Autonomous Home Based Education.

[julienoshoes]

Okay- I am not looking for a discussion over whether the choice to HE or not, is right.
I'm not looking for comments about school either, as it would be irrelevant to Autonomous HE unless a child requested to go.
I'm not even looking for comments about whether HE should be parent led, or child led.
You each make the choice that is right for you family, as far as I am concerned.

But as a result of the recent boost in members on the Mumsnet HE FaceBook page, (where any style of home educator is welcome-or those interested in becoming one) and questions asked there, I went looking for something I'd posted elsewhere.
For those of you interested in an Autonomous style of home education, I thought this might give you a little insight into 'our' AE:

Autonomous home education fascinates me-you never know where you are going to end up in any one day. I could be helping with sociology statistics, or with revising psychology theories. We could be involved in painting a Warhammer figure, doing a piece of ?Batik? or making a rag rug. We have taken long, long walks and talked and talked and talked. I have helped to write a poem on a beautiful hillside in Malvern and helped to Lucy to commit it to memory to be performed at a Street Festival. I have learned to milk a goat. We helped to take down a tee pee in the valley of the river Wye. I have helped to make electrical circuits and bath bombs. We have curled up in bed, reading stories for hours on end, on wintry days and made igloos in the snow on a snowy day. We have been fossil hunting on a beach in the sun and the rain! In short all the wonderful things other parents of schooled children, get to do for short periods between school, home work and bed, and in school holidays, we get to do all day if we want ;o)

Is autonomous child led? What if the child wanted to go out for the day but you just didn't feel like it - what happens in a situation like that? Or is autonomous education about fitting in with everyone so one day your needs and wants come first and the next day, or hour, the child's does?

It would depend on individual families Colleger, for us we only had one rule of mutual respect.
So every one would have an equal say, and consider what is best for us all.
We'd try and reach a consensus, that we could all live with, rather than compromise where one person feels like they have given something up.
Other people would do it differently, but that is what worked well for us.

Yes, it's child led-sorry I missed the first bit of the question.

In America it's called Unschooling, although I prefer Autonomous HE as a child could choose to be very structured-and that doesn't 'sound' like 'unschooling'

I like an American site that helps to explain it:
Joyfully Rejoycing

How can I limit computer-use but be autonomous and if my son is sitting about all day, getting chubby and unhealthy with no intention of ever moving then surely that's not good for him but encouraging him to exercise wouldnt be autonomous. I don't suppose it's possible to be autonomous for somethings?

Although child led, do you ever take stock of what you've done? You made a list on your message to show how much you cover. With autonomous HE, do you (or does one) take an overview of what you've covered this month to see if things are left out? I would be worried that if I didn't provide opportunities to cover a subject then that subject would not enter ds head so he would not explore it of his own volition. I don't mean have a curriculum of 'river errosion' to be covered this week but have an idea of 'has ds been given an opportunity to be inspired by some sort of geography'? I'm having difficulty wording this correctly. But it's the old adage of "if you don't try it, how do you know you don't like it". Does autonomous HE allow for some sort of provision of opportunities which are greater than what the child can come up with. After all some children would not stray off anything which wasn't pink or to do with cars etc.

Maggi I don't HE but I work as a childminder and follow the Early Years Foundation Stage. This is very much based on learning through play and can be autonomous.

I agree with you that the adult has to provide the opportunites for children to learn new things, but don't feel this over-rides the child-led approach.

For example, if I wanted to cover 'river erosion' but a child had shown no interest in learning this (which they wouldn't if they'd never hear of it) I would probably suggest a trip to a river. I would borrow a couple of books from the library on the subject and have them available. I would bring it up in conversation when the children were playing by the river. "Look at this, can you see what's happening as the water flows through..."

I would decide my next action on the child's reaction. Activites can begin as adult-planned but become child-led as soon as the child becomes involved.

Colleger - I absolutely don't limit computer use. Partly because there are all sorts of thoroughly educational things a child can do with a computer (and of course one can spy some of those out and draw the child's attention to them, but I'd have to admit that many of the most amazing things I've seen children do with computers have been entirely self-directed).

