Unschooling_ The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild _ Nature _ OutsideOnline.pdf

8/10/2019 Unschooling_ The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild _ Nature _ OutsideOnline.pdf

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Rye Hewitt putting his pack basket, which he wove himself, to good use. He and his brother Fin learned how to make the

wooden baskets from a friend of the family who also unschools her children. Photo: Penny Hewitt

n early September, in a clapboard house situated on 43 acres just outside a small

town in northern Vermont, two boys awaken. They are brothers; the older is 12, the

younger 9, and they rise to a day that has barely emerged from the clutches of dark.

It is not yet autumn, but already the air has begun to change, the soft nights of late

summer lengthening and chilling into the season to come. Outside the boys bedroom

window, the leaves on the maples are just starting to turn.

School is back in session and has been for two weeks or more, but the boys are unhurried.

They dress slowly, quietly. Faded and frayed thrift-store camo pants. Flannel shirts.

hooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild | Nature | Out... http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/Unscho

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Rubber barn boots. Around their waists, leather belts with knife sheaths. In each sheath, a

fixed-blade knife.

By 6:30, with the first rays of sun burning through the ground-level fog, the boys are

outside. At some point in the next hour, a yellow school bus will rumble past the end of the

driveway that connects the farm to the town road. The bus will be full of children the boys

age, their foreheads pressed against the glass, gazing at the unfurling landscape, the fieldsand hills and forests of the small working-class community they call home.

The boys will pay the bus no heed. This could be because they will be seated at the kitchen

table, eating breakfast with their parents. Or it might be because they are already deep in

the woods below the house, where a prolific brook trout stream sluices through a stand of

balsam fir; there is an old stone bridge abutment at the streams edge, and the boys enjoy

standing atop it, dangling fresh-dug worms into the water. Perhaps they wont notice the

bus because they are already immersed in some other project: tillering a longbow of black

locust, or starting a fire over which to cook the quartet of brookies theyve caught. They

heat a flat rock at the fires edge, and the hot stone turns the fishes flesh milky white and

flaky.

Or maybe the boys will pay the bus no heed because its passing is meaningless to them.

Maybe they have never ridden in a school bus, and maybe this is because theyve never

been to school. Perhaps they have not passed even a single day of their short childhoodsinside the four walls of a classroom, their gazes shifting between window and clock,

window and clock, counting the restless hours and interminable minutes until release.

Maybe the boys are actually my sons, and maybe their names are Fin and Rye, and maybe,

if my wife, Penny, and I get our way, they will never go to school.

Hey, a father can dream, cant he?

heres a name for the kind of education Fin and Rye are getting. Its called

unschooling, though Penny and I have never been fond of the term. But self-

directed, adult-facilitated life learning in the context of their own unique interests doesnt

exactly roll off the tongue, so unschooling it is.

It is already obvious that unschooling is radically different from institutionalized


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classroom learning, but how does it differ from more common homeschooling? Perhaps

the best way to explain it is that all unschooling is homeschooling, but not all

homeschooling is unschooling. While most homeschooled children follow a structured

curriculum, unschoolers like Fin and Rye have almost total autonomy over their days. At

ages that would likely see them in seventh and fourth grades, I generously estimate that

my boys spend no more than two hours per month sitting and studying the subjects, such

as science and math, that are universal to mainstream education. Not two hours per day oreven per week. Two hours per month. Comparatively speaking, by now Fin would have

spent approximately 5,600 hours in the classroom. Rye, nearly three years younger, would

have clocked about half that time.

If this sounds radical, its only because youre not taking a long enough view, for the notion

that children should spend the majority of their waking hours confined to a classroom

enjoys scant historical precedent.

A stubborn calf. Fin and Rye also take care of their own dwarf goats. Photo: Penny Hewitt

The first incidence of compulsory schooling came in 1852, when Massachusetts required

communities to offer free public education and demanded that every child between the

ages of 8 and 14 attend school for at least 12 weeks per year. Over the next seven decades,

the remaining states adopted similar laws, and by 1918, the transition to mandated public

education was complete.


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It was not long before some parents and even educators began to question the value of

compulsory education. One of those was John Holt (http://www.naturalchild.org/guest

/marlene_bumgarner.html), a Yale graduate and teacher at the Colorado Rocky Mountain

School who published his observations inHow Children Fail (http://www.amazon.com

/Children-Fail-Classics-Child-Development/dp/0201484021) in 1964. Ultimately selling

more than a million copies, it was an indictment of the education system, asserting that

children are born with deep curiosity and love of learning, both of which are diminished inschool.

Holt became a passionate advocate for homeschooling, which existed in a legal gray area,

but he quickly realized that some parents were simply replicating the classroom. So in

1977, in his magazine, Growing Without Schooling (http://issuu.com/patfarenga/stacks

/bb179dac91264c10bb183f89bf955935), he coined a new term: GWS will say

unschooling when we mean taking children out of school, and deschooling when we

mean changing the laws to make schools noncompulsory and to take away from them their

power to grade, rank, and label people, i.e. to make lasting, official, public judgments

about them.

Holt died in 1985, having authored 11 books on child development. But along with veteran

teacher John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of

Compulsory Schooling (http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-

Compulsory-Anniversary/dp/0865714487), he popularized a movement. Well, maybepopularized is a tad generous; while its generally accepted that unschoolers comprise

about 10 percent of the 1.8 million American children who learn at home, hard numbers

are scarce.

In addition to fundamental curricular differences, there is also something of a cultural

schism between the two styles. Home-schooling is popularly associated with strong

religious views (in a 2007 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics

(http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009030.pdf), 83 percent of homeschooling parents said

that providing religious or moral instruction was part of their choice), while unschooling

seems to have no such association. Unschooling has always been sort of code for being

secular, explains Patrick Farenga, who runs the unschooling website JohnHoltGWS.com

(http://www.johnholtgws.com/). Its about understanding that learning is not a special

skill that happens separate from everything else and only under a specialists gaze. Its

about raising children who are curious and engaged in the world alongside their families


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and communities.

I can almost hear you thinking, Sure, but you live in the sticks, and you both work at

home. What about the rest of us? And its true: Penny and I have made what most would

consider an extreme choice. I write from home, and we both run our farm, selling produce

and meat to help pay the bills. Everyone we know who unschools, in fact, has chosen

autonomy over affluence. Hell, some years were barely above the poverty line. But thetruth is, unschooling isnt merely an educational choice. Its a lifestyle choice.

And it can happen anywhere; these concepts are not the sole domain of rural Vermont hill

farmers living out their Jeffersonian fantasies. Kerry McDonald left a career in corporate

training to unschool two of her four children in Boston, though her husband, Brian, still

works as a technology consultant. The city is our curriculum, says McDonald. We

believe that kids learn by living in the world around them, so we immerse them in that

world. Their classroomssidewalks, museums, city parksmay appear drastically

different from those of my sons. But the ethos remains the same, that a childs learning is

as natural and easy as breathing.

