Unschooling Answers

She contributes:Marsh Clean-up.

I was recently interviewed by a group of University of Houston, Texas students for some research they were doing on unschooling.
Here are some of the questions they asked followed by my answers:
* What are your opinions of unschooling?
That’s a broad question but I will try to answer it. Unschooling does not mean uneducated. To the unschooing philosophy, curiosity, good old fashion curiosity precedes education. You have to start with a desire to know something and that thirst is what moves it along. Conveniently, that’s something we are all born with. We are all natural born learners.

* What are some common misconceptions about unschooling? How do you disagree with them?
"Unschoolers are not well rounded." " Unschoolers aren’t socialized." "You can’t go to uni or college if you are unschoolers."
I’ll usually counter with no one is truly well rounded. Or I might question the concept of well roundedness. Well roundedness at what price? Mediocrity all around?
Socialization? An unschooled kid is going to have more of an opportunity to be socialized-- to a wide segment of the population!
 "Unschooling works if you are rich," is another misconception. "Unschooling works if you are exceptional.  You can't be 'average' and be successfully unschooled."
This is all unfounded nonsense. Unschooling should not have to be forced into a position where it has all the answers to education. It’s one form of educating- it is a really good one for some people. I’d say for most people because just like we know kids can grow up without being punished, without being beaten so too can they grow up without going to school. Also, no one wants to grow up stupid and uneducated!
It’s an approach – an outlook that basically says, learn what you want. The rest will follow. Just like the old adage, follow your bliss. It’s the same people-doubters doubt that too,don’t they? Unschooling keeps you on your toes. It’s something I’ve noticed around unschooled kids- they take initiative quickly. Of course, there are those who are less motivated or feel that they should be in school. So go ahead! Go to school.
 Unschooling is not for the ones who like to be lead, who crave direction, who find comfort in the norm, the regular, the routine. Unschooling can seem like a wild adventure or endless boredom. It can feel like opportunities are everywhere; "Where do I begin?" or it can be like, "I don’t know what I want to do. Someone tell me!"
And both can live side by side comfortably once you get the hang of it. Need help? Go and get it. That’s where my role comes in as a parent. To find guides, all the time, the learner is steering this ship.
Schools should be using more of that 'self-directed,'' go get it ,' attitude; helping kids to find what they want to be if society really wants to build stronger, independent thinkers. They need to nurture the natural thirst to be the best person you can be. I think unschoolers are really lucky because they have that opportunity every single day. It’s up to them to use it. We all have that opportunity mind you- just that it is less obvious.
* Could you tell us about your blog? How could it help people have a clearer view of unschooling?

We started with a weekly radio program called Radio Free School. It was all produced by my husband and I, including our kids who came up with ideas about what they wanted to learn about that week. So it was a show, by for and about homelearners that ran for seven years. Some of the shows included self-directed learning advocates such as J.T. Gatto, Grace Llwellyn. You can hear archived shows by following the links right here on the blog. A book will be coming out soon (hopefully!) that includes many interviews we conducted over the years with leaning advocates of unschooling as well as grown unschoolers!
The blog serves to demystify unschooling, to give support, to share thoughts and ideas.
* What is school like in comparison to unschooling in your opinions?
Apples and oranges. School is prescribed, linear, usually no deviation from what the curriculum dictates. Unschooling is freedom in learning, self directed. It can become very structured too though- when you put all your energy into what you want to be doing. The only true dictate is follow your nose. Also, unschoolers have more time.

* What are your thoughts on the ageism and class rank instilled in schooled individuals?

It’s a shame. I think schools have an opportunity to be so much more than what they are if they could give up the fear, if they could share power but as Gandalf says, "There is only one master and he does not share power!"
Kids could teach one another- I see that all the time and it was like that before. More inter-relatedness like with unschooling. My 13 year old daughter plays with her 5 and 6 year old cousins and hangs out with kids down the street who are 11 and 10. She is not bothered by that. It’s because I think she knows that just because you are small doesn’t mean you have nothing to contribute.
So school misses that opportunity for kids to make real meaningful contributions to the community- because they are so locked up in the 9 to 3 or whatever time they leave at, within an institution with a few teachers and their peers. With unschooling, you get to go out a lot more.

Part II: About Beatrice's daughter

1. Could you tell us about your daughter?
I have three actually. But lets's focus on the youngest (13).

2. How and why did you decide to let your daughter become an unschooler?

I decided long ago that living a live of surprise,adventure and learning from a place of curiosity and love was more authentic then going to an institution that eats your time up.

