Part I Setting the stage for natural learning
2 12 2005Success takes planning
I know several “unschooling” families. It is not for everyone. Not one of these families (as far as I know) has simply thrown books at their kids and said “hey, teach yourself this stuff”. The common factors among the successful unschoolers I know (and yes, I’ve seen the results of non teaching - that is NOT unschooling) are as follows:
Admittedly, I only have experience with families that have been this way from the beginning - I’m not sure how to execute them “midstream”, but I’m sure with modifications, anything can be achieved. This process seems to work best in families that are actively implementing attachment parenting techniques, fairly liberal, have organized adults in charge, and the adults are willing to model the behavior they want the children to emulate. That doesn’t mean anyone can’t unschool, I’m just relating my experience.
The environment of the classically unschooled family - from infant to teen
Regardless of space involved, the environment of the unschooler needs to be structured to encourage learning. All the time. The goal is to make learning a habit. Books, books, and more books, picture books, story books, comic books! Science books, math books, how-to books. Classics, twaddle, it doesn’t matter. Once reading becomes a habit, the material is not important. Children who are being gently conditioned to learn are going to gravitate towards informational reading. I have yet to see a book that contains such glaring grammatical errors as to render a child incapable of learning to write well later.
Bright colors, posters (I tend towards the educational, updating as my children have grown - currently the house is decorated with a 32 poster physics set) toys that incite discovery and provide imaginary play (building sets, puppets, manipulatives, dress up) and discourage the possibility that the child will sit and watch the toy play (electronic). That isn’t to say that computer games and video games are bad - my children grew up with both and I do believe that video games can provide both hand eye coordination and the opportunity to focus on something for more than a few minutes (attention span). We also have satellite TV. There’s no reason to feel the TV is a bad thing. Use the power of being a parent - don’t let the kids access channels you don’t want them to see. If their choices are educational or family programming (and even with all the music video, cartoon, and daily drama twaddle channels turned off, we still have nearly 50 channels of good programming), that’s all they’re going to watch. It’s like not having junk food in the house. No junk TV.
Daily (rain shine snow heat) exposure to the elements is essential. Bundle them up, strip them down, whatever - get them outside and exercising - make outside time a habit. As very social teens, my kids still ‘take a walk’ every day. Hardly a day goes by that they don’t return home from a walk in the woods, or along the river and don’t have a story to tell me, an animal they saw, a bird to identify, an unusual rock. From the time they were infants in a stroller I pointed out birds to them, it had been a hobby of my own. They acquired the habit of identifying things because that’s what we did - we carried the guide books with us (rocks and mineral, insect, mammal, bird).
Exposure to pursuits that can become lifelong interests or hobbies. Children should be exposed to music, art, sports, scouts, 4-H, as many as possible, in order to be able to choose something they may want to continue their entire lives. Many times, having caring adults include a child in an activity gives birth to interest - children instinctively want to be like the adults they care about, the adults that care about them.
Children, even very young children, benefit from routine and responsibility. This helps to condition them to setting goals and following through. Chores, a pet, scheduled family time, inclusion in family decisions and business, a “job”, all these help to prepare a child to become a lifelong, self motivated learners.
Ok. So far so good. This may be a technically stupid question, but, when your young’uns got up in the morning…what did they do? Did they go about the day, amusing themselves, playing with their educational toys, reading on some of the books you had, and playing outside? This is my personal brain fart.
Having been raised in lots of structure and coming out of public school and university myself, I have this overwhelming urge To Do Something. To measure it in some way. To ensure that something isn’t being “wasted”.
Now, I know the potential folly of that line of thinking. But having no real “model” to follow, I tend to err on the side of freak out, er, I mean, caution. I’m coming to realize, however, that there needs to be a more organic way of doing things. Our schooling just feels too scripted, and my son isn’t getting into it for the love of it, but getting through it because he has to.
Something needs to change. And I don’t think that something is him…
I’ll address your questions tomorrow - but a couple things to keep in mind. I wasn’t public schooled (hippy/native american parents), and my kids have lived their entire lives here on the farm. Our perspective rises from there - and our mindset is different. Heck, my kids didn’t know what heterosexuals were until they were 7
Certainly on my to-do list when I am a parent
and i dint knew what they were when till I was 17 
Jen, I accidently deleted your comment along with some rude ones, oops! You’re very welcome.
I realize every day how I was effected (brainwashed) by the public school system as I try to teach my children. Paranoia arises because my 9 year old son refuses to learn his multiplication facts. Fear that I am not doing enough and they are not doing enough rears its ugly head daily. Reading your post reminds me that I learned and read when I chose (usually in a non school environment), and completed the work without learning a thing and made the grade for school. Why then, am I drawn to these structures. I am jealous to think that there are people out there who are not loaded down with all this baggage (you must memorize the times tables by 3rd grade, etc. etc)
I am very intrigued by doing something different with my children. We live in the country and have so many opportunities to learn from the land so to speak. I am reading each post with great interest and looking forward to the ones coming up!
Great set of articles on unschooling you have here! I linked to you in my blog
I’ve included this awesome post in the carnival of unschooling #2.
http://atypicalhomeschool.net/articles/canival-of-unschooling-2/
Shoot. here’s the link.
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