Radical or Whole Life Unschooling

[brucethecollie]

I have been really wanting to discuss this with others outside of those who already live this way.  Radical Unschooling or Whole Life Unschooling is, as I understand it, respecting children and allowing them the same freedoms we adults have.  It's about letting children learn what they want, when they want, in the way they want.  The ideas behind this is that when we coerce children to learn what we want them to learn, when we want them to learn it, we are stressing bonds of trust between parent in child and we are ruling over them because we are assuming they don't know better and we do.  Children respond to evidence and they trust the knowledge from their parent-especially if they see their parent is just, honest, and of good moral character.  Obviously, when a child is in danger, parents step in.  

 

I guess the focus is more on modeling behavior and allowing freedom which may help stop the controlling behavior that we get from adults when we raise them while helicoptering over them and constantly correcting and criticizing them.  

 

Because I unschool my children, we often get an adult requesting they spout off their ABC's for them as a mini-test.  Why do people feel it is their personal responsibility to do this?  And why don't they test publicly schooled children?  My kids know and can write all the letters since they were 4 but we never spent any time on the arbitrary ABC song and order so they can't sing it.  Someone once said to me after a loud gasp, "They don't know their ABC's?"  "No."  I said.  "Would you prefer they write you a letter, instead?"

 

The reason I do this is because the kids are happy, healthy, and learning.  Also, attachment parenting seemed like it naturally led to this.  Attachment parenting seems to be about meeting a child's needs.  A child's needs continues past the early years.  I feel like I'm meeting my children's needs by being with them during the day, allowing them freedom to discover and learn on their own terms, make and learn from their own mistakes, and providing them a clean home and healthy food to choose from.  My children are only 6 so I still am fairly new to it all and that's why I am looking to discuss it with people who can bring insight and legitimate concerns.  Morally or ethically I'm still putting this idea to the test because as you know, concerns grow as children do.

 

So do any of you unschool?  Do any of you have any strong opinions about it?  If you have questions, shoot.  

 

[Guest Gee]

Welcome to the board and thank you for posting this.

 

I as of yet have no children but I plan too and I shall not be permitting the state to raise them so am very interested in this area.

 

Could you please clarify something for me?

 

When you say, It's about letting children learn what they want, when they want, in the way they want, do you mean you permit the child to direct its own learning completly but with your support if required, or, is it more the cognitive equivilent of providing them a clean home and healthy food to choose from in that you will permit the child to select stimulating topics, free from asserting conclusions but you are placing limits on the choices avliable?

[brucethecollie]

As I understand it, it is supposed to be completely child directed learning and living but I feel like I do more of the latter, pertaining to your last paragraph.  I know some families where the child watches R rated movies from a young age and eats McDonald's all day.  My kids don't know what McDonald's is and we don't have cable tv-just netflix, where they have their own channel.  The only thing they really like are nature shows and Bill Nye the Science Guy.  The kid channel option on netflix is already set with automatic parental controls.  So I'm not limiting them and yet my husband and I are still making choices that put in limits.  I'm not buying junk food so they aren't eating it.  So while I provide them freedom to choose, there isn't an exposure of everything.

 

As they get older we will obviously have a lot to think about.  The other day my son confessed to watching a few minutes of the Ghostbusters movie and he said he turned it off because he didn't feel ready for it (in that it scared him a little).  So one thing that seems to be helpful is that when they have any feelings about anything, we validate the feelings and allow them to have those feelings.  For example, they can feel like hitting someone but they can't actually hit someone.  Frustration is healthy and normal, violence isn't.  What I've noticed is that they back away from people and things that make them uncomfortable or things they don't feel are appropriate for them.  They run from people who ask them if they are saved by Jesus and they have no fear of climbing an 8 ft rock and leaping off of it.  

[jpahmad]

 It's about letting children learn what they want, when they want, in the way they want.  The ideas behind this is that when we coerce children to learn what we want them to learn, when we want them to learn it, we are stressing bonds of trust between parent in child and we are ruling over them because we are assuming they don't know better and we do. 

 

Well, we are still responsible for teaching our cultural values.  These "principles" can not be discovered by the child on their own.  There is a wealth of knowledge and wisdom that humanity has learned the hard way that must be instilled through cultural transmission to each new generation.  There is no reason to have them attempt to re-invent the wheel by trying to figure out everything for themselves. 