Unschooling is also perfectly legal in all 50 states, so long as certain basic

stipulationsfrom simple notification to professional evaluations, curriculum approval,

and even home visitsare met. But many unschoolers have been reticent to stand up and

be counted, perhaps because the movement tends to attract an independent-thinking,antiauthoritarian personality type.

To the extent that I hadnt demonstrated these qualities previously, the arrival of my 16th

birthday provided ample opportunity, rooted in two events of great and lasting

importance. The first, of course, was the acquisition of my drivers license. This came with

a craptastic Volkswagen Rabbit that my mother had driven for the past half-dozen years

and sold to me for $200.

The second was the quiet arrival of Vermonts minimum dropout age. More than three

million American teens leave school annually, a number that makes up about 8 percent of

the nations 16-to-24-year-olds. Dropouts comprise 75 percent of state inmates and 59

percent of those in federal prison. They earn, on average, $260,000 less than graduates

over their lifetimes.


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My 16th birthday came on November 23, 1987; by the end of that day, my freshly minted

drivers license was cooling in my wallet. And by the midpoint of my junior year, I had

pointed that little Rabbit, already bearing the scratch-and-dent evidence of my negligence,out of my high schools parking lot for the last time.

The irony of my dropping out can hardly be overstated. At the time, my fatherwho

earned his undergraduate degree at Cornell and his masters at Johns Hopkinswas

employed by none other than Vermonts Department of Education. My mother graduated

from Iowas Grinnell College and was a substitute teacher. My familys immersion in

structured education was total. It wasnt merely the medium through which my parents

made their way in the world: it provided the means to support their children, one of whom

was now flipping the proverbial bird to the very hand that fed.

It might lend a degree of credibility to my role as my childrens primary educator if I could

report that I dropped out of high school for reasons of virtue, perhaps to pursue a rigorous

course of self-directed study in thermonuclear engineering or to dig wells in some

impoverished sub-Saharan village. But the truth is, I left public school because I was bored

to the point of anger. To the point of numbness. To the point of rebellion.


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Fin and Rye drying foraged chokecherries. The boys know where to find wild mushrooms and berries, "and

lord knows what else [they] are eating out there," Hewitt writes on his blog. Photo: Penny Hewitt

Day after day I sat, compelled to repeat and recite, and little of it seemed to have any

bearing beyond the vacuum of the classroom. Everything I learned felt abstract and

standardized. It was a conditional knowledge that existed in separation from the richly

textured world just beyond the schools plate-glass windows, which, for all their

transparency, felt like the bars of a prison cell.

Peter Gray knows just how I felt. Gray, a Boston College psychology professor who wrote

the 2013 book Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our

Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life

(http://www.amazon.com/Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct-Self-Reliant/dp/0465025994), is unsparing in his criticism of compulsory education. Children are

forced to attend school, where they are stripped of most of their rights, he says. The

debate shouldnt be about whether school is prison, because unless you want to change the

definition of prison, it is. School deliberately removes the environmental conditions that

foster self-directed learning and natural curiosity. Its like locking a child in a closet.

What kids need instead, Gray contends, is exploration and play without supervision. It is


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this that allows them to develop self-determination and confidence. If hes right, current

educational trends are not promising: in 2012, five states voted to increase the length of

the school year by no less than 300 hours.

Of course, unschooling is not the only choice. Increasingly, families are turning to options

like Waldorf (http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/), the largest so-called alternative-

education movement in the world. It was founded in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919, based onthe teachings of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who believed that children learn

best through creative play. In 1965, there were nine Waldorf schools in the U.S.; today

there are 123.

Sending our children to a Waldorf school was never an option for us, if for no other reason

than tuition, which can run as high as $30,000 a year. But when Fin turned five, the age at

which we deemed it necessary to introduce some structure to his days, Penny and I sought

to integrate aspects of the Waldorf curriculum into his learning. We purchased reams of

thick craft paper, along with pastel crayons and watercolor paints. Penny arranged a small

schooling station at our kitchen table, under the assumption that our firstborn would sit

contentedly, expressing his innate creativity even as he learned the rote information

necessary to navigate the modern world.


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The Hewitt family (plus goat). They've lived and worked on their Vermont farm for over two decades. Photo:

Penny Hewitt;

It was, to put it mildly, a flawed assumption. Fin chafed at every second of his perceived

captivity. Crayons were broken and launched at innocent walls. Pages of extremely

expensive paper were torn to flaky bits. Bitter tears were shed, even a few by our son. It

was an unmitigated disaster.

It was also a watershed moment for our family. Because as soon as we liberated ourselves

from a concept of what our sons education should look like, we were able to observe how

he learned best. And what we saw was that the moment we stopped compelling Fin to sitand draw or paint or write was the moment he began doing these things on his own. It was

the moment he began carving staves of wood into beautiful bows and constructing

complex toys from materials on hand: an excavator that not only rotated, but also featured

an extendable boom; a popgun fashioned from copper pipe, shaved corks, and a

whittled-down dowel; even a sawmill with a rotating wooden blade.

In other words, the moment we quit trying to teach our son anything was the moment he


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started really learning.

n my early twenties, having passed my General Educational Development test and

endured two semesters in Vermonts state college system, I lived for a time in a

$75-per-month bungalow just outside the bucolic Vermont village of Warren. This was at

the apex of my immersion into bicycle racing and backcountry skiing, and I workedinfrequently in a bike and ski shop, subsisting on the time-honored action-sports diet of

boxed noodles, canned tuna, and expired Clif Bars liberated from the shops dumpster.

The bungalow was attached to a rambling, ranchlike structure that looked out over the

valley; it was one of those seventies-era, quasi-communal homesteads that carried the

lingering scent of sandalwood incense and the fetid body odor unique to heavy tofu

consumption. A sign by the door read Resurrection City. Resurrection from what? I had no

idea, and no one seemed to know.

During my yearlong tenure at Camp RC, as it was affectionately known, the main house

was occupied by a single thirtysomething fellow named Donald who homeschooled his two

young sons, Crescent and Orion. Or maybe he unschooled them. I do have a vague

recollection of them sitting at a table, studying well, something. But, for the most part,

the boys ran wild, exploring the surrounding woods. On weekends, Donald packed up his

orange VW van and drove with Crescent and Orion to bike races and music festivals,

where they hawked vegetarian burritos. By the ages of six and eight, the boys were

prepping orders and making change.

I was blown away. And jealous. This was the childhood I wished Id had, equal measures

freedom, responsibility, and respect, with none of the rote soul-crushing memorization

that had soured me on school. Sure, Crescent and Orion could be a bit wildI once found

the front bumper of my truck kissing a spruce tree that stood between the driveway and

the housebut they were precocious and self-aware, brimming with confidence and

curiosity. They looked you in the eye and spoke in full sentences. They were constantly

running and laughing and playing. Im not sure how else to put it except to say that never

before had I known kids who so fully embodied childhood.

When Penny, then my girlfriend, came to visit, she noticed it, too. Those kids are

amazing, she said. I didnt even know there were kids like that.