If I think it would be a good idea for my child to get some exercise I might try 1) suggesting that to them in an abstract way [age dependent and also would need to be carefully done to avoid heel-digging-in] or 2) suggest some really fun activity that just happens to be away from the computer and involve moving around. I've rarely known a child turn down a bouncy castle opportunity, yk? (actually, I've rarely known me turn down a bouncy castle opportunity )

Maggi I absolutely DON'T divide life into school-style subjects. There are things that my children do that would easily fit into the maths-english-history-science-geography categorisation if that seemed helpful, but actually we concentrate on answering the children's questions, and providing them with resources to support their special interests of the moment. If it's all about maths this week, I'm hardly going to stop a child making themselves maths problems to solve in order to insist that they do some French now. equally, if they are busy translating the closed captions of a DVD into French via Google translate, and then listening to the computer voice and echoing the sound, I'm not going to make them stop that to do art. If they are painting, or making an animation on sketchstar at miniclip, I'm not going to make them stop that to practice their reading. And if we've gone a month without any interest in biology being shown then that will come into focus another time. I don't make those decisions - people learn most efficiently (in my opinion) when they are learning exactly what they are most fascinated in right now.

And as for keeping track - if an activity has a "product" at the end of it, I sometimes slip that product into a bag which hangs on the back of the kitchen door. This is a sort of a memory bag, which we could return to in order to enjoy the things we used to do. Once it becomes a fire hazard (and we finally accept that we never will look back at the crap KidArt of years and years), we'll bin the older bags which are all stored in a pile. I really don't try to keep track of what my children are learning at any given time, except to respond to it in the moment through conversation, and to keep the current special interests in mind when on charity shop trips or thinking of birthday presents etc.

Hope that helps!

What Ommward said!

(I wish there was a 'Like' button on Mumsnet!)

WantAnOrange - I did have real trouble wording my question. I'll try again:-

As an autonomous HE household, would the adults guide the child into areas of study they did not automatically find themselves doing?

Some of the stuff I've read about autonomous, makes it sound as though the adults would not offering any guidance into new areas and I wondered how much influence julienoshoes had in her household. Plus what level of guidance by an adult would make it just child-centred as opposed to autonomous.
(I'm a cm too)

julienoshoes- Sorry I didn't ask the right question. Would you look back at the year or half a year and think "I'd really like my child to be more active/mathematical etc" and then think of ways to provide for this in the future, or is it purely down to the child? (I'm not trying to be critical, just to understand what is meant by autonomous)

Maggi - Depends what you mean by "guide", and also different families do it differently.

Some parents favour an approach sometimes called "strewing" in which you leave things lying around the house which you think your children might enjoy. If they latch onto it then fine, and if they don't that is also fine. My older daughter used to have great trouble finding library books which she thought she might like. Maybe it's because she wasn't yet a fluent reader, or because she hadn't yet developed the skill of judging a book by its cover. (You know how you can get clues as to what sort of book it might be based on the cover design etc.) Some were books I had enjoyed myself - there's nothing wrong with wanting to share your own interests with your child so long as you don't push. Some were in subjects she had expressed an interest in. Some were pretty random. Those 20 or so books would come home and she'd choose from among them, or not. She was always free to choose her own library books if she could be bothered, which she occasionally did, but mostly she preferred to have me narrow it down like that. I do something similar with TV programmes: I am the one who downloads BBC programmes from iPlayer overnight. I choose a selection which I think the family would enjoy or which they've said they liked in the past. If they can be bothered, they go browsing during the daytime and leave me a list of what they want me to download for them, but usually they leave it up to me.

In the case of maths, say, if I thought my child lacked opportunities to do maths then I would start including maths books among the armful I brought home, and see whether she latched onto them - but I wouldn't say "Come on, don't you want to look at THIS book with me?" Likewise I might ask her if she wanted to go to a maths lecture with me, or download a maths programme. If I really thought she'd like it if only she tried it, I might cunningly make a point of watching it myself when she was around just to see if she got sucked in by it. I do that with my 5yo, who is a bit black-and-white about what she thinks she'd like.

I've had a few friends whose children were very cautious about trying new things, and the parent worried that the child would simply become more fearful and would miss out on things they'd enjoy. So the parent would insist that the child go along once to a new activity. If the child didn't want to go back then that was OK. Or the parent would say, "We are all going out to the new HE group, and you are coming too. If you don't like it you are welcome to sit in the car and play on your gameboy." Some AE purists would object to that approach.