3. Is there anyone in your extended family who disagrees with your decision to let her unschooled? How did you deal with it?
There are family members but I have never been one to worry about what other people think. I am strong that way. Besides, they observe the results all along.

4. When did she first know that she is different from schooled kids? What are her reactions then?
Outwardly there is no immediate difference- like yellow noses or purple chins. It is how they approach situations. They seem to have a broader understanding of things- not so desperate to hide ignorance; not afraid of failure of doing the wrong thing, of not fitting in, of making a faux pas.  They stand up for what is wrong even at personal cost to their selves.

5. What are your roles in helping her discovering her interests? How can you be sure that she is interesting in learning new things instead of staying home and playing around?

Be observant. Notice things. Questions. Ask. Think. Pay attention.

I am there to help her find the assistance/guide/coaching she needs – to help her find her own mentors. To push her if she wants me to.
First of all, playing around as you put it is fundamental to learning. We forget that is how all learning begins and in fact that element of play is crucial to invention, discovery, creativity. It is vital that children play and actually they don’t even make a distinction between work and play. So playing is fine. As kids grow they seek more- they want to learn more. We continue to encourage them to challenge themselves by taking lessons, reading, reading, watching youtube videos, going to lectures at the university, in the community, community engagement environment, art, etc activism. and so on.

6. How is her typical day of studying? How does she learn? Does she find any difficulties or challenges to overcome during her unschooling?

We go out a lot. We read a lot.  She writes a journal. She takes classes she is interested in. She does a lot of sports. If she wants to study then we work together. She meets other friends to study art, or biology. Life is challenge- of course she finds challenges but intrinsic motivation is what makes her seek to learn more. Also the thought that other kids are learning certain things is a curiosity and a challenge sometimes! (she is competitive!).

7. What are her hobbies or favorite subjects? Do you remember when she first started pursuing it?
She loves dogs. She fosters dogs. She loves soccer. Running.  Art. Writing. Reading. Her sisters play violin, piano, reading and science. “Of course I like science. I don’t like to study it. I can feel comfortable knowing there is a whole field out there that I will never know about. I can live with it," to quote her older sister (aged 14 and in highschool).

8. Does she encounter any difficulties in her social life? Does she have cousins, friends, etc. that are currently in school? How is her relationship with them?

Youngest is the most social! She has absolutely no difficulty whatsoever in social situations.

9. Why did she decide to go to school?

 She wanted to try it out because she was curious about it.  She wanted to meet more people. Also her best (always been schooled) friend was going.

10. Does she ever feel a sense of inferiority to the schooled majority, in any way?

No. Maybe the opposite even! She knows that there school is not the end all be all of he life. "I never let school interfere with my education," to quote Mark Twain.

11. Even if she feels like she has an intellectual advantage over other students, does she feel as if she has missed out on anything? On the other hand, has she ever encountered someone who is schooled, and felt they had missed out on something by being schooled?

Her friends envy her- her happiness, her social ease and well being. Her confidence. That she can  go back to unschooling if she wants to.
12. What does she expect to be in the future? How may schooling and unschooling help she achieve her goals?
An animal behaviorist! She gets to meet her idol- Jane Goodall!

Robert Epstein:Taking Teens Seriously

I always have at least 30 books on the go at any given moment and one of the books that I'd like to suggest here is Robert Epstein's newest book Teen 2.0: Saving our children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence. The landmark Program for Awakening the Inner Adult in Every Teen (2010, Quill Driver Books).

The title is an eye full for sure- but reflects much of what you'll find within its pages.
Reinforcing the work in his first book,The Case Against Adolescence), the new book is about the urgent need to stop infantilizing teens and start treating them as we would adults.

It's obvious that teens today have more money then any other generation before them, are better dressed, have unlimited access to the Internet, seem to be born knowing how to work technology and are generally allowed to enjoy their youth to lengths of time reaching into their 20s and beyond.

But according to researchers like Epstein, teens today, treated like incompetent children in maturing bodies are more rebellious, angry and depressed then ever before.
The thing I find interesting is that even when our kids are unschooled, there are still not enough 'adult' opportunities (like work) out there to meet their growing needs.
And being respected, being taken seriously is far from automatic outside the context of 'unschooled' situations.

It's tough growing up in this culture. One of my daughters attends grade 9 at a local high school. She is a proficient writer (years of lying on the bed reading, reading and more reading) and in one of her classes (geography), she was given a writing assignment.

But when she completed the assignment the teacher called her up to question her about the work. It was so well written, he thought she had plagarized it and was very hesitant to give her a deserving mark. A few other classmates who are good writers also received similar treatment. They had to call on her enriched English teacher to have her convince the geography teacher!!!

