Unschooling is not THE way

After a discussion with my husband, and a little thought, I wanted to clarify that I am not trying convey that unschooling, or even homeschooling, is the best and only way to raise your children.

I know many wonderful families who do lesson plans and worksheets, have scheduled ’school’ and/or send their children to public school, and I know that they are doing the best thing for their family.

I only share my thoughts and feelings about unschooling/homeschooling because that is what I know and what I believe is the best for me and my family, and that’s it. Unschooling works for my life, my lifestyle and my personality. It may not work for yours- or maybe it does. Only you can decide.

We are all unique, and we each have our own path to walk, I firmly believe that. No one can judge what is best for another, we each are responsible for the choices we make, and are accountable to no one but ourselves and God.

So, enjoy an insight into the life of an unschooler, and know that we can respect our differences.

To those who are homeschooling, I hope my experiences can help you.

More Unschooling Quotes- John Holt

Today’s schools focus on indoctrination and socialization, rather than actual learning. Children learn better without school. School hinders children’s learning. As John Holt once said, children don’t fail despite school; they fail because of school. Look at some more John Holt quotes below:

“Children do not need to be made to learn to be better, told what to do or shown how. If they are given access to enough of the world, they will see clearly enough what things are truly important to themselves and to others, and they will make for themselves a better path into that world then anyone else could make for them”
~John Holt

“What makes people smart, curious, alert, observant, competent, confident, resourceful, persistent – in the broadest and best sense, intelligent- is not having access to more and more learning places, resources, and specialists, but being able in their lives to do a wide variety of interesting things that matter, things that challenge their ingenuity, skill, and judgment, and that make an obvious difference in their lives and the lives of people around them.”
~John Holt

“What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to find out.”
~John Holt

“I can’t help noting that no cultures in the word that I have ever heard of make such a fuss about children’s bedtimes, and no cultures have so many adults who find it so hard either to go to sleep or wake up. Could these social facts be connected? I strongly suspect they are.”
~John Holt

Kudos for Unschooling

Forgive the rather long list of quotes. They were all so good!

“It is absurd and anti-life to be a part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.”
-John Taylor Gatto

“I never have let schooling interfere with my education.”
Mark Twain

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
Albert Einstein

“My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.”
George Bernard Shaw

“School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, and brutal violations of common sense and common decency.”
H.L. Mencken

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
Albert Einstein

“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”
Henry David Thoreau

“How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.”
Alexandre Dumas

“We are students of words; we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The founding fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.”
John Updike

“I do not believe much in education. Each man ought to be his own model, however frightful that may be.”
Albert Einstein

“My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.”
Margaret Mead

“I loathed every day and regret every day I spent in school. I like to be taught to read and write and add and then be left alone.”
Woody Allen

“Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
Oscar Wilde

“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”
Paul Simon

“School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.”
Ivan Illich in his book Deschooling Society

“Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends upon knowing that secret; that secrets can only be known in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind concieves of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessable only to those who carry the proper tags.”
Ivan Illich

“Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.”
G K Chesterton

“I hated school so intensely. It interfered with my freedom”
Sigrid Undset (Nobel Prize winner)

“The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.” George Bernard Shaw

“There is nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school”
George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize winner)

“Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization. I know. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities.”
Seymour Papert

“It is much easier to condemn a child than to understand a child.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti

“One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman.” Gandhi

“I have not the least doubt that school developed in me nothing but what was evil and left the good untouched.”
Edvard Grieg

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.”
Gertrude Stein

“Our aim in education is to give a full life. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking – the strain would be too great – but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest.”
Charlotte Mason

“In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it…and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself.”
Grace Llewellyn

“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mundane educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom, go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts.” - Frank Zappa

“The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on — because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions.”
– Noam Chomsky

The Perfect Unschool Day

I’ve wanted to do homeschooling for as long as I can remember, I don’t know where I first got the idea, but it was before I had any children. I had grand visions of planned lessons done in our school room complete with desks, chalkboard and an American flag. I imagined my children being brilliant and reading by the time they were three and memorizing all the Presidents of the United States.

As the years have passed (it’s only been 6 years), and my four children have come into my life, those ideals have changed a lot. I still am an advocate of homeschooling, I believe it’s benefits are unmeasured. But my idea of what homeschooling means to me is altered.

I’ve tried the lesson plans, the worksheets, the assignments, the phonics books. But there was always frustration, a feeling that something was missing or I was doing something wrong (and a lot of time there was fighting and headaches about ‘doing school’).

With more research, and application, I’ve discovered that I’m an unschooler- by far. The basis of unschooling is founded on the idea that people (and children) learn best when they are interested in learning.

I know, for me personally, this is exactly how it is. I can learn any subject, as long as I’m interested in learning it. I will usually get my interest piqued in something, then read every book I can on the subject, until my interest has been fulfilled. This has worked very well for me.