Sorry I missed a bit out from my second paragraph. I meant to say that I used to grab 20 books which I thought my dd might like and check them out from the library for her to choose from. She could choose any or none.

Can autonomous education be taken too far by some? I think the HE'ers on here are not talking about behaviour on here but I did have a number of AE friends and the child could do anything they wanted which included eating what they wanted and behaving how they wanted. There was a lot of nasty bullying behaviour and my boys bore the brunt of it. The parents would watch but do nothing.

I must add that the majority of AE wouldn't subscribe to this but I'm trying to get my head around what child-led and AE means in reality. Do we produce spoilt brats if the parents have never said no to them? :/

Some parents don't believe in interfering in disputes between children and differing attitudes about this do cause friction in home ed groups.

I don't think it's specifically related to autonomous education, more about a particular parenting style.

Though having said that, I guess some parents who don't get involved, would see this as an extension of autonomous or unschooling approach.

Re children eating what they want, this occurs as an element of some parenting philosophies where children attend school, so it's not just related to autonomous home ed.

Also it may be related to sensory issues, where the decision to let children eat what they want is taken after the fact, and what the outsider sees may look more permissive than is experienced by the parents themselves.

The disputes our children were facing we're more akin to Lord of the Flies with parents watching on as my son was being physically beaten and whimpering!

Again I'm sure that has nothing to do with AE and just coincidental that they did AE. I want to AE but I don't know if my definition will be AE iykwim?

Thank you for this thread It is very useful to hear others stories about how they Home Ed.

We are just starting HEd after DD having awfull time at school so very much ' de schooling/chilling' but i have no idea how we are going to do things when we do get round to it! I do know we wouldnt have even considered HEd if we wasnt certain DD was self motivated and really wanted to learn. I also believe you learn from life experiences not just by sitting in a class room.

We have always visited Museums, wild life parks, the theatre etc - we will just have more time and flexibility now.

I know DD will work hard and is determined to follow her chosen path (she is fortunate to know what this is at 13 - i didnt) and once she is well enough we will work out together how to achieve this. Is this Autonomy? I dont think parenting any child is about never saying 'No'( or never saying 'Yes'!) its about working together and allowing to make their own decisions where possible (but guiding gently if required).

This is a very useful thread and has given me lots if ideas already.
TY

"Again I'm sure that has nothing to do with AE and just coincidental that they did AE."

No, I do think there is a connection, and it isn't a coincidence. But it is quite possible to allow children freedom over some aspects of their lives and not others. Allowing a child control over ALL aspects of his own life would logically mean the child controlled his own education. But you can give the child freedom over his education without necessarily giving him freedom over his diet and bedtimes and interactions with other children.

Does that make sense? Fiona explained it more briefly when she said "I guess some parents who don't get involved, would see this as an extension of autonomous or unschooling approach."

Nearly all of the AE parents I know do set some limits for their children, but the areas where the parents take control are different in different families. Some parents might only dictate about screen time, others might only control food, some might control food and interaction with other people, etc.

As an autonomous HE household, would the adults guide the child into areas of study they did not automatically find themselves doing?

For the most part, no. I would say, the parents could offer ideas and opportunites but not insist. I think you would find that you don't need to guide the learning very often. If you document learning properly, you'll find that children naturally cover most areas.

The main focus should always be the child's interests but you can't avoid having some influence. For me it's more about learning togther, than a teacher/student relationship (you could look into the Reggio Emilia Approach for a better idea of how I learn alongside children).

That said, how can a child ask to learn about something they've never heard of before? As an educator, I think it's my responsability to introduce new concepts, but the real learning happens when the children take over.

Does that answer the question? It's hard to explain.

As an autonomous HE household, would the adults guide the child into areas of study they did not automatically find themselves doing?

In OUR AE household, I would offer things that I thought that our children would be interested in. But it didn't matter whether they chose to do something I had suggested or not.
TBH it wasn't needed-every moth we'd have newsletters for the HE group in our county and in Gloucestershire and the West Mids too. We'd look at all of them and decide what we were going to attend. So often things would be put on that neither the children and I would have thought of, and we'd give the ones they had chosen, a go.

