“There’s a somewhat dichotomy between schooling & unschooling because one is where one is really well defined and the other is more open ended. Both are testament to their pedagogical nature.”
This came to me in a couple of Tweets yesterday. First of all, I hate the word pedagogical. It doesn’t really roll off the tongue nicely. It causes sort of a gagging sound in the back of my mouth and causes me to try and keep repeating it until it doesn’t. When I looked it up for verification I found that pedagogy is the science of instruction, and often refers to instructional style. While I can’t wrap my brain around the term “science of instruction” I do understand different instructional styles. Unschooling is not an “instructional style”, and really should not be classified as one of them. The problem with this is that most people can not see past adults having authority and control over children. It’s extremely foreign to the mainstream to think that children might actually be anything but students. The mainstream educational system incites many parents into thinking that children do not want to learn, will not and can not learn outside of a mainstream curriculum. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Unschooling children and teens learn in much the same way that babies and toddlers do before they are stuck in school. Naturally, organically and through their own curiosity. It is near impossible to *NOT* learn in today’s society. This is the age of information and technology!
One of the problems with trying to define Radical Unschooling is that there is no simple answer. If you give someone a definition you inevitably leave some other aspect out. Some definitions give the wrong impressions, like child-led learning. I don’t really like this one because I’ve heard of people not offering up anything interesting to their children because they think the child needs to think of it. Some think unschooling is simply the lack of curriculum and freedom of academics. But how can a child exercise his innate curiosity if he isn’t given the same right to explore life and be free from others control?
There is no one right way to unschool. In timely fashion, Danielle Conger said on a list this morning, “…no such thing exists. (If someone says it does, I say they’re selling you snake oil.)” You can’t give an instruction booklet to living life. If you closed your eyes, and imagined a world where institutionalized schools did not exist in any form, what would you see? I see freedom. Real freedom. It’s not a theory or a feeling, it’s real and the freedom to learn whatever you want, whenever you want is undeniably valuable. Still, it’s not just learning, it’s doing, seeing, touching, hearing, tasting, and feeling. It’s living.
Radical Unschooling is less about an educational philosophy and more about freedom and not rehashing all those mistakes our parents made on us. It’s living a full and interesting life, and not getting in the way of our children’s passions. It’s providing our children with as much information as we can without the expectation that they learn it. It’s about supporting their passions and going the extra mile to make sure they have access to what they need to explore that passion to the fullest. It’s about the individual child, and knowing that he/she is a human being and cannot fit into a mold. It’s about parenting, remembering what it’s like to be a child, and working hard to not spew the nonsense that was spewed upon us as children. It’s about learning from others before us, and passing the knowledge to those after us. It’s an organic life. It just happens and it’s near impossible to not enjoy it.
Learning happens all the time and there is no reason it needs to be separated into neat little subjects. Learning doesn’t have to be named or even noticed. *GASP!* It just is. It’s happening, whether you like it or not. When learning is forced upon children, they lose that curiosity and that zest for life. They stop asking questions and start looking for a way out. Life doesn’t stop at 3pm, so why should learning?
I’m watching my newly turned 5 year old learn to read. He’s not learning alone, yet I am *not* teaching him. He asks a lot of questions about letters and their arrangements. He recognizes the shapes of some words. He asks other adults in his life or that we meet together. He is learning by using the computer, and playing video games. He is learning to read because he lives in a text rich society with literate people. He is learning to read right on schedule… HIS schedule. It’s because he *wants* to read and he knows just how to get the information he needs, and he is needing it now. Some children do not need this information until they are 10 or maybe 12. They are all different and require different information at different times. It is amazing, yet foreseeable because I trust that he will learn to read, when he needs to. If I did not trust him to read, he would know that, and I would be getting in his way of his learning process.
Just like life, Radical Unschooling cannot be defined in simple terms. It is there, to be contemplated, to be discussed, to be learned, and to be questioned. It can be simple at times and more complicated at others. We can learn from ourselves and we can learn from others. We should not and most of could not being doing it alone. The only common factor is our children and our unquestionable devotion to our relationships with them and their well being.
