Unschooling is not well loved in much of the homeschooling community. In this episode, we’ll discuss why all the negativity surrounding homeschooling might have more to do with parents than the kids...
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This episode discusses:
What unschooling is
Why there is a lot of negativity around the unschooling philosophy
Questions to ask yourself if you’re opposed to unschooling
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Lets face it…Being a homeschooling mom who also works from home can be pure chaos! As you’ve probably already noticed, despite the occasional laugh track, life isn’t a sitcom and everyday struggles are rarely resolved in 30 minutes with commercial breaks to keep your sanity in check so the right strategies and mindset are vital for becoming more productive and less overwhelmed with all the things life throws at us. Enter the Simply Freeing Podcast…Episodes for the highly passionate, busy work at home, homeschooling mama ready to break away from cultural norms and raise life long learners. So let kick stress to the curb, throw chaos out the door and order in some peace and simplicity…with a cup of coffee, or 3.
Hello, hello! It's been a while since I did an episode alone. I'm so excited to be back! Today's episode was kind of inspired off of a very simple question that I asked on Instagram the other day. I asked, “What comes up for you when you think of the term unschooling?” I wanted to know what the Instagram community thought about it and guess what happened? Immediately the unfollow started flooding in! I didn't even say my opinion on it. I literally just asked what you think of when you think of the term unschooling. So there was a huge influx of people that turned off and put a wall up because of a word. Doesn't that sound kind of familiar with what's going on today in our culture. We cannot even listen to opinions that are opposite of our own because we're so passionate about our beliefs. As moms we need to be so passionate about teaching our children to not allow that to happen. We want our children to be able to share their opinions and their beliefs but also listen to the opinions and the beliefs of others around them. It's super important!
For some of us more than others, we have that vision of those awkward homeschoolers that lack social skills and don't have any discipline whatsoever. So if we've interacted with homeschooling families we might consider strange or awkward, we end up creating a label for them. Immediately we put our guard up and we begin saying why we aren't like “that family.”
Let me just backtrack a little bit…If you're unfamiliar with the term unschooling it was coined in the 1970s by an educator named John Holt. You can do a Google search and look him up some more but in a nutshell in a nutshell it's a form of education that is completely led by the child's interest. Unschooled children are usually left to follow their own interests at their own pace without adult direction. The adults are seen more as mentors observing what the child is interested in and finding resources to support that. There is one technique in particular in the unschooling community that I actually do and I didn't realize that it was something that you would do as an unschooler. It's called strewing and it's where the parent purposefully leaves items a child might be interested in on the table so that the child naturally gravitates toward it. You may even have done this without knowing what it is. I just thought that was an interesting aspect of unschooling to share.
Side note, I know that many of you listening to this are working moms, so if you're a business owner trying to grow on social media and you're not able to be yourself because you're afraid of the unfollows, you may have some inner work to do to get to a more authentic place. If someone unfollows you for being yourself, GOOD! They weren't meant to be a part of your community in the 1st place. I say that from experience because in the past, it really tore me up to see that if I said something that was a little bit out of the norm, that people would get annoyed and leave or like attack me. You can't live your life from a place of fear wondering what everybody else is going to think about you if you speak your opinions and your views on whatever. It's just not healthy. OK I had to say that! Now back to what we were talking about…
I believe that the term unschooling is a little unsettling because basically what it means is that you have to unlearn everything that you've ever known about education and that bothers people a lot! It's too out there. It's too different from the mainstream and when you've grown up in the education system and that's all you've ever known and you have to look at it now from a different perspective and realize that maybe the way you were raised or the way the education system is working is not really working out, it's a hard thing to accept. Many families that stay in the education system, not all but many, complain all the time about what they don't like. What I think it boils down to is that our education system truly wasn't designed for the benefit of the kids. Having worked in the New York City public school system, I can say that with confidence unfortunately.
So this episode is not meant to be an episode that says unschooling is for you. It's for everyone but the purpose of his episode is I'd like to help you think about this homeschooling philosophy a little bit differently instead of immediately turning off because you hear a word that you don't like. There are extremists in every type of homeschooling philosophy those that take it to the next level true unschoolers frowned upon any type of discipline and parental involvement whatsoever so I personally don't align with that. I believe children need discipline. I believe they need parental involvement but the heart of unschooling I believe is very, very powerful and can change your homeschooling in a good way! The biggest issue with unschoolers is that people feel that the children will not be equipped for life but I would argue that especially for the artsy and creative children, some form of unschooling is going to be beneficial for them. I happen to be a mom of four very artsy creative children. The goal of unschooling is to gently lead children into a productive and meaningful life a life where they feel fulfilled and end up doing what they love. Unfortunately those families that literally shut down and turn away once they hear a term they don't like, might be missing out on the heart of what educating our children is truly about. The term might sound negative to some but again this is because our “school is how you achieve anything in life mindset” kind of takes over so let's just change the term to life schooling if that makes you feel better! I like that term too and I also did a poll on Instagram and 100% of you said yeah you prefer the term life schooling. So we'll change it but that's not really what's important who cares about the label and what you call it.
I want you to think about this this is the takeaway I want you to have from today's episode…
Are you closed minded and not open to alternatives out of fear of failure or what others will think of you?
Are you close minded and not open to alternatives out of fear of failure or what others will think of you?
Are you so caught up in curriculum and philosophies of education, and worrying that they are going to be behind that you miss out on connecting with your kids?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, I want you to think about why that might be happening?!
I believe that the principles of unschooling should be incorporated into most children's home school so I did get a lot of unfollows that day but I also got a ton of responses in my DMS and one of them stuck out to me and I want to read it to you.
“Unschooling has nothing to do with the child essentially and everything to do with ourselves. It involves us learning to be free and learn through interests versus being told what's important because someone else says so and lastly it's the true understanding of children's brain developments and when children would generally learn certain skills versus what schools have taught us to believe learning and milestone expectation is.” I love this! As a homeschool mom, teaching our kids effectively has so much more to do with how we think and act rather than anything else. If we're open to different approaches and styles of learning and we're not fighting a war every time schoolwork has to get done, we're teaching our kids in more meaningful ways. If we're not fighting, there is more learning that is happening. But we have to get to the place where we're not fighting!
Our culture says education and learning is separated from life and our culture says that education and learning is separated from life and fun. It's why you are going to hear, “Thank God it's Friday! it's the weekend!” We're basically wishing away the week days just to get to the fun and that's not the way we should be living life that's not the way we should be teaching our kids to live life! I am so passionate about putting a stop to this thinking but then taking it a step further and teaching families how to design a homeschool day that is fun, that is enjoyable without all the stress…Making a home school that you enjoy being a home educator in the midst of living your life and working and doing whatever else you are called to do! I hope this episode was helpful! Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time!
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