Some of the stuff I've read about autonomous, makes it sound as though the adults would not offering any guidance into new areas and I wondered how much influence julienoshoes had in her household.

Aren't all parents an influence in their children's lives-either positively or negatively?
I'd say that we have a brilliant relationship with our children, we discuss anything and everything. I know because they are all grown up and tell us now, that my dh and I are a huge influence on our children. But they have been influenced too by attitudes thoughts and beliefs of other adults that figure in their lives too. Just as I know I have been an influence on some of their AE friends, who have come here to stay. Just yesterday I had a Skype call from an previously AE young person, currently travelling in the Far East, as she wanted my opinion on something, she knew I have experience in.
Autonomous doesn't mean neglect....all of the very many AE families I know are very engaged with their children's education.

For example if they were watching something like Power Rangers, rather than banning it, like some families we know and the school that they attended did, we would discuss with them, what effects all of that fighting had in reality, what damage would be done to the other person etc. That didn't change just because we HE.
Nothing was banned, nothing limited-but everything was discussed.

Plus what level of guidance by an adult would make it just child-centred as opposed to autonomous.

Accepting the children's choices to do something or stop doing something, is what would make it autonomous IMO

julienoshoes- Sorry I didn't ask the right question. Would you look back at the year or half a year and think "I'd really like my child to be more active/mathematical etc" and then think of ways to provide for this in the future, or is it purely down to the child? (I'm not trying to be critical, just to understand what is meant by autonomous)

I don't feel criticised-it's a very valid question.
I don't think so, they got so much maths/geography/English/Science/PE in every day life, that I don't think it's necessary to think in block subjects.
As I said if I thought one/all of them were interested in something, I'd offer it.
The point for me about AE, is that is about what the child wants, not what I want.

They really haven't needed a formal education of any sort, say, to get a Maths GCSE equivalent. They have just signed up for a course when they were ready/needed it, and done it (successfully) in a very short period of time.
Others I know just work through the curriculum -often in a very short period of time, and then enter the exam as an external candidate.

The disputes our children were facing we're more akin to Lord of the Flies with parents watching on as my son was being physically beaten and whimpering!

It's horrible isn't it? That's what was happening to my son in school. I think you'll find it in all walks of life. But just as this may not be what some people's experience of school is, what you describe isn't my experience of AE. Quite the opposite in fact.

Do we produce spoilt brats if the parents have never said no to them? :/

Our only rule, was one of mutual respect-and that would equally apply to them or me, or anyone else in their lives.
We try and live consensually where we try and reach a consensus, where everyone is content with decisions, rather than with compromises, where someone would end up feeling like they are giving something up.
It's how my relationship with my dh works, and it is the same for our children and grandchildren.

I love this thread. I know we're still in the deschooling stage but we are so leaning toward unschooling (I can say that, Im american). I wouldnt say our family would be suitable to a radical unschooling approach, the no limits whatsoever on anything. If I see a behaviour or attitude in my children that would harm them or cause harm to others, I feel it is my parental responsibility to correct them or call their attention to it, at the very least.

I have noticed just how much they learn by just living, reading, playing, watching, being around other people. My 3 havent shown any difinitive interest in anything that would lead to any big project but Im ok with that. They produce absolutely nothing that would be considered 'work'. We just read up on different things, sift thru children's encyclopedias, atlases, read a variety of different books, talk about them at length. We watch tv together, movies, play games, discuss music tastes, enjoy music together. Goodness sake, listening to the radio provides a decent musical education, imho.

My take on it is that unschooling, for us as a family, is about the whole family. We're all in this together, dh and I are learning as we go too. I love information on all sorts of subjects so Ill get books for the kids from the library and even if they arent interested in them Ill read thru them myself, lol. I do introduce things to the kids. Just like their interests might suck me in, my interests sometimes rub off on them. I dont do subjects tho. Its fascinating seeing where this is leading us. Im watching my kids go thru various stages. Since my dh had a minor operation things have gone a bit all over the place. Im still dictated by the school year bc Im in college myself (hairdressing) and its half term. For the kids all this means that its been very relaxed in our house. Thats been interesting to see what they get up to when dh and I are really so preoccupied with other things that we are really unschooly... bc I still need deschooling too and I did find myself trying to force things. Since we had to really chill out with that we are all much more calmer and they are still learning.

