Unschooling myself - what? why? how?

[battlecrumpet]

Ok I've seen a few people talk about unschooling themselves. And I'm interested but don't really understand it.
I've spent 17 years in educational institutions so perhaps so "unschooling" is in order??

Anyway so here are my questions!
1. What exactly is unschooling? And how is "radical unschooling" different from, ummmm, any other type of unschooling?
2. Why would you want to unschool ie what are the benefits?
3. How do you going about unschooling yourself!

Thanks for your advice :)

[Ayla]

fak try these

http://www.joyouslearning.info/deschooling
http://www.joyouslearning.info/articles/47--unschooling-youll-see-it-when-you-believe-it
http://www.joyouslearning.info/articles/51-precisely-how-to-unschool
http://www.joyouslearning.info/articles/53-but-my-child-isnt-school-aged-yet-deschooling-our-thoughts-on-when-learning-begins

[Ayla]

http://www.joyouslearning.info/forums/tags.php?tag=deschooling

[Ayla]

just bumped lotsa threads :) try tag searches too http://www.joyouslearning.info/forums/tags.php

http://www.joyouslearning.info/forums/tags.php?tag=radical+unschooling

[battlecrumpet]

Thanks heaps. I forgot about searching obviously :oops

[Janet]

I was schooled and then in university where I'm well qualified in history. :) I'm loving natural learning and watching how my kids _just learn_. I try to get out of the way and let them go for it.

[Hush]

How do we balance unschooling with the weight that society seems to place on degrees? For example, I don't have a degree of any kind, but I feel that were I ever to wish to pursue a career as something or other in the future (whether that be author/architect/midwife/programmer) I'd need those little letters after my name you know?

[battlecrumpet]

I think it depends on what career you want to pursue! My husband ended up in IT / programming but it had nothing to do with his degree (which was in ecology and economics). And my step-sister ended up doing IT project management and I don't think she had a degree at all. So with IT (and some other jobs I guess) it's possible to get into careers through work experience alone, rather than a degree.

Medical type jobs like midwifery would be different of course - I guess it'd be hard to get into them by work experience alone (as I s'pose you'd need to have the degree to be registered - not sure though).

[Beatrice]

I'm not sure whether you're asking about "unschooling yourself" - pursuing your own interests - or "deschooling yourself" - losing the mindset that Real Learning always looks like school.

I don't see that "wanting to unschool" is about benefits - I think it's about not fucking with a system which is already working perfectly - ie. our children are learning machines from birth, nothing changes at age 5 which means they suddenly need to be "taught". The only thing that changes are the social messages which have convinced most of us that we are no longer adequate to be in charge of our children's education so that now we need to hand them over to experts. Unschooling just says that our kids are the experts in what they need to learn, and if we take them seriously and don't interpose our own ideas about what they should be doing at this age and stage, we can help them achieve whatever it is they are after.

Kids are drawn to attaining mastery of skills, and it's a cyclical process - they will have uptime and downtime, and the downtime is just as important as the uptime even when it looks like they aren't doing anything. It's kind of like digestion - you can't keep stuffing food in without giving your body time to digest it, and it's exactly the same with learning, but we're conditioned to think that learning happens day to day at exactly the same rate and if they aren't achieving anything overt, we should pull out the workbooks. Deschooling is about attuning ourselves to our kids' natural learning cycles instead of seeing them in relation to how teaching is done in schools.

It's also about seeing value in anything our kids do - not because *we* know what they're getting out of it, but because *they* do. Happy well-adjusted kids aren't going to invest a lot of time in stuff which doesn't derliver them returns. Deschooling is about learning to trust that even if we can't see the value in what they're doing, they can.

[battlecrumpet]

Thanks that's really helped B. I didn't realise the difference btw unschooling and deschooling. I just had some vague idea that being in the education system myself for so long, I'd acquired some attitudes that might be, erm, not useful, and somehow I need to de-program those attitudes. I only have a vague idea what attitudes they might be.

Perhaps what you said about "unschooling myself" being to do with pursuing my own interests - in my own life up till a couple of years ago, my own education and career was all about achievement and rewards (mainly financial). And I guess, the reason I felt that way was partly because of the school system that I went through, and partly due to parenting. And it didn't help me distinguish what I was "good at" (ie I achieved well at) from what I was really interested in. I was good at academics, so I enrolled in law school. And then when that didn't seem to suit, I also enrolled in journalism because I was OK at writing. But that wasn't the same as being interested in writing e.g. as a craft - I wasn't. And so on and on till I went on maternity leave - and it's only then that I've been able to start finding, and following, what I really and interested in / enjoy. So if I understand you correctly, the "unschooling" from that point of view has been going on in my life for a year or two.

As far as deschooling is concerned - by the sound of your description, I've gone a little way down that road but still have a lot to learn. I want to encourage Caelan to pursue his own interests from a young age (ie not making the same mistakes that I made!) and facilitating his self-directed learning is the logical way to instill that.
And I can totally see the lack of logic in a mindset that encourages kids to be self-directed in their learning when very young, and understanding that their learning occurs in fits and starts rather than a smooth pattern - but later on, at school, not catering for the cyclical nature of learning, and forcing kids to learn stuff whether they want to or not, and testing them on it. I can understand how such a system would stifle kids' ability to follow their real interests and passions in life.

So for me it's also been about taking responsibilty, as a family, for Caelan's learning until he reaches maturity, rather than treat the Education Department as the expert in this field and largely relinquish responsibility for his education after he turns 5. And I guess the idea of taking responsibility as a family, conflicts a bit with the idea of his learning being totally self-directed. Because there are basic survival skills that I think he'll need to learn whether he's interested in them or not (basic nutritious cooking, how to manage money etc). Although if I present them in a home ed environment, I can try to make the experience as interesting and relevant as possible for him, so that hopefully he will enjoy learning. And as I said, I guess this is kinda contradictory to the self-directed learning thing, but I have still a lot to learn myself about unschooling, so perhaps my views will change in future.

