top of page

What is unschooling?

Esther Jones

There's a lot of buzz right now around children learning without school, and the different terms used can be confusing. I see the word unschooling pop up in different contexts and sometimes feel a bit flat when I see what it is describing. Not because someone else is doing it 'wrong', but because when this word is harnessed for things beyond its original meaning, it loses its joy and magic. And unschooling is absolutely joyful and magical.


The word was originally coined in the 1970s by John Holt, an educator from New York City. Holt became disillusioned by the education system and believed that in the right environment, children are capable of naturally learning without coercion. He ran a newsletter called Growing without schooling, and wrote a number of books, including How Children Learn and Learning all the Time.


Whilst reading about Holt recently, I found out that he wasn't entirely happy with the word 'unschooling' and would have preferred 'living' instead. Some time ago, I was talking with E about the term unschooling. He said that he isn't keen on it because it has the word 'school' in it, and he couldn't see why that needed to be there, since school doesn't come into it. I asked him what he would prefer and he said that he would call it 'living'. So there we go, perhaps the best description of unschooling is 'living'.

In fact, over the years, I see how our children have naturally been able to just live whilst we have had to undo a lot of our paradigms around parenting and learning to, firstly, allow them to just live, and secondly, to relax into the living ourselves.

So, if you're new to unschooling or just curious, here's a little rundown of what it is and what it isn't, learned, as always, the best way - by living.


It is a more a philosophy of life than a learning methodology Unschooling is about much more than learning. It is a trust-based approach to parenting upon which our relationship with our children is based. We could think of it as creating and holding a space within which the children's needs, interests, desires etc are free to emerge and to be explored. Within that space, what actually happens day-to-day will depend on each family. There's no agenda or need to 'do'. The doing arises naturally in this space.


There's no curriculum In an unschooling home, the children learn what they want to learn. To our schooled minds, this may sound odd, but you're likely to end up marvelling at the strange and wonderful things that happen. They will not follow anything like the steady, subject-by-subject progress that might happen at school. Instead, they will become passionate and knowledgeable about all sorts of things. Much of what is sweated and struggled over at school will appear to be acquired with no effort whatsoever. You are likely to find yourself looking on, open-mouthed, and you will frequently wonder how they know all of what they know.


It often doesn't look like learning In the absence of teachers, textbooks and worksheets, children are free to acquire the knowledge any way they want. This may be through conversations, videos or books, or just by observing something in their lives. Sometimes, when I am really surprised at their depth of knowledge in some subject, I might ask how they know that. Sometimes they know where they got the information, and other times they're not sure. They just know.


There is no coercion Children learn. They are hard-wired to learn. There's no need to disguise learning as play, or to trick our children into thinking fractions are fun (though I'm sure they are for some people!). No need to intentionally incorporate maths into baking, or create a writing activity from a nature walk. Enjoy the baking and nature walk for the fun that they are, and let the fractions, reading and writing come up when they naturally come up, as they inevitably do in life. Don't worry about making things 'educational'. All of life is an education.


There's no teaching Whenever someone says 'So, do you teach them?', there will be a smothered laugh from one of my children. I'll always offer help if I happen to know something that's useful, and I'm happy to join in any project. But the idea that I would be teaching them is very funny to me now (and even funnier to them). They know masses more than I do on countless topics. From North Korea to Romans, stock investing, politics, dogs, physics and geography, they run rings round me. Besides which, once you have left the idea of a curriculum to one side and embraced the idea that the whole of life is one vast field of learning, how on earth could you decide which things are important for your children to know?

Having said this, many unschooled children take part in classes of their choice. All three of my children have done classes in things they wanted to know more about, from computer programming to history and dog training. They've chosen to attend the classes as they enjoy the subject and have wanted some more knowledgeable input. Many unschooled children choose to go into further education. The lack of school and teaching doesn't put them off learning. It's pretty much the opposite - it gives them self-knowledge and confidence in their ability to learn whatever they put their minds to.


It takes advantage of real life Real life, as opposed to school, is packed with curious and interesting things. It has meaning and purpose and is filled with exciting possibilities, so it is naturally fascinating to children. Nature, business, economics, politics, fashion, sport, ecology - whatever they are interested in, it's out there in the world. Here, as our children get older, almost all of our conversations revolve around real world topics. Everything is more interesting in its authentic context. The narrow curriculum of school, learned in a classroom, just can't compare.


It takes a lot of involvement and connection Unschooling may look like a lazy, hands-off approach, but it's far from that. True, the parents aren't spending their time preparing their home-ed classes for the next day, but they are investing their time in a different way. They are likely to be looking for ways to facilitate interests and to find new life experiences. They will be joining in on projects, helping solve problems, and engaging in long conversations about whatever is on people's minds that day. They will be noticing how their children are, and knowing what is needed to keep creating and holding that safe space for them. They will also be constantly working on their own triggers and issues and at 'deschooling' themselves. It's hard to quantify all of this, but it is anything but lazy.


It is driven by intrinsic motivation and passion Knowledge and skills aren't rewarded with gold stars, grades or a pat on the back. They are not acquired for someone else's approval. There is no pass or fail. The learning happens because that is what feels good and right. It is the result of endless curiosity and a desire to know and to engage in the world.


It is based on trust and respect At the heart of everything are trust and respect. In order to relinquish the idea that we must have control over our children we need to trust the child and their natural processes, and understand that we can accompany these processes but we can't direct them. This means respecting our children as the whole people that they are. There is a lot of talk about children being respectful, but unschooling requires us to understand how an adult should be respectful of a child. It requires us putting control, authority and hierarchy to one side, and engaging in an entirely different way with our children.

Like the best things in life, unschooling is stunningly simple. Unfortunately, we have overcomplicated our thinking around children and learning to such an extent that it can be difficult to find our way back to these innate and beautifully-designed processes. It can take some work to rediscover the intrinsic joy and magic that society has managed to quash so thoroughly, and to realise that it really is all just about living.


4 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page