Unschooling - thoughts?

[Snickerdoodle1]

Recently got back in touch with an old school friend via Facebook, have mostly shared messages but last week we met properly for coffee and was good to see her again.

I'd never heard of it before but apparently she is 'unschooling' her DS - not the same as home ed as they never sit down and dedicate time to work, they just visit the occasional museum and forest school class but mostly just focus on being happy. They go on a lot of holidays and spend time will their fellow unschooling friends.

Her DS seems cheerful and positive so clearly she's doing something right but when I was discussing with DH later at home he said he thinks it's 'not fair' on someone not to equip them for life and work and adulthood.

Just wondering what other people's thoughts/opinions are on it?

As an ex-teacher and someone with a degree in child psychology, the concept of unschooling is bollocks. Children don’t know what they don’t know, so it’s not up to them to choose what they learn. They don’t have the capacity to. As adults, we need to make sure they have the basics (reading, writing, maths) AT LEAST in order for them to function in society.

Even for upper primary it does not cut it. If you look at a SATS paper for Y6, the level of knowledge and skill is way beyond what is required to weigh and measure. These are great ways of encouraging maths in everyday life but they are simply insufficient for a child to have the foundations required for taking exams later.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, strong correlation with anti-vax, and other woo unscientific bollocks.

I think homeschooling has much more of an eye on the curriculumn and eventual exams so a parent would guide some learning out of the cake that fitted with the aim thar one day i want my chikd to do maths gcse. Wheras unschooling would be more my child will learn whatever they are interested in from the cake - which might just be how to make a cake and children guide their own learning so might never bother with maths.

I wonder as well how the child will feel about their parents when they grow up. Grateful for the carefree, responsibility- free endless childhood or resentful of the fact they're unqualified, uneducated (in any real sense) and so far behind their peers they are unlikely to ever really catch up.

Gosh, is she hoping he meets a nice rich woman who’ll go out and earn the money while he’s all happy not working but managing their home? Imagine if we went back to equipping our girls only for this sort of future. It’s been compulsory since 1870 for both boys and girls to be educated until they are 12. Amazing that a parent is arrogant enough to limit her child’s potential so greatly in 2022.

We sort of do a mix for our dd.

She has health issues so when she’s ok we do ‘normal’ HE work and when she’s having flare ups we do nothing at all or something akin to unschooling where she picks what she wants to do and we try to get some kind of lesson out of it.

She recently had 3 months of it as was quite unwell now we are back to 1.5 hours work each day where she will sit down and do English/maths/science etc.

No it’s been a concept in home education for several decades. Definitely one on the hippy fringe, though. That said, some people just do it for a while to “decompress” from school before working out their own hole curriculum. Slightly too laid back for my tastes but it might work for some. A lot of home educated children are ND, have SN or are school refusers and I can imagine a place for it, in fairness.

That could be her motivation then.

She clearly doesn't see that no education and having fun during school age inhibits you anyway. She's learnt later in life and assumes (I suspect) that her DS will too.

I don't agree with her. I don't agree with the fundamentals of the conventional unschooling.

I think education is definitely a marathon and not a race and children shouldn't feel the pressure they do for SATS, GCSEs and a levels etc. (and I work in education!)

But you can't go off and do a degree or masters if you haven't had exposure to learning and writing essays and exams. You need a good standard of basic education in at least the core subjects.

Ridiculous. Kid should be removed from her and placed with someone with common sense!

As a pp has said though, lots of parents would do that anyway, after school or a fun weekend activity. I bake with my kids all the time, get them to add up numbers in the shop etc. On top of going to school. Not instead of.
And the baking = maths example is so often touted here but it just isn't enough for them to remotely keep pace with what would be covered in school in the same time. Which is fine, as long as you understand that your child may end up with big gaps.

My friend did this but properly.

Unschooling is about letting them choose what they want to learn. Not forcing them to learn specific things.

She took them everywhere and has got them cooking, growing food, playing musical instruments, learning languages, swimming competitively as well as learning about geography, space, maths, literature, caring for animals etc.

She has them eager to learn. She doesn't force them but asks what they want to know about.

I have no idea how she has done it. I know I couldn't. She is definitely not neglectful or lazy.

They have just started going to normal school at A Level age because she feels that she has come to her own intellectual limit and doesn't feel like she can help them learn any more.

She is in the USA and lots of people do it so it is more geared up for it.

There’s a lot of ignorance here.

I know a couple of people doing this and their children are feral and uneducated. Like seriously behind - the 10 year old can barely read. It makes you realise why Germany banned home schooling though I know some decent home schoolers

Maybe you could share some wisdom?

