Unschooling - Do you think it can work?

[abacucat]

Unschooling is the idea that children naturally want to learn and that what children need is the opportunity to pursue their interests.

I think it depends on the child. Some are very self motivated and inquisitive and love learning while others may need a bit more guidance and structure. I don’t think there’s any one approach that will suit every child. That’s why school doesn’t work for everyone.

People don't really understand unschooling it does not mean doing nothing. It means providing the opportunities for your child to learn what they are interested in or want to learn. It also means introducing a wide and varied set of ideas so they have the widest choice available.

If a child wants to be a marine biologist then they would be able to spend lots of time learning about this. But if they really want to work as one then they would need a degree, they would then need the qualifications to do that degree - so they would want to study for the qualifications they need - which is normally maths and English GCSE. Then most go onto post 16 education. Or they may find an alternative route to higher education or into working with sea life. They would not however bother with additional pointless qualifications that they don't need unless they wanted to.

We HE and I know loads of children who have been unschooled- all 57 I have known who have reached the right age have gone to uni.19 are now doing masters and 4 PhDs.

Unschooling does not mean no education or no qualifications - I'm afraid this is a very flippant and superficial interpretation of what it could possibly mean.

I know if you have never seen it in action it's hard to believe but it really does work.

Are you trying to write an article about home education OP? The other day you started a thread about whether home educators should need approval before starting.
I have home educated for over 12 years, while we're not unschoolers I have seen it done many times with varying levels of commitment and success.
If you are genuinely interested in home ed there is a board on here and lots of Facebook support groups. AIBU tends to throw up lots of negative stereotypes and a few home eders trying to argue but definitely not a balanced opinion.

If a child wants to be a marine biologist then they would be able to spend lots of time learning about this.

This - kind of shows it only works where parents are very aware, and proactive in seeking out education and knowledge themselves. Middle class lentil weavers in other words 😄

But if you don't know that marine biology is a thing, your kids not gonna find out about it.

That depends on where you are OP. In Ireland it's perfectly possible to study medicine following a third level science access course.

I can't see how it would work effectively to provide a rounded education.

My eldest is a total science geek. He already does a lot of reading about science, watching documentaries, listening to podcasts, going to museums and so on in his spare time. No issues on that front. But had i let him choose what to learn he wouldn't have bothered with much maths, certainly wouldn't have done any reading of anything which wasn't the Hobbit, wouldn't have done geography, art, music, modern languages etc etc. He'd end up at 18 knowing everything there is to know about flu epidemics and dinosaurs, but not knowing a verb from a noun or where Spain is.

DD doesn't have a clue what she wants to do. She has found - to her surprise - that she's actually really enjoying subjects at senior school like Modern Studies, Design and Technology and French. She wouldn't have known she was interested had it no been on the curriculum.

Child-led is fine to some extent. But it's a parent's job to ensure the basics are covered.

no

People don't really understand unschooling it does not mean doing nothing. It means providing the opportunities for your child to learn what they are interested in or want to learn.

So where does the “un” bit come in? Isn’t it just alternative education?

Isn't the important difference between 'unschooled' and 'home schooled'? The home schooled kids I've come across have usually been confident and articulate but have required help when needing to move into any form of further education (and most of them have eventually wanted to do this). They have been very high maintenance in that parents need to ensure they meet up with their peers and form friendships by doing lots of activities. This can work really well. However, 'unschooling' seems to imply that any learning is child driven and in that case there could be whole areas that are neglected. What happens if a child has no interest in numeracy? Life is going to be tough. To be honest, it sounds like a foolish idea and I think the comparison with under privileged children striving to be educated in poorer countries is a really valid one.

It's not a subjective question, it's objective. Unschooling can and does work wonderfully for many people. Whether other people believe that or not is as immaterial as the belief of a flat earther to the shape of the planet.

Just to say for accuracy sake, many universities offer 4 year degrees with a foundation year, to those without qualifications. It is a way of widening access.

In my experience the offer a foundation year for those that have the qualifications just not in the required a levels. Not those who have no GCSE and A levels- that would be an access course when older.

I follow someone on Instagram who "unschools" her four kids. She spends all day in the gym / getting blow dries and brings them there too (she's a fitness blogger).

One child seems to learn Chinese. They all can read by the look of it. They seem to be on screens just as much as other children. She does mention visits from the education authorities so presumably they're happy with what she's doing. And her kids seem happy too.

