Episode 18: What is Unschooling and How Does it Work?

Episode 18: What is Unschooling and How Does it Work? 

We Discuss:

The origin of the term “unschooling” as we understand it 

Different paths to unschooling - our own experiences 

The assumption of school as the default 

Respectful/Attachment parenting as a pipeline to unschooling 

Whether we use the term unschooling to describe what we’re doing 

Whether home education culture has moved more toward labels

Respecting children as whole people and the difficulties that can come up in school settings 

Radical Unschooling - duh, duh, duh  

Freedom for children and arbitrary requirements 

The nice thing about being on the other end of parenting and observing how things play out

That challenges and failings of systems don’t necessarily reflect the teachers and assistants who work there 

How learning happens naturally all the time and we couldn’t stop it if we tried (looking at the world’s inventions and discoveries show us this) 

Failing as an important part of learning and how one person’s discovery is often built upon another person’s previous one

Living, learning and exploring naturally have been common to all cultures and times - it just happened to be coined by John Holt to explain the way we understand it after years of standardized schooled assumptions

Whether learning needs to be painful and the ways our views have changed about that over time 

The fear that children won’t learn and how learning actually happens as a by-product of life rather than learning being for learning’s sake

That learning isn’t always about utility but we never know where a thread is going to lead 

How coercion creates resistance and the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation 

The goal doesn’t need to be to learn ‘it all.’ We don’t need to stuff learning in.

That gaps in learning are not only by normal, but opportunities for growth. We don’t want a standardized world - variances are needed. 

The often random and changing standards of school 

How this way of living really keeps us in our toes and imagining things from our kids’ perspectives 

The ways autonomy leads to deep learning 

An experience with a young adult identifying their own gaps and what their reaction has been. What is our responsibility as a parent? 

Resources: 

John Holt 

Dr. Peter Gray 

Taking a Kinder Path (for ourselves, our children and the world)