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Fin and Rye almost always wake up before dawn. We do not have an alarm clock, but early

rising is our habit, ingrained over the decade and a half weve run our small farm. We tend

to chores as a family: Penny heads to the barn to milk cows, I move the rest of the herd to

fresh pasture and slop the pigs, and the boys feed and water their dwarf goats, Flora,

Lupine, and Midnight.

The "cafeteria". The Hewitts run a diversified farm with gardens, an orchard and blueberry patch, and

livestockthey also sell their produce. Photo: Penny Hewitt

By seven the chores are finished and we convene at the wide wooden table for breakfast

eggs, usually, and bacon from last years pigs. After breakfast, I repair to my desk to

write and Penny heads to the fields or orchard. Fin and Rye generally follow their mother

before disappearing into the woods. Sometimes they grab fishing poles, uncover a few

worms, and head to the stream, returning with their pockets full of fish, fiddlehead ferns,

and morel mushrooms. Occasionally I join them, and these journeys are always marked by

frequent stops, with one boy or the other dropping to his knees to examine some small

finding, something I would have blithely, blindly stumbled over.

Papa, look, wild onions. And theyll dig with their young fingers, loosing the little bulbs

from the soft forest soil. Later, well fry them in butter and eat them straight from the pan,

still hot enough that we hold them on the tips of our tongues before swallowing.

Other times, they work on one of the shelters that they always seem to be constructing;


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their voices carry across the land as they negotiate materials and design.

Fin, lets put the door on this side.

Did you say ten and three-eighths or ten and five-eighths?

Rye, we need another pole on this end.

These shelters are so prolific that occasionally I come across one I hadnt even known

existed, and I can see the evolution of the boys learning in the growing soundness of these

humble structures. Winters first big snowfall no longer spells collapse; the boys have

learned to slope the roof and to support the ridgepole at its center. They face the openings

southward and build on a piece of well-drained ground. They use rot-resistant cedar for

anything that will contact the soil.


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The boys cleaning the garlic crop. The Hewitts all tend to their farm as a family. Photo: Penny Hewitt

Fin and Rye are proficient with most of the hand and power tools that form the backbone

of any working farm. By the time they were eight, both of them could operate the tractor

and, in a pinch, drive the truck with a load of logs. They split firewood alongside us,

swinging their mauls with remarkable accuracy. They are both licensed hunters and own

.22 rifles and 20-gauge shotguns. They wear belt knives almost everywhere, oblivious to

the stares of the adults around them, some concerned, some perplexed, and some, it often

seems to me, nostalgic.

Our sons are not entirely self-taught; we understand the limits of the young mind and its

still-developing capacity for judgment. None of these responsibilities were granted at an

arbitrary, age-based marker, but rather as the natural outgrowth of their evolving skills

and maturity. We have noticed, however, that the more responsibility we give our sons, the

more they assume. The more we trust them, the more trustworthy they become. This may

sound patronizingly obvious, yet I cannot help but notice the starring role that

institutionalized educationwith its inherent risk aversionplays in expunging these

qualities.

Our days do have structure: chores morning and evening, gardens to be turned and

planted, berries to be picked and sold, all these things and so many more repeating in

overlapping cycles. But even within these routines, Fin and Rye determine how their days

will be spent. Often they disappear for hours at a time, their only deadline being whichever

meal comes next. On their backs, they wear wooden pack baskets that they wove under the

tutelage of a friend who also unschools her children. When they return, the baskets are

heavy with the small treasures of their world and their heads are full of the small stories of

their wandering: the moose tracks they saw, the grouse they flushed, the forked maple

they sat beneath to eat snacks. The bark felt thick, Fin tells me. Its going to be a hard

winter.

hich brings us to the inevitable issue of what will become of my boys. Of course, I

cannot answer in full, because their childhoods are still unfolding.

But not infrequently I field questions from parents who seem skeptical that my sons will

be exposed to particular fields of study or potential career paths. The assumption seems to


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be that by educating our children at home and letting them pursue their own interests, we

are limiting their choices and perhaps even depriving them. The only honest answer is, Of

course we are. But then, thats true of every choice a parent makes: no matter what we

choose for our children, we are by default not choosing something else.

I can report that Fin and Rye both learned to read and write with essentially zero

instruction, albeit when they were about eight years old, a year or so later than is expected.They can add and subtract and multiply and divide. I can report that they do indeed have

friends, some who attend school and some who dont, and their social skills are on par

with their peers. In fact, Penny and I often hear from other adults that our sons seem

better socialized than like-aged schoolchildren. Fin and Rye participate in a weekly

gathering of homeschooled and unschooled kids, and Fin attends a weekly wilderness-

skills program. In truth, few of their peers are as smitten with bushcraft as they are, and

sometimes they wish for more friends who share their love of the wild. But even this is OK;

the world is a place of wondrous diversity, and they must learn that theirs is not the only

way.

What if they want to be doctors? They will be doctors. What if they want to be lawyers?

They will be lawyers. Peter Gray, he of the belief that school is prison, has studied

graduates of the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts, where students

as young as four enjoy complete autonomy to design their own course of study, even if that

involves no studying at all, and found that they have no difficult gaining entry to elitecolleges, nor in achieving high GPAs. A home-based education, even one as unstructured

as my sons, does not preclude acceptance into a university; in fact, many colleges have

developed application processes geared specifically toward homeschooled students, and

while there are no major studies of unschoolers exclusively, homeschoolers are

significantly more likely to take college-level courses than the rest of us.

I look back at unschooling as the best part of my life, Chelsea Clark told me between

classes at the University of South Carolina School of Law, where she was accepted on full

scholarship after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the universitys undergraduate program.

It was a huge advantage, actually. I had the confidence of knowing what I wanted to do,

and I wasnt burned out on classroom learning like most college kids. Chelsea was

unschooled throughout her high school years in the small town of Dorchester, South

Carolina.

Still, perhaps the best answer I can give to the question of what price my children might


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pay is in the form of another question: What price do school-going children pay for their

confinement? The physical toll is easy enough to quantify. Diabetes rates among

school-age children (http://ndep.nih.gov/media/youth_factsheet.pdf) are sky-high, and

the percentage of 6-to-11-year-olds who qualify as obese has nearly tripled

(http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm) since 1980. And what do children

do in school? Exactly. They sit.

Inactivity is also bad for the brain. A 2011 study (http://chronicle.augusta.com

/news/education/2011-02-09/study-finds-exercising-feeds-brain?v=1297301290) by

Georgia Health Sciences University found that cognitive function among kids improves

with exercise. Their prefrontal cortexthe area associated with complex thinking, decision

making, and social behaviorlights up. The kids in the study who exercised 40 minutes

per day boosted their intelligence scores by an average of 3.8 points.

Yet the physical and cognitive implications of classroom learning have played minor roles

in our decision to unschool Fin and Rye. Its not that I dont want them to be healthy and

smart. Of course I doIm their father.

But, in truth, what I most want for my boys cant be charted or graphed. It cant be

measured, at least not by common metrics. There is no standardized test that will tell me if

it has been achieved, and there is no specific curriculum that will lead to its realization.