This is just a minor example of the way teens are held in suspicion. Guilty until proven innocent. Worse, they are not valued as a necessary and contributing part of our daily landscape- to the detriment of society.

In fact,teens as a group have more restrictions that prisoners or the mentally sick according to Epstein's research.

It will be interesting to hear the views of unschooled teens/grown unschoolers;
how the adult world perceives/perceived them; how they've dealt with an in-grained hostility towards teens. How they have overcome this prejudice.

"The time has come to end the isolation{from adults}. Young and old, we will all benefit by restoring the child-adult continuum that existed through most of human history in industrialized nations and that still exists in preindustrial societies today. The teen years need to be what they used to be: a time not just of learning, but of learning to be responsible adults," concludes Epstein.

Definitely worth a read.

When unschooled wants to be schooled.

Without a doubt the time between ages 11 to 13 are the toughest for unschoolers. At this point kids start going, "Eh- I'm not learning as much as the kids at school. I'm bored. Nothing much is going on."
Expect to hear your usually happy unschooler complain that they want to go to school.
A little bit of preparation to meet this challenge is a good thing.
In 2005, I interviewed Sandra Dodd a seriously experienced mama and author who knows about this stuff for a radio free school show (To listen go to http://www.hwcn.org/~ap951 /three.html and click on show # 32).
The transcript was also published in Life Learning Magazine July/August 2005.
Here's an excerpt from the the interview:
"There's a learning curve that I see with unschooled kids and that is that they seem to be ahead [of their peers in school] for the first few years and then there's a period of time,roughly from about nine to twelve years of age,when they seem behind. And then after they are 12 and 13, zoom! They look ahead! They seem to be ahead again."

"In school,there is a period when children are 11 or 12 when they've just been crammed full of math facts,and geographical facts...and they just seem full to bursting with knowledge, and the kids at home might still be playing with pokemon or coloring books, and they look up and the school kids are naming places and things they don't know, they're reading text books and doing long division or writing cursive-things that you can see from across the room. "What are they doing? I don't know what they are doing. I can't do that!"

"But then what seems to happen with the unschoolers I have met and talked with, is that when their kids got to be 13 or 14, a kind of maturity comes upon them and they say, "Oh! I guess if I want to learn cursive, I'll just practise it, Is this it?" And they do it. They look at something and they say, "Is that all?" And they figure it out on their own how to do math.
They start to develop their own map of the world and history of the universe and stuff;all of the facts are starting to gel in to a model of the universe. They are understanding a lot of things and making a lot of connections. And about that time the kids as school get all burned out and realize that all the facts they are learning are only leading to another year of facts. It's like Rumpelstiltskin: "Oh you turned that straw into gold? Next room. Bigger. More straw. Oh and by the way, you don't get to keep the gold." While the unschoolers are saying,"Oh yeah! This is cool. I'm glad I didn't go to school!"

Another thing I've noticed is that when they get to be 13 or 14, they've either gotten a job, gotten a really cool volunteer position, become involved in a hobby they have so that they are in a position of teaching whether it is karate, or horseback riding, or ice-skating. They've gotten to the point where they know enough that they are a senior student and they are given a position of responsibility. If they are given something real and they are given the kind of responsibility that is given to and adult, in a way it makes them an adult. They feel that shift of not being one of the kids anymore.
And you see a change in their posture and their bearing and the way adults treat them.
..So while school kids are at the point of greatest dismay with public schools the kids their age who are unschooled are saying, "Hah! I wonder if I should go to horse camp of if I should take a college class..... and the kids in school don't have any of these options. So at the same time that they are made small, the unschoolers have been made large."

Teen Culture

I gotta be honest. After my experience today I couldn't help but have my doubts in the human species. I admit that I faltered and temporarily lost my faith in Robert Epstein's work: The Case Against Adolescence. Waiting for the bus (that came late) I was engulfed by the most disgusting presentation of maleness egged on by the worst kind of female stupidity. The young males of our kind cleared their throats loudly and spat on the ground continuously in between crude language and cussing, 'talking' about the worst kind of rubbish, the giddy females giggling and encouraging them.

"Epstein's cracked!" I said to myself. How can we treat these people like they're adults? Kids handling responsibility? Not likely.

But this is exactly Epstein's point: kids live up to our (adults) expectations. If we expect shitty behaviour then that is what we get! If our expectations are high the results will correspond. But we need to give them the opportunities first. So yes, yes, yes. Expect more. Give more responsibility and trust.