Well all of that is true, to an extent, especially now schools are so underfunded.

You're a bad friend to judge when you have no knowledge.

I know some unschooling families. Their kids are older now, mostly at university. We home educated for a while, I did not unschool as I have a teaching background, but those who did it appeared to be taking their responsibilities very seriously. One family in particular has extreely high achievng children who did some amazing things - I'm not linking to their updates for obvious reasons but the children were very accomplished.

Sounds like lots of people don’t know what this is.
I know several families (including mine) who have gone down the unschooling route, mainly (but not all) because our children could not cope with the high pressure, adult led structure of school and were traumatised from their previous years at school.

My own children have PDA, unschooling worked for them. They followed their interests and did far more than they were able to do in either a school environment, or in home educating led by me. Both are in farming now. The oldest is also a competent mechanic and fixes his own car himself. Both are in work, progressing in their respective jobs and earning well.

Other families (many of them from teaching backgrounds) decided on unschooling as they felt this was the best choice for their child(ren). I am still in touch with them now, one is in her first year of med school, her brother is currently doing a levels. Others are doing a variety of things, just like their peers who were in school. They stand out as very interesting and have been allowed to follow their passions.

Of course neglect and laziness happens in HE children, but it also happens in schooled children. Taking my boys out of school was the toughest thing I ever did, and not having a break from them for 5 years was difficult, but worked for them.

I do wish people would consider why anyone would choose HE, in whatever form it takes, and stop with the predictable knee jerk reactions.

Some dc won’t ever do gcses or a levels etc but they will have been offered an education that is appropriate to their needs and abilities. Often schools can’t offer this even with EHCP as they are still tied to certain targets and expectations in online with what is expected of everyone.

It does work and it’s not neglect to choose the path that is right for an individual child

Agree but previous experience with these threads says there is nothing to be gained by trying to counter it - you will only attract a whole heap of opprobrium!

The thread has probably only been started to be goady anyway.

He might be a happy child now, but how happy is he going to be when he finds out just how much he doesn't know, and how hard it is going to be for him to catch up enough to be able to get even the lowest paid job.

Her DS is 10, she is not planning to start him at secondary and I think he would struggle to cope there as he doesn't know times tables, can only do basic maths/reading, etc. She said she's more interested in him being happy and tbf he did seem very cheerful, sat politely whilst we chatted, etc and seemed a very kind/friendly kid.

Oh dear... she's definitely depriving him of future options by not even attempting to keep his three Rs up to the level of his peers. What if he decides at 11 / 12 / 13 he DOES want to go to school?? How will he cope? And later on... he'll never be able to go to uni if he wanted to? Ironic that your friend is doing a degree, so she clearly does place value in higher education!

Frankly she sounds lazy and selfish to me. The whole "I just want him to be happy" argument is nonsense. It makes the assumption that school makes kids unhappy. For most (apart from the odd sulky teen) the opposite is true. Kids love to learn with their friends in a structured environment.

And he'll be VERY unhappy later on when he realises that his mum had made a choices for him that basically cut off a whole world of opportunity and condemned him to menial, low-paid work all his life.

I also worry about the boy's socialisation - how is he making friends??

Saying that parents who do child led home ed are selfish, negligent, and so on. It’s complete bollocks. There’s also ignorance about exams being the be all and end all of education, and a lot of assumptions that conventional schooling is a force for good - when it was developed to get children used to a factory setting, and is relatively new in human terms (couple of hundred years). There’s also a lot of emphasis on “what about getting a job?” which shows the complete internalisation of the capitalist mindset which is very disappointing. All in all, a very sad thread.

It is a load of airy-fairy bollocks. I get that school is not for everyone and that homeschooling / home education is a great choice for many. But as a parent your job is to ensure your child is educated, not wafting around to museums and watching the odd YouTube video on dinosaurs, completely ignoring the basics of English and Maths because they'd rather not.

Great way to make a child unemployable though.

The whole "I just want him to be happy" argument is nonsense. It makes the assumption that school makes kids unhappy. For most (apart from the odd sulky teen) the opposite is true. Kids love to learn with their friends in a structured environment.

where are you getting that from? Kids mental health is in crisis.

Yabu to misrepresent unschooling this way. A simple Google would remedy your lack of knowledge. Unschooling is learning without the formalities of school, but done properly there is plenty of learning. In fact all the unschooling parents I know have children who are learning years ahead of their peers in state schools, learning others languages at a young age etc.