he happens to do. I concluded that,
"Since he already does so well on his own, we have decided
not to introduce language skills as a subject to be studied. It
seems to make more sense for us to leave him to his own continuing
success."
Unschooling is a unique opportunity for each
family to do whatever makes sense for the growth and development
of their children. If we have a reason for using a curriculum and
traditional school materials, we are free to use them. They are
not a universally necessary or required component of unschooling,
either educationally or legally.
Allowing curriculums, textbooks, and tests
to be the defining, driving force behind the education of a child
is a hindrance in the home as much as in the school - not only
because it interferes with learning, but because it interferes
with trust. As I have mentioned, even educators are beginning to
question the pre-planned, year-long curriculum as an out-dated,
19th century educational system. There is no reason that families
should be less flexible and innovative than schools.
Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller's mentor and
friend, said:
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate
and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built
upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who
must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to
himself, he will think more and better, if less
"showily". Let him come and go freely, let him touch
real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching
fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid
of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual
experiences.
Unschooling provides a unique opportunity to
step away from systems and methods, and to develop independent
ideas out of actual experiences, where the child is truly in
pursuit of knowledge, not the other way around.
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