My girls (13 twins) are baking cookies for a stall at a jumble sale this weekend. Their friend's mum is running it and she's charged them £2.50 for a table. At first I thought that was tight, then I thought in reality they would have had to pay for it, so... They also had clothes they want to sell there too. Last time they made £9 which was pretty good for something they threw together off the cuff, I think they didnt have a lot of planning time. What they did was take some of the money they earned from the cookies they baked and bought two more bags of cookies at £1 each, they had 10 cookies and they charged 50p each. Sold out. All off their own back.

My son has shown an interest in guns. He plays call of duty black ops at a friends house and likes the guns so he started drawing them. I was thinking what I could do with him, as in spending time with him bc my girls and I are just so girlie together (as you can imagine with my studying hairdressing, lol) that I thought he was kind of feeling left out. So I just thought Id see if he wanted to research weaponry. We did this morning. We drew some examples, I bought him call of duty modern warfare from amazon. I couldnt buy the black ops bc its so gory, I wouldnt want to play it with him!! Its got zombies in it so I compromised and got him the modern warfare one. Maybe thats wierd but ... well I thought it was a compromise we could both work with. I got a bit ... concerned for a minute with his interest in guns and shooting things. We talked about it a bit and I was satisfied that since we're doing this together and we talk so much that he wont go postal or anything like that. I dont mean to sound flippant, there were some terrible things that happened in american schools with teens and guns and school shootings... and that sort of flashed before my eyes while I was going over this with him... Ive dealt with that tho now, so Im ok...

Anyway, dont know if this is ranty or all over the place. This is what AE looks like for us at the mo...

I would like my dd to learn at her own pace, using her own learning style which is Kinaesthetic. I know now what she will choose and in what quantity,
If I allow her the freedom to do this is this still autonomous, even if I know she is directed by the ncc, because she has asked for it. I can see dd asking for sats papers in y6. How can this be autonomous? or isn't it?

autonomous HE could indeed involve a child sitting down for 6 hours a day with very book-based, product-based, qualification-directed learning.

The different between them and some children in school is that that child has chosen that path themselves, and they have the freedom to jump off the race track if they change their mind. Child led. Self directed. Autonomous.

(I know a family who closely follow the sonlight curriculum - the child wanted a curriculum-based life; they tried a few out and this is the one the child likes. THat's autonomous HE, even though from the outside it looks exactly like a top-down adult led education would look. It's all about choice and motivation.

I wouldnt say our family would be suitable to a radical unschooling approach, the no limits whatsoever on anything. If I see a behaviour or attitude in my children that would harm them or cause harm to others, I feel it is my parental responsibility to correct them or call their attention to it, at the very least.

Now you see that's the problem with labels-if I were to use an unschooling one, I'd say we were/are totally radical unschoolers-with no limits.....but that doesn't mean we can't live with mutual respect-and that would mean drawing attention to anything that causes harm to others, so that they would cease the harmful behaviour.

But apart from mutual respect, the only other rules in our house, are don't put drinks on the nice wooden furniture and don't drink momma's real ale........

It's really worth looking at Sandra dodd's website if you want to learn more about radical unschooling. I also thought it absolutely wouldn't be for us but there are some very convincing articles on the perverse effects of limits. We definitely have rules about respecting each other but they are the same for children and adults, everyone's opinion is valued. Violence is not tolerated but nor is ignoring children's needs. Around TV and computers, we dropped all limits about 4 months ago and he now watches less than he did before and we never argue about it. Food we are also experimenting with, mostly because for us control wasn't working, and it was adversing affecting my relationship with my son. I am not sure if I will be strong enough to trust him with his diet as I see him choose so much sugar at the moment, but I am fairly convinced that it is a better way if you can manage it - both for their relationship with you and for their long term relationship with food and themselves. My son is almost 4.

Could you be autofocus but say, "You can do exactly what you want but for ten minutes everyday you're learning French?"

I mean, that would be 99% autonomous - no? I want the autonomous label with 10 mins of French!