Unschooling

January 5, 2008

One subject that has captured my interest lately is that of "unschooling." It's a fairly new concept, the term first used in the 1970s by educator John Holt. It's not the same as "homeschooling." Unschooling seeks to abandon the traditional methods of school and teaching, and allow a child to learn in his own way at his own pace.

Unschooling's main philosophy is that children are natural learners. Wikipedia says, "A fundamental premise of unschooling is that curiosity is innate and that children want to learn. From this an argument can be made that institutionalizing children in a so called "one size fits all" or "factory model" school is an inefficient use of the children's time, because it requires each child to learn a specific subject matter in a particular manner, at a particular pace, and at a particular time regardless of that individual's present or future needs, interests, goals, or any pre-existing knowledge he or she might have about the topic.

"Many unschoolers also believe that opportunities for valuable hands-on, community based, spontaneous, and real-world experiences are missed when educational opportunities are largely limited to those which can occur physically inside of a school building."

Why is the concept of unschooling so important to me? My 5th-grade son, Nathan, has a complete lack of motivation for succeeding in school. What gives? Whose son is he? He certainly didn't get that quality from me.

I believe he could benefit from unschooling.

I was asking my friend Kenny recently what he had to say about the subject; that is, motivating boys. He teaches high school (various subjects) so I didn’t know what sort of experience he had with pre-teens. My son is intelligent, creative, and talented, but he just has no motivation in his bones to keep his work done. Staying in during recess doesn’t bother him. Making a D on a test doesn’t bother him.

Kenny said that that’s a continual universal problem in schools, not knowing how to motivate boys ages 13-18. He said he didn’t have any answers, but I was glad to hear I wasn’t alone. I mentioned how that I’ve read that schools are designed for girls. He wholeheartedly agreed with that. Boys aren’t built to sit in desks for an hour at a time and do “sit down” work. Boys are active, visual, and tactile. They are built completely differently than girls.

So. There’s a project for me -- find a new way to teach boys. And maybe….redefine “success.” Maybe success shouldn’t be measured by “90-100 is an A" and failure shouldn't be measured by "anything below a 60 is an F."

This goes back to what I’ve read about “unschooling”: teaching kids to learn for the sake of learning. In the traditional school system, kids are taught to pass tests, to meet certain pre-ordained criteria, not to ENJOY learning. They aren't taught how to think independently. They are taught that success is defined as a number between 1 and 100.

This should be changed.