We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
March and April 2004
May and June 2004
July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
2007-01-03 - 13:28
Jack and his �children�
A few days ago, Jack came and asked me to take some picture of him and his �children�. Like his brother, TJ, Jack has two children, a boy, and a girl.
The one you may be thinking is named �Andy�? No, that�s Scarecrow; he�s named for the Playschool song about the Dingle Dangle Scarecrow. The baby girl is named �Baby�.
It�s amusing and instructive to see him parenting his children. Both Baby and Scarecrow use the potty, though Baby still needs a diaper. Both �children� sleep with �Dad Jack� as often as possible and I�ve caught him reading to them.
His interest waxes and wanes, but it seems that he works through new developments with his children first, and then he makes the leap himself. (Which is one reason to be very grateful that Scarecrow is evidently completely toilet trained.)
What makes it �Unschooling�, then?
In response to a recent blog entry, a correspondent who is trying to choose a method and curriculum for homeschooling her children asked me to explain unschooling vs. school at home, vs.� well, everything else.
That brings me to a big question. I'm not sure why that makes it 'unschooling', if I'm following my children's various needs and interests? �it seems to me that following the child's needs and desires/ interests should just be a part of home schooling no matter what curriculum or needs the child has?
Like your Jack reading, telling time. His needs are very different from my little artist, and her desires to be doing art work every day for hours, or my little problem solver�s strong desire to learn about trucks and be outdoors. Following this logic, it seems that some children's needs are also structure and a curriculum, right? As much as some kids crave reading, another craves writing, another craves music, etc. I can see my little artist thriving on an artsy curriculum? Does that mean I'm both schooling and unschooling because I follow her needs? I mean, you guys follow Jacks lead- but you certainly do school him. I mean, he does worksheets, and programs on the computer- it's not that he's 'taught' nothing but what he might have asked for in a few sentence response, right? I mean, honestly, then he wouldn't be schooled at all. I'm just really confused about what unschooling means, and I'd like you to explain more- because based on what you say on your blog, and knowing your experience with Jack, most everyone I know unschools then?
Unschooling is based on the work of John Holt, an prize-winning educator who abandoned the public school system because of the irreparable flaws he saw there. You can learn more about his ideas at What is Unschool at the John Holt web site. My take on it that unschooling vs schoolling has to do with the amount of structure and expectation the parent puts on the child as opposed to how much the parent follow's the child's lead. You are somewhere in between the two extremes, as are most of us.
I am far from an expert on these matters; we�re just beginning our own journey, but I think the basic confusion lies in that you still equate "schooling" with "education". The way the word �schooling� is used in the home schooling community, particularly amongst unschooling proponents, "schooling" is almost the antithesis of education and learning.
�Unschooling� is not "schooling" because in unschooling the child learns as an organic part of living, rather than having a curriculum bought in a package or invented by the parent. The parent remains the moral authority, but cedes "authority" and "control" of the child's education to the child and becomes a mentor and assistant rather than a teacher. What the child learns is based entirely on where the child�s interests lead, and there is no set idea about what "should" be learned, no testing or grading or working on anything that hasn't engaged the child first.
(In theory, it could mean 12 years of education with no attention at all to reading or math or history or...whatever. But that's not as bad as it sounds. I knew a young man who attended Clonlara an unschooling style school. He went through all his years there without ever studying math. He didn't care about math, he wasn't interested in it and didn�t see a use for it, so he didn't. At the age of 16 or so, he decided that he wanted to go to MIT and learn to be a computer engineer. His advisor suggested that, as he had never done any work at all on math, he might have trouble gaining admission. Iain asked the counselor to explain what he needed to know, he went to the school library, sat down with math books for six week, and went on to achieve the highest SAT math scores in the county that year and went to MIT at 17. The theory behind unschooling is that we can't all know everything. If we know how to learn efficiently and we have learned to trust our intelligence, then we can learn anything we need to know as we need to know it. Iain proved that can be the case.)
Actually, the two radical extremes, as it were (neither strikes me as truly radical, but then again, that's me) are "unschooling", which I have just described, and "school at home" where there is a set curriculum, and a strict schedule where �at 7:30 we wake up and eat breakfast. At 8:30, we clear the table and do an hour of math from the math book. We have a pee break, and then from 10 to 11, we do English from the book, and then we eat lunch. We cover 5 worksheets/five chapter/whatever per subject per week, and we do review every two weeks and test comprehension every month". It is basically, public school in a mixed age group with Mom as teacher. In more flexible interpretations, the child's interest may be allowed to extend a lesson further or add additional subjects when 'school" is done for the day, or maybe change the order in which things are studied a little, but the curriculum is the curriculum is the curriculum. Variations are few.
Actually, very, very few people are total unschoolers and very very few are strict "by the book" school at homers. Almost everyone is actually somewhere in between, some closer to one end, some closer to the other.
Classic Waldorf isn't unschooling because while it is �play based� in the early years, the teacher has a plan for what will happen that day -- there are verses, games, songs, crafts, and stories that the teacher has chosen and will teach in a specific order and a specific way. If the teacher has decided that today is felting day, then any preference for watching videos all day that the child may express has little influence. (Not to say that in the real world, real Waldorf home educators might not say, "well, ok. I'm feeling off, too, so we'll do that another day� -- but that�s not how it�s *supposed* to happen.)
It�s true that we see home schooling methods as far less a matter of �one right way� and more a matter of a smorgasbord of ideas, any of which can be incorporated to make for a fun and enriching educational experience. That can make our explanations seem like it�s all grey area and no Universal truth, because frankly, that�s how we see it.
Choosing a Home Schooling Method
I recommend that no matter how happy you are with a specific model, method, or curriculum you have chosen, that you do A LOT of reading about the theories behind other methods. Some will have ideas you can use, some won�t, but no method or model is entirely perfectly suited to every family or child. Once you do enough reading, you have the tools you need to fix the parts of your favorite method that aren't working perfectly for your family -- you'll have the words to understand what isn't working and some ideas for things to try that might work better.The thing is, if you have many home schooling tools at hand, you don't need a name for your home schooling style -- and in having no name, your style won't have any rules except the ones that work right now. Rod and I are finding that we're blending the ideas of three different approaches to come up with a method that suits what we think Jack will need as he gets older
We are choosing a more Classical education over unschooling because we feel that a deep and rich understanding of human achievement will be an asset to Jack. Our view of education is less pragmatic than the usual unschoolers view, because we don�t consider �need to know� the ultimate standard for the usefulness of education. Education when approached properly, shapes the human mind and personality. We believe that knowing the best that humans have achieved in art, music, science, mathematics, and philosophy, speaking several languages, and knowing how to write well will all help Jack to be able to think well. But we intend, too, to use many unschooling methods because we agree that the ability learn efficiently and to trust ones own ability is also crucial. Interestingly, though, I think Rod and I may lean more toward unschooling than we ever expected to before we watched Jack in action.
