Deschool Yourself: Why Unschooling Isn’t Uneducation

Excellent article written by Misha at Simplicimom. "Simplicimom is an online magazine for any mom looking to make life a little simpler and a lot more fun. Being a mom can be hard, but it doesn't have to be." Visit Simplicimom or see the original article.

I think a lot of people get confused. I think a lot of people think that because my – or other people’s children – are unschooled it means that they aren’t educated. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Just because we don’t follow a set curriculum and do A,B,C,D before a child reaches a certain age, doesn’t mean they aren’t learning. They are learning all of the time. What’s great about it is that I’m not constantly “on them” to do this, that or the other thing.

I was worried for years that Liam couldn’t do his multiplication tables. He still can’t just reel them off to you like I learned how to in school. This infuriated me. We sat for hours with work books and flash cards. I even sent him to school half days so he could take advantage of a special education math program (he is slightly autistic). They couldn’t teach him his times tables either. I’ve done all kinds of programs – visual, auditory, picture-based. But if you ask Liam right now, what’s 4 times 3 – he won’t be able to tell you.

Imagine my complete surprise when I noticed (and he’d probably been doing it all along), that without missing a beat, he told me that we would need 8 boards that were 4 feet long to finish a project. “How many feet of boards?” I asked, just kind of absent-mindedly. “Ummm…32,” he replied. I thought about it a minute and I was like “Holy cow! Liam you can multiply!” He was like “I know…”

All that work – years of work and frustration and he just figured it out. Hmmm….
My children have lots of interests. Jack likes airplanes and cars and engines and swords and mythological characters and helping in the garden. Alex is 16 and draws better than anyone I ever saw. He is developing his own comic book and has a few budding business ideas. He is also a math whiz and is really good at Tae Kwon Do and Aikido. Liam loves to help people and finds himself volunteering no matter where we are. At 14, he is working at his business fixing people’s computers and developing their websites. He also loves to help out at a local stables.

My kids volunteer at the library, babysit for other people’s kids, play with their little brothers and sisters and teach them lots of things. They make friends through their various activities and work hard at the things they love to do. That’s all I want for them in their lives.

In between, we talk and question everything together. My husband is forever taking them outside to look at a star, look through a telescope, look at a cloud, look at a plane overhead. We talk about the news and oil spills and coal miners stuck in mines and how to fix those problems. We watch Mythbusters on TV and lots of other documentaries – also Star Trek and the West Wing, which give us all kinds of topics to talk about. We play video games and surf for answers we don’t know on the Internet. We read historical fiction and classic novels and watch documentaries about our founding fathers. We talk about the constitution and how things are in other countries and how things used to be. We are forever interested in almost everything and we don’t need a curriculum to tell us how to learn about it.

I am forever picking up books for them at the library and at yard sales that I know might interest them, but if they don’t read them — or only read a bit of them — I don’t get mad and make it mandatory. After all, how many times have I brought home a cookbook from the library or picked up a novel at a book sale that didn’t interest me after the first chapter or so?

I also let them try things and don’t get upset if they don’t “follow it through.” If I’ve learned anything as a parent over the last 20 (almost 21) years, it’s that they will continue to pursue what they love – just as I do. I tried to get Matthew to play piano for years. I know how to play the piano (because I loved it) and wanted to teach him. He blew it off and didn’t practice and eventually I gave up. But he did pick up his father’s guitar and then proceeded to essentially do nothing but play it in his room for about two years – coming out only for basketball practice and food. Matthew is now an accomplished guitarist and I didn’t have a thing to do with it except providing the guitar and a chord chart poster I picked up at a music store. I also bought some picks.

I was recently heartbroken and on the verge of tears by the scene (often-repeated) of a grandmother who was infuriated by her 5-year-old daughter’s desire to not go to gymnastics class. Kiara takes gymnastics once a week and loves it. I’ve never had to cajole her to go and she’s never begged me to leave. If she did, I wouldn’t make her go. This little girl was so frightened and upset at going – all she wanted to do was go home and listen to her grandmother read stories. The grandmother repeatedly threatened that she would not get any stories if she didn’t finish the class. It was so sad to watch this girl, sitting on the balance beam, crying, just wanting to not be there anymore but afraid to leave.

Finally, one day the grandmother took her home early, but would not speak to her. The girl repeatedly asked, “Can I still have a story?” And the grandmother wouldn’t respond. When I heard the child scream through the door outside in the car, I got up, went outside and started to go to my car, as if I needed something. I didn’t want to interfere but I was compelled. The grandmother looked at me and I just broke down in tears (call it pregnancy hormones, if you will). “Please,” I said. “Please don’t be angry with her. She’s just scared right now. Let her have her story.”

“She has to learn to follow through with things,” the grandmother replied to me angrily. Of course, I couldn’t stop and I just said… “No, no she doesn’t. She’s just a little one. She doesn’t need to know that yet. She needs to know you love her still.”
The grandmother just looked at me and then sat in her car and started it up. Did I step over the line? Probably. But week after week of watching this poor child broke my heart. I tried not to be accusatory. I wanted to be more diplomatic but I was just emotional.
However, the little girl was gone for a week and then the next week her other grandmother brought her. And the grandmother stayed for the class and watched her and cheered for her. The next week the little girl was fine with the class.
I don’t know what happened in between but I do know that I’m glad I said something, whether it was appropriate or not.

Children know what they want. And they know what they don’t want. There have been times when my kids have wanted to quit sports teams and the like. Often, I try to encourage them to finish out a season, especially if there aren’t enough kids for a team. But if something is really bothering them or going to the event is just torturous for them, then I don’t make them.

Unschooling, I think, is not just about how we educate our children but how we talk to them. I am not perfect, but sometimes when I feel my “mom voices” coming on, I try to remind myself of how I would ask a friend or a friend’s child to help me out. For some reason, we often think that because they are our children we are allowed to treat them as little “minions.” This can’t work if we expect to have children who are respectful of us and others. Am I always perfect in this goal? Of course not. I am flawed and human and often just want to get the job done or whatever. But everyday, I try to remember that my goal is for my children to be joyful and to guide them to that, if I possibly can.

I am so impressed by the answers my children come up with and their creative solutions to problems. More than all of it, they are people I like to be around. They are kind, unselfish, fun and smart. I would choose them as friends if they weren’t already around all of the time! I hope they can say the same about me.

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