Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Unschooling

There seems to be a *thing* about what unschooling is, who is an unschooler, what's the difference between unschooling and radical unschooling?

I have written many times about my take on this.

It seems that the people who get their panties in a wad about some of us trying to *define* unschooling are the ones who aren't really unschooling.

I really don't care what you do. My concern comes in when people say thay are unschoolers BUT...

Either you are or you aren't. It's really simple for me, black and white. I know it's not that simple for all.

Why do people want to join the unschooling movement and still hold on to schoolish ways? I don't know the answer to that. They are the ones who muddy the waters, they are ones who confuse newbies, they are the ones who say I'm an unschooler not an unparent.

Hello!!!!
We parent in partnership not as authoritarian adversaries.
We are parents, we are unschoolers. Unparenting is neglect, plain and simple.
So many things are just plain to me.

I have completely DEschooled, I have no more school hang ups. If you don't deschool you will never unschool.

If you hold on to  anything from the school model you won't unschool.
You need to step away, exam, shift your paradigm. Be a bold, non -conformist, just let go.


You need to deschool and leave your kids alone. Do not impose your hang ups on them!

Kids learn naturally until they are forced otherwise.

Get over yourself and let your kids live and learn in freedom.

Learning is as natural as breathing and my 4 always UNschooled kids are proof of that.

So unschooling means something, it's not do whatever and call it unschooling.

John Holt first coined the term and he meant no school. Unschooling means no schooling whatsover and so much more.

Educate yourself!

7 comments:

JoAnn said...

Nothing to add except Amen!

Penny said...

Excellent post! I also do not get those who covet the label *unschooling*, but don't trust enough to really do it.

Penny said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
wfpearson said...

Perhaps the question is more important than the answer.

L. J. Lowe said...

Go ahead and take your voice back girl! Amen!

Grace Walker said...

AWESOME!!!!!

unschoolermom said...

I can definitely agree with what you are saying. Sometimes it is hard to let go of the old system, just because that is what we are most familiar with. I have that problem sometimes; and then when I finally do let go (again), I see how much better it works.

I can see more clearly since I have opened a childcare why schools operate the way they do. It is very, very difficult to include child-directed learning in an environment where all of the kids come from different families. It gets out-of-hand very quickly. I have found that I do have to structure my days a lot more than I would prefer - just to be able to keep peace in the environment.

But Taliesin and Nathanael oftentimes need a break from the daycare activities. Yesterday was a good example - Nathanael walked away from the activities that we were doing and started doing his own thing. It happened to be looking at a book on the human body.

Thank you for your post!

Kandy