This is what I want for my sons: freedom. Not just physical freedom, but intellectual and

emotional freedom from the formulaic learning that prevails in our schools. I want for

them the freedom to immerse themselves in the fields and forest that surround our home,

to wander aimlessly or with purpose. I want for them the freedom to develop at whatever

pace is etched into their DNA, not the pace dictated by an institution looking to meet the

benchmarks that will in part determine its funding. I want them to be free to love learning

for its own sake, the way that all children love learning for its own sake when it is not

forced on them or attached to reward. I want them to remain free of social pressures to

look, act, or think any way but that which feels most natural to them.

I want for them the freedom to be children. And no one can teach them how to do that.

Ben Hewitts new book is Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting Off the Beaten Path,


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Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World. He blogs at benhewitt.net.

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Newest| Oldest | Top Comments

Oct 1, 2014

Sep 30, 2014

TerriSavoie (http://www.livefyre.com/prof ile/62409790/)

Zambezi (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/65522499/)

83 people lis tening

Cynical,the way we decided was pretty much left to the kids,with guidance. We expected a college bound

high school curriculum,they picked subjects. Our state requires covering certain subjects, but there are

many ways to do that. Four sciences for high school,so some kids picked them all in biology,from basic,to

botany,to genetics. Other preferred geology,chemistry and physics. Same with math. All had to do

geometry,algebra,and algebra two. Several also did calculus and trig. One branched into computer science.

In the younger grades it is very easy for play and exploration to cover reading,social studies,science, etc.

Like Reply

The issue that I had with the article is that I felt the tone was unduly dismissive and outwardly hostile

towards formal education. I think most people agree that there are a lot of things wrong with formal

schooling but there are also wide qualitative variations between school districts and states. Not all schools

shackle their kids to a chair and not all kids stare all day at the school bell.

In the article the author largely suggested that he was quite hands-off with his children's education - hence

the difference between home schooling and "unschooling." He was letting his kids figure out things forthemselves rather than guiding them through their education as perhaps a home school parent would,

hence the article title - "We Don't Need No Education."

As is turns out, though (following various critiques in this forum), the author has since clarified that he does

not fact teach his children at home. His active involvement in their education has allowed him to raise

children who can read and write and do math. They did not simply pick this up as they were gathering

berries. This admission seems to undercut the main theme of the article which largely promotes allowing

children to just figure out their education on their own. Otherwise, what is the big difference between home

schooling and unschooling?

While formal education is flawed, it also allows children to develop interests of their own that are apart from

their parents' interests. It allows them to pursue those interests in a comprehensive, in-depth way. Again,

no one is arguing that the current system is perfect, least of all me, and I think it would great if kids could

have more input on the subjects they learn once they reach the high school level. But I have lived overseas

in developing countries most of life and I have seen the extent that foreign parents will go to to get their

children a U.S. public education. I don't think these parents are simply poorly informed. They understand

that prosperity is gained through rigorous education. I think it doesn't matter if such education is gained by

a home school parent or a teacher but it is rarely gained by letting the kids just discover it for themselves.

+ Follow Share Post comment as...


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Kids don't stumble on to Calculus.

Like Reply

Sep 30, 2014Luba Vangelova (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62716335/)(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62716335/)

@Zambezi (ht tp://www.livefyre.com/prof ile/65522499/)To answer your question, the

distinction between home schooling and unschooling lies in whether or not a curriculum is

imposed on a child. Exposing someone to a subject and mandating that she or he study it are

very different things.

Like Reply

Oct 1, 2014CynicalMallu (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62464392/)(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62464392/)

@Luba Vangelova (http: //www.livefyre.com/profile/62716335/)So who decides

what subjects a kid should cover? Do we leave it to the kid?

Like Reply

Oct 2, 2014Luba Vangelova (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62716335/)(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62716335/)

@CynicalMallu (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62464392/)@Luba

Vangelova (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62716335/)By definition, if a

family has chosen the self-directed learning route, then the child decides

what to study. It's based on the assumption that learning is most effective

(and efficient) if people apply themselves to learn something when/if ameaningful external or internal need for it arises. A corollary is that the

window of opportunity for learning extends throughout life.

Therefore self-directed learners dont study algebra at age 12 because

everyone is made to study algebra at age 12. Instead, they study it when/if

a fascination with math leads them to explore algebra; or when they decide

they want to become engineers and need to fulfill course requirements; or

when they need to solve some real-life problem for which algebra is a

useful tool, so they ask someone or consult a book or web site to figure out

how to solve that problem, and in the process, they learn how to formulateand solve an algebraic equation.

There has to be a support system of some sort, but the distinction is that

the support is offered rather than imposed. It's like having access to a

library and librarian, instead of having that librarian require you to read

certain books in the library.

Also, in practice, there are different degrees of self-direction, and families

who say they are "unschooling" aren't all necessarily following the same

model.

(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/63924828/)


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Sep 30, 2014

Sep 30, 2014

Zambezi (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/65522499/)


Oct 2, 2014Saskia HM (http://www.livefyre.com/prof ile/63924828/)

Like Reply

@Zambezi (ht tp://www.livefyre.com/prof ile/65522499/)There is a big difference between

having an active involvement in your kids' education and teaching the kids a curriculum

determined by the parents. The whole point with unschooling is that the parent facilitates the

child's education rather than directs it - the child follows their interests and the parents help them

learn where necessary and provide guidance, support etc. The parent might make suggestions

or offer to teach certain things they think their child might benefit from but the choice is ultimatelydown to the child.

I should say that I don't homeschool my own kids but know a few people who do (including

unschoolers) and have looked into it in quite a lot of detail as it's something I'd love to do in an

ideal world. Personally I don't feel up to the challenge of being solely responsible for my kids

education, as I have various problems that mean I have enough trouble managing the stuff I

already need to do, and even unschooling takes an awful lot of commitment and skill on the part

of the parents. I realise the author here makes it sound like they are very "hands off" but I

suspect he is being modest about the contribution he and his partner make to their kids

education, it's just that it's often in a more intangible form than formal homeschooling. A lot of itust comes down to being a really good parent!

As for the assertion that "children don't stumble onto calculus", I think that comes from a place of

understanding how kids learn based on traditional formal schooling - kids who have been at

school all day being made to learn mathematics etc aren't likely to come home and choose to

educate themselves about calculus, obviously. But a child who has developed a love of learning

for themselves, and who has started reading about something that requires an understanding of

calculus (e.g. lots of things related to science & engineering), will want to learn it and will

probably learn it much more effectively than a child sitting in a maths lesson being taught it in a

much more abstract fashion. An example from my adult life of how "real life experience" prompts

learning would be my rediscovery of trigonometry when I started building a porch and needed to

work out the dimensions of the roof - I'd forgotten most of what I'd learnt in school so went onto

the internet to teach myself and came out with a far better understanding than I had after

learning it as a child. In the case of unschooled kids, a love of building dens will eventually lead

them to high school level mathematics in order to build more sturdy & interesting structures &

work out what materials they need.

1 Like(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/) Reply

.