Unschooling takes the same approach to teaching children. It allows the children to guide you in helping them to learn what they are interested in. I am responsible for providing the learning opportunities and introducing ideas, experiences, etc., but if they’re not interested, I don’t push it.

As an example, we had what I consider to be a perfect unschooling day yesterday. Among other things, it included reading stories at the breakfast table which taught us number recognition and letter sounds. We also read the classic by Hans Christian Anderson, The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Then we learned about dinosaurs. We discovered that they are reptiles, like crocodiles and snakes, and we also learned the definition of herbivore and carnivore (and that carnivore is like carne- the Spanish word for meat).

(Today we followed that up by learning about and smelling herbs in the pantry-learning that herbs are plants)

After lunch, the kids did gymnastics (standing on their heads on the couch and jumping off the table- don’t laugh, they’re learning new skills, even if it’s unconventional). Then later, they did art and music appreciation (painting with toll paints while listening to Bach). Kyah discovered all on her own how to make light blue (mixing white and blue) and made a beautiful tree painting, with blue sky and a sun.

Kyah also practiced her writing and learned to write Mommy and Breakfast. And that evening they worked on more phonics at www.starfall.com

All of this took place without me initiating anything, I just followed their lead. The biggest ‘challenge’ with unschooling is being flexible. You have to learn to say ‘yes’ to the requests your children make, recognizing it as an opportunity for learning.

When they come to me and want to paint or read a story, I see that as an opportunity for ’schooling’ to take place. I provide the tools (I took the kids to the library, had the books, paints, paper, internet available), but I allow them to show me the right time.

If I say “Ok kids we’re going to learn about dinosaurs. Sit down, copy this worksheet, do this, do that, blah blah blah,” (and I have done that before), very little learning takes place. Either it’s ‘let’s placate mom so we can go play,” or it’s a defiant rebellion against busy work.

But when I follow their lead, go where they want to go, look for the opportunities, and expound upon them, learning takes place naturally, easily. Almost perfectly.

I’m amazed at how much easier and faster the children are learning. When I used to try to ‘do school’, Kyah would fight it and me, and hated it (so did I). Parker would downright refuse unless he was in the mood. All in all it was not a pleasant experience. Now the day goes quite smoothly, and is always different.

I just compiled a list of field trips that we’re going to be doing as well. It includes visiting art museums and natural history and science museums, as well as the planetarium and historical places. This is going to be great!

Homeschool Resources

I’m mostly putting this here for my benefit, so I have access to it. This is for the Utah area.

For those interested in the Thomas Jefferson Education model, here is a link to the Paradigm Charter School, which opened this year for High School students, located in Sandy.

Here is a new website where you can find courses for free, for any age: www.curriki.org

Wanna Get Connected?
Visit www.ourcommunityconnection.com for a calendar of local goings on! From the home page, go to Event Notification to sign up for a free weekly update of fun events tailored to your own needs.

There is also a new utah blog page for the old schoolhouse magazine that can be found at
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Utah/

…last, but not least, I found this awesome website with all kinds of educational freebies like handwritting and typing skills downloads, math, science,history, and foreign language resources, bible study references, teacher’s kits, and more! Check it out…
http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/teacherslounge/freebies.php submitted by Alyssa Bray

Here is a wonderful site with even more resources: www.homeschoolingahouseful.com

www.SaltLakeCityMommies.com
This website provides a venue to communicate with each other through a forum after becoming a member. As an added bonus, you can find some nice articles.

www.GlobalArtways.org They teach art classes
The objectives of Global Artways are to encourage creativity, develop critical thinking, and instill a love of learning while teaching basic art skills.

The Heralder’s of Utah

The Heralder’s of Utah is a non-auditioned home school choir open to children 5-17 years old. The focus is to provide professional choral training for young singers wanting to develop their unique voice talent. The choir is under the direction of Deborah Smith who has a BA in Music Theater and Voice from BYU (1979). She has directed the Heralder’s since 1995. She belongs to numerous professional organizations including: NATS (National Association for Teachers of Singing); NFMC (National Federation of Music Clubs); Orff; Kodaly; Kindermusik and the National Voice Care Network. Currently, Deborah is the Voice Vice-President for the Suzuki Association of Utah. She has been a private vocal coach for over 20 years. She and her husband have 4 children, a son-in-law and a beautiful granddaughter – who claim to know every song she has ever taught her students!

Rehearsal Place: Columbus Center Auditorium
2530 South 500 East SLC
Contact Person: Hollee Crowley 561-5261

The Read Aloud Handbook

by Jim Trelease

In a nutshell:

Dedicated to improving literacy in America by encouraging teachers, parents, grandparents, educators and all others who interact with children to read aloud to them everyday in order to create a desire and love of reading.

Introduction

Chapter:

1-