Varieties of Unschooling Experience

Unschooling is not just for secular, white people with alternative lifestyle demographics. The ideas about learning that John Holt developed over the years speak to people in school and out, to children and adults, to conservatives and liberals; Holt’s work is translated into more than 14 languages now.

However, when we speak about unschooling we are speaking about an idea, not a program, and people need to incorporate ideas into their lives to make them real. Here is an example of what I’m talking about. I recently read A Little Way of Homeschooling: Thirteen Families Discover Catholic Unschooling by Suzie Andres. She writes:

“Unschooling has been the easiest and most comfortable fit for my family. I knew it was right for us, because it was the educational approach that chased away my fear and spoke to me of love. I could really appreciate St. Theresa’s words when she wrote to her older sister in Story of a Soul, ‘No word of reproach touched touched me as much as did one of your caresses. My nature was such that fear made me recoil; with love not only did I advance, I actually flew.’

“Then I heard an echo of her words when I read John Holt. John, like Therese, is articulate, sure, and passionate. He concludes the revised edition of How Children Learn:

‘Little children love the world. That is why they are so good at learning about it. For it is love, not tricks and techniques of thought, that lies at the heart of all true learning. Can we bring ourselves to let children learn and grow through that love?’

“He wrote, too, of fear in education, and how ineffective a tool it was. I thought of my own education and agreed. He wrote of children’s natural love of learning and desire to master the world around them. Again, I knew from experience he was right . . . when I read John Holt I felt the same deep peace I felt when I read St. Therese. Their message to me has been essentially one and the same: Replace fear with trust. Since this is exactly what Jesus taught, I knew it was good advice.”

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 While speaking in Chicago I learned about Finding Joy: A Christian’s Journey to an Unschooled Life by Julie Polanco (it is available from lulu.com). Polanco ends her short book with questions and answers; here’s her reply to a criticism unschoolers often get:

Q: This sounds like all you do is have fun all the time. Life isn’t about having fun. How do kids learn that life is rough?

A: Why shouldn’t life be fun? Why shouldn’t people make money doing something that they find and fulfilling? Sure, all of us experience hardship and tragedy at some point in our lives and our children often experience those things in the course of their lives, too. Their best friends move away or begin to exclude them from the group. The family dog dies. Grandma gets sick and is hospitalized. Dad loses his job. If your children don’t experience any of these things, they will feel the pain through someone they know.

Doing service together often exposes them to the realities of life. When they visit a widow or bring a meal to a new mother, when they make Christmas boxes for Samaritan’s Purse, when they bring new clothers and food to the neighbor whose basement flooded, or when the befriend the immigrant family down the street, they will experience all the ups and downs that life has to offer. Learning should not be among those things that are difficult and unpleasant for children. Learning should be joyous, wonderful, and anticipated with fervor and zest.

On Unschooling, Parenting, and Video Addiction

The topic of video addiction came up on an unschooling list I read. I was surprised by the response given to people who, out of desperation about what to do or in reaction to their own admitted video addiction, were seeking ideas or validation for what they did. Instead, they were greeted with an unsympathetic reply largely along the lines that they were wrong to limit or deny their children unfettered access to video games, and that if there was an addiction issue it is because they weren't unschooled or they didn't do unschooling properly. Here is what I wrote:

As someone who has considerable experience in unschooling, as a friend of John Holt, publisher of Growing Without Schooling, and a father of three girls, I want to add my perspective on this discussion about video addiction.

There are no studies about whether unschooling and unfettered access to video games has a positive or negative effect on child development. However, there is considerable evidence that an unhealthy attachment to anything, be it videos, food, or getting perfect grades, can stunt emotional and physical growth and if a parent feels that such an attachment is hurting their child and seeks to do something about it they should not be banished from unschooling for doing so. If watchful waiting is no longer an option for the parents, then they should try something else and see if that helps the child and them live better together.

I support parents who decide to allow their children unfettered access to video games and I have published stories in GWS about the success of this strategy; I vividly remember one we published in the 1990s when a boy who could play videos as much as he wanted eventually decided to sell all his video games because he decided that they prevented him from spending time doing other things he wanted to do. However, I also support and published stories about parents who dealt with this issue differently, because their personalities, beliefs, and family situations are completely different, yet they, too, found a way to unschool their children. Just as one size does not fit all in school, one size does not fit all in unschooling.

Unschooling is first and foremost an educational approach. Unschooling was not created by Holt, nor propagated by my colleagues and me since Holt’s death in 1985, to be an ideological parenting method, though I think unschooling certainly informs one’s parenting. Just as we trust children to discover and learn things in their own way, so, too, can parents be trusted to figure out how unschooling will work in their family and adapt it to their relationships with each of their children. There are varieties of unschooling, such as radical unschooling, Christian unschooling, and so on, and they are all important developments for people seeking ways to learn without schooling. But the common, broader element that unites them all is the word “unschooling,” meaning we are not doing school at home with our children. That’s what unites us and makes unschooling an educational movement, as it has been since Holt coined the word in 1977. To claim that only one particular way of parenting and raising one’s children is unschooling does a disservice to Holt’s work and to all the people who are seeking, however imperfectly, to do something more meaningful with their children than schoolwork.