Like Reply

Also,we always traveled,so the community my kids interacted with was much larger than one encompassed

by a public school.

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Sep 30, 2014

Sep 30, 2014


CynicalMallu (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62464392/)

Cynical,indeed that is true,but there are also many of us that just like the freedom that this type of

education gives our families. There are many ways to educate children and I for one am happy that we can

choose the best fit,be it public,private,parochial, or homeschooling.

Like Reply

Homeschooling, unschooling etc. is typically followed by extremely religious households who do not want

any other influence on their kids which may affect their faith. In short they want the kids to be completely

closed minded. Sure they meet other members of the "community" - code word for people of their own kind.

Many people do that and there is nothing wrong with that - many Islamic families practice that because they

fear that their kids will be "Americanized" if they send them to public schools.

Like Reply

Sep 30, 2014aikimoe (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)

@CynicalMallu (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62464392/)I'm actually not sure what the

facts are on what percentage of homeschooling parents want their kids to be closed minded. Do

you have any data on that?

In my experience of meeting dozens of homeschooling families, and interacting with even more,

I never encountered any who didn't allow their kids to have friends who went to school or any

other kind, really.

Many of them were like me, secular liberals simply looking for an education alternative that met

our needs and one that we've found very satisfying. We've worked hard to make sure our kids

experience as much diversity as they can.

And as the numbers of homeschooling and unschooling families increase, there are more and

more secular, liberal families doing it for the same reason we did.

Like Reply

Sep 30, 2014CynicalMallu (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62464392/)(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62464392/)

@aikimoe (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/) http://www2.ed.gov/about

/offices/list/oii/nonpublic/statisti cs.html (http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices

/list/oii/nonpublic/statistics.html)

In 2012, 83% parents chose home-schooling to provide a "A desire to provide

religious instruction". In my mind that will produce a brainwashed religious person -


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such folks are causing big problems around the world.

Plus, just look at who the political enablers are - Sarah Palin/ Rick Santorum are the

kind of politicians who want Home Schooling.

If you are a liberal, you are a minority...

I can perfectly understand this option, if the kid is not able to perform in a regular

school due to disability/health issue etc. or if the schools in the area are just terrifying.

But if the schools are great, why not. We live in Northern Virginia and the schools are

some of the best in the country - Google Chairman went to our local High School.

But I do feel that kids ( and adults too) suffer from too much TV and "nature deficit

syndrome" ( Richard Louv's excellent book on this topic is a must read for all

parents).

Like Reply


@CynicalMallu (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62464392/) Religious

instruction wasn't the most important reason people chose homeschooling,

but one of many. It actually came in fourth, behind, "A concern about

environment of other schools," "Other reasons (include family time,

finances, travel, and distance)," and "A dissatisfaction with academic

instruction at other schools." That's an important point.

There are lots of people who received "religious instruction" as children,

but who weren't "brainwashed" (that word can mean many things) or made

to be closed minded. And it's important to remember that there are alsolots of kids who do go to public school who are very closed minded and

what many people would consider to be "brain washed."

There are also many people who are religious AND liberal.

Whether or not a "school is great," is a personal judgment. What's great

for some is simply not for others. A school with high academic standards

might not offer the kind of flexible, personalized education someone else


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Sep 30, 2014

Sep 27, 2014


KristaJohansen (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62605812/)

could be looking for.

There are lots and lots of schools that are considered "great" all over the

country where a certain percentage of the students are miserable. That

doesn't mean the school is bad, only that, like the system itself, it's not able

to meet the needs of many students.

A primary motivator for lots of homeschooling families is the fact that kids

learn different things in different ways at different times. Homeschooling

provides many families with very satisfying educational outcomes.


All you critics out there,kids see there parents talk,so they learn to engage in conversation. They see their

parents reading,they are curious,and the seeds of reading are sown. Is this so hard to understand? And

yes,if a child wants to be a doctor,they will have years of formal education. This method of education worksbecause the kids stay interested in learning,not because they can do everything by themselves. As children

get older,they ask for instruction in areas they have interest. I have adult children now. One is a sports

photographer,one is a professional ballet dancer,one a graphic artist,2 still in college. I cAn assure you that

if can't teach dance, art, or photography. My field roaming sons were able to articulate what they wanted to

learn And find teachers for formal study.

This is not the way for every family,but why so hostile if it works for the author? Remember,during the 18th

and 19th century,most children were educated this way with just a small amount of formal school each

year.


ben, alkimoe,

*Yawn*. Ben, others besides me have asked you to clarify your essay and you never have, and continue to

avoid doing so. It's that simple, end of story.

Fine, don't explain it to me. Here's a thought: explain it to everyone else! Good God, and you say I'm a 'lazy

thinker'? Pot/kettle/black. You won't explain anything for _anyone_. So don't try and play it off that Krista on

the internet keeps you from elucidating. That's lazy, pal. From the start I've tried to get more information,

and Ben offers none.

I might add, both alkimoe and Ben, put your big boy panties on. The world is full of people far, far worse

than me. I've known a few hick town sheriffs who will teach you a thing or two about "justice". You know

who's unkind? ISIL. An internet forum is Disneyland, kiddos. Suggestion: go live on Zendik Farm.


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Sep 26, 2014KristaJohansen (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62605812/)

Glad you're gone, alkimoe. I consider my work here done. :-) But in a way I'm glad you spent so much time

speaking for Ben, because it proves my point: Ben never goes public with anything, so sycophantic

supporters such as yourself have to do it for him. For that, I thank you. By the way I had a lot of fun in these

discussions.

Like Reply

Zambezi--great posts, well elucidated, and btw what a river--did you raft it? Anyway, you make a great point

about the omissions. The author is consciously trying to avoid answering pointed questions about the

where/what/why/how. I think it's one thing to tell a kid "You can be a doctor" but not then explain that to be

a doctor a lot of specialized studying, rigorous exams and tests are required. Basket weaving will not get

one into medical school. On that note, I'll bet the boys are totally unvaccinated.

Alkimoe, you're either the author's best friend, his inlaw, or the author in disguise. It's funny how Alkimoe

tries to answer more for the author than the author himself does. It's lame how the author just hides. o me

that says he either A: can't back up his essay or B: he expects the world to just accept this lifestyle with no

questioning. Both are bang out of order.

Zambezi wrote: "In my opinion, the article seems to present less of an alternative to formal education but

rather seemingly advocates for no education, almost to just let kids just figure it out. While identifying

moose tracks, or weaving a basket is a handy outdoor skill, it's hard to make an argument that these skills

are the basis for the educational background of our citizenry. So perhaps the author just chose to omit all of

the examples of teaching his kids but the overall tone is that he is incredibly hands-off, choosing not to take

any credit in helping the kids read or write. The people I know who home schooled their children were very

hands-on and were committed to their kids' education."

Best summary possible right there. And, as usual, the author is silent. Maybe alkimoe answer for him?

I frankly don't believe the author's contention that the kids learned to read and write totally on their

own. Why would any kid who roams the woods all day sit down and learn 26 symbols known as letters? I

would like to see a scanned set of images showing a creative composition done in their own hand. There

are none, of course.