I just wonder how they will ever get "normal" jobs.

Truly I didnt know that.
And no, I am a housewife, not a journalist. Just for personal reasons interested in this.

| was taught like this for my last year of Primary.

So I read. I read almost all of the books in the library in the classroom.

I did minimal maths (was good at it but hated it) and never caught back up. It meant I missed out on a good exam result for it.

I was a good, hardworking pupil but needed to be pushed, and I wasn't.

I can see the benefit of kids having more freedom in studying what they are interested in. But surely sometimes they need to learn stuff they don't like. Given free choice my 12 year old would still only be able to count to ten as she despises all maths.

Also it's only possible where parents are highly educated themselves and also can afford to pay for all these opportunities. Oh and when at least one parent doesn't work.

I totally believe it would work for my ds1 - he's a natural "go and find out" type and is constantly fascinated by the world around him. That said he loves school and being w friends and constant exposure to different teachers.

For ds2 it would be a disaster. Left to his own devices hed be great at gaming and unable to write his name.

It was a total disaster for a family friend's son who has a stellar IQ but never did get fed up of farting around on Instagram. 4 years later and 4 lack-lustre GCSEs to his name he's now enjoying college (this is the boy they were planning to send to uni at 16).

I think that it can but only if the parent is providing lots of opportunities, responding to the child's interests and using every moment to build on learning and basically just being massively on top of it. Which some are and some aren't.

I think it's brilliant and I'd love to do it - but I think contrary to how it sounds it requires quite a lot of energy and effort from the parent(s). You're not directing their learning but you do need to listen to their interests and create opportunities to follow them. I don't think that necessarily requires the parents to be experts in whatever topic, but you need to know how to find out more and explore topics. You need to be willing to take them places and gather resources they couldn't access by themselves. You need to not rely overly on shortcuts like screens as babysitters, and I think you probably need to be "on" most of the time.

I would love to do it because I think it's a fantastic concept but I am just not cut out for it. I can do the creative ideas but I am too lazy for the resource gathering, trips and not using shortcuts.

I think it can do but it depends on the child. Mine are HE but are much happier with a bit of guidance and structure. A lot of topics are still instigated by them, for example we are learning Japanese rather than any of the languages I thought we’d do (fine by me though, we are loving it!), DS fell in love with chemistry after picking up a particular book so we will be doing that before I thought we would (he’s just turned 9). But a lot of what we do is thought up by me (from a selfish point of view I love doing this anyway). I’m really happy with the balance we have but I am sure unschooling can work very well. Most of our HE friends are quite similar to us and we are pretty much all increasing the structure or planning to as we get to secondary age.

I don't think you need to use every moment to build on learning - school is only 30 hours of the week and not every moment there is spent learning. In fact I think once you take out registration, lunch, break, classroom crowd control and transitions between subjects/activities, it's probably more like 20 or less.

If I did it with my eldest it wouldn’t work in terms of his future prospects.
He is 8. If he just learned about what interests him it would be English and Science out of the core subjects. A good thing would be that he would spend all day learning about nature and writing stories. However, he doesn’t find maths easy, so tries to avoid it.
He is so keen on nature and knows so much that he would like to do zoology or similar. He really could do with maths A level for that. So if we unschooled he wouldn’t be able to achieve his dream.
Thing is, he spends a lot of his free time doing little experiments, reading about animals, memorising every single bird in his field guide. This learning has nothing to do with school (apart from learning to read!). I can’t imagine he’d know much more if he was unschooled.

Yeah, it works. My 17 year old was unschooled until age 15 when she decided she wanted to go to college. Now she's at college, in her final year. If you met her you wouldn't know she hadn't spent years of her life studying stuff she didn't want to know, just because everyone else does it.

bertie sorry should have said that differently, just meaning in a sense that I do as a childcarer, so if an opportunity arises to naturally expand on something without dragging it out then I jump on it.

I think many people have a negative idea of unschooling because we've all heard of or met "unschooling" families where the parents do sod all and the kids are left completely to their own devices. It's frustrating. I know of one such family and the poor kids are utterly isolated from others their age as well due to parent's lack of ability to travel and them living in the arse end of nowhere.

Yes, and it does work.
I think it's a family decision though, and a way of life, a philosophy.
It definitely needs an open mind.