 

I'm pretty sure that radical "unschooling" is a knee-jerk fad reaction to traditional schooling.  It's also a terribly bad idea, tailor-made for lazy parents (not you).   But, homeschooling/parenting, is the best idea.  I'm sorry, there is no way around putting a vast amount of time and effort into your offspring.  So don't have more than you can teach yourself.  

[brucethecollie]

Yes-that we are still responsible for what values they learn-that has been my concern and priority. I notice that most people doing this unschooling use modeling behavior as the way they teach values, I still feel more comfortable stepping in the way I do to avoid trauma to my children.  Obviously we all try to model behavior to our kids since they are great at sniffing out hypocrisy and since they learn more what we do versus what we say.  But, I try to avoid my children being subject to certain things.  Some unschooled children get to hang around whoever they want but if someone is spanking and cussing at their child, I don't want mine subject to that.  Others would say that I should let them get the consequences of hanging out with that type and to decide themselves to reject it. But, children are children.  I don't feel comfortable leaving them to ill ways of others.

 

The way my homeschooling or unschooling is different from traditional homeschooling is the element of coercion (unless I'm misinformed).  There is none.  And yet, with lots of attention and enthusiasm, my kids have been learning no less than if I were making them learn (perhaps more?).  The reason I continue doing this (and even though it's "child led" I still get up early and prepare like a professional going into a job) is that we can have all the learning without me taking away their freedom to choose.  My kids choose to read 2-3 hours a day with me.  They go to sleep when they want and it works because they wake up when they are rested after 10-11 hours (obviously, sleep is important).  We discuss what we all want to do each day and we all find a way to mutually agree upon a schedule.  It makes it easier for me to run errands with them and they get to go to the park or museum they want to go to and no one feels controlled or at the bottom of a hierarchy. They also learn to debate and reach agreements with others.  They wanted to help me cook when they were 3 and everyone told me that was too young.  But, too young why?  So I took safety precautions and got them little stools and they started to learn basic cooking skills. My son likes computer programming so I sit with him and we learn about it together.  My daughter loves to dance and write stories so we help her write them down, edit them, and even set them to music so she can make them into plays she can dance in.  In other words, I feel I can advocate for unschooling when one is committed to ruthlessly helping kids follow their interests, answer their millions of questions (or help them get the answers), and model proper behavior.  We talk about ethics a lot because we go out a lot and come into contact with other humans and so we have so much to discuss. My kids tend to believe me because I don't display any controlling behaviors towards them and I don't lie.  I also let them call me out if they need to. How do I get them to do it respectfully?  I do it respectfully to them and my husband and he to all of us.  It's challenging but, so far the way they are has been telling me to keep going.  

 

I shared some of this with some unschoolers who don't spend time guiding their kids or have kids that yell at them and they didn't want to hear it.  But, I think it makes sense that, like you said, one cannot take any shortcuts with raising children.  The consequences of that will eventually surface.

[jpahmad]

It sounds like you're doing the right thing.  

[Tyne]

My son is only a year old, but I'm already being asked where I want to send him for school. I tell inquirers that it will be his choice, and we will inform him on his options. I really don't want to send him to public school (even though people rave about the schools in my area.) I secretly hope he decides to stay home for school because I think it will be a fun challenge for me and my husband. Both of us went to public school (my husband had some private schooling, too) and hated it, barely scraped by, and now I just feel like after 12 years of public school as a full time job with overtime and no extra pay, I have catching up to do to unlearn all this crap! I didn't discover how much I love learning until I graduate high school.

 

I don't feel adequate to guide my son's learning. Did your education help or conflict or influence your approach to your kids education? Do state standards interfere with the preferred pace your children learn (i.e. If they, say, learned to read way later than the school standard age,) do you get harassed by some sort of education inspector busy-body; could this be a potential problem in the future? Are there things you think are important for your kids to learn that they just have no interest in learning? Did you find a creative way to draw their interests or was it a matter of waiting it out? Can you recommend any literature on this?

 

Sorry- I bet some of these questions are really common.

