ESTHER JONES

Some years ago, when my eldest son was still a toddler, I came across a book about learning at home. The author had interviewed many families (parents and children) on different topics to do with how the children lived and learned. The majority of these families didn't follow a curriculum or do any formal classes. Most had tried some kind of directed study initially but found that it just didn't work, and had ended up following an unschooling approach to learning, based on th

It’s 10pm on a Tuesday night and we're in the sitting room quietly doing maths by candlelight. We look like some austere homeschooling family of bygone days. Far from it. This just one of those lovely moments that happen when you stop expecting anything in particular to happen. When I talk about unschooling as creating a space in which things can naturally arise, this quiet Tuesday evening is a good example. We got here in a typically roundabout way. We went out to walk a fri