People who get their knickers in a twist over an 11 or 12 year old not reading yet really crack me up. Because those same people would not be able to tell my 16y.o. apart from any child that learned to read at age 4 or 6 or 8. He was 12 before reading “clicked”. People have to see all learning as valuable, just as you stated, before trust can happen. Jared can easily pick apart grammar and spelling and read as well as any adult these days… but those school-focused lenses would only have allowed a person to see him as “illiterate” and us as “negligent” parents not too long ago. I just sigh…..and smile. Unschooling is the best kept secret really…even though we all keep trying to explain it.;)
awesome post, Heather!
You rock Heather!!!!!
My always unschooled kids read at different ages too, I didn’t teach them
My dd is 10 and just starting to click, woohoo!
Ha! I’m glad my digital discussion on twitter has created more discussion. I guess my use of pedagogical was more Paulo Freire-like and referring to the method of how learning occurs from one person to another, and didn’t mean it just strictly as the study of the teaching profession, if that makes sense?
My inclination is that by ‘naming’ things, we can find ways to connect others to it. If we can give a bit of description and definition to things, we find ways to join together with others who are interested or apart of the same thing. With this, I am not advocated the academic defining of ‘unschooling’ because really, the people from within that community of thought should be doing the ‘naming’, which does happen often with ‘unschooling’.
Yet, ‘unschooling’ can come up with a number of definitions, which is perfectly fine. But there are a few main streams of thought about what ‘unschooling’ is. There’s semantics about calling it something else, or referring it to something prettier, but essentially the principles and critical-of-the-school part or ‘anti-school’ part is inherent to ‘unschooling’ too.
If education is also used in a way to mean the process of giving and receiving knowledge, unschooling would have an educational philosophy. That philosophy just happens to believe in the abilities for humans to be a learning animal, and how we can be functional, contributing, and creative members of society by following our passions and interests. That seems like a philosophy to me, and starkly different from typical compulsory schooling methods.
Very cool post though. I like the dialogue.
Ha! I hate the word pedagogical! It sounds so gag-reflexish:)
Love your thoughts– and also, I do believe the picture of your kiddos (you, know with sparks in their eyes and joy in their faces) says it all. And my eldest, who was ready to read at just about 10, went from nothing to Harry Potter in matter of weeks. When they are ready, they are ready. And the beauty of waiting for that time? Your children will love to read. There was no force or stress or feelings of failure to get in the way of that. And that, is learning at its finest:)!!
Dustin – I very much agree. Often I meet people who are “home educating” and are unschoolers to me, yet they reject the label. I embrace the label of unschooler because it enables me to find other like minded individuals to connect with. It also gives a starting point with which to describe. I also prefer “in the absence of school” to “anti-school”. While many unschoolers certainly are anti-school, many are not, and many even give school a try.
Kate – incidentally, my oldest (11) learned to read in school (Kindergarten and half of first grade) and hates to read books. Go figure.
Great post. I’ll have to come back to read the comments when I have more time. I particularly loved this:
“Learning doesn’t have to be named or even noticed. *GASP!* It just is. ”
I’ve found the only way to describe what we do is through face-to-face conversations. Civility rules in person, tones can be detected and understood, questions can be answered more clearly and I’ve never had a face-to-face convo (with an intelligent, albeit skeptical person) end in disagreement. It’s always led to eye-opening revelations on both parts and understanding on their part at least that there is more than one way to raise and “educate” a child.
Beautiful. Thank you!
Thanks Julie! I don’t post much on the message board, but I read everything that goes through. It seemed like the right time.
“Pedagogical” IS an awful word.
The rest of your post had a lot of other true things, too, but that one really spoke to me.
I think a major problem with explaining “unschooling” is that most people can’t imagine what it looks like at all and that has their thoughts going all over the place. Asked to imagine “school”, fine, everybody knows what that looks like and our thoughts will be fairly similar in most ways; “homeschooling” – that’s like school at home, right? Asked to imagine something that *isn’t* school – hmm … what could that be? Anything really to people who’ve never thought outside of, “You have to go to school or you’ll never learn anything” (an overheard comment from years ago when my son was in school!).
I’ve even encountered a few people who seemed to believe that living without school means adopting some kind of Amish or gypsyesque lifestyle. In 2010?
“Pedagogical” is a truly awful word. So’s “autodidact”. Personally, I hate the sound of that one too.
I think it’s *super* important to remember that it’s completely alien to a lot of people.
Autodidact doesn’t bother me, but I don’t use the word in conversation either. It usually means I have to explain the definition of the word!