[brucethecollie]

Well, I thought I had a decent education until I got out of high school and realized that I didn't learn much of anything. But, I have always valued learning and I have a lot of enthusiasm for learning almost anything.  That makes me feel adequate for the early years of education.  Early math is built in with cooking, building things, counting and sorting things, and purchasing things.  There are some things I teach that they don't enjoy learning such as what to do in an emergency-practical stuff.  I do get creative so that learning things is a joyful thing.  For example, they have a cousin who is two years older who they never get to see but just adore-so I gave them the idea of being her penpal which provided motivation to learn our address and practice reading and writing.  Many things just take time.  I have heard that those who think more with their right brain learn to read a little later than those who are dominant left brain.  There is also the case of personality types.  I am really into sitting all day and reading and writing and so I taught myself to read when I was 5.  My daughter never stops moving.  She learns in motion it seems.  She and I have talks and discussions while taking walks because she responds so well that way.  She learns well after running and playing for a while.  My son is hands on.  Talk to him about math while building legos and he seems to retain information much better.  Or draw him a diagram.  My kids didn't talk until they 3 and didn't speak in sentences until 4.  People said "omg take them to an expert!"  But, I read what experts said about twins often speaking later because they had their own language and were thus satisfied with that for a while.  They also heard me speaking two languages at home so that tends to give a slower start, too.  And my kids speak very eloquently now with a large vocabulary (but they do still retain a tiny bit of the baby accent we associate with 2 year olds-less every month though).  My point with this is that the public at large is somewhat lost on how children learn.  As they get older, I plan on getting tutors in their interests.  In the meantime, they have my family members who tutor them in their career field and provide them their knowledge in areas I am not nearly as passionate in, even though I can research and teach them anything basic at this point, it's nice to use people who know more and live more of these subjects.  Meeting state requirements can be tricky.  I live in a state that requires I send in my subject matter and teaching plans.  I am able to have someone with a teaching license and a graduate degree to sign off on their learning in lew of nationalized testing.  I happen to have a sister who fits this criteria and is more than willing to evaluate my kids and sign off.

 

I sometimes try to remember what I honestly learned in my first 5 years of school and I cannot say anything beyond a familiarity with American events and famous characters in history and math up to long division.  My children can chop vegetables, tell you about a cell, build a trapezoid, count out change, be patient and kind with others, assert themselves and their rights and speak up as needed, and say things like, "mom, i'm not satisfied with that answer, could you give me a more nuanced explanation?" and so even though they can't sing their ABC's, which is arbitrary really, they can write you a letter, and so I figure that supporting them with what they want to learn without stifling their creativity and encouraging them to keep trying until they get things...is at least as good as what public schools can do. And of course, there is no morning or bedtime rush to worry about.  Someone told me that our peaceful lifestyle wasn't teaching them how to deal with chaos and bullies.  But, we are out and about and when confronted with bullies or chaos, I've learned that children who haven't been forced to get used to it, can often reject it more easily.  They aren't mean, they just avoid people who aren't going to treat them respectfully and they avoid situations where the moral climate is low. To be honest I was surprised it worked out that way-and continues to.  I will get literature together to send you the resources I know about.

[Kurtis]

 

Because I unschool my children, we often get an adult requesting they spout off their ABC's for them as a mini-test.  Why do people feel it is their personal responsibility to do this?  And why don't they test publicly schooled children?  

  

 

I just posted on this forum about an unschooler named Jeff Till ( https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/45122-a-complete-case-for-home-education-jeff-till/).  He has a great podcast/article that addresses many of the questions/criticisms that people ask of unschooler parents.  I remember him specifically, in one of his shows, discussing this situation of people wanting to "test" his kids.  He had a great response, much as you do!

 

 

 

 

 

I know some families where the child watches R rated movies from a young age and eats McDonald's all day.  My kids don't know what McDonald's is and we don't have cable tv-just netflix, where they have their own channel.  The only thing they really like are nature shows and Bill Nye the Science Guy.  The kid channel option on netflix is already set with automatic parental controls.  So I'm not limiting them and yet my husband and I are still making choices that put in limits.  I'm not buying junk food so they aren't eating it.  So while I provide them freedom to choose, there isn't an exposure of everything.

 

 

This made me think of a recent episode I listened to of The Unschooling Life podcast on the subject of 'Spoiling' kids ( http://unschoolingsupport.com/spoiling/).  It was very interesting in the examples of how when given limits, kids will want to binge on the things they are not allowed, when given the chance.  But when kids are able to choose openly, they always end up self regulating these "unhealthy" behaviours.  

 

I want to say that I'm not saying what you should or should not do in regards to your parenting!  I am only just learning about these things now in preparation for kids in a couple years. 

Thanks for sharing your experiences!