The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same

I recently transferred this video interview with me about homeschooling and unschooling that I did for Christian Science Monitor television in 1991. It is almost exactly 20 years ago to the day (2/16/1991) when I filmed it, but since so much of the information is still relevant I thought it would be of interest. I'm struck by how in those 20 years we went from the estimated 500,000 homeschooled children in 1991 to nearly 2 million today, and yet we are still being asked the same questions, particularly "How will homeschooled children be socialized?" What I like about this interview is how thoughtful and prepared John Parrott, the interviewer, was. He handled the socialization question differently than I expected and I was pleasantly surprised.

New Events and Learning From Strandbeests

It’s been an eventful time since my two webinars a couple of weeks ago. First, I had a great time doing the webinars and apparently so did the audience. In fact, some people contacted me to say that they couldn’t get into the event I did with Diane Keith/Homefires since they reached their capacity (500 attendees) and couldn’t squeeze anyone else in. As a result, Diane ran a recording of the webinar for free over the subsequent weekend to accommodate those who couldn’t get in.

Then I learned that www.onlinecollege.org voted my blog one of the best about the unschooling movement.

Then I was contacted by the Florida Parent Educator’s Association to deliver two workshops at their conference in Orlando over the Memorial Day weekend (May 26–28). I have addressed this conference several times in the past, but I haven’t done so in perhaps a decade and I’m looking forward to seeing how it has grown. The organizers tell me they expect 10,000 attendees this year. I also have upcoming speaking engagements in Chicago (March 25–26) and Sandusky, OH (May 16– 19). Please navigate to “Farenga Speaking Engagements” if you would like more information about these events.

Then there is the wealth of materials, information, and good books that keep coming to me. I look forward to writing about them all, and to get started here are two interesting resources for anyone interested in learning about science, art, and nature.

The first is for those interested in nature and animals, or for those who would like to try and see if they become interested. It is The Great Backyard Bird Count and it provides people of any age with an opportunity to participate in a genuine science project being conducted by the Audobon Society, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Bird Studies of Canada. Here is the general information:

The 14th annual Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up February 18–21, 2011. People of all ages and skill levels are needed to count birds in their yards, neighborhoods, or other locations across the United States and Canada. Simply tally birds for at least 15 minutes on any day of the count, then go to www.birdcount.org and enter the highest number of each species seen at any one time.

The second is a fascinating video about an artist who creates life forms. I think the term “life” is being used pretty loosely here, but I think a child or adult who is interested in mechanics, engineering, and creating things that move autonomously will be as fascinated as I was by this video. Further, the kinetic artist, Theo Jansen, uses no electronics to make his creations move. He uses PVC pipes, rope, and fabric to capture the wind and animate his work. This video may inspire children to create their own such creatures, or at least inspire them to figure out how these things move. I suspect having a good anatomy book, such as my favorite The Anatomy Coloring Book, will be a great aid in figuring out how to make their own creations move like Jansen’s Strandbeests.



Free resources and events for homeschoolers and unschoolers

Here are several resources, events, and videos I learned about over the past few weeks that I hope will be of interest to you too.

I’ll be featured in these two free webinars:

Wednesday, January 26, 2011, 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM EST. Dr. Carlo Ricci of The Schulich School of Education, Graduate Studies at Nipissing University has asked me to speak about John Holt’s work. My topic will be how can teachers negotiate the tension between using John Holt’s ideas about individualized teaching and learning while at the same time working in the field of standardized education? Can unschooling be reconciled with working in school? If grades and tests must be used in your classes, is it still possible to reduce fear and cheating, encourage Socratic dialog, and form meaningful mentoring relationships with your students? What did Holt do himself in this situation? What did he recommend others to do in that situation? Reserve your Webinar seat now.

Thursday, Jan 27, 7 – 8 PM EST. “Understanding Unschooling.” This will be an interview I do with Diane Flynn Keith, follwed by questions and answers with the audience. To register: http://www.homefires.com/

Learning Resources:

If you’re interested in scholarly writing about unschooling, you can read all the issues of the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning (JUAL) for free.

I’ve been a fan of the TED videos for some time, enjoying them as a smorgasbord. However, a non-profit site “designed to promote the study of the sciences among students considering obtaining a bachelor degree” has compiled an interesting list of TED talks that are focused on topics of interest for homeschoolers and other independent learners:

50 Awesome & Inspiring TED Talks for Homeschoolers

One of my favorite TED speakers, Sir Ken Robinson, receives an animated commentary in this neat video, Changing Education Paradigms.

I’m intrigued by this website and concept, the Slow Thought Movement. “Slow Thought embodies a conscious renunciation of borrowed ideas” which, among other concepts presented on the site, meshes well with homeschooling and unschooling practices.