Like Reply


@KristaJohansen (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62605812/)I can't answer for the author,

but I did respond to Zambezi's posts, because Zambezi has posted some legitimate concerns,

which well reflect the concerns most people have upon first hearing of unschooling. At no point

has Zambezi descended into snark or judgment or childish taunting, which was quite refreshing.

Your repeated contention that unschooling can't prepare kids for real life is demonstrably untrue.

The fact that kids who were unschooled have and are entering and graduating from colleges all



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Sep 27, 2014benhewitt.net (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/58697968/)

over the country is clear evidence that unschooling, while not for everyone, is a viable alternative

to formal education. Ignoring this simple fact is no different from ignoring the evidence for

evolution or global warming. It reflects an appreciation of one's opinions and perspectives over

objective evidence.

Since the author doesn't say his kids "learned to read and write totally on their own," it's no

wonder that you don't believe it. "Zero instruction" is not the same "totally on their own." People

learn without instruction all the time. And as I linked in response to Zambezi, it's been clearly

demonstrated that, in the right environment and circumstances, kids have learned to read

without instruction. I don't expect you to read or respond to the link, as you've avoided anything

resembling a constructive conversation since you first posted a comment.

As to why the author doesn't respond to you, who can blame him? Besides the fact that he's

obviously very busy, you don't come here to have conversations. You come to accuse and

belittle and judge, the same way a (rather impolite) religious fundamentalist might go to an

article describing a parent who is raising his kids to be agnostic. You've made it quite clear in

your exchanges that there is literally nothing he, or anyone, could say to change your mind.You've even ignored the posts of people who were actually unschooled. That's not what

someone does when they're interested in knowing the truth about something.

You attribute the fact that you appear to be "mean," to just being "honest." And, as I pointed out

below, it's very easy to not be mean while being honest. Good teachers, good parents, good

friends do it all the time. All it takes is a little consideration; a desire to be a nice person.

So, good luck with that. I'm going to take a hint from the author and turn my attentionelsewhere, as this is very much like discussing geology with a young-earth creationist. Life is

ust too short. Respond if you must, but I'm done. Adios Amoeba!


@KristaJohansen (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62605812/)Krista,

I'm not hiding. Simply put, I find you to be unkind and in your unkindness, boring. Furthermore,

your habit of repeatedly trotting out irrelevant stereotypes (i.e., that my children areunvaccinated) is evidence to me of lazy thinking.

The choice between trying to explain myself to you and spending time with my family is not a

difficult one for me to make.

I have no idea who aikimoe is.


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Sep 25, 2014Zambezi (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/65522499/)


"I can report that Fin and Rye both learned to read and write with essentially zero instruction..." I just

returned after living three years in southern Africa. Many poor kids there (who also spend all of their days

outside) are not suddenly learning to read or write on their own. In my experience and observation, children

must be taught these things; kids do not simply begin to write letters and construct sentences without being

instructed (informally or formally).

While the lifestyle in the article is interesting, I am skeptical that his children could pursue a career as a

medical doctor or lawyer as the author suggests if his kids are only learning two hours a month of

instruction on mainstream school subjects. This would imply that they are ignorant of some basic subjects -

American history, chemistry, algebra, foreign languages, etc. If they want mainstream careers then at some

point they will have to pursue formal instruction and catch up. In today's job market I think that would be a

tight place to be in.

While their outdoor experiences seem interesting and fulfilling, isn't that what long summers are for?

Like Reply


@Zambezi (ht tp://www.livefyre.com/prof ile/65522499/)I doubt seriously that most of the poor

kids in southern Africa have homes filled with books and parents who read to them on a daily

basis.

Kids need support when learning anything, but the fact is it is very well documented that kids

can teach themselves to read in the right environment.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-

themselves-read (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-

teach-themselves-read)

Lots and lots of doctors and lawyers are ignorant of American history, chemistry, algebra, foreign

languages, etc. Besides this, you're assuming that kids won't learn these things unless they'reforced to study them. But this is also demonstrably untrue, as there are many unschooled kids

who are interested in one or more of these subjects. And there are millions and millions of high

school graduates who, despite being forced to study those subjects, know almost nothing about

them.

Like Reply

Sep 25, 2014Zambezi (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/65522499/)(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/65522499/)

@aikimoe (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)@Zambezi

(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/65522499/)I have no doubt that home schooled



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children can receive an education just as effective as a standard institution - I met a

lot of missionary families in Africa who were doing just that with their families and

their kids were not just smart but incredibly polite and behaved. My issue with the

article is that the author does not really discuss about how he is teaching his kids

basic aspects of a formal education but rather seems to revel in his hands-off

approach to let them just be. He doesn't give any examples of sitting them down and

reading books to them but rather relishes the fact that they hardly sit around for two

hours in a month to study anything.

In my opinion, the article seems to present less of an alternative to formal education

but rather seemingly advocates for no education, almost to just let kids just figure it

out. While identifying moose tracks, or weaving a basket is a handy outdoor skill, it's

hard to make an argument that these skills are the basis for the educational

background of our citizenry. So perhaps the author just chose to omit all of the

examples of teaching his kids but the overall tone is that he is incredibly hands-off,

choosing not to take any credit in helping the kids read or write. The people I know

who home schooled their children were very hands-on and were committed to their

kids' education.

Finally, doctors and lawyers and other professionals may not be experts on some

basic fields but a decent lawyer has to understand jurisprudence, does have to

understand U.S. history, and has to know how to write. A decent doctor has to go

through rigorous exams and has to know some fairly esoteric things in their field. So

while of course you don't have to be forced to study something to learn something,

you have to be exposed to things to spark your interest in them and, frankly, often you

do have to study things to get better at them.

I don't really care if people get an education at home or at school but the parents

need to take an interest in teaching their kids some of the basic curriculum and letting

the kids run loose after farm chores doesn't seem to me to be sufficient for a child in

today's world.

Like Reply

Sep 25, 2014aikimoe (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)

(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)@Zambezi (http://www.livefyre.com/profi le/65522499/)I think you're

misunderstanding the author's contention. Also, I think people differentiate

between "formal education" and "education." His kids are definitely

receiving the latter, and the former is up to them. That doesn't mean that

he's not committed to their education, rather that he is letting them decide

how formal they want it to be.

I think he did omit examples, but he does say that "Our sons are not

entirely self-taught; we understand the limits of the young mind and its still-


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developing capacity for judgment." At his blog, he describes their lifestyle

in greater detail, and reading to the boys is a regular feature.

There's a good interview with the author here, which clarifies his position

on schooling (he's for it!).

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/09/04/345827467/these-kids -grew-

up-with-the-woods-as-their-only-classroom (http://www.npr.org/blogs

/ed/2014/09/04/345827467/these-kids-grew-up-with-the-woods-

as-their-only-classroom)

And this can happen outside of homeschooling. The Sudbury schools

around the U.S., basically are places where kids go and decide what they

want to do all day. As kids get older, most of them realize what they need

to learn to do what they want to do. And so they learn those things.

