When I wrote the definition of unschooling a few weeks ago I handed it out at the local homeschooling meeting in hope that the philosophy around it would be a bit more understood… I found out yesterday though that it really wasn’t…

I agree that to the outsider, unschooling doesn’t look like the parent is doing much… you are not technically sitting and teaching a few hours a day… you might not have as many ways to “show” what your kids are learning because there is no curriculum, no workbooks or tests…but unschooling is not about “doing nothing”… you are always answering questions and researching things… you need to be attentive to their interests and provide them with experiences…

I felt really felt disillusioned yesterday at the homeschooling meeting when I realized that my efforts to explain unschooling in the attempt to create a connection regardless of our differences had caused maybe even more confusion… some parents were talking and saying that they agree with unschooling because they do it also when they are not doing school work… (like in the afternoons.. on weekends or in the summer on school break) basically saying that when they are done “teaching” the kids what they “need” to know… then they are free to “unschool” (with limits of course)…and in the context and way they said it, it was like unschooling is what happens when the parent is doing nothing to actively teach their kids…  they also made clear that most kids cannot be unschooled because they just “wouldn’t do anything’ and would never be able to learn without being taught…

The thing is… Unschooling is not just about not doing schoolwork….  it is about looking, and seeing, learning and education, in a different way… it is about  having confidence that all kids start with the love of learning and if nurtured, they will always learn what they need to learn when they are ready and interested to do so…

When you see that, you no longer see the need to actively teach math and grammar because you know that they will learn it when they see the necessity in learning within everyday life experiences… you don’t  teach the alphabet or colours or make sure that they know where their nose is… you can even see that doing so can be detrimental and destroy the love of learning…

Free time after sitting and being taught for a few hours is not “unschooling’… and neither is summer vacation… just because you decide on stopping school work for the day… or even a month or two and the kids keep on being interested in things it doesn’t mean that you are unschooling… it just means that kids are being kids…  but it could be unschooling if you continue letting them do that all of the time and gave them encouragement follow their natural interests of what they want when they need to…

To be honest, the rest of night I was much quieter than usual and was wondering what I was doing there… the experience left me feeling really withdrawn and indifferent… I feel that each time I have made an effort I have felt pushed away.