Freedom to Learn

I'm curious to know how an unschooled adult is able to fit into professions that require an exam, such as the Chartered Accountants final exam or a medical/law school entrance exam. They won't have had any practice in their childhood years. Are they able to adapt? Or do the unschooling parents accept that the doors of those professions will be closed to their children as adults?

Thank you for linking to my unschooling page. Another extensive page, with a different tone but the same philosophy, is Joyce Fetteroll's "Joyfully Rejoycing": http://joyfullyrejoycing.com

Hi,

Regarding academia ignoring unschooling, what about your own work? Did you not have students who continue these lines of thought?

Clearly your opinion is that freedom and lack of evaluation must be complete to be effective. But you allowed "relaxed homeschoolers" in your count above, so there is some room to manoeuver here. Trying to understand how complete these need to be seems like a great (family of) research topics which could really inform both individual parents and larger organizations. If no-one is studying these, why not?

(It is too bad there are no (few?) research masters' in the USA. I can understand that many people don't want or need to get a PhD, but here there are still many small problems which if I understand you correctly haven't been adequately studied. Perfect research masters topics.)

The first reading I ever did about schooling at home was by John Holt (Teach Your Own) and that was 30 years ago. There were no homeschool curriculums, seminars or book fairs in those days. The next books I found were by Raymond and Dorothy Moore. So, we did the closest thing to unschooling as I had heard of. Lots of reading and "real" activities. Lots of tools that the kids could access on their own level.

Of the six of them, one is in a math/bio doctorate program, one is an RN, and two more are in university now. One is not interested in further academics and is starting his own business. The last just graduated from high school and is saving for college. By the way, all four that are in university got full four year scholarships.

They did struggle with the transition to a classroom with lectures, tests and textbooks. But all made the transition and found ways to make their college years what they needed. All of them started college quite late--between ages 22 and 24.

I dont think we did "true" unschooling, because I did guide them. But the majority of the learning was initiated by them around subjects that they were passionate about.

Dr. Gray,

Thank you so much for your interest in unschooling and your willingness speak out in favor of it. I am filling out the survey now and look forward to seeing your work regarding it.

The leap from the schooling mindset to the unschooling mindset requires a paradigm shift so radical that it is amazing to me that any of us EVER find it, and yet we do. Thousands and thousands of us have made the leap successfully and are living this joyful life that requires nothing but a desire to learn, a desire to support our children's interests and a desire to believe that learning is living and living is learning - no coercion necessary.

It is my most fervent hope that your work can help pave the path for all of the parents who know that compulsory education is not working for their children, but don't know where else to turn. There is a solution!!

Gratefully,

Michele Holt
Austin, TX.

What about University?

My daughter is going to a Democratic School next year, where she can learn what she wants, how she wants and I am really looking forward to it. The problem I have is her Dad is concerned about how she will be accepted into University if she does not have any high school transcripts to prove her grades. I know there are OPEN Universities (although, I am still not really clear what that means), also she could always apply as an adult student when shes 22ish, (I think). Does anyone have an experience with their unschooled kids getting into uni/college.

I just filled out the survey and turned it in!

I just wanted to share two sites revolving around Christian Unschoolers. I am part of a wonderful group online that supports Christians in their choice of unschooling (despite it being a very controversial method in Christian homeschooling circles)

http://christianunschooling.com/

http://www.christian-unschooling.com/

As someone who believes in the great value of homeschooling in general, and unschooling in particular, I am delighted that you are seeking additional information from unschoolers and I look forward to seeing your results!

-Kerry @ City Kids Homeschooling
http://cityhomeschooling.blogspot.com/

I started homeschooling my kids when they were 10 and 8 (5th and 3rd grades). They are now 20 and 18. We gradually transitioned from relaxed, creative homeschooling, in which I did insist that they spend a certain amount of time reading each day, and did give them some school-ish assignments (although I never used a curriculum set, but rather, started with a number of inexpensive workbooks from various publishers, and also used many websites, educational TV shows, games, arts and crafts activities and music as educational resources), to unschooling. The difference was that I stopped thinking of part of our day as "school time", stopped differentiating between "learning activities" and "non-educational activities", and stopped giving my kids school-ish assignments. It became clear to me that my kids learned from everything they did.

I never accepted the public school mentality about academics in the first place. I did not attend public schools myself, as a child. I attended small, private Jewish schools through 12th grade. Despite the fact that the 2 schools I attended were religiously Orthodox, they were also philosophically/educationally progressive/liberal. That was probably just a reflection of the times (the 70s) and the location (New England), with a large influence of Yeshiva University's old philosophy, before the entire American Jewish Modern-Orthodox community moved further to the right-wing in every way. I grew up in a school setting and family that valued both secular education and religious education, music and the arts, open-mindedness, questioning, science, pluralism, and Democracy. (The Jewish Modern-Orthodoxy of my day - especially among my extended family and the synagogue community I grew up in, was not fundamentalist at all. It was very pro-intellectualism and modern culture.)

