Pros and Cons of Unschooling...

[renie408]

When I started homeschooling, I was so insecure about making sure that my daughter learned all the 'right' things that I ordered what was pretty much the Fourth grade in a box. It was all structured and was exactly what she would have been doing in the traditional school, only I was the teacher and it was at home. I quickly became disenchanted with the Science and Social Studies curriculum (which I have already mentioned) and branched out.

Lately I have gained a little confidence and begun to look into other methods of homeschooling. One of the things that I have been researching is Unschooling. I have noticed that several people here use this approach and I am wondering if you would share your experience with the pros and cons.

[mzteris]

1. There's a huge unschooling

group around/near Charlotte.

I'll PM you the link to them.

[LeftyMom]

2. I think transitioning to unschooling from more structured education would

be a challenge, because more structured schooling gets the child used to the idea that someone else decides what's worth knowing. Some kids take to unschooling like ducks to water, but others take a fair amount of down time to regain thier full measure of natural curiosity.

Hopefully somebody here has some advice about the transition. I've got a younger child (he'll be 5 in April) who has never set foot in traditional school so I probably don't have much advice that would apply to your situation.

That said, I can say that at least for my family unschooling works.

[unschooler]

3. Here's a surprise: I'm big into unschooling!

Unschooling, to me, doesn't have to mean that you never do anything in a structured fashion (although we do precious little that way) or that you never take a class or formal lessons. To me, unschooling means that you don't make yourself a slave to a curriculum, inside of school or out. You don't worry about what your fourth grader (or whatever) supposedly should know but about what your fourth grader wants to know and what you want her to know. You play a lot to your strengths and back-fill as necessary. We play a lot of learning games, look for opportunities (had a great discussion in the car today about protests in response to an NPR story on California protests against the immigration bill).

Somewhere I read an analogy that went something like this: school sees a child's mind as a jar to be filled; we see a child's mind as a fire to be stoked.

If you're interested in transitioning toward a more child-directed approach to your child's education, you absolutely must read John Holt's books. I also recommend www.unschooling.org and www.unschooling.com. Home Education Magazine also tends to be supportive of unschooling.