Unschooling resources

[Bentham]

Can you recommend any good unschooling resources such as books and podcasts?

 

I've read (listened to) "Radical Unschooling: A Revolution Has Begun" but I found it unpersuasive (though I thought it was a good book)

 

http://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/Radical-Unschooling-Audiobook/B008UYG5CA

 

Thanks.

[DGB]

Check out Peter Grey's book, "Free to Learn", not unschooling specific but it convinced me that's the path I'd like to take.I read Dayna's book too and feel a similar way about it. I enjoyed it, but if I was not already sympathetic towards unschooling as a concept I'd probably be 'meh' about it.

[cherapple]

I don't know of any current unschooling podcasts that are still in production. It's interesting that there have only been a handful over the years, and that they didn't last very long. 

 

• The Unschooler Experiment: http://www.unschooler.com/category/the-unschooler-experiment/podcasts/
• Of course "School Sucks" (although it isn't specifically about unschooling): http://schoolsucksproject.com/category/podcast/
• There used to be one called "Humans Being," but it looks like the creator removed it from the internet.

 

Read anything by John Holt, Alfie Kohn (who does't actually support unschooling, but his writings are popular with unschoolers), or John Taylor Gatto.

 

At the risk of collectivizing and generalizing (I know there are a few unschooling parents here who post on the boards and listen to FDR), unschoolers can be irrational and acting-out of their histories because they don't have (and like most people, don't want) philosophy and self-knowledge. My advice, if you want examples of rational parenting and education of children, is to stay right here. 

[Lians]

I became interested in unschooling about a year ago and read up quite a bit on the subject. I was also listening to the School Sucks Podcast at the time. In general, the idea is infinitely better relative to public school indoctrination. However, as Cheryl noted, most unschoolers are not particularly philosophical (FDR unschoolers excluded), so they tend to have some really questionable theoretical underpinnings behind their approach. I'll give you a list of things to watch out for when digging into unschooling.

 

Negotiation is often seen as a manipulative tool for imposing the parents' will and desires on the child. They rightly point out that the child's natural state is curiosity, but they assume the child is magically able to pick the useful knowledge from the near infinite amount of information out there. You should get out of his way and become a pure facilitator of his knowledge. Can you guess who has a pretty good idea about what's useful in life? Adults. Why can't you make the case for something like reading? That's manipulative! Teaching the child how to establish boundaries by example is also frowned upon. As a parent, communicating your own preferences is often equated to an implicit threat of withdrawing care and affection.

 

Unschoolers don't have frameworks like UPB and RTR under their belts. They're also largely ignorant of economic thinking. Without these tools, their approach tends to fall back on their own history. We all know where that leads in the absence of self-knowledge.

 

There tends to be quite a lot of disagreement on what "unschooling" actually is even among known unschoolers. In the absence of philosophy, all they do is try to control the definition in order to silence the opposition.

 

What I outlined is a really broad generalization based on my own observations. I also deliberately chose to focus on the negative aspects of what I've observed. There are a lot of wonderful ideas generated by the unschooling community that we shouldn't ignore. The FDR community will give you the tools to separate the good from the bad ideas, so I also recommend you stick around.

[cherapple]

Very well said, Lians. The "unschooling community" is rife with confusion, irrationality, in-fighting, and double standards. That said, it was the first source I found for community support and some tools for improving my relationships with my children, before I found the supporting "communities" of liberty and, soon after that, philosophy. It's not all negative, but without philosophy (as we've seen in recent cases) it can get pretty insane. 

[Guest Mags]

I'm currently reading "The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education" by Grace Llewellyn and am finding it quite good. Other than that I really haven't read much on the topic though.

It's written for teens (and partly their parents) on how and why to unschool. Tons of resources too. Very thorough. 

[tasmlab]

At risk of repeating the above, I really feasted on:

 - Gatto's "dumbing us down" and "weapons of mass instruction" (currently reading "underground history")

 - Lewelyn's "teenage liberation handbook".  The first few chapters are superb and the rest can be scanned or selectively read.

 - John Holt's "Teach your own" was good, but I was already getting the concepts

 

I haven't read Dayna book on Radical Unschooling but have gone through her site.  I believe she also advocates for no bed times, no meal times, letting kids watch whatever they want on the internet. Some of her critics call it "unparenting".

 

The Unschoolers I've come across can be super-persnickety about the right way and what constitutes homeschooling.

 

Our approach has been to grab what we like from it and still do what we think is best, which in our case is providing some guidance and suggested materials, asking them to do at least something daily, and at least keep the unschooling ideas in our mind when we are doing un-unschooling like things.

 

The later may sound fishy, but I mostly mean being constantly aware of how tops-down or joyless or counter-beneficial any school-like activity might be.

 

It's a little like the minarchism/anarchism debate where both parties already went 99% down the road together and then fight over the last 1% w/r/t the distance between ripping your kids out of the PS prison and what you do once you are so distant from it.

 

I really like everyone else's posts on this so far!

Almost forgot,

 

The best resource has been talking to unschoolers.  They like to have park dates!  And in ours, many of them had kids that weren't school age yet, but still identified as "unschoolers".  You can show up to these and chat, although I don't know if I'd go without a kid in tow.