I Live Therefore I Learn:
Living an Unschooling Life
by Pam Sorooshian
Unschooling is both easy and difficult to describe. The easy answer is that
unschooling means “not schooling,” but it is a lot harder to explain
what we do instead of schooling.
Unschooling means not depending on the usual school methods. It means no lesson
plans, no curriculum, no assignments, no quizzes or tests, no required memorizing,
and no grades. It means that the parent does not become the child’s schoolteacher—it
means not creating a miniature classroom in the home.
Instead, unschoolers focus on living a rich and stimulating life together.
Seriously, that’s it. We do not “school,” but, instead, we
concentrate on living a life filled with opportunities and possibilities and
experiences. Human children are born learners. Literally. What unschoolers
aim for is keeping that love of learning and intense curiosity alive as the
children grow up.
How do we do this? In practice, it is going to look very different for each
unschooling family. “We follow our interests,” is the unschoolers’ anthem.
And, each family’s interests will lead to all kinds of learning—history,
math, writing, music, reading, science, and all the other real-life subject
matter that is valuable and interesting. But we won’t think of them as “subjects.” We’ll
just think of them as interesting and fun and fascinating and something we
want to pursue further or not. One thing will lead to another and life goes
on and kids learn and parents learn and life is full of opportunity everywhere
we look.
It is natural for people to learn—each in their own way. It is natural
for children to want to understand the world around them. They also want to
join the adult world and become competent and capable adults themselves. They’ll
strive for this in their own natural ways.
Unschooling parents work on creating a home environment that supports their
children’s natural desire to learn and grow.
Each child is unique and experiences the world in a different way than any
other person and expresses themselves in ways that are different from every
other person. There is no curriculum in the world that is designed specifically
and dynamically for any particular child, but an unschooling lifestyle can,
in effect, provide a 100 percent individualized learning experience. Unschoolers
aren’t likely to learn exactly what the professional educators and textbook
publishers think they should—so, in that sense, they will have gaps in
their learning. But they’ll learn so much more, too, that is not included
in those lists of “learning standards.” What is important for one
person to learn is not necessarily important for another and we don’t
really have any way of predicting what will be important to know in the future.
We DO know that learning that is forced or pressured is not lasting and that
most of what kids are “taught” is not truly “learned” in
any kind of lasting way unless it is something in which they are interested.
Unschoolers also have in mind a lifelong timeline for learning. We don’t
worry about whether a child is “at grade level” because we know
that children are learning “something” all the time and that they
will eventually learn whatever they need to know for whatever reasons they
have. We don’t worry that they’ll miss something important because,
if it is important, they’ll realize that and find a way to learn it.
A true unschooling slogan is, “Life is learning, learning is life.” Unschoolers
simply do not think there are times for learning and times for not learning.
They don’t divide life into school time or lesson time versus play time
or recreation time. There is no such thing as “extracurricular” to
an unschooler—all of life, every minute of every day, counts as learning
time and there is no separate time set aside for education.
Is unschooling right for everyone? My answer is, “It depends.” I
think ALL children can learn and grow and thrive as unschoolers. But, I also
think it takes an intensity and focus on living life with a great deal of gusto
on the part of unschooling parents. Unschooling parents work hard. For example,
they must develop a very high level of sensitivity to their children to know
what to offer, when to support, when to back off, how busy they want to be,
how much solitude they need, when to nudge them a bit with encouragement, when
to get more involved, and so on. AND parents need to be able to always have
their kids and their interests in the back of their minds, thinking always
about what would interest them; bringing the world to them and bringing them
to the world in ways that “click” for that particular child. And
it takes a great deal of trust that the child will learn without external pressure.
We could do the curriculum—I could put together a few hours per day of “school
work,” insisting that my children do it. But I’ve read everything
I could get my hands on about learning and I’ve had 30 years of teaching
experience and I know, deep down inside, that any coercion in learning creates
either open resistance, passivity, or apathy, and I don’t want to create
any of those in my children. Learning feels good—it might be hard, but
it is also pleasurable. Coercion feels bad and trying to learn under coercion
is not pleasurable, even when we make the best of it. Children who have only
experienced the pleasure of unforced learning show the effect in their incredible
creativity, confidence, intensity, focus, persistence, self-knowledge, and
strong sense of personal responsibility.
Not all parents WANT their children to grow up strong-willed and truly independent-minded.
And, it is fair warning to say: “Be careful what you wish for.” If
what we mostly want is for our children to respect us and to adopt our beliefs
and goals, unschooling may not be for us. Many parents have a general definition
of “success” in their own heads, and what they want is for their
children to achieve their version of success. Many want their children to offer
living proof that they were good parents—they may even be especially
interested in outcomes that will impress friends, relatives, and acquaintances.
Again, unschooling is probably not a good fit under those circumstances.
Unschoolers do have goals, though, that impact our day-to-day interactions
with our kids. We want our children to discover theirlife’s passions
and to jump into them with both feet, with confidence and trust in life and
themselves. We want our children to know, deep inside themselves, that they
are strong and capable and can make their own individual choices. We want them
to be willing to buck the mainstream culture AND buck the counterculture and
think for themselves and do what they think is right and good and worthy and
valuable.
I think, most of all, we want them to love being alive—now and in their
future.