If they want to be a lawyer, they'll learn the things necessary to be a good

lawyer. Same as with any profession. You learn the things you need to

learn for that profession. There's no evidence that consciously unschooled

kids read or write any worse than schooled kids. But we know for a fact

that most high school graduates forget most of the things they were never

interested in, which indicates a grotesque amount of waste, both in terms

of time and money.

Consciously unschooled kids are exposed to everything that other kids

are, they're just not forced to temporarily memorize the arbitrarily chosen

trivia required to satisfy bureaucrats and politicians.

Whatever the "basic curriculum" is, outside of reading, writing, and basic

math, there is no universal usefulness in it. And seeing as how

unschooled kids have been and still are enrolling and graduating from

colleges all over the country, it seems clear that it's a viable alternative to

coerced schooling.


Sep 27, 2014benhewitt.net (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/58697968/)(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/58697968/)

@aikimoe (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)@Zambezi

(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/65522499/)aikimoe hits it square on the

head. I can assure you that our educational process is not "hands off."

Indeed, it is anything but, as we are constantly facilitating learning

opportunities for the boys. However, our "instructional" interactions with our

children look approximately nothing like what our culture has come to


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Sep 19, 2014KristaJohansen (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62605812/)

Sep 25, 2014WendySMartinWyatt (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/59937634/)

assume these interactions should look like.

When I say that my boys spend no more than two hours a month sitting

and studying, I mean "studying" as we have come to understand studying.

Our children learned to read at least in part because we spent literally

thousands of hours reading to them almost from the day they were born (in

fact, we still read to them, simply because we all enjoy it).


I didn't teach my daughter to read. But...whenever she was nursing, I had a chance to read. She

seemed curious, so I would read out loud and move my finger along under each word. She had

lots of kid books that she wanted me to read over and over and over. Her favorite book was a

children's dictionary. By a year and a half, she could point to every picture and tell me what it

was. This was a dictionary for elementary school kids. Then I read chapter books to her. When

she was 4, we were reading the Little House on the Prairie series. I was sick and coughing with

pneumonia. In exasperation, I handed her the book and told her to read it. I about fainted when

she read fluently, no hesitation and with meaning and emphasis. I asked her when she learned

to read. She shrugged her shoulders. I asked why she didn't tell me she could read. She said

she was afraid I would quit reading to her! All sorts of learning came easily. We had lots of books

and borrowed even more. We had our farm, we traveled and camped. We were surrounded by

interesting people and things. Learning just wasn't an issue. Unschooling generally seems to

result in very well rounded and intelligent human beings.

Like Reply

http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2014/09/lincoln_highs_theodora_mautz_e.html

(http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2014/09/lincoln_highs_theodora_mautz_e.html)

My God!!! NOOOO! A teen who aced the tests and even seems....GASP! --happy with her life?! Impossible

to believe, I know. I love the quote, "That test intrinsically made sense to me." Anyway it must be all BS, the

parts about how she loves learning and school. It's impossible. Tests surely must have killed her love of life.

Sad, really.

Like Reply

Sep 19, 2014WendySMartinWyatt (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/59937634/)(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/59937634/)

Ummmm, so? In your world is there only one choice for everything? Like when people had a

choice of what Model T to buy? Black...or black. It's not a war or contest between public school

and unschool. It's an informed choice out of many choices for what is best under the

circumstances. I unschooled my daughter, but I went to public school. I didn't even know people

studied for the ACT and SAT. I just went and took the tests. Top 10% for both. I am sure I only

did that well because most of my reading and learning was through following my interests at

(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)


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Sep 19, 2014MelodyNShawnDonnelly (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/64488984/)

Sep 19, 2014

Sep 19, 2014

aikimoe (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)


home.


@KristaJohansen (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62605812/)Tests work great for lots of

kids. They're terrible for lots of kids, as well. It's wonderful that tests are there for the kids who

respond well to them, like the impressive young woman in your linked article.

It's important to also care about the kids for whom tests are detrimental. Pretending they don't

exist is part of the reason that nearly 1 out of 5 kids graduates high school unable to read.

That's probably a bigger problem than some families choosing alternative education for their

kids.


@KristaJohansen (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62605812/)Looking at your comment

again, it dawns on me that since the author is not saying that it's "impossible" for kids to like

school, and he's not saying that ALL tests are bad for ALL kids, you've basically constructed a

strawman.

Nobody should argue that formal education and testing is bad for ALL kids. Are you actually

arguing that formal education and testing is good for all kids?


I absolutely loved this! How in the world do I start unschooling my 9th grader? I have a ton of questions if

someone would please assist me????

Like Reply

Sep 19, 2014

Sep 19, 2014

WendySMartinWyatt (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/59937634/)


(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/59937634/)You and your kid should read Grace's book.

http://selfmadescholar.com/b/2009/04/07/great-thinkers-on-self-education-grace-llewellyn/

(http://selfmadescholar.com/b/2009/04/07/great-thinkers-on-self-education-grace-

llewellyn/)

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(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)@MelodyNShawnDonnelly (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/64488984/)This could be a good

place to start:



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Sep 13, 2014windytuesdays (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/63518502/)

Sep 19, 2014TerriSavoie (http: //www.livefyre.com/prof ile/62409790/)

http://whyunschool.info/ (http://whyunschool.info/)

Good luck!

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Fire away with questions,but really,part of the idea is figuring out what's important in yourlives,and working with that.

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Sep 19, 2014MelodyNShawnDonnelly (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/64488984/)(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/64488984/)

How do I go about getting my daughter out of her current high school enrollment?

How do I enroll her in unschooling? How does she get grades? Will she get a high

school diploma?

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Sep 19, 2014

Sep 19, 2014

Sep 20, 2014

WendySMartinWyatt (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/59937634/)



(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/59937634/)https: //www.hslda.org/laws/ (https://www.hslda.org/laws/)

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(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62656366/)@MelodyNShawnDonnelly (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/64488984/)

It's a lot to take in, but if it's something she genuinely wants and needs,then it will, most likely, be a very awesome thing, for both of you. There's

lots of great info in the above links for you and your daughter to check out.

Have fun!

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(http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62409790/)You take her out of school just like you are moving. Just go into the office

and I enroll. The diploma thing seems to depend on your state's rules. We

ust issued a certificate of completion that was accepted by the colleges

my kids applied to. Also I wrote a transcript and assigned credit hours to

the stuff they did,but did not give grades. Included for the college apps was

a 2 page sample of the books we used throughout the high school years

and a one page explanation of our his method and why there were no

grades.

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Sep 11, 2014

Sep 10, 2014

Sep 9, 2014

Sep 9, 2014

PitchLake (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/63162628/)

elementalskye (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/63013380/)

Luba Vangelova (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62716335/)

BridgetBisset (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62807391/)

None of the unschoolers I know, including myself, are secular. We all hold deeply religious convictions, but

also agree with you about your opinions about unschooling. So, I don't believe that unschooling is

associated with secularism and traditional homeschooling is associated with religious people. It has always

seemed the opposite to me, since I don't know any unschoolers at all who are not religious. Unschooling is

a way of life with our two sons, and it's the best way we can imagine homeschooling. Thanks for the

wonderful article.

