The other day I realized I have a few pearls of parenting wisdom under my belt. Most have come to me through trial and error rather than being learned in a book, as most good wisdom is. Today I’m going to share with you my favorite one. The one that I live [...]
Unschooling
So what is unschooling?
The term “unschooling” was coined by John Holt in the 70’s. It is reference to the soft drink 7up calling itself the “un-cola” as an alternative to Coca Cola. Unschooling as a movement was an alternative to school or school-at-home.
It is simply learning from life and following the lead and interests of your child. The underlining principal is that humans are born learners and learn best with the freedom to be self motivated and learn what, when and how they choose. Human beings are driven to acquire knowledge-children are constantly asking “why?” and “show me how”. It is not through rigorous lessons and testing but through observation, interaction and the need to be a part of the community that children learn how to talk. Learning about the world around them and how things work within it are no different. It is through school that learning by rote of a pre determined body of knowledge at set ages is introduced. This does not take into account the individual needs, interests and learning style of the child.
Joyce Fetteroll says “The goals of unschooling are different than those of school or academic-leaning forms of homeschooling.
Our goal is for our children to be happy and pursue what they enjoy. Most people have that goal too, but they believe children need prepared to do what they enjoy. Unschoolers know that people will do what they need to do to do what they enjoy when given the freedom to do it.”