So, when I began homeschooling my kids, I immediately started out with the mindset that all of their learning, including art, dance, music, Hebrew and religious studies, karate, etc, were of equal value to reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. I also started out with the basic premise that kids learn in many ways, through many media, and that testing and grading were detrimental to true learning. From the time I was 12 or so, I had extrapolated from the Jewish concept of "Torah L'shma" (Learning Torah for its own sake, rather than for grades and tests) that ALL learning should be done for its own sake.

Unschooling, for me, meant dropping all coercion from their education. My children did not need to be ordered to read if they weren't in the mood, write book reports, or do pages in math workbooks. All they needed was to live in an enriching environment, in which knowledge, curiosity, the arts, and self-expression are highly valued.

My son chose to go to public high school, starting in 10th grade. He knew he had the choice to leave if he didn't like it. But he was happy there, and graduated with honors. He is now a sophomore in college.

My daughter tried public high school for one week, at the beginning of 9th grade, didn't like it, and came back to unschooling. She is currently taking 3 online high school courses (she doesn't feel ready to start college yet, and feels that these online courses are helping her get used to formal course-work), and doing all the things she enjoys and has been doing for years, which include being an active Sea Scout, occasionally making jewelry, sculpting, and drawing, playing the recorder, volunteering at a Shakespeare theater (and getting to see the plays for free), reading a lot of fantasy and Manga, watching a great variety of YouTube videos, reading and writing fan-fiction, getting together with a group of homeschooled teens a couple of times a month, pet-sitting, swimming regularly, and looking for a job. (She got certified as a life guard this summer. She should be able get a job as a life guard at an indoor pool this fall.)

When she does feel ready to go to college, she will start off at a nearby community college, which unschoolers typically have no trouble getting into. After a year or two, she will probably transfer to a four-year university, if she can get the necessary financial aid. (We are a very low-income family and can't afford any college tuition, but my son qualifies for the Pell Grant AND merit-based scholarships. As long as the Pell Grant is still available in coming years, my daughter will be able to get that, and hopefully scholarships as well.) She wants to major in marine biology and work in an aquarium, zoo, or some kind of wildlife rescue setting.

We know quite a few unschooled teens from our area who have gone to college, and I know of a lot more from online groups. I have never heard of an unschooler who was NOT able to get into college if s/he wanted to!

In response to Christy about the ability of unschoolers to enter professional schools--I do think, from my experience, that a lot of unschoolers are stronger in the arts. It would be interesting to know how many unschooled go into something like accounting or law.

I was very attracted to the philosophy of unschooling, but because of the concern that you express here, I was reluctant to be a purist in the method. So, I did have a core of academics that I followed that was basically math and music. They had lots of practice in writing because of all were interested in that, and some became prolific writers as adults. I did direct some of that as well because I wanted them to know how to do it--I do think that their ability to navigate university would be hampered without that ability.

Both of my kids who have graduated from university have degrees in science (math/bio and nursing). The one who is in graduate school struggled with the GRE. All of the kids have struggled with studying in the university setting, because their habit at home was to study something to the point of mastery, and there isnt much expectation of(or allotted time for)that in the early years of college.

If a student wants to go into one of the fields that requires a background of math or science, they will probably need some incremental teaching, and that may mean pushing them on days that they dont "feel like it". I dont think that having that type of teaching is antithetical to unschooling. It would be interesting to read other people's thoughts on that.

Have you seen the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Education (http://www.nipissingu.ca/jual/index.asp)?

YES!

We practice child-led, project-based learning. It definitely isn't schooling at home but it isn't completely unschooling, either. However, it may be the balance between the two with the most potential to spread where traditional schooling now dominates.

We allow our home learner to choose projects based on passion and interest, but we do expect him to create, write, compute, research, study, report, demonstrate, and present his work. Sometimes he works with Legos, composes music, makes stop-motion animation videos, studies fire pistons, reads comic books, makes his own comic books, or works on a spy novel. We measure success through "doing", engagement, civic engagement, participation, creation, and other subjective means. No tests, grades, time limits, or curriculum materials. We act as mentors or facilitators in the learning -- not teachers or experts. http://spottybanana.net/2011/09/09/project-based-home-learning/

My wife and I both got our PhDs in education and we have been unschooling our two children for the last eight years. My wife was a teacher educator and I've been a teacher educator for 25 years, and it's both fascinating and depressing how ubiquitous is the assumption in schools that learning requires instruction. I teach teachers who will (or do) teach grades PK-3, and was recently informed by two of the teachers with whom we place our students for student teaching these two mentor teachers could not figure out how to allow our student teachers do even one assignment in which the pupils' learning came from child-initiated learning, or following the child's lead. This is how complete is the takeover of learning by teacher-dominated instruction.

So, while our state require future teachers to take 12 semester hours of courses in teaching reading, our children learned to read and love reading without any reading "instruction" at all. To my right, our son is playing "The Entertainer" on piano, and our daughter just wandered into the room to report that she and one of her unschooled friends have just agreed that they will each read the same book and then discuss it on-line.

Because schools fill childrens' days with instruction and nights with homework, it is impossible for them to discover what children might initiate, create, and learn if only they were given some freedom.

Michelle Holt is right that what's needed is a paradigm change, and we need new language to communicate the vision of truly democratic educators and unschoolers.