Here's a question to Epstein and his reply found on p202 of his book:
Q:Isn't it true that the brains of teens aren't fully developed? Isn't that why they behave so poorly? Doesn't current brain research refute your theory?
A: No brain is fully developed. Brains change throughout
the life span. Teen brains aren't all that different from adult brains, but where there are some differences, those differences don't explain their misbehavior or distress. Brains are reflections of our behavioral, cognitive, and emotional states:they don't cause the states...

In summary, is there a teen brain? Epstein's reply is, "Only in the trivial sense that unique behavioural characteristics that some teens might have-anger, impulsivity, depression-must be encoded in their brains...it's the genes and experiences of angry people that made them angry and gave them angry brains;their brains aren't the cause of their anger... The teen brain is by necessity every bit as much of a cultural creation as adolescence itself."

The Creation of Adolescence?

That turbulent, hormone driven,'devil may care' period of human development is something people made up?
Hard to believe, right? But Epstein presents a convincing case as to how adolescence and the artificial extension of childhood came about since the mid 1800s in western culture at least:

*Nurturing tendencies by women (and some men) to protect the millions of young people toiling long hours in the new factories or getting into trouble on the streets
*The elevated status of women, which gave them a powerful new voice in policy making
*The widespread adoption of the new view that young people are tender, helpless and incompetent (reminds me of how people thought of women in the Victorian era!)
*Determined efforts by the new labour unions to protect the jobs and wages of older workers by pushing young people out of the work force
*The desire of leading industrialists to sweep the streets free of troublesome youths and to prepare new generations of skilled laborers through mass education
*The desire of leaders in the upper and middle classes to impose their moral standards on poor and working class youths
The emergence of new businesses and industries that catered to the young and helped to create a "youth culture."

Says Epstein,"Before these forces emerged, the troubled teen was a rarity in human history. With these forces in play, teens rapidly became isolated from adults and increasingly unhappy about their peculiar place in society;adults in body and mind, toddlers in status."

Here's what John Taylor Gatto says,in an interview with Jerry Brown about the lively America before the industrialists took hold of it: "Independent livelihood was where it was at! You know, back in the 1840's - 1850's it was impossible to assemble an American work force over 40, because people would only work for you long enough to get a little stake, and then cut off and go off on their own. When we look at the history of New England factories, that they're going to concerts, and dances and libraries for the young girls who worked there for just a couple of years until they could bring a little stake to their marriage. That was the American dream, that you could write the script to your own life! And very , very gradually, that dream was converted, and this is quite easy to track, not by evil people, but by people who understood that wealth depends on your ability to command labor. And unless you can assemble large groups of labor, you were never going to be wealthy as the Europeans reckoned wealth, or the English reckoned wealth."

Taylor Gatto places a strong emphasis on the individual, on the entrepreneur in control of himself and his livelihood. Gatto details the lives of archetypal Americans like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison, who were independent, free-thinking leaders, none of whom spent more than two years in any kind of school, and yet all were leading productive, fulfilled lives by the time they were in their teens.

Write in and tell us what you think!

Non-typical teens

Recently, on an unschooling list I am a member of, a woman posted a concern about her teenage children 'not being typical teens.' She has raised her kids with non punitive methods, has respected their educational paths, their interests and now worries that they don't seem like the most teens. She angsts that "they don't drink, smoke, have sex, drugs, or indulge in consumerism. I mean, they don't even experiment?! Here is what I'm feeling worried about. Can kids be "too good"? Are they going to want to experiment later when the consequences might be more harsh?" {Disclaimer-drinking, having sex etc doesn't make you a bad person in my opinion}.

Ehh... and the problem is? They are kind, like to hang out together, don't care about hanging with other teens that much, they like their parents, like their life, could care less about obsessively calling their friends on cellphones or texting every few minutes- in fact they find the company of regular teens a little dull and immature.
Frankly, in her shoes I'd consider myself fortunate. Why worry? She has obviously done a great job of raising them.
The fact is, as Gordon Neufeld (Hold on to your kids: why parents matter more than peers) and others have written, what we are after is for our kids to be adult-oriented, not peer- oriented.
We want kids of all ages to form attachments to caring, engaging, responsible adults rather than having them put all their faith in their peers-expecting them(peers) to serve as role models, and directive and influential forces in their very young lives.
If these teens are not overly dependent on their peers to make their life seem whole then it is a good thing-and it could be because they were raised to find value in their own company, in being alone or with a few close friends and families. This doesn't make them anti social. In fact this is the way to develop into a caring social being.

Reality Check: Teens growing up in many non western cultures don't shun nor are disdainful of the adults in these cultures.