[Janet]

How do we balance unschooling with the weight that society seems to place on degrees? For example, I don't have a degree of any kind, but I feel that were I ever to wish to pursue a career as something or other in the future (whether that be author/architect/midwife/programmer) I'd need those little letters after my name you know?
If you want a degree go get one. I have one and a half at present. How my children learn is nothing to do with my qualifications and if they want to go to uni unschooling will set them up a darn sight better than the school system.

[asimplelife]

Oh yeah, since I was 20 I've been studying towards all sorts of things - I feel that one day they'll all come together somehow perhaps (export marketing, interior design, editing/proofreading and organic horticulture). I like studying but the best thing is is that I'm choosing to pursue what I am, and I'm doing it for me to use (or not) as I like. I amazingly found out I was no longer the "c" student I seemed to think I was and started getting "As" or passing papers just putting in the effort based on what I'd chosen to learn and was wanting to get out of it. I'm thinking it wasn't that I wasn't bright at school, it was just that I was forced to learn things I had no interest in.

[Beatrice]

And I guess the idea of taking responsibility as a family, conflicts a bit with the idea of his learning being totally self-directed. Because there are basic survival skills that I think he'll need to learn whether he's interested in them or not (basic nutritious cooking, how to manage money etc). Although if I present them in a home ed environment, I can try to make the experience as interesting and relevant as possible for him, so that hopefully he will enjoy learning. And as I said, I guess this is kinda contradictory to the self-directed learning thing, but I have still a lot to learn myself about unschooling, so perhaps my views will change in future.

B has a very keen interest in learning to cook and how to manage money :lol She cooked dinner for all of us last night, because she wanted to, and because she doesn't really like my style of cooking. She made little pies with frozen pastry and a white sauce filling with ham and veges, then she made coconut soup for me and DH because DH doesn't really like white sauce. She's been learning to cook for a couple of years now. She also manages her money better than we do most of the time - she has a generous allowance but banks most of it and saves it for big things. She just bought an iPod Touch a week or so ago. She's paid for a plane ticket to go on vacation with her grandmother as well. She's practically counting the days til she's old enough to get a real job :lol

I think we just muddle along and this stuff comes up naturally, because they're life skills and unschooling is just about living life. I didn't decide "Right, now you need to learn to cook and balance a budget". It just happened.

[battlecrumpet]

Yeah well if C did go to school, most likely he wouldn't learn those type of life skills there anyway. He'd learn at home without me consciously thinking about it. So I guess there's no point stressing about it just because I feel like I'm "taking responsibility for his education" in terms of planning to homeschool him.

Really I'm just taking a little bit more responsibility than I would otherwise, ie if he did go to school. Makes me think more and more that most of the stuff he'd learn at school, wouldn't be of much use to him anyway.

[Beatrice]

Probably not :lol

[turtledove]

it seems to me that a lot of what they do in school, especially in the early years, is a poor imitation of 'real life' so I don't see any reason to imitate school imitating life when you can just live it and learn all sorts of marvellous things along the way :)

[Hush]

If you want a degree go get one. I have one and a half at present. How my children learn is nothing to do with my qualifications and if they want to go to uni unschooling will set them up a darn sight better than the school system.

I know but the year that I did of a degree was eternally dull, frustrating, and just felt like jumping through hoops to get scores, no critical thinking or learning happening at all...
I'm not so much worried about how I can teach him or how he'll do at university in the future should he choose that, I know he'll get skills at home that will prepare him much better than school would, it's more of my own frustration with the system.

[Sarasvati]

I adored uni. I found the opposite, that critical thinking was encouraged, but that I really had to work to prove what I was saying. When I was a tutor I was really appalled at the first years just out of school that wanted to be spoon fed, that wanted to know "what do you want to read?" instead of what they believed, or were passionate about. I think school has a massive focus on critical literacy yet here I was trying to help 17-18yr olds learn something they had supposedly been taught. No, they'd been taught to write what the teacher wanted.

I digress.

My deschooling is about needing to let go of high marks as a benchmark to achievement. Letting go of being able to "see results".

[Janet]

First year is not about learning lots of skills, it's about learning basic stuff. Second year of a degree is when the really really good stuff starts. Critical thinking is encouraged in some courses and not a part of others. I was pretty horrified when I heard from a friend that her biomedical degree was basically learning facts and regurgitating without question because everyone Knows the science is correct. As a humanities student I struggled to get my head around that idea. :lol I hated first year uni with a passion but the rest of my degree (ten year gap before I braved it for second year!) was sooooooooooooooooooooo greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat!!!! :lol

[Sarasvati]

I did an intro psychology subject in second year and was also horrified by the discouragement of thinking. Seems a bit ironic really.

[battlecrumpet]

DH reckoned his degree encouraged critical thinking (this was applied science - ecology). My own experience wasn't really the same (journalism and law). Perhaps it also depends on the uni you go to - mine was a more traditional one.....

OTOH DH and I might also have different interpretations of what critical thinking entails. Because of his science background, he sees critical thinking through the lens of scientific experimentation ie you make a hypothesis, test it out, if it works then you tell it to the (science) world, and then other scientists test the theory themselves e.g. by trying the replicate the results of your original experiment. I think that's how it works anyhow - any ppl from a science background who are on here may want to correct me.

My own view of critical thinking is more in terms of criticising societal norms / laws etc - I guess this is a product of the type of degrees I did. Even if I don't think they directly taught me critical thinking, they kinda established the lens / paradigm through which I interpret what critical thinking actually entails, IYKWIM??

Phew!!