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"My mother never sent me to school - if she did I would have been a damn fool" Bob Marley. One of the

most poetic and beautifully constructed song writers ever.


My Domestic workers daughter grew up mainly on the streets of Johannesburg and the bush of Zimbabwe.

I took her in and got her into a decent preschool (kindergarten) for her final year before subjecting her to

school. she has been in Grade 1 for the past year and battling terribly. she is a confident, intelligent andincredibly witty little girl. When she joined us she couldn't speak English and could only scribble. under the

tuition of my then 4 and half year old daughter, within 3 months she was drawing better than most kids her

age and learning to write her name (This, without any schooling). My daughter is due to start school next

year and after watching the schooling process, and how her 'sister' is only interested in the friends and

recess and not at all in the actual school, I have decided to move my kids and their new sister to a Waldorf

school. I know it's not unschooling, but when they come home from school, we spend the entire afternoon

working in the garden and the kids come up with the most incredible inventions. I want my kids to have an

education that will feed their incredible creativity and ingenuity, not stifel it. thank you for your article. It

really takes such courage to go the opposite way to your families ideas and your own up bringing.

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@benhewitt.net (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/58697968/)If you haven't seen it already, you may be

interested in this article about a partly unschooled farmer who now runs a very popular sustainable-

agriculture consulting business: http://modernfarmer.com/2014/08/brilliant-unusual-twenty-something-

hopes-unleash-next-green-revolution/ (http://modernfarmer.com/2014/08/brilliant-unusual-twenty-

something-hopes-unleash-next-green-revolution/). He didn't have exactly the same experience as yourkids growing up, but the rural setting did make me think of your essay.

-- Luba Vangelova (http://www.LubaVangelova.com (http://www.LubaVangelova.com))

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Sep 9, 2014

Sep 8, 2014

BrianZ (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62805936/)

Al tToSchool (ht tp ://www.livefyre.com/profi le/60742081/)

@benhewitt.net (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/58697968/)hiya, great article! I'm curious about the

relationship between your children & technology/media, namely the internet. When and how were they

introduced to it? What was their reaction to it and how does it play out in their life now? Also, do they watch

television? Or stream TV/Movies? Also curious about whether they use Social Media?

You mostly elaborated on their wilderness type skills, but you did mention the arts&crafts sessions and that

they eventually embraced this on their own terms. Have they gravitated towards pursuing any kind of

arts/music as a hobby? Or sports? Are they big readers? (no judgement here, just interested in the variety

of things they have been exposed to and what took off (or didnt) in order to get a more well-rounded

picture!).

Also, for anyone who thinks that your children's interests make them unemployable, they need to face facts

that permaculture & rewilding will be the big career paths in your children's future :D Thank goodness we

will have talents like them around!

Any elaborations you can give will be very interesting! Thank you!

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The tone that this article takes towards the public school system is a bit harsh. To say that sending children

to a public school is like "locking them in a closet" or akin to "prison" is unfounded. I went through the

public system in Illinois and had a wonderful experience. It wan't all perfect but such is life. That is my

experience. I take no issue with the idea of home schooling or unschooling. Most of the children in this

country still attend a largely underfunded and often demonized public school system. While I found the

information regarding unschooling to be interesting I thought that the digs on public schooling were

unnecessary and didn't add credence to the writer's point of view.

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@BrianZ (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62805936/)I can understand that. I think the author

was describing school based on his experiences. Lots of kids have great experiences in public

school, but every year lots of kids are also made miserable by it. Those kids do feel like they're

in prison. I think this is mostly due to differences in personalities, but unfortunately, schools

remain relatively rigid and inflexible in terms of making sure that all kids have the best education

experience possible.

Side note: Considering the U.S. spends more per-pupil than all but 2 or 3 other countries, I think

the funding problem is less about deficiency and more about management.


More here on the topic of schools, including how and why they got to be as they are:

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/26/school_is_a_prison_and_damaging_our_kids/

(http://www.salon.com/2013/08/26/school_is_a_prison_and_damaging_our_kids/)


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Sep 8, 2014

Sep 8, 2014

LuaMartinWells (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/58808577/)

meadoo (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62772735/)

Sep 16, 2014Saskia HM (http://www.livefyre.com/prof ile/63924828/)

@KelWay (http://www.livefyre.com/profi le/59592392/)No worries.

Honestly you didn't add a lot to the discussion.

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@KristaJohansen (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62605812/)I think

you got a sarcastic answer because you were asking what appeared to be

a confrontational question loaded with negative assumptions. It would belike asking someone a religious homeschooler "are you going to let your

kids know other religions and atheism exist or will you keep them locked

up away from the "heathens" for ever and shelter them from the knowledge

that some people hold other views?". Of course it's perfectly possible there

are a few extremists that fit that description but to direct that question at all

religious homeschoolers would be a bit presumptuous and would come

across as confrontational.

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@KristaJohansen (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62605812/)Honestly, unschoolers can

adapt to taking tests when they have a reason to. My daughter was unschooled. We made our

own transcript, she took the SAT after spending some time (a few weeks) preparing for it. She

applied to five four year colleges, and was accepted at all five. And yes, she spent her junior

year in Plymouth, England, because she is an Anglophile with many favorite British authors from

Shakespeare to Neil Gaiman. She adapted to tests and papers in college with no problem,

made virtually all A's (one B), and now has her Masters, and a full-time job that is perfect for her,

as a public librarian. My unschooled son's path took him to college, too, and he's a paramedic,

saving lives. Unschoolers follow their interests and as they get older, they make their own way

in the world.

If you really want to know more about how unschoolers "turn out" - just read about the graduates

of Sudbury Valley in MA (a sort of unschool school), or read the info from Peter Gray's recent

surveys of grown unschoolers.

3 (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/63518502/) (http://www.livefyre.com/profile

Like/63924828/) (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62072947/) Reply

@KristaJohansen (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/62605812/)While this seems like a bit of a

random question I have an answer (in a way), I was unschooled for the vast majority of my life

and when I wasn't I was a student at the Sudbury Valley School, which is essentially unschooling

with a large number of other children in a democratic community. And when I went to college I

started in a community college (which is very common for unschoolers) after two years and with

a 3.9 GPA I transferred to a small university in Dublin, Ireland. My 3.5 years living, working and

studying in a foreign country was an amazing experience one I will treasure for the rest of my

life.... the thing is non of my american friends who have more traditional educational


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Sep 16, 2014windytuesdays (http://www.livefyre.com/profile/63518502/)

backgrounds did anything like this, some (a very few) did semesters abroad, where partying and

sight seeing take precedence of truly experiencing a different culture. While interestingly enough

a lot of my friends who were unschooled or SVS students have lived abroad for extended

periods of time. In my experience we are less fearful of the unknown and less bound by societal

rules which makes us much better able to adapt to the customs of a different culture.

I

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